Turnout:

• We had about 180 come to SHDH throughout the day, with crowd numbers peaking between the times of 6:00 – 8:00 pm

• People began to show up at 1:00 pm, and we had nearly 50+ hackers by 3:00 pm!

• We had 25 all-nights warriors that continued developing until 10:00 am!

• Splitting the venue between a roof top and the main office room worked well to distinguish between hacking and socializing

Interactions:

• An IRC Channel made in-house and group collaboration possible, but it was underutilized. Only about ten to twelve people were on it at any given time.

• A Twitter hashtag was made available, and tweets associated with the event were projected on an office wall. However, the hashtag was too long and confusing. A better idea would be to simplify this, like #SuperHappyDevHouse

• The Post-It Wall in the foyer was a good way to publicise specific projects, and even mention a job opening or two!

• Cross video posting between rooms was a great idea, as was the live streaming of the event.

Food:

• Lunch consisted of two dishes, dessert and drinks. There was more food than was actually required. The same could be said for the dinner. The midnight pizza was great, but more might have been appropriate.

• Quality of lunch wasn’t very good, but dinner and pizza were great. Not including the pizza, however, too much food from lunch and dinner was wasted.

• Free flow Asahi, free-of-charge! More than enough beer; we drank seven kegs, and had three kegs remaining by the end of the event.

• All-you-can-drink Nespresso was awesome. By the end of the event, 180 cups were consumed. But too much milk

• Not much in the way of snacks, so hackers either had to wait until the meal times or had to bring their own.

Venue:

• The venue was perfect: the location was great, and the rooftop really helped switch things up. It made the division of work and socialization very easy.

• The main office could be a little tight sometimes, but there was no problem in the partitioning of electricity.

• There was music, but that was probably unnecessary, as most hackers had their own headphones.

• As the night progressed, some of the socializing moved its way into the office, which wasn’t for the best, as it took some valuable space away from the hackers.

• The main office would benefit from different types of furniture, such as bean bags; the tables and chairs were not really conducive to hacking or networking.

• The electricity was a bummer; it short-circuited three times throughout the evening, with the longest blackout lasting nearly an hour. A good handful of participants left during this time.

• After some initial hiccups, the network was reasonably robust. There was no difficulty getting online as the night progressed.

• The rooftop was nice, and would have been great to work on; too much emphasis on the main office as a workstation.

• The weather was cooperative, which is good; the tarp would not have protected us. Next time, if on a roof, a fitted tarp or large umbrellas would be better for participants and organizers.

• Signage and Directions to the venue were weak; some participants had difficulty finding the event

• A tip jar / donation box would not be out of place; we could cover many of our costs by putting something like this near the refreshments and food

Projects/Presentations:

• About ten projects in total, with a second round at 9am

• Many projects weren't from the list we seeded, but it was nice to have and it was a good conversation starter.

• There were some really exceptional ideas, and even some viable products with some genuine commercial value.

• The lightning talks were really well-received.

• Unlike last year, there was no giveaway with e27 to award the most interesting project a booth/table at Echelon 2011 (very cool) and also had consolation prizes of free tickets.  In fact, no prizes were given out, not even the t-shirts.

• Some presentations blurred the lines between pitches and advertisements of existing companies; next year the former should be emphasized

• Not enough publicity on the agenda, timeline or venue; most people didn’t even realize that they could post their projects on the site, which may have hurt collaborative efforts

Improvements for future events:

• Increase the frequency: we can probably host two events a year without generating fatigue in the community.

• Better and more accessible mediums of communication, i.e. wiki, IRC, twitter, etc. etc.

• Logistical constraints put an undue burden on organizers; next event should be easier in terms of set up and deliveries.

• Too much wastage of food and drink; we could reduce supplies by half and still come out with a surplus. Types of food should change: hand foods like sandwiches and pizza is preferable to noodles

• Encourage more people to upload photos at the event, maybe to a flickr group; a dedicated photographer might be useful to push out photos in real time

Pre-event checklist reminder for next time:

• Venue (JustNice Company venue is great)

• Sponsors

• Chairs/Tables

• Carrefour Snack Budget

• Drinks (beer, coffee)

• Lunch/Dinner/Midnight Snack

• Increase Marketing Push: FB event, Wiki Page, three email announcements, Mailchimp signup

• Newsletter few days before

• Coverage in blogs should be increased

• Bigger push on press invitations