JIBC Demofest Wrap Up – Part 1: How we did it

JIBC’s first Demofest event was a success–there was a great buzz in the Atrium thanks to the 16 presenters and approximately 80 JIBC staff who attended during the 1.5 hour event.

We modelled the JIBC Demofest after the Elearning Guild’s DevLearn Demofest.  This is how we structured ours:

1. Presenters submitted a one page form with screenshots and links, description of their project, technologies used, and problem they were trying to solve.  We merged these submissions into a JIBC Demofest guide that was distributed digitally before the event.

2. With the screenshots and links provided, we produced a short version and a long version trailer. The short trailer was distributed digitally.  This gave attendees an idea of what to expect when they came to the Demofest.  We also provided some details in a blog post about what to expect.

3.  Attendees were told to arrive in our theatre at 11, where we showed the long version trailer, explained the voting and then distributed some door prizes.  We kept this portion of the event to 10 minutes.

4. Attendees left the theatre and went to the Atrium, which was set up with small tables, some chairs, power supplies, and a voting table.  The voting table had 3 iPads set up with a voting app ready to go for each of the categories.  The app saved us a ton of time in tabulating votes and was very easy to set up.

5.  We announced winners and distributed prizes within a couple of hours.

The one thing we’d do differently is find a way to have the presenters (who in our organization were the elearning developers) have time to circulate themselves, since they are also the ones who could benefit from learning about the different technologies and projects.  We are thinking that we could do this in a couple of ways:

  • have presenters come in two’s, so each can take a shift in looking around
  • have 2 presenters circulating at a time throughout the event

Other than that, we were pretty pleased with how it all went.