OpenRefine 2025 BarCamp

I’d like to start the conversation around organizing the 2025 edition of the OpenRefine Barcamp!

The 2024 Barcamp took place from June 16 to 19, partly online and partly in Berlin, with 14 in-person participants and 15 joining remotely. It was quite a success, as you can read here.

For budget reasons, the 2025 edition will be fully online this year (see this discussion). This gives us more flexibility and opens the event to anyone in the community, regardless of location.

We also want to stick with the Barcamp format as an unconference-style event where the agenda is co-created by participants at the start. We usually have a suggestion period a few weeks before, then kick things off by reviewing those suggestions and building the agenda together. For the 2025 edition, we're aiming for a mix of technical deep dives, demos, training sessions, and open discussions about OpenRefine’s development, design, and roadmap.

Whether you're a longtime contributor, an avid user, or just curious about OpenRefine, you're welcome to join! We want this to be an open and participatory space.

To get the ball rolling, I’ve created a poll to find the best date. The goal is to gauge interest and ensure key contributors can attend. We'll keep voting open until April 15.

We plan to open the contribution period for session ideas about four weeks before the chosen start date.

We’d love to hear what you're hoping to get out of this Barcamp; whether it's hands-on sessions, big-picture discussions, or something else entirely. It's your event and we want to shape it together!

:spiral_calendar: Date Options

Votes are open until April 15.

  • June 2–4
  • June 12–14
  • September 1–3
  • September 4–6
  • September 8–10
  • September 11–13
0 voters

Thank you all for your responses. After reviewing them, I suggest we organize the BarCamps between Monday, September 8, and Friday, September 12. This timeframe captures the overlap between the two periods that received the most votes and avoid week end. Additionally, it gives us some extra time to organize the event.

Please mark your calendars for now; I will provide more details in the coming weeks.

1 Like

Proposition

Here is an initial proposal to schedule the 2025 BarCamp. I suggest running the Barcamp from Monday, September 8, to Thursday, September 11, for 4 to 5 hours each day during that time (see proposed time in timebuddy).

  • Evening in India
  • Late afternoon in Europe
  • Late Morning and Early Afternoon on the East Coast
  • Morning on the West Coast

On Monday, September 8, we will have our planning day where participants will discuss the proposed sessions and develop our agenda. I believe it is important to dedicate an entire day to this process. I found last year's exercise to be both enjoyable and productive, and we should ensure there is ample time for participants to introduce themselves and get to know each other.

We have three days to schedule the session, from Tuesday, September 9, to Thursday, September 11. The spirit of the barcamp is to allow the audience to decide and shape their event; therefore, we can adapt the schedule and time of the event based on participants' interest and availability.

Session Content Idea

A Barcamp lets participants bring up topics they want to discuss during the event. So it is up to you to decide what's on the agenda. From last year's feedback, we are looking for sessions covering

  • Feedback regarding OpenRefine UX and usage.
  • Hands-on session to write code, update documentation.
  • Issue triage party.
  • Discussion to better scope specific feature (see our new goal posts page).
  • Present progress and recent development on a specific aspect of the software or its extensions.
  • Trainer sharing tips and suggestions for successful training.
  • And obviously, anything else you would like to discuss ...

At least one participant must suggest a session for it to be discussed when we define the agenda.

Logistic

My next steps are to create a registration form and a space for participants to suggest sessions. The two open-source solutions Unhangout and Camper (which we used last year) are no longer being maintained. Therefore, I am currently evaluating alternatives.

  1. A turnkey paid solution with https://www.groupmap.com
  2. Using a set of tools we already have access to:
    • Google Form for registration
    • Public Google Calendar for scheduling (similar to last year)
    • A dedicated section of the forum for session proposals and comments
    • Zoom for online session (similar to last year)
    • Zoom whiteboard (which is very similar to Miro) for live voting and collaboration
    • Etherpad for note sharing (one pad per session, similar to last year)
    • Telegram for chat (similar to last year)

I'm eager to hear other options and perspectives. I welcome feedback as we define this year's Barcamp. If you think I missed something or have a better way to design the event, please let me know.

Rationale regarding the scheduling.

Here is how I get to the proposed schedule.

As mentioned in my previous message, Monday, September 8, to Friday, September 12, captures the overlap between the two periods that received the most votes and avoids the weekend.

Then I aim to have at least 20 hours of scheduled meetings, similar to what we had in 2024. Last year, we had five sessions on Tuesday and six on Wednesday, with Monday as the planning day, for a total of 20 hours of scheduled meetings.

In 2025, the event will be conducted online only, and we need to take our community’s various time zones into account. As a result, we won't be able to hold a full 8-hour day event. We will be limited to a maximum of three to four sessions per day, including breaks.

From my observation, contributors and users are mainly spread between India, Europe, and the Americas (up to the West Coast). I acknowledge that the proposed time is during the night for contributors in Asia, Australia, New Zealand, and Oceania. I am open to suggestions to improve how we integrate them into the event (either with a different schedule or asynchronous participation...).

3 Likes