SoOnCon 2011
by Alex.
SoOnCon is the Southern Ontario Hackerspaces & Makerspaces conference. Hosted in 2011 by Site 3, I got tapped to do the organization – which means a lot of the graphic design as well. For the conference proper I produced a simple and clean type-based logo, and then a large talks chart and poster designed to be lasered into mahogany underlay.
Organizing even a one-day event is a massive challenge. SoOnCon typically features a microcontroller-driven badge – ours was based on Jimmie Roger’s LOLShield – and a single track of talks, with a reception the night before to show off the host space. Site 3 is worth being dead proud of, so we sorted out lightning talks for the evening of September 30th, and ran the conference proper at TIFF Bell Lightbox as part of their Nexus initiative.
We ended up with 28 speakers across two days, with ten presenting at Site 3 and 19 presenting at SoonCon proper – there was some overlap between the two, on topics as diverse as Quad Copters and How to Publish Your Own Book. I’m still a little overwhelmed by the whole thing; I didn’t have a chance to grab many photos at the event proper, even, but it was a fantastic time.
Here’s hoping I get to do something similar next year!
Tags: Public Speaking