TCGC #1 Postponed
The first Twin Cities Give Camp has been postponed. This is not a decision that was made in the haste of the moment, but one that the entire TCGC Coordination Team (Founder, Coordinator, Business Analysts, etc) discussed over the course of the last couple of weeks. We decided that it would be necessary to reschedule in order to ensure that the event was a success.
Why are we postponing this event? Why wouldn't the event be a success? When it comes down to it, the Twin Cities Give Camp is very similar to a consultancy. We consult with various non-profit organizations & charities across the Twin Cities in hope that we can help them solve various technical problems within their organizations. This type of consulting also comes with a level of responsibility to ensure that the problem domain is properly identified and expectations are set and understood on both sides. This ensures that both parties are aware of what is to happen, and how things are to work. During the discovery phase of the first TCGC the organizations and our staff hit some roadblocks, ran into unforeseen issues which in turn forced us to both learn a new process along the way. With that said, it comes down to the business requirements of the tasks at hand. As we all know, these can be very difficult to nail down. The difficulty is also compounded by the fact that the Give Camp is only one weekend from start to finish. Some of the requirements were nearly complete, some were not even close. This was of no fault of any party, but of both - chalk that one up to the learning process of setting up an event like this.
How can we avoid this in the future? In order to ensure the future date is not moved we have decided to cut scope into much smaller units of work. The units of work will be cut down to the level of where one person could complete the work in under a day (6-8 hours). This enables us to properly match the resource with the task at hand. We also have increased our discovery phase and process. Learning along the way has its benefits and we're positive the future date will not be moved. We have already set up a few organizations with proper requirements (usually smaller tasks) and we will carry those forward into the next event.
When is the next event? The event will be moved to November 14th & 15th of 2009. Why so late in the year? As all of you Twin Cities residents are aware ... during the Minnesota summer _no_one_ stays inside. Asking a Minnesotan to give up a nice summer weekend is like asking a fish to not swim. Having this in the beginning of the winter will hopefully increase the volunteers as well as give us the ability to increase our output.
Again, we apologize for postponing this event, but we as a team feel that it is the best thing to do for the organizations. If you have any questions please let us know via our contact page.
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