Fernanda Foertter

Let’s start with a definition

BoF = Birds of a Feather (fly together)

Birds live in flocks (unless you’re a deadly owl or another bird with talons). These flocks look for food and a place to live and rear their young… together. There’s no leader, they just all hang out and do, like, bird things, together. They squawk and fly and drink and eat… together. 
You know, together.

See, a BoF is supposed to be about building and nurturing a community, a flock if you will. So if you’re proposing a BoF, make sure it has community in mind. Answer these questions:

— Does a community exist? (1)
 — If not, are you taking the lead into fostering one regularly? (3)
 — Are there similar possibly competing solutions? (2)
 — Are the competing solutions also authors & included in your proposal? (5)
 — Did you or your organization create this *thing* ? ( -1 )
— Is your list of authors only from your org? (-5)
 — Are you taking a backseat and letting stakeholders/users take center stage? (3)

You should get at least 10 points on this scale. Basically, any negative here and your BoF idea is in peril.

Here are some examples of what BoF proposals should be good, and not so good:

1. “My company built this tool so my co-worker and I are proposing a BoF to tell people about it” — Not a good BoF
2. “My company built a tool that is similar to this other company’s tools and some opensource tools and we got together to talk about how it’s serving the community using them.” — Good BoF
3. “I wanted to present some work I did (because in reality I didn’t get a tech paper slot)” — Not a good BoF
4. “I asked Bob and Sue, users of my tool, to lead a BoF with me and present some use cases, state of the practice, lead feedback session, and help users determine what we should focus on next, so this tool can serve the community better” — Good BoF
5. “Dr. Big Ego along with Dr. Self Impotant and Turned Consultant, want to explore some big-out-of-reach-idea with a panel of Big Wigs. We will draw an audience because of our importance, but it’s not like we are going to follow up or anything, we have better things to do with our important time LOLZ” — Not a good BoF
6. “Something new is happening in our industry and we see a lot of people struggling to make sense of it. We think a BoF would be a good place to get us all talking together” — Good BoF
7. “We make a niche tool for a niche market, and at this giant conference we’re going to show how everything ever made is inferior. If you are interested in the future come to our BoF or else be stuck in the past HAHA” — Not a good BoF

This pretty much summarizes every BoF I’ve ever reviewed in the last 4 years. The bottom line is: we can generally tell if you’re genuinely interested in building, or reaching out to community. All other attempts just make you and/or your orgs look like schmucks.

Don’t be a BoF Schmuck