I co-chair O'Reilly's Fluent conference (JS/Web Platform/etc) and we're always trying to come up with ideas to help ease interactions between attendees. I don't know if I should, but I feel a little guilty if I think attendees are not connecting and getting what they want from the event.

A random blast of things I've observed or that we're doing/trying..

I don't know where it originated, but O'Reilly always has 'bird-of-a-feather' (a.k.a. BOF) tables at their events either during registration, at lunch, or in the evening, where people are encouraged to get together to talk on specific topics related to the conference. A lot of people seem to dig these because they remain technical but they pretty much say 'whoever you are, you're welcome here!'

For 2014, we're going to try having actual 'BOF sessions' during the main program on various topics (Angular, Ember, HTML5 gaming, etc) with official teams or representatives present, but the whole goal is just to get attendees together and chatting in an easy, non-threatening environment.

One of the conference team also came up with the idea of trying a 'speed networking' at the last event. It went OK with about 50 people turning up and spending 30 seconds talking to each other person. I found it quite exhausting as an introvert but it definitely made me feel more connected with the attendees.

Another thing we found had a good effect at this year's event was our evening 'Ignite' event (a lightning talk format that has events of its own all over the world). The mood is more informal, drinks are on offer, etc, but there's still a structure to it and some entertaining talks too.

There was also a pre-conference mixer at a local bar but I didn't enjoy this as much because, well, I don't really like drinking or standing around at bars, but I did get to chat to a lot of people.

I've noticed that many attendees actually like a well targeted, friendly-feeling expo/exhibit hall. If the people representing the attending companies are actually in the community or are just genuine, friendly people, they can make for good (but temporary) company. We've run something called the Startup Showcase in the exhibit hall where startups using JavaScript got to show off their products/apps in a chance of winning a prize. I had some of my best tech conversations chatting with all of these folks who were keen to show off their work. I think going even further with the "expo" style of things would work well for us as it's a sort of interaction I personally dig. We also had a giant chess board and similar things set up which brings people together.. watching two competitive researchers from Microsoft playing chess in a 30 minute break is quite something ;-)

I'm mostly sharing these points in case anyone finds them useful in implementing their own extra social activities at formal-ish tech conferences, but I'm also keen to hear what else works at similar events because both I and the O'Reilly conference team are keen to consider new ideas and make the event fun while keeping our eye squarely on the ball of being a serious, tech-focused event.

Sorry for the ramble, but I'd love to hear if any of the ideas click or clash with anyone, as we're always trying to learn and experiment.