Just wanted to clarify how Toronto worked in terms of hours.
We had a problem pre-weekend with a lot of work that needed doing and very few people willing to put the time in. That forced us to realize that there were going to be some people who would not really participate and who were not really interested in doing the work.

We actually did some work pre-weekend asking people what areas they were interested in and tried to build complimentary groups of interest and skills. The teams themselves were supposed to record their hours. In the end, we eventually ended up with one team made up of people remaining from the original groups after a lot of folks simply went home and didn't come back.

The days were divided into 4 hour blocks. This was for several reasons a) it was thought too cumbersome to record every hour but it was easy to have someone walk around and record people present every 4 hours. b) We wanted to not penalize people who had families they had to attend to (we felt that peoples children were more important) and we wanted to allow those people to participate and get their due credit even if they had to leave for a while. c) we recognized that not everyone was going to be productive for the whole weekend.

In the end, every person who was there for the opening got at least one share, even if they never came back. I'm not sure if that was a fair thing to happen, but at the same time their reason for not coming back may not have been their own fault (e.g. we went Ruby and there were a lot of folks who did not know it) so I think in the end that one share for showing up balances out.
I like the fact that those who spent the whole weekend in a chair and worked as long as possible actually received more hour/shares — they deserved it. I also like that we tried to take into account people and not just as work units. Those that had to go home for a while where not penalized significantly because of their other obligations.

What worked: The large blocks of time were actually easy to record and maintain. People who needed to leave for a few hours or an evening were not unduly penalized.
What didn't work: There were a few who really didn't participate period, but we didn't try to determine if they were working and so they received the shares they were there for anyway.

You mentioned that only one weekend launched (was it Boston?) but we actually launched as well. We died a year later because we just couldn't get people to commit at all after the fact.
Birmingham's Curtis Palmer had a good point in his post “0% of CrossConneXion > 5% of a Zero” (http://bit.ly/4tXEZE)

I think that some place in the middle, between those two methods is the right way to go. People need to know that if something useful does come out of their hard work, they will not be forgotten. However the value after the fact of people willing to commit and volunteer time is far higher and will make or break a fledgling company.

Just wanted to clarify how Toronto worked in terms of hours.
We had a problem pre-weekend with a lot of work that needed doing and very few people willing to put the time in. That forced us to realize that there were going to be some people who would not really participate and who were not really interested in doing the work.

We actually did some work pre-weekend asking people what areas they were interested in and tried to build complimentary groups of interest and skills. The teams themselves were supposed to record their hours. In the end, we eventually ended up with one team made up of people remaining from the original groups after a lot of folks simply went home and didn't come back.

The days were divided into 4 hour blocks. This was for several reasons a) it was thought too cumbersome to record every hour but it was easy to have someone walk around and record people present every 4 hours. b) We wanted to not penalize people who had families they had to attend to (we felt that peoples children were more important) and we wanted to allow those people to participate and get their due credit even if they had to leave for a while. c) we recognized that not everyone was going to be productive for the whole weekend.

In the end, every person who was there for the opening got at least one share, even if they never came back. I'm not sure if that was a fair thing to happen, but at the same time their reason for not coming back may not have been their own fault (e.g. we went Ruby and there were a lot of folks who did not know it) so I think in the end that one share for showing up balances out.
I like the fact that those who spent the whole weekend in a chair and worked as long as possible actually received more hour/shares — they deserved it. I also like that we tried to take into account people and not just as work units. Those that had to go home for a while where not penalized significantly because of their other obligations.

What worked: The large blocks of time were actually easy to record and maintain. People who needed to leave for a few hours or an evening were not unduly penalized.
What didn't work: There were a few who really didn't participate period, but we didn't try to determine if they were working and so they received the shares they were there for anyway.

You mentioned that only one weekend launched (was it Boston?) but we actually launched as well. We died a year later because we just couldn't get people to commit at all after the fact.
Birmingham's Curtis Palmer had a good point in his post “0% of CrossConneXion > 5% of a Zero” (http://bit.ly/4tXEZE)

I think that some place in the middle, between those two methods is the right way to go. People need to know that if something useful does come out of their hard work, they will not be forgotten. However the value after the fact of people willing to commit and volunteer time is far higher and will make or break a fledgling company.