On Mon, 09 Jan 2017 12:07:32 +0100 Brian Exelbierd <bex@xxxxxxxxx> wrote: > Warning: This email is long. I don't know how to avoid that. I > debated making this a wiki, but I think we need more discussion that > just editing. There is no tl;dr. If you want a tl;dr perhaps you > should wait a while and participate near the end of the conversation. > > Warning: The opening text is the same for both Part I and Part II. > > During 2016 I had the privilege of helping to plan and execute Flock > and attended both FUDCon LATAM (Puno) and FUDCon APAC (Phnom Penh). > Talking to people has led to me to believe that these events may not > be meeting all of our goals. Specifically we are spending a lot of > time and money on them and may not be getting our full value. I > also heard a lot of comments about how the events are not equal from > people who thought they should be and not well distributed across > the world from people who thought they should be. This led me to > believe that there is a lot of confusion about why we do these > events and what we want out of them. > > In the spirit of it is easier to edit than to create, I am going to > propose some ideas. My goal is less to present this as a polished > proposal ready for a vote and more to allow us to have a discussion > around the finer points of the events strategy. It would be nice to > see this discussion come to an end by the end of March so that it can > have impact this year. The planning for Flock will begin soon (see > my another of my emails today) but the FUDCon processes are not > heavily started, as far as I can tell. > > Additionally, while history is important, I think it is equally > important that we consider what we want to accomplish today and in > the next few years, not just what we tried to accomplish in the > past. Therefore, I've written this without too much reference to what > is being changed and instead as an idea of what we should be doing. > I look forward to folks bringing forward suggestions for continuing > activities from the past or better incorporating lessons learned that > I may have missed. > > I look forward to your feedback and input. > > regards, > > bex > > # FUDCon > > As mentioned above, I attended both FUDCons in 2016. These are the > only two FUDCons that I have ever attended. I was told by attendees > at both events that while every event is different, these two were > fairly typical in the areas I was concerned with. > > FUDCons have been described to me as being for Fedora Users and > Developers (hence the name). What is never clear from the people I've > talked to is what kind of users they think are targeted and whether > the developers are "developers who use Fedora" or "people who develop > (contribute to) Fedora." Both events this year were held in > partnership with Universities. Both had large attendances on the > first day, typically when students were incentivized to show up by > their faculty and poor attendance on the non-incentive days. It was > unclear that many people took a lot away from the conference or that > there would be significant follow up activity. These comments are > not to single out the organizers for these FUDCons. They all worked > very hard and pulled off very good events. I just didn't get a > feeling that the events had a lot of impact and changed much in the > short or long term. > > I believe that for our investment of time, energy, and money in > FUDCons to be successful, the goals of these events must be clarified. > I think one of the problems is that FUDCon has been trying to do much. Trying to get collaborators together and get new people on board. My experience is that bringing new people on board takes a lot of time, and it is not feasible during fudco. This is not to say that we should not show case the best talent of the region with open to public talks. But we can reduce that and avoid at all cost preaching to the choir. FUDCon it is a good opportunity to push people in the pool that has been in the edge for some time. But most important thing like stated for flock ... bonding, planning, cross-pollination. > ## Structure > > I believe we need to remove some of the restrictions we place on > these events, chiefly on where and how often they can be held. > Therefore, I believe we should simply state that FUDCons can be held > anywhere in the world and any number of times that is appropriate. > This means that we can have FUDCons in places like EMEA and NA (which > helps to relieve pressure on Flock). > > Additionally, while FUDCons are inherently regional events, I believe > that the Fedora Council should nominally "own" them. This means that > the budget allocation should work like most FADs and be approved by > the budget. I don't think this is a change from current practice. > > While I hope that Ambassadors will take the lead in organizing and > running these events, I believe that any contributor should be able to > make a proposal. > > Finally, I believe these events do not need to be standalone. I think > they can have greater impact when collocated with other conferences or > run as "+1 days" to other events. While this shouldn't be a > requirement, I think it is a good practice to encourage. > > Another challenge for FUDCons that we should remove is to make it > easier to organize them. Once a FUDCon is approved, we need to > ensure that we have enough people and resources engaged to make the > event a success. In the case of Flock we see several core organizers > working with the local organizer to make things happen. FUDCons > should be able to rely on more support from the FCAIC and possibly > others to help with organizational details. We should also see > FUDCons being proposed with robust organizing committees that are > appropriate to the size of the event. > Talking about structure before goals is not the best approach. Having a smaller event as a +1 day to a large conference can be good. But if the event is too big, we can have people tired. Also a big event may dilute fedora event. Not bad, but something to be careful. > ## Goals > > It is hard to write a single set of goals for a varied set of events. > Instead, I think that we should consider these in a way that I hope is > similar to how the Ambassadors consider events they attend. > Specifically, I believe that we should be asking the following > questions: > > * Who specifically is this event targeting and why? How does this > group align with the target audiences for Fedora? > * What are the specific desired outcomes of this event? How can we > see evidence of achieving these goals? Evidence doesn't need to be > quantitative, it can be qualitative, but you need to have thought > through how you know you were a success. > * Why should we hold a FUDCon in this specific city? > * How will you ensure you attract the right audience and that they are > engaged? What preparatory activities need to happen? How will those > happen? What follow up activities are needed? How will those happen? > * If this FUDCon is collocated, why is this conference or event the > right one to collocate with? If this FUDCon is not collocated, why is > an independent event better? > I thing that it is good to have the best people of a region together to plan how to do better, exchange expertise, and help collaborators to get interested in other areas of the project. It will be a great opportunity if the local team has a group of people that is interested in contributing and give them the final push. This means trying to have people from different part of the project is key. Even bring some people from outside the region if the region do not have participation in one area of the project. > ## Programming > > Programming for FUDCons is extremely important. In 2016 one event was > run as a Bar Camp and the other was run as a programmed event at a Bar > Camp. While Bar Camp voting should result in the conference that > people want to attend, that also means that the speakers need to be > talking about topics that matter to the audience. In the case of a > programmed event, this is also critical. > Voting usually help to make the schedule, so topics with more votes are not allocated at the same time. FUDCon 2014 got online voting before the event. > Therefore programming at FUDCons should be based on the goals and > target audience, not just based on which Fedora contributors want to > attend. Ideally the proposal should include the kinds of topics that > will be presented and even a provisional list of speakers who will be > approached. > > ## Funded Attendance and Costs > > To increase the number of activities, we should cleanly divorce > FUDCons from Regional FADs. FUDCons are necessarily a reason to fly > in contributors from all over a region or the world. Let's keep them > locally focused. Depending on the goals and target audience all of > the speakers do not even need to be Fedora contributors. For > example, a non-Fedora contributor speaking about Eclipse (on Fedora) > at a developer focused FUDCon may make a lot of sense. > > Therefore I believe that budgets should trend toward the smaller side > with an emphasis on impact being directly related to budget size. To > give some (highly contrived) examples, a +1 day event for FOSDEM may > have a large budget because the event needs good publicity to draw the > huge attendance opportunity from those attending FOSDEM. A +1 day > event for DevConf.cz may have a small budget because we have a > friendly environment for advertising and a ton of local contributors > to help with programming. A +1 day event for FISL may need a medium > size budget because of the need to fly in Spanish speaking presenters > for some sessions. (These are just examples, don't read into them.) As a local event, it is a problem with how the public will react to an event. It is really difficult to ask a developer to be good at logistic to create a great event. There are challenges to overcome and sadly as local event the experience gained in one place may not be relevant for the next place. What I mean is that we can not expect a continuity with events that are focused locally, because life has challenges. I am very happy that we are talking about this, I strongly believe that we need to have a clear set of objectives if we want to FUDCon to produce real value for the community and the project. Neville _______________________________________________ council-discuss mailing list -- council-discuss@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx To unsubscribe send an email to council-discuss-leave@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
