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Posted to discuss@apachecon.com by Stas Bekman <st...@stason.org> on 2003/11/20 23:46:55 UTC
apachecon 2003 post mortem
One valuable thing I've learned while working at Intel several years ago, is
that no project ends without a post mortem - an analysis of things that were
done well and not so well, so the mistakes won't be repeated again and good
things won't be lost.
Since I'm sure others will be able to provide an additional input I'll just do
a partial post mortem and let others complete it. I'll use itemize items with
+ for things that I liked, and - for things that I liked less.
To those who don't know me, I taught a mod_perl 2.0 tutorial on Sunday
afternoon. So my comments will be "biased" by it, but not limited to it.
Organization:
+ Nice producer's attitude during the conference. I can't tell about other
speakers/attendees, but personally I had a great experience working with the
organizing folks, who besides being very cheerful, were all very helpful. I
had a much better experience this year, than the previous one.
+ Name tags were very good! Most other conferences you always struggle to get
them straight, which makes it hard to read the fellas names.
+ It felt as a quiet conference, and there was plenty of space in the
presentation rooms.
+ AV worked without a hickup, aircon was just right.
- It was hard to find the Apollo rooms: a big map in the expo hall would have
helped a lot us disoriented people.
- There wasn't enough electricity sockets in the rooms (think of bringing more
socket extenders)
+ There was the network
- The network was quite slow
- Mine and Theo's tutorials weren't provided with handouts, which we delivered
like 2 months ahead of the conference. Luckily my tutorial's attendees have
received them at very end. But Theo's never did. It was explained to me that
it wasn't the organizer's fault, but Kinko's, and even though I've received a
an apology, it's the attendees that have suffered and not me. So I think Tina
at el., owe an apology to attendees from my and Theo's tutorials.
- There was no tea/coffee for tutorials. I think it's a little cost to have it
and people would have had an easier time to stay awake.
- I know Theo also lacked a mike and he had people sitting far away. In my
case I had a very small audience and I believe they could hear me well. Theo
also mentioned that his tutorial didn't have enough chairs to all attendees,
which sort of disrupted his talk a bit.
- I had no idea that as a tutorial speaker I was supposed to collect
tutorial's tags from the attendees. Nobody told me to.
- In the future it'd be nice if the tutorial speakers will be told how many
attendees to expect, to know when to start the talk. Often times it's very
important for the attendees to be in the room at the very first minute of the
talk.
+ This year the speakers were paid right away, which is a great change from
the last year, were some speakers were paid 12 months later.
+ I like the Alexis Park choice because it has no casino and noise in it.
- As a session chair I couldn't find the 30,20,10,x posters in the Apollo room
on Wed and had to struggle making subtle signs to one speaker who was very
excited and didn't want to finish his RSS demos on time ;)
+ It was good that we had the two lunches, saved us some time.
+ special thanks go to the asf conference committee who spent a lot of their
"copious" free time co-operating with the conference organizers, in order to
give you the best conference with the best content.
Content:
Personally, my main goal at the conferences is to communicate with people. I
get to know a whole lot of wonderful people, solve mine and their tech
problems and talk to them about non-tech stuff, therefore I really don't mind
not to go to any talks at all, as long as I'm engaged in fascinated
discussions in the conference halls. So I'll leave this space for those who
went to many talks, but say just one thing:
- I suppose that the organizers tried to make the conference cheaper to
attendees, by making Monday, the Java day, Tuesday the Apache day and Wed the
Perl/PHP day or something like that. I guess this allowed people who were
interested only in Java attend only on Monday and save money on the other
days. It may have worked well, money-wise but it had bad side-effects on the
content. If people interested in Java wanted to attend several talks of their
interest, often times they couldn't do that, because they all happened at the
same time. Instead if each of the topics had their own single track happening
over all 3 days the attendees would have been able to attend to many more
talks of their interest.
p.s. I'm sure there were other good and bad things that I haven't thought of,
so I'm expecting you, attendees and speakers to fill the blanks in in order to
make your next conference a better experience.
__________________________________________________________________
Stas Bekman JAm_pH ------> Just Another mod_perl Hacker
http://stason.org/ mod_perl Guide ---> http://perl.apache.org
mailto:stas@stason.org http://use.perl.org http://apacheweek.com
http://modperlbook.org http://apache.org http://ticketmaster.com
Re: Photo links
Posted by Rodent of Unusual Size <Ke...@Golux.Com>.
John Coggeshall wrote:
>
> http://apachecon.com/wiki/index.php/ConferencePhotos
>
> I'd personally love to see what kind of photos were taken (Ken -- I
> *know* you have photos to share!)
my comments about the show are in my web journal, at
http://Ken.Coar.Org/burrow/ -- and the photos are now completely
up at http://Ken.Coar.Org/gallery/ac2003us/
--
#ken P-)}
Ken Coar, Sanagendamgagwedweinini http://Golux.Com/coar/
Author, developer, opinionist http://Apache-Server.Com/
"Millennium hand and shrimp!"
Photo links
Posted by John Coggeshall <jo...@coggeshall.org>.
I didn't find anywhere online that had this yet, but I started up a wiki
page for every to put links to their conference pages.
http://apachecon.com/wiki/index.php/ConferencePhotos
I'd personally love to see what kind of photos were taken (Ken -- I
*know* you have photos to share!)
John
Re: apachecon 2003 post mortem
Posted by Rich Bowen <rb...@rcbowen.com>.
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On Sat, 22 Nov 2003, Nick Kew wrote:
> Maybe some more relaxed social event(s) at least one evening, with
> things like BOFs during the day rather than after it? Ending the day
> at 10pm (time to get up next morning for those of us on European body
> clocks) was very tiring.
It is impossible to find a good time for BOFs. Last year, we had them in
the morning (8am) and that went over like a lead baloon. I think it's
pretty safe to say that no matter what time we pick for BOFs, it will
conflict with something, not work with someone's schedule, or cause
someone to get up too early or go to bed too late.
So, while I agree with you (I'm getting old, and tend to be in bed by
9pm most nights) the biggest problem with planning conferences is always
scheduling things so that they work for everyone.
Having said, that, when during the day would you suggest that BOFs be
held?
- --
Rich Bowen - Rbowen@RCBowen.com
Apache Cookbook - http://www.oreilly.com/catalog/apacheckbk/
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Re: apachecon 2003 post mortem
Posted by Nick Kew <ni...@webthing.com>.
On Thu, 20 Nov 2003, Stas Bekman wrote:
> Organization:
>
> + Nice producer's attitude during the conference. I can't tell about other
> speakers/attendees, but personally I had a great experience working with the
> organizing folks, who besides being very cheerful, were all very helpful.
Yep. Team always very good.
> I
> had a much better experience this year, than the previous one.
As a first-timer, can't comment.
> + Name tags were very good! Most other conferences you always struggle to get
> them straight, which makes it hard to read the fellas names.
And indeed legible. I wasn't about to worry when my speakers ribbon fell
off, but they insisted on attaching a new one.
> + AV worked without a hickup,
- Poor positioning in Parthenon rooms: I couldn't see my own slides on
screen. Also no wired networking (many thanks to DrBacchus for lending
me his laptop with wireless networking for my live demos).
> aircon was just right.
Not bad, but one of the apollo rooms stank powerfully of smoke at times.
> + There was the network
> - The network was quite slow
- see above.
IMO the network was fine for personal stuff (OK at busy times it was slower
than modem dialup, but so what?) For live demo during my talk it was
rather nasty: people might have thought it was my software that was
horribly slow:-(
> - There was no tea/coffee for tutorials. I think it's a little cost to have it
> and people would have had an easier time to stay awake.
Indeed. And american tea and coffee was a nasty shock overall (both at
Alexis park and other places I tried). Next time, how about an English
caterer to make tea and an Italian for coffee?
> + I like the Alexis Park choice because it has no casino and noise in it.
+ Agreed: relaxing location (mostly)
- Did suffer from too much pollution: I woke up two mornings choking on a
diesel/aviation fuel stench.
> + It was good that we had the two lunches, saved us some time.
- I had to make a fuss to get lunch without meat
( + I got it eventually, and Tina was overly apologetic about it)
-- Sandwich and apple OK, but crisps and sweet-fizzy-drinks?
-- I had trouble finding anything that wasn't meat and/or complete
junk-food in Las Vegas.
> + special thanks go to the asf conference committee
Yep.
> Content:
It seemed to me that rather a lot of the talks were of a tutorial nature;
the kind of thing you get by reading TFM. Nothing wrong with that, but
shouldn't it fall under a Tutorial banner rather than a Conference one?
> Personally, my main goal at the conferences is to communicate with people. I
An interesting one. I find online media rather better for that: I'm not
suffering jetlag, worrying about the stomach, or hurrying to snatch brief
moments online to read email.
> get to know a whole lot of wonderful people, solve mine and their tech
> problems and talk to them about non-tech stuff,
Yeah, it's nice to put some faces to the names we know (and next week I'll
get around to signing those keys - and thanks to those who have already
signed mine).
> p.s. I'm sure there were other good and bad things that I haven't thought of,
> so I'm expecting you, attendees and speakers to fill the blanks in in order to
> make your next conference a better experience.
Maybe some more relaxed social event(s) at least one evening, with
things like BOFs during the day rather than after it? Ending the day
at 10pm (time to get up next morning for those of us on European body
clocks) was very tiring.
--
Nick Kew
Re: apachecon 2003 post mortem
Posted by "Andrew C. Oliver" <ac...@apache.org>.
>> + I like the Alexis Park choice because it has no casino and noise in it.
>
> Alexis Park has a fine conference area, but their rates are not competitive
> with other nearby hotels (Some people reported rates of <$69 at nearby
> fancy hotels).
>
No clue on conference areas, but the hotel next store was more aesthetically
appealing and was $69.. However I grew up in Florida and am partial to that
Spanish colonial style ;-)
-Andy
--
Andrew C. Oliver
http://www.superlinksoftware.com/poi.jsp
Custom enhancements and Commercial Implementation for Jakarta POI
http://jakarta.apache.org/poi
For Java and Excel, Got POI?
The views expressed in this email are those of the author and are almost
definitely not shared by the Apache Software Foundation, its board or its
general membership. In fact they probably most definitively disagree with
everything espoused in the above email.
Re: apachecon 2003 post mortem
Posted by Aaron Bannert <aa...@clove.org>.
I'll add my comments inline with Stas'.
On Thu, Nov 20, 2003 at 02:46:55PM -0800, Stas Bekman wrote:
> + Nice producer's attitude during the conference. I can't tell about other
> speakers/attendees, but personally I had a great experience working with
> the organizing folks, who besides being very cheerful, were all very
> helpful. I had a much better experience this year, than the previous one.
>
> + Name tags were very good! Most other conferences you always struggle to
> get them straight, which makes it hard to read the fellas names.
>
> + It felt as a quiet conference, and there was plenty of space in the
> presentation rooms.
>
> + AV worked without a hickup, aircon was just right.
+1 to all of these. The organizers were very helpful and friendly, the
name tags worked really well, and the AV worked perfectly.
> - It was hard to find the Apollo rooms: a big map in the expo hall would
> have helped a lot us disoriented people.
+1 a few big maps would have helped.
> - There wasn't enough electricity sockets in the rooms (think of bringing
> more socket extenders)
+1 more power would be great.
> + There was the network
> - The network was quite slow
The network was *MUCH* better than it was last year, and honestly
it was FAR better than it has ever been at any conference I've been
at. The network guys solved outages VERY quickly and in general
the availability of access was high. There's always room for more
speed, but I think the network was very reliable.
Also, wireless coverage was *excellent* and far better than last year.
> + This year the speakers were paid right away, which is a great change from
> the last year, were some speakers were paid 12 months later.
+1
> + I like the Alexis Park choice because it has no casino and noise in it.
Alexis Park has a fine conference area, but their rates are not competitive
with other nearby hotels (Some people reported rates of <$69 at nearby
fancy hotels).
> + special thanks go to the asf conference committee who spent a lot of
> their "copious" free time co-operating with the conference organizers, in
> order to give you the best conference with the best content.
+1!
-aaron