Feedback collections for the next event

Archive IPFS Thing 2022
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There’s going to be all kinds of opportunities to make future events better. A formal feedback survey will go out after the event, but this is here to make it easy to capture ideas/suggestions while they’re fresh. Feel free to put comments on what worked well and what you think could be done better. Problem statements are welcome; problems + solutions are even better :slight_smile:

Thanks!

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Unconference / Birds of a Feather

If we’re doing weeklong events, there should be a dedicated unconference / ad hoc sessions / Birds of a Feather track with a selection of spaces available. This is similar to “Hacker Houses” that I’ve started doing at some FIL events – a coworking space that serves as a home base.

This is perfect for small groups or areas of interest who aren’t big enough for a track, but will have time to hack / discuss / meet.

This can have some dedicated curation and system for adding one off sessions, and they can be added and updated during the week.

There is a lot more to be said about doing true daily collaborative unconference planning, which I’m happy to talk about (e.g. everyone presents sessions live in the morning, vote on sessions to assess room size, and then do quick scheduling)

TODO: I have an unconference “session voting app” that I’m going to try and get access to.

Got access, it’s here GitHub - kyoung/unconf: for all those times we all said... "why isn't there an app for this?"

Probably overkill for this edition of IPFS Thing and numbers, but I’m going to look at setting up a test install.

Discord per event

Past about … I don’t know, 20 people, a dedicated Discord server per event might be a good idea. This can then be set up with permissions / roles at the server level and with clearer channels (not just threads).

Part of sign up / interest / other tooling can be outfitted to assign roles as appropriate, or eg. hand out “track chair” or “volunteer” or “organizer” roles. We can gather best practices about this over time. There are a bunch of bots and automation that can be added.

NOTE: we ended up with a dedicated Slack for this event. So s/Discord/Slack/

Luma

Luma https://lu.ma is pretty great for stuff where you really need attendance numbers / registration. It also has “Communities” support where you can group events. This is another very light weight way for anyway to schedule “side events” – that are more one off – and still keep everything in one place calendar wise.

Of course, we’re also tinkering with the Discourse events plugin which is another path.

I wanted to mention Luma, because it can link to a Discord server, which is pretty great.

Screen Shot 2022-07-09 at 9.45.29 AM
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(yes I made an IPFS Thing Community as a demo to see if I can help Yuni gather all her separate events – consider it a test, because we haven’t added other things to it, and it’s for connecting to a Discord-as-community, not Discord-as-channel-for-event)

NOTE: it can also link to Dedicated Slack instances, and we did end up setting this up.

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Also @BigLep let’s maybe even have an end of event retrospective while we’re still there? Could edit an event into this top post and do it Saturday or Sunday evening. But we’ll see how we feel after a full week :slight_smile:

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This is a hold for things that come to mind…

  1. Potentially start later than 9am on the first day given travel and jet lag
  2. Include times/locations of things like breakfast and lunch on the schedule.
  3. AV needs to be able to project zoom remote participants.
  4. See if can reduce information sources (website, Discourse, Notion, chat). Should be able to get rid of Discourse or Notion for event logistics.
  5. Have day-of signage on where to go or at least someone dedicated to directing.
  6. Have presenter guide/tips
  • Do projector hookup practice before the track starts so not finding out during transitions that someone’s laptop doesn’t work with the project setup or how to configure one’s display properly.
  1. Potentially have dedicated computers hooked up to projectors and have everyone do zoom share through that so that dealing with screen hookups.
  2. (minor) Assuming have a chat channel per track, provide a pinned link in the chat channel back to the notes page (currently on Discourse)
  3. For remove/VC attendees, we need to do more than have owls on site. To make it successful, need to account for things like:
  • Power adapters in Europe
  • USB A → USB C for new machines/macs
  • How will setup with microphones and speakers in the room so you can still record and not get audio feedback. A computer needs to be using the Owl as its camera and microphone and join the zoom, but if you do that, then likely the room will be projecting the mic input from the Owl that is coming over zoom and playing it on the speakers causing a feedback loop.
  1. We have visibility on general unconf sessions, but it didn’t seem like tracks with unconf sessions provided visibility to those outside who didn’t attend the track in person.
  2. If using Discourse in future, it by default blasts a message into #ipfs-chatter for each post. Maybe we want to change that for the event category?
  3. For PL EngRes: provide guidance on if/when separate dinners from large group (cost, frequency)
  4. Video handling
  • How do we get access to videos sooner
  • Define in advance the process for screening videos
  • Juan had lots of good feedback that should be carried forward forward for video teams in future.
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More power would be great too. Also, as hard as it may be, can we choose one app? We have discourse, Luma, Slack among others.

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2022-07-16 doc where feedback was collected: IPFS Thing 2022 - Retro - HackMD

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2022-08-16 content lead retro: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1sbtXiLN00XlN9aW8J7N7L_wekWr3HIGrcHPxugfk6qo/edit#

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2022-08-17 organizers retro: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1nZfZ-khMCtfrLPF3FxVRcT2Bo2mlOpZMaSf1wgzCjEo/edit#