Session Format Post Mortem

[mikeal]

I got so much feedback on the session format that I'd like to give both the presenters and the attendees a place to stick it all so that we can continue to improve conferences and so that other organizers might be able to iterate on this as well.

First off I'll explain the format for the benefit of readers who didn't attend NodeConf:

NodeConf's ~300 attendees arrived in the morning and got their schedule and a map. The map showed where each session would take place, only exposing where the session would be and the name of the room (not the title of the session). The schedules were randomized and every attendee got a unique schedule.

This meant that groups of about 40 attended every session but at different time blocks and the presenters themselves ran each 8 times. Every session was held on the hour which meant that the timespan was ~55 minutes to give people time to make it to the next session.

The goal of the sessions was to give people real hands-on experience with something new. Presenters did not just talk for an hour, they had the audience write real code so that they would leave feeling enabled to use the information in the sessions in a much greater way than they would from a lecture.

It's also critical to understand that schedule which was roughly:

Thursday had people arriving between noon and 6pm and just hanging out getting to know each other. 6pm dinner was followed at 8pm by some music in the ampitheatre with the entire attendance as well as a 15 talk off-topic talk by @domenic on the Star Wars novels :)

Friday 8am Breakfast 10am Session 11am Session 12pm Lunch 2pm Session 3pm Session 4pm Session 5pm Session 6pm Dinner 8pm Ampitheatre music and a few quick talks

Saturday 8am Breakfast 10am Session 11am Session 12pm Lunch 2pm Presenters hung out in their rooms making themselves available for anyone that didn't finish their session. 3pm We combined several of the presenters in to the larger rooms for people to "go deep" and hack on stuff.

From 2 - 6pm there were also some concurrent fun activities like a nature hike and lake swimming. 6pm Dinner 8pm Ampitheatre Lightning Talks which were only about things that people built during their time at NodeConf.

[mikeal]

One piece of feedback I've already gotten from almost all the presenters was that the 2pm-6pm shift was too grueling. Anyone considering this format should try to put in a break in there.

I was concerned about this from the beginning but was trying to get everyone through the content as quickly as we could so that people would have seen everything in time to "go deep" in the last part of Saturday.

Take note: 4 hours without a good break is too much for the presenters and the attendees.

[mcculloughsean]

I don't think 1hr wasn't nearly long enough for almost all of the sessions. I would have preferred having them 2 hours long, and spread more evenly across Friday and Saturday, eliminating the need for the Saturday 2pm/3pm blocks.

[jedwood]

Minor point related to above: two sessions before lunch and four after seemed a bit out of balance. One hour seemed plenty for breakfast, and sessions could have gone from 9-12, 2-5

[mikeal]

@mcculloughsean here's a few of the challenges with extending the time.

Increasing the length of a session means cutting a few sessions to make time, which would have been an increase in the number of people in each session. None of the presenters I talked with felt that a room of 60 was manageable in any amount of time.

Another challenge is that no amount of time is enough to go as deep as some people want to go. The goal was to get people over the conceptual barriers to moving forward with a technology, not necessarily make them experts.

I think that @substack's stream adventure was a great middle ground. An hour was more than enough to make it through a few levels and then everyone walked away with many more levels that they could play through on their own and if they needed help they could get it from 2-6pm on the last day.

[mikeal]

@jedwood interesting comment about the "balance", it's definitely something that cut in to the experience that I hadn't anticipated.

One hour was certainly enough for meals but we also wanted to give people a social break. Next year we'll likely do less time, maybe an hour and a half, but stagger people arriving to lunch by a half an hour which will break down the big line that forms and give the kitchen an easier time keeping up with the rush.

[mikeal]

[joliss]

As an attendee, I loved the format. Better than any other conference I've been to.

[dominictarr]

I liked the format. It felt a lot more educational than a normal conference. This was the first time I'd ever given a workshop like this. after a bit of teething trouble in the first two sessions we figured out a good pattern.

first of all, some technical stuff - getting every one to install nodeconf2013 wasn't really helpful. there where always people who hadn't installed it, and sometimes npm install X --noreg didn't work if it did... instead, we created a simple server to deliver a bundle of resources that would be used in the class. this had the added benefit of allowing us to revise the materials inbetween classes if we needed to.

We used this to deliver the modules we needed, plus a .js file started with boilerplate, and then got the attendees to fill in the interesting parts.

A big part of the challenge was getting people to avoid errors unrelated to the topic, but to encounter problems related to the topic.

This is the server: https://github.com/dominictarr/disthelper the streams guys did the same thing.

In one session we tried to get everyone to just copy and paste the answers, while we explained what it did. This experiment successfully failed, there was much less engagement, and people finished too early, but with less questions.

Moving around the room and checking over people's shoulders was essential. People rarely put their hands up when they had a problem, but if you approached them and saw a stack trace then you could help.

My biggest disappointment was not being able to go to the sessions myself. Obviously this would require a whole extra day, which would be asking a lot, but would have been valuable feedback.

[dominictarr]

oh, yeah -- the two hour break was good. that gave us an opportunity to fix a few things, and the rest of the sessions went much more smoothly.

[rockbot]

Things that I would change, from a presenter's point of view:

1. 4 sessions in a row is brutal. (See @mikeal's comment above.) No joke. (I'd rather have 2-2-2 or 3-3 session layouts, instead of 2-4)
2. ALL of the presenters wish that they could have participated in the other sessions.
3. The first session of the conference (no matter what the topic was) was the worst. Since it was our first time running the session, we had a lot of things to work out.
4. I think a lot of the presenters would have really liked to partake in the non-session-y stuff, like swimming, etc as well.

One potential solution: Bring the speakers in for a day ahead of time. It'll be an 8-hour, full-on run-through. Presenters/staff only.

Pros:

• All the presenters get to partake in all of the sessions. (Fixes #2)
• Presenters get a chance to try out their sessions and get valuable feedback (Fixes #3 - sort of)

Cons:

• It adds another day to the conference for staff - this costs time and $$

[mikeal]

@rockbot we had considered doing some quick run-throughs of all the sessions on the first day, around 1pm, while people were just hanging. The problem was just that not enough of the presenters could make it up that early. I'll think about the extra day part, it would be nice but I wonder what the engagement rate would be since 3 days is already a lot to ask of most people.

@rockbot and @dominictarr being that you're both pretty advanced with node, how many of the sessions did you wish you could have attended? if things were laid out a little different we could open up a free block to differing session runners but I doubt we could do more than one or two blocks.

[mikeal]

@dominictarr wanted to follow up with your comment about copy/paste because you outlined what experiment failed but didn't tell us what you moved to that was more successful :)

[rwaldron]

first of all, some technical stuff - getting every one to install nodeconf2013 wasn't really helpful.

Agreed. We encountered some strange issues, such as:

• Only some of the repos being present in nodeconf2013/node_modules
• Bizarre paths, eg: nodeconf2013/node_modules/nodeconf2013/node_modules (This happened more then once, but I believe it was a human error)

Additionally, Hardware had a unique, impossible to predict issue the arose from the Node Core session's instruction to have the latest node built from source—we had to get everyone back to node v0.10.12 for Serialport to work correctly (some unforeseen issue with v0.11.3, I'll boil it down later).

People rarely put their hands up when they had a problem, but if you approached them and saw a stack trace then you could help.

We enforced a very clear policy: no question is a dumb question. We made this a mantra and people really opened up, lot's of hands raised and a lot of people not feeling bad for asking questions or simply not understanding. I think this was really key to diminishing any ego that might result in apprehension to ask questions.

...

Going into the conference, I was a skeptic of the of 1 hour format, but now I'm sold on it. It worked really well for Hardware, forcing us to simplify and present only the most important things and in doing so, we had a very high success rate (success being measured by attendees that completed the task that we presented to them). Credit to @rockbot for identifying this before the conference, so all of our sessions went well.

In the future, I would just make lunch later: 3 sessions, lunch, 3 sessions. And better wifi ;)

[max-mapper]

It was extremely satisfying to teach 300 people about streams, but I spent most of the day sitting around.

The way that https://github.com/substack/stream-adventure#stream-adventure is designed made it easy for people to help themselves. If they got stuck @substack or myself would help them. But with a little training any competent node programmer could have done our job.

We got glowing reviews, and I'm glad we helped further education on an important topic, but I cant help but feeling like the format could be improved.

tl;dr more work before the conference means less work at the conference as is evidenced by stream-adventure

Other thoughts

• if it was any longer than 1 hour we would have had a lot of bored people. the goal is to expose people to a new way of thinking, not take them to mastery of the subject
• I wouldn't take away any of the social time for more sessions, I felt the balance was correct. The point of nodeconf to me is to get people to talk to each other in person. The workshops are there to justify the conference as a business expense :)

[mikeal]

Yeah, everything we thought would fail with the wifi didn't and what we did to mitigate it didn't entirely work either :)

We thought the aggregate network would go down, or be unreliable, so we didn't think relying on it the way @dominictarr and @raynos did would work. We also didn't consider a local npm because 1) we thought the network would be down and 2) didn't realize that @iriscouch can actually configure their DNS so that the public resolution for that domain would be unique in our network and "just work".

What would work better: backup local wireless networks in each room with local npm and a server to distribute materials on. I think I'd still have people try to get stuff running ahead of time to flush out issues like not having a compiler but I wouldn't rely on it as much or do the whole USB key thing again.

[mikeal]

@maxogden yeah, we got a lot of great feedback on the stream adventure. I will say though that while it's a perfect fit for teaching streams it obviously wouldn't work for something like hardware, where the vast majority of issues encountered are physical, or necessarily work for domains and dtrace since you learn by debugging a live issue, although I might just not be creative enough to figure out how to write an adventure game for that :)

I will say that @max123 also had a lot prepared ahead of time in the smart machines he had people running and it seemed to help get everyone through the topic in record time.

I don't think any two topics could have had identical material approaches and worked, but kudos to @substack for finding the perfect one for streams :) we've been banging our heads against the wall trying to teach people streams for years and it feels nice to have something we can finally point everyone at.

[dominictarr]

@mikeal I should mention, we ran our server on our local network - which wasn't connected to the internet. After trying the copy-paste session, we gave people a tarball that installed via a curl one liner curl ip:8000 | sh, with a half started .js file. this meant people could procede on the problem at hand, and avoid getting snagged on incidentals.

[mikeal]

@dominictarr oh yeah, i forgot that I stuck a separate wireless network in there for the distributed session.

any issues with that? i was a little worried about 40 on an Airport Express.

[AndrewHenderson]

@rwldrn My first session was arduino with you, @rockbot and @tmpvar. I thought you guys did a good job of getting people through issues. You insisted that people ask questions which helped me feel more comfortable.

@maxogden I talked to a lot of people who loved your session. I'm glad. I struggled. I did get some help, but without much foundation on streams, the adventure felt more like a quiz on the first day of school. Great meeting you and @substack though and I now know I have a lot to learn! :)

@mikeal I think everyone is in agreement about 3 - lunch - 3 format. Another improvement might be better ventilation in the rooms. I walked into dtrace after lunch. Between the heat, full stomach, and beer, I had trouble staying focused. Those were just a few minor things. I had a great time. Everyone was friendly. The socializing was first-rate. I learned a ton talking between sessions. Walker Creek did a great job. The location was awesome. Food really tasty. I will be back for sure.

[dominictarr]

@mikeal our session was ABOUT writing programs that functioned in the midst of unreliable networks, so I was kinda hoping there would be problems - but no, it worked fine!

re: sessions I wanted to attend: domains, dtrace (ardrino and 'copters goes without saying). Also, it would have been great just to experience other people's teaching styles.

[mikeal]

@AndrewHenderson yeah, ventilation was an issue, the camp bought 6 more fans on the second day, so hopefully it was better then. Next year we'll probably just bring a bunch of extras :)

[domenic]

Wanted to attend web services, core, dtrace, distributed.

As for ventilation, or rather heat in general, maybe just go for later in the year? NodeConf Summer Camp a year ago had nice chilly weather.

[mikeal]

@domenic global warming is making the weather incredibly unpredictable :)

4 days earlier this year and we would have been rained on the whole time. all we can really do is prepare for whatever weather we get stuck with :)

[rwaldron]

or do the whole USB key thing again.

This was a life saver.

[aulvi]

Yeah, I wanted to attend dtrace, distributed and core for the info and the remainder to see teaching styles.

The 2hr lunch breaks were critical to our success with Drones, this gave us extra time to rotate batteries and since we were so far from the dining hall, we often came late for lunch. By the same token, the long breakfast and late start (10a) was super helpful since the Boogie Barn was used both for our session as well as party central after hours and we needed time to clean and reset the space.

[othiym23]

I wanted to attend core, DTrace, distributed, and Nodecopters (<3 u nodebots peeps, but I already have a huge pile of random hardware / Arduino stuff).

FASTER THUMB DRIVES. Size is less important than latency, and they were enough of a lifesaver that it would have been worth the cost, even if I were footing the bill myself. Also having versions with the binaries precompiled for Linux, OS X, and Windows.

I agree, wandering around and lurking was essential to getting people unhitched and focused. Also, here is the rare vote in favor of less internet -- a couple people were randomly checking their GMail during our session, and while it's their time and their own conference experience, fewer distractions are better.

I would have liked a little more time between sessions -- Domenic and I started our sessions as late as we felt comfortable (especially for the last sessions between lunch / dinner, because we could run over), but five minutes isn't really enough for people to take pee / smoke / drink breaks and get across the camp. I think a few people showed up late enough that they got lost and stayed late throughout the sessions, and that was a bummer.

I think that an hour was barely enough time, but I also think having the followup session on Saturday was a fantastic idea (as was having the counselors hang around in designated places for hack time), and if I'd known that session was going to exist from the beginning, the hour would have felt more comfortable. I choose to interpret everyone wanting the sessions to be longer as a mark that we did a good job of engaging them -- I think an entire weekend of 2-hour sessions would have left everyone (and not just the presenters) exhausted.

I'm basically at the point where I think rehearsals should be mandatory, and I like @rockbot's idea of coming up a day early to do a complete run-through. We could have seen all the sessions and troubleshot any weirdness as a group, which would have tightened things up considerably. I did OK on my first session, but it would have gone better if Domenic and I had had a chance to figure out the slide order was screwy before we did it in front of a crowd.

Literally every single person I talked to on Saturday evening and Sunday said the format was fantastic, and I was asking everybody I could how they felt about the show. It was a lot of work, but I would happily do it all over again. I learned a lot and it's fantastic hearing people say that they were planning on going home and reworking their back ends to use domains, which was exactly my goal for the conference.

[othiym23]

Also, @mcculloughsean, where the hell were you? I was looking for you this weekend and you never came up and said hi! :cry:

[mcculloughsean]

@othiym23 I tried coming up a few times but you were in deep discussions with people and i didn't want to interrupt. Your session was fantastic though, and the only time i used the internet in the conference was to create tickets to add domains to a couple of places in our application.

Regarding the 2 hour sessions -- I wasn't suggesting that the sessions were two hours of direct instruction, but more like two hours between the beginning of one session and the beginning of another. @substack and @maxogden's talk fit neatly into an hour, but it would have been beneficial to have time to continue playing around during the sessions hosted by @isaacs, @max123, @dominictarr, @rwldrn and @rockbot if one so chose to. Basically mixing Saturday's free time into the flow of the conference. Have an hour of prepared content, but then allow for free time afterwards so if people did want to wander off, they could, but if they wanted to keep going there wouldn't be a need to context-switch back into the mindset of the session. I personally wouldn't have minded if the sessions went later into the evening to allow for more breathing room (we're all practically nocturnal anyway).

But all-in-all this was by far the best conference I've ever attended, and I feel like I learned a lot and had quite a bit of fun. Thanks to all of you who worked to make this fantastic event a reality.

[hueniverse]

I was really unhappy about our Web Services session.

• The topic was way too abstract / wide

I think the main issue was the topic. Web services is just way too big and too hard to add enough value to people. We planned to cover three things: node, express, and hapi. I don't think we got deep enough on any of them. I was very satisfied getting people to know hapi existed and why we created it, but not enough to really leave a strong impression.

The node part was just a waste of time. We wanted to use it as a demonstration how you could do without a framework but why you would want one. It didn’t really work and people got bored right off the start. Ironically, all the tweets from the session were quotes of things I said during that segment about what makes frameworks valuable so the second day we just kept that one slide from the first segment about “why frameworks” and got the message across without any code.

• The audience was very mixed

Almost everyone raised their hands for having express experience but when I walked behind them when @mcantelon was talking, lots of people were taking extensive notes which meant they didn't really know as much as they claimed. I really wanted to jump right in but I felt like people really needed that entry level tutorial.

I think we had something to offer to everyone, but not at the same time, which meant, people got about 5m worth of new information out of 50m.

• The hands on tasks were boring

During the first session, when we got to the hands on part, people just stared at us. It was very awkward.

We had a slide with "things to try" after we finished going through the express basics which included both beginners and advanced tasks but people did nothing. We tried to get them engaged but it was clear that it was not enough. Same thing happened when we got to the hands on hapi stuff.

We provided people with a full working copy of all the code we showed them, and asked them to change it by adding features. Looking back, that wasn't an interesting idea. In general, asking people to build an abstract API is just pointless. I did identify this issue during the planning but my solution to provide a JSON file with fun info about the attendees didn't work. Only 2 people actually got into it and wrote an app using the data. One app looked for everyone there who is following the guy on Twitter, and another building a website that can "predict" if you are into callbacks or promises. Both apps had little to do with web services.

• Seconds day worked slightly better with more focus

The second day I removed half the slides (all of the raw node, the authentication, and a few other things). Instead, we spent more time doing live coding with audience participation. Some people coded with us but the rest were still engaged as I messed with the code on the screen and asked “what will happen now?”. On the express side, we focused on how the internal router works which some people found very useful. On the hapi side we focused on some cool advance features like validation and proxy.

• No time to rework the session during the first day

I think we needed an hour break right after the first session to have some time to take in what worked and what didn’t and adjust. If we had this in the schedule and had some alternative ideas prepared ahead of time, it would have been useful. The changes on the second day would have been great the day earlier.

The first day quickly turned into a lecture with little to none hands-on. It was the only thing we had time to adjust to counter the lack of interest in the hands-on stuff we prepared.

• people actually wanted to see a fight

I was surprise at how many people wanted me to be mean to express. Maybe the session would have worked better as a dual instead of as a show of solidarity and harmony. If I was to do this again, I would rework this as a dual, splitting the audience into two groups of express vs. hapi. Spend 20 minutes giving tutorials on both, and they doing a team challenge to beat the other with a set of web services tasks. This way people can choose one framework to dive deeper on, and the competition will add energy.

But my best conclusion is that a generic web services session is probably a bad idea.

[domenic]

I think we needed an hour break right after the first session to have some time to take in what worked and what didn’t and adjust.

Yeah, getting actual experience and then adjusting was key. Our changes were thankfully mostly re-ordering, so we were able to make them over lunch. But even then, it would have been cool if our second group didn't have to suffer like the first group did :P.

Maybe just make it clear to everybody camp-wide that their first session is kind of a beta test. I'm not sure exactly what this would accomplish, but it certainly would have made me feel better giving them a confusing session if they'd been warned ahead of time, haha.

[mikeal]

with such a broad set of topics every attendee was bound to be a little bored in at least one. unfortunately for most people, that's the web services session because more people make websites for a living than robots :(

[jhs]

I have attended and spoken at conferences. Speakers are usually treated as honored guests--a rock star or a foreign dignitary.

This is wrong. If your conference is for engagement and education, then speakers should feel like school teachers. Teaching is a horrible, grueling, thankless grind. Teachers suffer. They forgo opportunities. They endure humiliation at our beck and call, spoon feeding us a bit of knowledge as if it was not actually gained at a terrific price.

Maybe some details could improve, as @maxogden suspects. But broadly, the presenters sacrificed themselves, no way around that. It was necessary to have a truly useful event and not just more of the same: a bunch of dudes masturbating in some place.

[max123]

On Jul 2, 2013, at 1:52 AM, Jason Smith notifications@github.com wrote:

… then speakers should feel like school teachers. Teaching is a horrible, grueling, thankless grind.

This may be true in elementary and high school (though I doubt it), I completely disagree otherwise. I have been teaching for years, and I find it one of the most gratifying jobs I know.

max

[othiym23]

I gotta agree with Max. I put a lot into NodeConf and it was a lot of work, but I got as much out as I put in, and it was about as far from thankless as possible. I know what you mean, @jhs, and I think Mikeal made the right call in optimizing the conference for attendees instead of presenters, but it's not like we were slaves or anything.

[kenperkins]

+1 on all of the comments regarding 4 straight sessions being brutal.

I would have liked some time before/after each session to mingle a little bit. There were some folks I sat with during a session I had a hard time connecting with later in the conference. It felt like the second we were done I was basically running for the next session.

@hueniverse I was in the first session, and I wasn't so much interested in "hating on" Express as I was in the concrete motivations that led to Hapi. I actually really enjoyed the Hapi portion, but felt there just wasn't enough time to go into any depth.

[mikeal]

@hueniverse why is that gif so slow?

[simianhacker]

You guys all did a terrific job... The amount of work the presenters had to put in was not lost on the attendees. I think having a few hiccups and working around them are normal for a format like this. It seemed like the adjustments were made pretty well.

@hueniverse I think the pivot you guys made on the second day was good. I agree web services (and frameworks for that matter) is a hard topic to talk about and do a class on. There is a little overhead to learning the framework that can throw people off. I've used express extensively and it was great to get the exposure to Hapi. To be honest I sat back and watched the presentation more then I did the hands on part. But after several hours of hacking in classes it was a welcome change (for what that's worth). Also in my session there was some good back and forth between you and the attendees.

@mikeal For the SO track the only feedback I got from my wife is she would have liked a printed out schedule similar to the attendee's. She didn't need to know what the activity was as much as where/when things where happening. Our 3 year old is still napping so there where times where they might have skipped some during nap time but wanted to pick up with the group afterwards. But on the way home the general consensus was they had a really good time. Most of the friction they had was with me ( as usual :/ )

When talking to my friends the question was asked "Which session did you like the most?" Most everyone had a hard time answering that question because they took a lot a way from each.

I'm not sure how useful some kind of panel discussion would have been at the end of the day with everyone would have gone down. But for some reason I was kind of hoping there would be something like that where we could hear people debate current topics in our community. Most of us follow people on Twitter and see debates happening with out the context of the actual person talking. I guess what I'm saying is I really wanted to see @mikeal and @domenic do a Mad Max style Thunderdome over promises and callbacks (I'm mostly kidding... mostly)

Again... Thanks again everyone!

[mikeal]

well, @domenic and I got drunk in the cafeteria on Friday and basically did that. i may be remembering it incorrectly, but I think I won :P

[domenic]

I'm not sure how useful some kind of panel discussion would have been at the end of the day with everyone would have gone down. But for some reason I was kind of hoping there would be something like that where we could hear people debate current topics in our community. Most of us follow people on Twitter and see debates happening with out the context of the actual person talking.

I kind of like this idea, and definitely agree with the sentiment behind it. Part of the joy for me of my first few conferences was seeing these people in person and seeing them interact and exchange ideas. Really get a sense of what's going on in the community. Indeed part of the joy of summer camp is getting updates from core community members on "the state of Node"---like the epiphany that HTTPS sucks from last year. Maybe some kind of "state of Node" discussion with some subset of the camp counselers, or maybe one each night with a different subset or different topic, would be pretty sweet to observe from the outside.

[mikeal]

A lot of what people want to get out of the panels overlaps with what people have reported getting out of conversations with people during the breaks. If I had a choice between the two I'd go for more "free time" to accomplish this but augment it with either very short panels or just a standup like we do with the sponsors so that more prominent members of the community can be identified and people can interact with them.

The thing is worry about is a reversal of engagement with the more well known people. I don't know how well this works now that so many talks are posted online but the reason we don't do name tags is so that people who are more shy "accidentally" have conversations with people they would have been too nervous to talk to normally. Walker Creek Ranch obviously does a lot to break down these barriers but I still do a lot behind the scenes to create an environment that gets people talking and reduces the difference between "speakers", "famous" people and the rest of the attendees who are the ones that really matter :)

[domenic]

the reason we don't do name tags is so that people who are more shy "accidentally" have conversations with people they would have been too nervous to talk to normally

Love this, it works great. I remember sitting down to breakfast at NodeConf 2012 (which was like the second JS conference I ever attended) and suddenly realizing the person across from me was @isaacs.

[othiym23]

NodeConf 2012 was my first NodeConf as well, and it was a little scary because I knew absolutely nobody until I saw @maxogden, who I sorta kinda theoretically knew, but that also meant that I didn't have anybody to hide out with when I was waiting in lines for food and things and made a number of friendships that endure through to today. I also got a chance to talk to ryah for like an hour just because we were sitting next to each other, and that was totally awesome. The lack of hierarchy and the general permeability of the 1337 crowd within Node (not gonna pretend that it doesn't exist at all) is one of the community's strong selling points, and I give @mikeal and @isaacs a lot of the credit for that.

Still would like to have some kind of forum where we can have an Airing of Grievances / talk about the pain points / inside baseball discussion as part of NodeConf, though. Especially speaking as a counselor, my time and energy were constrained enough by presenting that I didn't get to talk about as much of the futurey stuff as I would have liked.

[mikeal]

Still would like to have some kind of forum where we can have an Airing of Grievances / talk about the pain points / inside baseball discussion

that's exactly what SummerCamp was. the problem with trying to recreate SummerCamp is that 1) it never succeeded at being about much more than core, and core isn't changing enough to justify another event and 2) as the number of commitments and conferences increases it gets more and more impossible to get everyone together that needs to be together.

the only way to do this really is to rent a resort or a ski lodge and invite 40 people and pay all their expenses. if someone has a spare 100K to spend, I'll put it together :)

[aulvi]

I agree with @othiym23 that we were Roadies more than Rockstars, but it was a welcomed change and I feel like I connected with campers a lot more due to the nature of the format.

[hueniverse]

Being a NodeConf 2013 speaker:

[joliss]

I was really unhappy about our Web Services session.

Don't be so hard on yourself -- I attended it on Friday morning, and even then it was great. It's OK to be a little superficial in a 50 minute session. I definitely got useful stuff out of it. In fact, trying hapi was one of the big technical takeaways I had from NodeConf.

[jhs]

@hueniverse I loved the web services section!

I am a sysadmin. For me, "front-end" development means adding CORS and Mozilla Persona support to CouchDB. I can't even spell HTML. When I think of building a Node web app, I feel nervous and frustrated.

The quick, low-impact overview of the frameworks was perfect! It was exactly what a short presentation should be: assuage people's fears, get them interested, and get them eager to follow up later.

I was in a later session. The exercises seemed de-emphasized, and that was also a very welcome surprise! It was a relief that not every "class" I attended would have a pop quiz. The variety helped me relax and take in the material without anxiety.

P.S. Regarding our discussion, I have reconsidered and I now think Hapi's "life cycle management" could be very useful to somebody like me (a newbie with a modest app).

[hueniverse]

@jhs I think the main lesson learned is that unlike other talks, this format isn't about speaker satisfaction and more about the overall big picture of the entire conference experience.