Event 1 feedback issue 🎧

[kelset]

This is the issue where you can leave your feedback about the first event, that we did @ Innovation Lab, Red Hat office in London.

What's something that you liked?

What's something that you would like to see changed?

Let us know below!

[nikitavoloboev]

Loved the event. 🧡

What I liked was the range of conversations we had around open source. Found out about Postgraphile because of it which is awesome.

Only thing I can think of in terms feedback would perhaps to allow the separate teams to join in on conversations or perhaps mix up the people in the different topics for short while.

[benjie]

I really enjoyed meeting you all and am looking forward to learning even more at the next one!

On the subject of learning; I’d love for us to have a short section at the end where we can each quickly share something with the group that has had an impact on us, a bit like I did when talking about octobox.io. I’d love to hear about the awesome tools, new functionality, chat servers, podcasts, books, techniques or awesome feedback that you all have found/received. I’m thinking less than a minute each on average, entirely optional (no pressure).

One more thing is that I have very poor memory for faces (and names), even the faces of people I was chatting with just a few minutes ago I’m not sure it’s the same person (I believe this is a mild form of “face blindness”). Name badges (with twitter handle and affiliation optional) would be hugely helpful for me. 🙏

[kitten]

Loved how the first event went and it was great meeting everyone! 🙌

I’d second the idea of name tags, which could be optional but encouraged. They’d really help to keep track of the amount of people, especially in case the next event attracts more attendees than this time!

I feel like exchanging ideas between the groups is important as well. I realise it’s probably impractical to swap groups rather often to avoid mixing things up too much, but this time the topics overlapped quite a bit, so this will maybe have to depend on the next event’s topics?

[gundalow]

What's something that you liked?

• Good mix of people, in particular, I thought it was amazing that there was someone who was just about to become an open-source maintainer

What's something that you would like to see changed?

• When the number of attendees is lower I wonder if having just two breakout sessions is enough. Not all of the breakouts had critical-mass.

Other bits

So I really enjoyed the event, in no particular order:

• I know for future events we will get topics picked in advance, getting people to think about the challenges they are facing, or how they've overcome them, before the session may help keep the discussion going
• +1 to optional name badges with GitHub/Twitter handles on.
• +1 to a quick show and tell on different areas.

[kelset]

👋 everyone! Thank you so much for the feedback and sorry for my late reply 😅

We will try to integrate as much as possible of what you proposed in the next event, in the meantime:

1) we have opened a dedicated issue for proposing topics for the next event (more details around it will be announced soon here #8), please leave a comment here #9 about the subjects you want to talk about

2) some comments on feedback:

Only thing I can think of in terms feedback would perhaps to allow the separate teams to join in on conversations or perhaps mix up the people in the different topics for short while.

When the number of attendees is lower I wonder if having just two breakout sessions is enough. Not all of the breakouts had critical-mass.

yes, we should try and fix how the groups are created and probably if we end up with similar numbers as last time, we should probably do an average of 1 group per each 10 participants. Also, maybe mixing the groups is a bit unpractical but I liked how we sort of all collapsed at the end of event one before going back to the main room.

Name badges (with twitter handle and affiliation optional) would be hugely helpful for me. 🙏

They would be helpful, I just wonder if anyone knows of a way we could do it in a "sustainable fashion". I'd love for those not to be in recyclable materials and/or long lasting (like, you get one and you bring it with you next event).

I’d love for us to have a short section at the end where we can each quickly share something with the group that has had an impact on us, a bit like I did when talking about octobox.io. I’d love to hear about the awesome tools, new functionality, chat servers, podcasts, books, techniques or awesome feedback that you all have found/received. I’m thinking less than a minute each on average, entirely optional (no pressure).

sounds like a lovely idea! My concern is that if we grow massively it would be less doable - but if we have similar numbers to last time (and up to 40-ish) I think it's doable!

[benjie]

I just wonder if anyone knows of a way we could do it in a "sustainable fashion".

We made some badges for our last GraphQL Training workshop, whiteboard marker erasable and held on with magnets. They worked out pretty well, but a couple magnets and one badge went missing and TBH I think less energy would have been wasted on traditional name stickers.

Does anyone else collect event lanyards? An event lanyard with your name on would both serve to include your name, and be a talking point about the event you attended.

sounds like a lovely idea! My concern is that if we grow massively it would be less doable - but if we have similar numbers to last time (and up to 40-ish) I think it's doable!

I thought on this some more; we could put our name and a project on a slip of paper in a hat, and then pull out a few at the end of the evening depending on how much time we have left.

[kelset]

👋 folks!

We are finalising the details for the event next week, and just as a follow up to this conversation:

• we will have name badges (more like, name stickers but hey that's a start!)
• there will be a "show and tell" timeslot at the end of the event (you can let us know what you want to show/tell via an email to provided-as-is[at]formidable[dot]com)

[kelset]

Thanks everyone for your feedback, let's see how things turn out tomorrow ;)