Damian Wojslaw wrote:
> There is another thing to mind. We are holding community events. Not
> commercial ones. Mine, while with great help from friends and Sun, was
> mostly done by me. And as such there will be no perfection. We do this
> in our spare time, with our spare funds. And out of dedication. We will
> try to get better, this is why I started the thread, but community
> events are measured in community satisfaction, and community does not
> expect a perfect marketing event, but more of a social meeting with some
> wisdom passing. For this event the community satisfaction level was high.
>
I agree. In fact, I've never been to a commercial event that even came
close to a good community event. The distinctions are obvious, too. The
best tech conference I have ever attended was the Ruby conference in
Tokyo. Here were the characteristics:
* Two days. Weekend. This is common in Japan.
* Good parties. A must.
* 30+ speakers. Massive community involvement.
* One room! Everyone together for *all* the sessions!
* About 350 people.
* All the signs were hand drawn. No corporate nothing.
* A very cool t-shirt.
* Only two talks were 1 hour long. The rest were 30 mins or 5 min
lightning talks.
* Two large screens on stage set low so the speaker could directly
interact with the slides.
* One screen for IRC, which was also used for live translations.
* Good wireless.
* International speakers (although in this case most were Japanese).
* It was a no-frills, no-shit good time and a pile of technical and
community content was exchanged.
:)
Jim
