Top-posting as I'm responding to the higher level point rather than the details.
Thomas, it does feel like you're describing a mix between our Contributor Summit and #puppethack events. I believe it makes more sense to double down on the more advanced/hacking topics at a large virtual event like #puppethack that lets more people participate than it does to force these through to a single geographic region, or to piggyback them onto PuppetCamps, which have a different focus. On Tue, Apr 12, 2016 at 11:36 PM, Thomas Gelf <tho...@gelf.net> wrote: > Am 13.04.2016 um 02:15 schrieb Nigel Kersten: > > On Tue, Apr 12, 2016 at 5:07 PM, Trevor Vaughan <tvaug...@onyxpoint.com > > <mailto:tvaug...@onyxpoint.com>> wrote: > > This is a tangent, but I would also like to see more advanced > > content at the Puppet Camps. > > > > Would anyone be open to a dual tracked Puppet Camp? > > > > Beginner/Intermediate + Business and Advanced + Hackathon? > > > > It's something we've definitely considered, but is difficult to justify > > given the small number of folks who register as "Advanced" at Camps (and > > yes, I recognize this can be self-fulfilling if we only have > > beginner/intermediate content). > > This. You're right, it's hard. Camps are very often simply not large > enough to justify multiple tracks, and if there are not enough people > you completely ruin the atmosphere. > > Another proposal, what about trying to start running a very few Camps as > "Advanced Camps"? Explicitly promoted being such. Just as an experiment > to get a feeling of whether and how they would work? If they do, add > more. In case they don't, fade them out. They should then structured in > a way really satisfying advanced users. > > > We lose a lot of the network effects by moving away from one track, and > > splitting the content like this means we need to send more staff, which > > means we can't afford to do as many PuppetCamps. I'm not a huge fan of > > half-arsed hackathons either :) > > Hackathons work very well if there are enough people willing to hack > something together. But of course they can be a pretty sad thing if you > have just 7 people in a room, with 4 of them being busy reading latest > news on Facebook ;) > > A few month ago we tried to run one after a small conference, related to > different monitoring tools. It was a huge success. We prepared a few > suggestions for topics to work on, people where allowed to propose their > own owns, together we selected five of them, and people chose where to > attend. Some tables autonomously divided themselves into sub-groups, > some people moved around. It was a lot of fun. > > Works only with skilled people willing to create something. If you want > to do something similar at an entry level camp it needs more guidance I > guess. You could try to run it more like a hands-on training class. > > Prepare some specific scenarios and let every group (or even the only > one) build puppet modules for one of them. Because this is what many > people are looking for: guidance when it goes to solve real-world > problems with Puppet. On mailing lists they often ask just for a > specific problem, get their answer and the hint to rethink their whole > module structure. Even if that's mostly right, it rarely helps them. > > It would require an additional day, but that would be a good idea > anyways. Charge that additional day extra, so you know how many > attendees you're going to have. Cancel it if there are not enough. > Still, people travel far for a single-day event. If a Camp is attached > to another conference it usually works fine, running a standalone > single-day camp is challenging. That's one more argument for an optional > extra day, but it would require even more organizational work. Having a > location with affordable rooms for example becomes important. A social > event in the evening, and so on. > > > We're not ignoring the problem, but our focus for more advanced topics > > has been the Contributor Summits we run in the US and EU, as well as > > PUGs (depending upon the attendee mix in a given region). > > Puppet used to have local partners that helped running camps, right now > they are large enough to do so by themselves. I understand the cost > problem you mentioned, especially when flying from camp to camp. Some > international flight hubs (like London) make good locations for IT > events, Frankfurt instead in my believes isn't known to be a "hip" IT > city with a vibrant community. But no doubt you'll reach a lot of banks > of course ;) > > Best, > Thomas > > > -- > You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups > "Puppet Developers" group. > To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an > email to puppet-dev+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. > To view this discussion on the web visit > https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/puppet-dev/nekpcv%24d52%241%40ger.gmane.org > . > For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout. > -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Puppet Developers" group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to puppet-dev+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. To view this discussion on the web visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/puppet-dev/CAGUqgV9q2iaoGwxJefcW8-Doo8wh-ZROB42i%2BQR0Eoy69r4jyg%40mail.gmail.com. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout.
