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 <[email protected]> wrote: > Am 13.04.2016 um 02:15 schrieb Nigel Kersten: > > On Tue, Apr 12, 2016 at 5:07 PM, Trevor Vaughan <[email protected] > > <mailto:[email protected]>> 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 [email protected]. > 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 [email protected]. 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