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Re: Thoughts on KubeCon

Michael Ducy
 

I agree with the need for coaching of end users. I actually sent an email last night that I thought was to the list, but didn't reply to the group.

One of the problems with soliciting talks from end users is that they are often inexperienced in conferences, presenting, submitting to a CFP, writing a compelling abstract, etc. So while we can ask them to submit more talks, in my experience there needs to be some mentoring done to help these people be successful. 

Bridget Kromhout does an excellent job of this with DevOpsDays Minneapolis. She actively seeks out underrepresented voices and mentors them through the CFP process, slide review, public speaking, etc. 

Maybe this would be a good use of the CNCF Ambassadors or CNCF Speakers Bureau? Leverage those people as mentors for end users to help guide them through the entire process.


On Thu, Oct 4, 2018 at 6:27 AM Richard Li <richard@...> wrote:
There seems to be a recognition that more real-world / end user / practitioner talks would be good, because we don't want an echo chamber of ideas.

One suggestion would be to provide more support & coaching for end users who want to submit talks. The vendors & hip cloud companies generally have cultures that are very supportive of speaking at conferences. But many other kinds of companies require more cajoling and support. A lot of times when I talk to an engineer at one of these companies and suggest a talk, the feedback they give me is "No, my stuff really isn't that interesting, and I also have to talk to my manager to get approval, and PR, etc." If we could find ways to support these folks in terms of helping them with their abstract, iterating on a presentation, etc. -- I think we could improve both diversity & quality.
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