To be clear, are you suggesting that we could leverage
existing groups by considering to mini-conferences at
the locations where a meetup groups exists and ask
meetup organizers to help?

Yes ;)

Cheers,
Michael

--
Michael Hausenblas, Developer Advocate
OpenShift by Red Hat
Mobile: +353 86 0215164 | Twitter: @mhausenblas
http://openshift.com | http://mhausenblas.info

-----Original Message-----
From: Ilya Dmitrichenko <ilya@...>
Reply: Ilya Dmitrichenko <ilya@...>
Date: 16 October 2018 at 11:53:53
To: Michael Hausenblas <mhausenb@...>
Cc: Matt Farina <matt@...>, Chris Aniszczyk
<caniszczyk@...>, Camille Fournier
<skamille@...>, CNCF TOC <cncf-toc@...>
Subject:  Re: [cncf-toc] Thoughts on KubeCon

On Tue, Oct 16, 2018 at 10:46 AM Michael Hausenblas
wrote

As an ambassador, I would find it easier to justify
traveling to a small conference then a meetup, as
in either cases I have to get a flight/train ticket and
a hotel for the night, but at a meetup time spent at
the event is much much less, thereby time spent
talking to attendees is significantly less.

+1

Also, we could think about how we could leverage
https://www.meetup.com/pro/cncf/ for it ;)

To be clear, are you suggesting that we could leverage
existing groups by considering to mini-conferences at
the locations where a meetup groups exists and ask
meetup organizers to help?
Otherwise one could imply that you are suggesting
something about the URL and the page as such... ;)

-----Original Message-----

From: Ilya Dmitrichenko
Reply: Ilya Dmitrichenko
Date: 16 October 2018 at 10:28:32
To: Matt Farina
Cc: CNCF TOC , Camille Fournier
, Chris Aniszczyk
Subject: Re: [cncf-toc] Thoughts on KubeCon

I second Matt's and Alexis' point on having more
of local mini-conferences/camps. Even for those
in the US or Europe, there isn't always a chance to
travel to a major city, and hotel prices as well as
duration of the even are a major factor.
Also, meetups have a number of properties that
make them less then idea, the fact that meetups
run in the evenings implies a lot, we cannot under-
estimate all seemingly small factors, e.g. the fact
that one may come to a meetup after a long day
of work and have low energy level already.
At a small 1-2 day even folks get to know each
other much more, also those of who may be more
shy get to voice their ideas and opinions, maybe
even for the first time within a wider group.

As an ambassador, I would find it easier to justify
traveling to a small conference then a meetup, as
in either cases I have to get a flight/train ticket and
a hotel for the night, but at a meetup time spent at
the event is much much less, thereby time spent
talking to attendees is significantly less.


Ilya

On Thu, 4 Oct 2018, 3:24 pm Matt Farina, wrote:

The CNCF site notes:
"The Cloud Native Computing Foundation builds sustainable ecosystems

and

fosters
a community around a constellation of high-quality projects that
orchestrate
containers as part of a microservices architecture."

*If we want to foster community around these technologies the end-users
need to far outpace the vendors or projects.* Successful open source
projects often have a community of users where only a small fraction

are

even publicly engaged in the project.

Meetups aren’t enough to foster cloud native computing in local

markets.

WordCamp, DrupalCamp, and devops days are good examples of local
conferences that helped grow the ecosystem.

When it comes to growing ecosystems WordPress is a great example. It

powers

31.9% of the web
. No
matter what we think of the technology the approach around it does have
some lessons.

For several years there was a conference in Ohio called CloudDevelop.

It

was a local/regional conference with most people being local. It was

about

cloud development, mostly with traditional IaaS. Several hundred people
would attend. Many of whom worked for banks, insurance companies,

school

districts, and other places like these. Most of them wouldn’t travel

to the

big conferences but what they learned and shared here was valuable and
helped expand the use and understanding of cloud. These same people

often

won’t attend meetups because they have family responsibilities and

other

things going on in their evenings.


--
Matt Farina
mattfarina.com



On Oct 4, 2018, at 9:33 AM, Camille Fournier wrote:

Meetups are nice but not at all a substitute for a good end-user

focused

conference, so let's please not conflate the two things.

On Thu, Oct 4, 2018, 9:25 AM Chris Aniszczyk <
caniszczyk@...> wrote:

Thanks for pointing those out. As Dan mentioned, it's on the agenda

for

2019 to support some smaller more regional events in new geos.

Currently we encourage folks to start a join an existing meetup, we

have

over 150+ worldwide:
Meetups: http://meetups.cncf.io/

We have been deliberately reaching out to folks all over the world and
the program has been growing every month since its inception

(instructions

on how to create a meetup here: https://github.com/cncf/meetups)

We also have an ambassador program where we support folks that run
meetups or speak at a variety of conferences that we may not be able

to get

too: https://www.cncf.io/people/ambassadors/

So in short, we're definitely looking to fill in the gaps next year

and

this is something I suggest you engage with the CNCF Marketing

Committee,

which is chaired by Mark Coleman:
https://www.cncf.io/people/marketing-committee/

On Thu, Oct 4, 2018 at 9:12 AM Matt Farina wrote:

Has anyone looked at the WordCamp model
for local conferences? They are somewhere in between a KubeCon and a

meetup.

There are several benefits to this model like:


- They are local and can be on work time. Meetups cut into evenings
and are short. Large conferences require travel. As someone outside

a tech

bubble city I see the appeal for locals.
- It builds up local ecosystem of cloud native folks. In particular
end-users
- These local conferences are a great way for people to learn and
hone speaking skills so they have the confidence to do a great job

at the

larger ones
- It helps build more and more capable end users


They aren’t hard to organize.

--
Matt Farina
mattfarina.com

--
Chris Aniszczyk (@cra) | +1-512-961-6719 <(512)%20961-6719>