Sarah Novotny <sarahnovotny@...>
There are a few things in this discussion that are a serious concern for me....
vendor is being used as a pejorative here. when we talk about vendors having outsized presences, there are also several who have very outsized *contributions* in the community (through code, docs, organizing and even full project donation).
another concern for me is that the metrics quoted from the attendee survey was reframed from 35% of attendees listed attending sessions as their "top reason for attending" to "only a 1/3 attended for the general session technical content?" That's not what was surveyed. Top reason is very different from the reframe. A conference which has ~30% expert (and speaker) attendees 30% intermediate (deeping their experience) attendees and 30% newbie attendees might well have only 30% of the attendees report session content as their *top* reason to attend the event and still be very healthy.
I do not disagree that having more user content is extraordinarily important. However, if we want to also make the event relevant and engaging to a broad audience we have to accept that there are many reasons to attend an event such as this including collaboration with a peer group.
I think like most things in this broader community we do better by focusing on improving outcomes for our target audience(s) or segmenting them if they are incompatible (which I don't think they are) than by restricting things we don't like.
sarah
On Mon, Oct 22, 2018 at 9:08 AM alexis richardson <alexis@...> wrote:
It may be better to serve the community needs through smaller events.
On Mon, 22 Oct 2018, 16:44 Ruben Orduz, < ruben@...> wrote: It is low. And the fact that "Networking" ranks higher, in my possibly wrong opinion, would lead me to think it's because the vendor-centric character of KubeCon. In community-driven confs which are much more geared toward individual end-users, the hallway/expo halls are ghost towns while the sessions are going. At KubeCon much like OpenStack summits the "hallway track" and expo hall were always bustling -- both share a vendor-centric focus.
Best, Ruben
On Mon, Oct 22, 2018 at 11:22 AM Matt Farina < matt@...> wrote: The top two reasons that people attended KubeCon + CloudNativeCon were for networking (40%) and to attend breakout sessions (35%)
Only about 1/3 of people attended for the general session technical content? Do we know if that has changed over time? Is this typical compared to other conferences?
I can’t help but wonder, am I wrong in thinking that number is low?
What does it say about the Con if more people are coming to network than lean from the content? What does that mean for vendors?
The information leads me to many questions. Anyone looking into this kind of stuff?
Thanks Matt, I will defer to Alexis as TOC Chair if he wants to make this an agenda item or not at an upcoming meeting. We are happy to offer space at KubeCon Seattle to discuss this topic with staff + TOC if you like in an F2F fashion if that's a better way to do this.
re: Yuri's point, yes we survey after every event, I've attached the report from last KubeCon in Copenhagen. "Feedback from attendees was overwhelmingly positive, with an overall average rating of 4.5 / 5. The top two reasons that people attended KubeCon + CloudNativeCon were for networking (40%) and to attend breakout sessions (35%)"
On Mon, Oct 22, 2018 at 4:02 PM Yuri Shkuro < shkuro@...> wrote: Has there been a survey of attendees from previous conferences? Is there data that shows attendees dissatisfaction with the content and specific areas?
On Mon, Oct 22, 2018 at 10:53 AM Matt Farina < matt@...> wrote: I would like to request that we have a discussion in a TOC meeting on the Con technical content. I’m happy to help curate items to discuss on it.
Three ideas I would initially seed the list with are:
- Should only CNCF projects (direct CNCF projects and Kubernetes SIGs/sub-projects) have intros and deep dives on the maintainers track? A non-CNCF project has an intro and deep dive this time around.
- Should we look to target tracks around types of user roles (e.g., app dev, app ops, cluster ops, project maintainers, management decision makers, etc)? If these kinds of users want to be there it gives vendors a good reason to have booths there, along with being useful to end users. I believe some of these roles are underserved today.
- Do we limit number of general sessions per vendor? This came up on the list because a vendor can currently have an outsized presence. This can lead to competing vendors, including those at the same sponsorship levels, feeling they are subsidizing their competition.
These are just questions to talk about. Maybe ideas. Anyone have others?
I would ask that we keep these to constructive ideas to improve future Cons so we have help what comes next.
-- Chris Aniszczyk (@cra) | +1-512-961-6719
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