We ran a Bird's of a Feather session (BoF) during DrupalSouth Hobart that was attended by event organisers to discuss what’s been working well, pain points and ideas to enhance future conferences.
One of the first topics discussed was the concept that the volunteer event team should be focusing on higher level strategic issues like format, speaker selection, diversity and attendee and sponsor engagement. These are the critical things that drive a great experience at the conference, and to be honest, the fun things to be involved in as volunteers.
While the more logistical tasks such as ticketing management, collateral printing, venue and vendor management are still critical to the success of an event, they don’t require an in depth understanding of the Drupal community but are generally the most time consuming and stressful tasks. It was agreed that the responsibilities of an event coordinator could be contracted as a paid role to a person with relevant experience to take these tasks on, alleviating a huge burden from volunteer time in the process. The cost of this role would be rolled into the event budget and offset by sponsorship fees and ticket sales.
From a marketing perspective, we discussed outreach approaches to other technology communities, such as ticket giveaways, and how to reach people using Drupal in their “day jobs” who aren’t currently engaged with the broader community.
Organisers also raised the issue of the growing number of parents attending DrupalSouth and the potential need for on-site or facilitated childcare and a parent’s room. While this is not something that has been implemented at prior DrupaSouth conferences, an effort will be undertaken to assess potential demand for this service and a model how it might be structured if there is clear demand.
Talk then turned to the conference format and the potential need for new talk tracks and session styles. One idea was to have a “First-timers” track that provided introductory content for people new to Drupal - potentially consistent content that can be re-used from year to year and updated as required. These style talks wouldn’t necessarily be submitted in the Call for Papers, but could be pre-prepared and delivered by interested volunteers. In a similar vein, the idea of “Hands-on” sessions where attendees bring their own laptops and follow along with code and configuration demonstrations could be engaging for both first-timers and experienced attendees alike.
The code sprint at Hobart was the best-attended in memory, so there was full agreement in continuing a focus on this at future events. Having it the day prior to the event rather than afterwards or on a weekend was probably a big factor in this, and a perfect opportunity to introduce people to Drupal's contribution approach. Note was taken that no coders' lounge was available in Hobart, but that this could serve as a means for people to continue collaborating on contribution throughout the event.
Our workshops and training sessions were also very well attended in Hobart, something which we'll attempt to continue into the future.
While it’s been done in the past at DrupalSouth and consistently at DrupalCon, better explanations of the experience level of the audience each talk is targeted at would provide a more effective means for attendees to self select which sessions to attend. This would avoid people suddenly realising they were in a session that was either too basic or advanced for their needs when they could have attended something more appropriate in a given time slot.
Diversity of speakers is a key consideration for DrupalSouth, and while Hobart experimented with “blind” selections of speakers solely based on session content descriptions, the general consensus was that this potentially excluded speakers who might have otherwise been chosen to broaden diversity. While people from less represented groups don’t necessarily personally identify (or want to identify) as such, the speaker selection team should have insight into things like gender and experience to better inform their choices. In order to provide less experienced speakers with an opportunity to present, the idea to provide more insight into how to craft submissions and confidently prepare and deliver successful talks was raised as something that could be run as a dedicated session during DrupalSouth.
Audience engagement and interaction is also key at DrupalSouth to help attendees meet people outside their immediate social circles and for people attending by themselves. Ideas around this included more ice-breaker style activities early in the conference, collaborative round table sessions in place of talks and social activities that aren’t based solely around alcohol consumption. The early morning walk around Hobart, Women’s breakfast and traditional DrupalCon Trivia Night were deemed great examples of this.
Overall, it was recognised that DrupalSouth is our region’s best opportunity to bring the whole Drupal community together for an event that’s as much about knowledge sharing and collaboration as it is about the opportunity to socialise with colleagues from different organisations and backgrounds.
If you have feedback or ideas that weren’t covered in this BoF, please share them with us!