[Users] Following Up on LinuxCon Japan Workshop

[Yair Zaslavsky]

On 06/14/2012 06:02 PM, Barak Azulay wrote:
> On 06/14/2012 02:41 AM, Mike Burns wrote:
>> Hi Leslie,
>>
>> On Wed, 2012-06-13 at 15:14 -0700, Leslie Hawthorn wrote:
>>> Hello everyone,
>>>
>>> I'd like to collect feedback from everyone on last week's oVirt workshop
>>> at LinuxCon Japan. [0] Please reply back with comments by close of
>>> business this Friday, 15 June.
>>>
>>> Once we have gathered feedback on list, I'll capture it on the oVirt
>>> wiki. We can then use what we've learned to help construct the agenda
>>> and other plans for other upcoming oVirt workshops at LinuxCons. [1]
>>>
>>> If you know that you would like to volunteer as an instructor for future
>>> workshops or would like to suggest alternate content for the workshop,
>>> please include that in your feedback.
>>>
>>> - Course Material
>>> What sessions were most well received? Which ones require improvement?
>>> Any additional sessions we'd suggest?
>>
>> All of the sessions seemed to be well received.  I don't know that any
>> need blatant improvement, though they could probably all take a bit of
>> slide updates.  The ovirt-node presentation was especially out of date
>> (my fault) with it's screenshots.
>>
> 
> 
> I would like to add:
> - a demo is a must in a workshop, as it is the most effective and
>   impressive way to attract people.
> - I think the ovirt-engine presentation needs a bit more meat
What stuff do you think we need to add to this presentation?
Can you be more specific?
Thanks,

Yair

> - I would also add vertical presentations:
>     * ovirt network
>     * ovirt storage
>     * ovirt vm life cycle
>   Of course all the above should be presented after the arch & demo
>   presentation
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
>>>
>>> - Audience Participation
>>> How many attendees? How did the Q&A periods go? Would we like to prepare
>>> a post-event attendee survey? (I recommend we do the survey and can
>>> prepare some questions for the group if that's useful.)
>>
>> There were probably between 25-35 people through the course of the day
>> for all the presentations.
> 
> 
> I gave also an intro/arch talk also in the virt mini-summit, I actually
> gave 2.
> I volunteered to cover for one of the presenters that surprisingly
> didn't show up on time, because of the confusion this session was rather
> small (~40)
> In the second one (in my scheduled slot), there were about ~80.
> 
> 
> 
>>
>> There wasn't really a lot of time set aside for Q&A aside from a few
>> minutes at the end of each presentation and the breaks in between
>> presentations.  During those times, there generally were people asking
>> questions.
> 
> 
> Actually I wasn't expecting too many questions due to the different
> culture of the audience, but we did get questions and people showed
> interest.
> Most of the interesting questions came during the breaks, and I had a
> few white-board sessions with those people.
> 
> 
> 
>>
>> I think we should prepare the survey in advance of the next workshop and
>> ask people to fill it out during the workshop, rather than coming back a
>> couple weeks after the fact.  We didn't really collect names of the
>> people in attendance and I expect that a fair number of people
>> registered attended the Gluster Conference.
>>
> 
> The linux foundation scanned all the participants tags, so I guess they
> can supply the names.
> 
> 
>>>
>>> - Developer/user traction resulting from engaging at workshop
>>> Did this workshop help us to gain new developers or users? Reinforce
>>> relationships with existing community members?
>>
>> Only time will really tell here.  People definitely seemed interested
>> and there were a couple people already downloading and installing the
>> bits during the workshop.  I got the impression that most of the people
>> there were more corporate focused -- Hitachi and Fujitsu were both well
>> represented.  They're from companies that have previously expressed
>> interest in the project.
>>
> 
> 
> Hard to tell,
> I had a feeling that there was also a none developers group that came
> also to learn about ovirt, more of the consultant type that actually
> considering ovirt as an option.
> 
> 
>>>
>>> - Promotion of the event, both before and after
>>> What could be done to more effectively promote the event prior to the
>>> workshops? Videos and slides from the workshop should be posted on the
>>> LC Japan site tomorrow; what action would the community like to take to
>>> promote this content?
>>
>> Not really my area of expertise -- promoting.  Probably better to get
>> information out there earlier that the workshop is happening.  It seemed
>> to be a bit of a fire drill getting things together for this workshop
>> since it was only about a month before that we decided to run it.
>> Future workshops shouldn't be as big a deal.
>>
> 
> 
> I would say we need a lot of promotion, I was actually accessed by a few
> people after the into presentation, saying they had no idea that ovirt
> is so mature and feature reach.
> This message should be conveyed before the workshop.
> 
> 
> 
>> Probably an email announcement to users@ with a link to the
>> presentations/videos is the right next step.
>>>
>>> - A/V and Room Set up
>>> Did the seating arrangements work well for the workshop format? Did the
>>> A/V work well, including the videotaping process?
>>
>> Our room was setup with 5 round tables seating 10 people each.  I'm not
>> sure that it was really the right layout.  I expected either rows of
>> chairs or long tables with chairs all facing the presentation screen.
>>
>> A/V worked seamlessly.  It was all setup already when we arrived.
>>
> 
> 
> I would agree with Mike on the room setup.
> I would prefer facing the presentation rather than having to look aside.
> 
> In addition and related to the preparations for the workshop,
> Since it was setup so late, the linux foundation thought that setting
> the workshop means canceling the mini-summit presentation slot.
> So all the handouts & schedule boards hanged around the summit did no
> include this talk, anyway eventually they hanged a hand written schedule
> update, but I assume more people would have come if they knew.
> 
> The web schedule was updated.
> 
> 
>>>
>>> - Food and beverage
>>> Did the catered in lunch help to keep the flow of the workshop
>>> productive? Was the food of good quality and in keeping with the needs
>>> of attendee dietary constraints?
>>
>> I had no issues with the food.  People seemed to take the opportunity
>> more to step out and take a break, rather than sit and continue
>> discussing.
>>
> 
> I agree
> 
>>>
>>> - Give aways
>>> We did not produce attendee gifts for the oVirt workshop. Thoughts on
>>> whether this would be a welcome addition in the future? Suggestions for
>>> type of gift also welcome.
>>
>> It would have been nice to have some sort of SWAG to give away, whether
>> just fancy handouts or stickers.  It would be even better if we could
>> have some sort of appliance with ovirt pre-installed and configured on a
>> usb stick as well, but that's probably a year or 2 down the road.
>>
>>>
>>> - Any other feedback
>>
>> It's probably better if there are people from a wider range of the
>> sub-projects than we had in Japan.  I think that between Barak and I, we
>> managed to cover the majority of the project, but I think it would be
>> better to have someone from each major subproject there.
>>
>> I expect that either myself or someone from the Node team will be
>> attending at least LinuxCon NA, LinuxCon Europe and the NetApp
>> workshops.  We'll certainly handle the Node presentation for each of
>> these workshops.
>>
> 
> 
> It looks like ovirt & gluster workshops will happen side by side in the
> near future.
> I don't know if this is possible but I would do the workshops in
> different days (of the summit) so people that want to participate in
> both workshops can do it.
> I know for sure that in Japan many registered for both workshops
> 
> 
> 
> Barak
> 
>> Mike
>>
>>>
>>> If it is preferable to discuss this feedback real-time, I will ask Mike
>>> Burns to give us more time for this topic during next week's oVirt IRC
>>> meeting.
>>>
>>> [0] -
>>> https://events.linuxfoundation.org/events/linuxcon-japan/ovirt-gluster-workshops
>>>
>>> [1] - http://www.ovirt.org/wiki/OVirt_Global_Workshops
>>>
>>> Cheers,
>>> LH
>>>
>>
>>
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>>
> 
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