[Users] Following Up on LinuxCon Japan Workshop

Thu Jun 14 15:02:46 UTC 2012

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  The ovirt-node presentation was especially out of date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
- 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
>>
>
>
> _______________________________________________
> Arch mailing list
> Arch at ovirt.org
> http://lists.ovirt.org/mailman/listinfo/arch
>
>