After Pulse: Community Conferences  ## Metadata - Author: [[Community Pulse]] - Full Title: After Pulse: Community Conferences - Category: #podcasts - URL: https://share.snipd.com/episode/451e304b-8ffc-4065-8034-3cc086a05291 ## Document Notes ## Highlights - **Burnout from Organizing Conferences** - Jason Hand shared his burnout experience organizing DevOpsDays Rockies for months leading up to the event. - He realized the extensive effort was unsustainable and chose to step back for his well-being. Transcript: Speaker 1 But I think we also identify that it's not just that I think that some of us that have been involved with these things you know we're all we're all changing to you know most of us are still Involved with. These types of roles professionally but at least for me personally I pointed out that I. Tend to shy away from spending a lot of my free time. And when I think about DevOps Days Rockies, which is kind of like the core main community event that I was involved with for years, I felt like I was working around the clock for the months And months leading up to that. And not just me, like other other organizers as well. And that, I think, I knew it was never really sustainable. But it took a couple of burnout sessions, burnout, you know, periods for me to finally say, you know, I just don't think I want to keep doing this. I don't think it's worth the burnout. I don't think it's worth the effort. And then also, I think it's always good to get out of the way and let other people step in and take charge a little bit and just see what they can do with stuff. ([Time 0:02:04](https://share.snipd.com/snip/0c184830-eaee-4e67-af63-1e18c4386837)) - **Rising Costs and Expectations** - Conference costs and attendee expectations have risen significantly compared to decades ago. - This makes it challenging for community-run events to sustain their appeal and viability. Transcript: Speaker 2 Yeah, it does take a lot of time to go to these events, but I also wanted to say it does take a lot of money. And we were talking about sponsorships and getting enough sponsors, but I'm talking from the attendee perspective, I think ticket costs, entry fees have also steadily moved up. As the, I think the expectations have also moved up of what to expect from a conference. I do remember, you know, decade, two decades ago, when going to conferences, the expectations were way, way smaller. You just expected to run into people, have a microphone maybe, sometimes not, a cafeteria auditorium. But now there's swag that's expected. There's branded t-shirts and lanyards and receptions, food and drink. It's less scrappy and so the expectations have made it so that it's less achievable. I think for me going to conferences, I don't know how many I would go to if my employer wasn't helping to pay the bill for me to get there, both from a transportation cost, but also just the Ticket costs are high. And so I do think maybe a refactoring is needed where it kind of pushes aside the corporate sponsorship to be more scrappy and more community involved to make sure things happen. A lot more volunteers, a lot more donated spaces or even like an outdoor park. ([Time 0:03:19](https://share.snipd.com/snip/658c69a7-ecc1-47b0-af9e-ae7062135ff7)) - **Shift to Smaller, Creative Events** - Community conferences grew large before COVID, requiring bigger venues and higher budgets to meet demand. - Post-COVID, events trend smaller and more intimate, inviting new creative formats like outdoor gatherings. Transcript: Speaker 1 And I think some of the disappointment I feel in my nostalgia about how things used to be in the good old days is just a victim of success for a lot of these, these events, you know, they started Off small or smaller than they were, you know, pre-COVID. And then with popularity of the events, you know, mostly speaking, again, of DevOps Days Rockies, it started off, you know, maybe 100 people, a couple hundred people, and then it just Kept growing and growing. People, you know, the word got out that this is a valuable event. And not just for the participants slash, you know, folks that are showing up as like attendees to sit in the audience, but also those who were speaking and, and the sponsors, and it just, It was, there was a lot of value being like plugged into that community. And so it kept growing and growing. And in order to, like, sustain that growth, I guess, or, you know, be able to make sure that we are being inclusive of all the people that want to come, we kept having to get a larger and larger Venue, and we'd have to get larger food, you know, provided, and more coffee and more swag. And it just kept getting larger and larger, just to meet, I guess what you'd say is the demand of that, of that event. And then COVID came around and kind of reset things a little bit. But I think it didn't like completely reset for everybody. It hasn't been really until after COVID that I've seen things start to trend a little bit in the smaller direction where, like Matti pointed out, a lot of DevOps Days events have had to Either change dates, or just completely cancel for a variety of reasons, many contributing factors. I know in Denver, it's the same deal there. But I think it's neat to see this like reimagining of what these events can be, you know, but the point is to just get members of the community together and share ideas. Let's not lose sight of that. You know, there's a lot of ways that that can be done. You don't need a quarter of a million dollar budget like Chicago had for their DevOps days. I pointed out, you know, there's some folks from from the local people here in Denver, Denver, who are now doing this wild spaces thing, which I think sounds really cool, really creative, I guess, maybe for those of those who like to be outdoors and enjoy camping and things like that. But to me, that's, it's thinking outside of how things used to be done. ([Time 0:05:04](https://share.snipd.com/snip/a2379635-9de8-428a-8cbc-379e47994ea3)) - **Maturation and Innovation Stagnation** - Community events have matured; many problems are solved and discussions are often repeats. - Innovation stagnates due to event diffusion, lack of central authority, and challenges in sponsorship coordination. Transcript: Speaker 2 Yeah, so the space is matured enough that we're not solving new problems, we're just rehashing old things. And then that causes the people who've been a part of the space to almost like graduate out, like they've matured past, having to have these discussions and look for these answers. And it's just a really, really good point. In terms of innovation, I think there's also a stagnation there where I have had people, even colleagues, say that they want to get in front of developers and they think community events Are a good way of doing it, but they can't find them. They don't know attendance numbers. They don't know locations. They don't know how if there's a way to easily even give them funds. Like do they have an entity to give them funds as a P O need to be created. There's not been like an Uber of events created where there's a one stop shop to actually find these like if I wanted to get in front of.net developers, then I have to do the research. I have to do the work to find out which conferences cater to this group. What are the sponsorship packages like? And there's not been really an innovation or a focus on doing that because these groups are all diffused. They're not one conglomerate that's able to lobby this to kind of get together and to solve this problem. And there's no way that someone else could be the authority of this, where they would able to have that power to be able to do that unless, you know, there's just some authority out there That people all want to blab on to. Everyone are doing these events because they are getting to their own specific audience, they want to do it their own specific way. And so it's something where unless something can kind of make it easier for people to give them money, well, the money will continue to probably be an issue going forward. But also, hopefully, it will move into more intimate spaces, more conversations that happen around things. Like for me, I am still extremely interested into work culture and environments, how to make sure that, yes, I know I need what I that, do my best work? How do I create an environment where when there is a forecast that there could be a catastrophic failure, meaning a la like CrowdStrike, either from the CrowdStrike side saying like, How do we make sure that we do better testing, or from the customer standpoint of saying, you know, how do we be more redundant? And how do we make sure that this is not an exposure we have? Those conversations, I think, probably did happen, but no one was able to really, really get those pointed across. So I think creating a culture around getting work done is something I would still like to get fixed and worked out. But how do we make space for these conversations that still need to be had, even though that a bulk of the, yes, we know how to solve it, but the question of how do we implement those solutions Are still something that I still think needs to be hashed out. ([Time 0:09:08](https://share.snipd.com/snip/afd72206-7b4a-46f3-a2e5-0da605151914)) - **Adapt to Limited Time and Budgets** - Community conferences must adapt to attendees’ limited time and corporate budgets for maximum impact. - Organizers should innovate to sustain events and retain their value for participants. Transcript: Speaker 2 Yeah, what came first? The value, the focus, or is it the money and the expectations that maybe it's COVID, maybe it's business needs. I think generally speaking, time has been kind of inconsistent and less predictable. And that's making it more complicated. Hopefully, I hope these community events still continue. I would like to still see them exist. I think it would be a sad, sad thing if they all went away. So I hope that things get figured out either on the company side, the attendee side, or the organizational side to make it sustainable. ([Time 0:13:29](https://share.snipd.com/snip/ba248e5b-008b-45a9-9333-75f619901408)) - **Focus on Simplicity and Value** - Large scale and high production quality aren't always needed; focus on meaningful learning and connections. - Redefine "high quality" events to be simpler and more focused on community value. Transcript: Speaker 1 Maybe they're getting smaller. We did have a bunch of questions that we didn't get to like How do you ensure that you can scale some of these community events? And I don't know I think what I'm I guess Concluding is that we've we all sort of agree that maybe that's not necessary. Maybe we you know that's part of the problem is that we expected to these things to just continue to grow and they don't need to. Or they need to shift in some way. And also the question of like, how do you continue putting on high quality events? You know, quality is quite subjective. And what makes a high quality event? Do you have to have a large screen that slides are being put onto with a really great PA system? And like food is really good and the coffee's great. And the afterwards social hour is like a cannot miss type of thing. I mean, we could have gone into that and that would have probably been much more interesting pre-COVID because I felt like you did see that a lot across community events as you were looking For ways to sort of one up the way you did it last year you know just to make it a little bit more interesting and better and I think maybe we have to reassess what better means you know I'm Just here to learn I'm here to make connections and I want a better experience around that I don't necessarily need this you know high product high produce highly produced thing and I think that that's totally fine too. That's just part of the evolution of these community events. ([Time 0:14:47](https://share.snipd.com/snip/15468d86-0e0f-4e75-957d-d98a6319bb0c)) - **Promote Unconferences and Content** - Encourage more unconferences centered on knowledge sharing instead of popularity or speaker fame. - Prioritize content quality to foster deeper community learning and engagement. Transcript: Speaker 2 Think it also would be nice if we had more unconferences too. Yeah. Which is more of a focus on people sharing knowledge, which I think some of this I think has been highlighted that it's a popularity contest when you talk about speakers, getting the Big names and the bigger names, drawing bigger crowds to of keep that up But if we go back to the content and having high quality content, mm-hmm Hopefully, maybe we'll see more of those. Yeah. Speaker 1 Yeah, totally agree ([Time 0:16:31](https://share.snipd.com/snip/468c8692-5b67-42d8-929b-72ca42bd4529))