conversation_notes/ep_02.md

Live Show Notes, 28 Jan 2021

Present: Valériane Venance (@valeriane_IT), Dan Maher (@phrawzty), Joe Nash (@jna_sh)

Notes: Ramón Huidobro (@hola_soy_milk)

Recording: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lPPmnnrshuc

Events in the Time Of COVID

• New formats being created
• How the difference in terms of event-feel makes it tricky to apply the same terms to events

Stage fright

• Nobody likes to feel foolish, like they're letting folks down
• By worrying about this, you're letting yourself down

Running hackathons remotely

• Sponsor promotions at virtual hackathons have shown to be more popular than in physical ones

Events in a post-COVID world

• Virtual events cannot recreate the feeling of offline ones
• Once we stop pretending they can, we can get more value out of them
• Being able to reach for people is a huge benefit
• Prediction: Hyper-local events are going to be huge again like in the past
• Hyper-local events might risk a fragmentation in experience organising these
• Local events will need sponsoring, too
• This could be trickier with slower financing systems, a riskier coin toss
• It's easier to get a goodwill going with a smaller group
• Maybe this is part of a cycle, and conferences will be gone/less present for a while before coming back again
• What can we do/are we doing to get the cycle back (safely)

Online speaking engagements

• Spending less time on talks, less spent on logistics, travel
• Sometimes, the shorter the talk, the more prep is needed
• Affecting folks differently
• Spending more time on engagement
• Being able to hop quickly between speaking and back to in-work meetings is easier remotely
• More opportunities for folks to do public speaking
• There may be a split in folks who can do online speaking but would for example prefer not to travel

Dynamics of virtual events

• How has events being online affected speakers sticking around and engaging after their talk?
• Being at home leading up to the event feels different from being there in person
• Creating relationships at online events is impacted
• Events like All Day Devops have for several years been virtual
• Events like re:invent would have a different purpose
• Experiences are much easier: Relationships are a lot harder
• Sponsorship outcomes are impacted

Platforms

• Each have their tradeoffs
• Some have their purpose, others are more generic
• At offline events, fundamentals are the same: Attention will be on a person, slides will be involved, then attention will move onto someone else
• Virtual ones are heavily affected by the platform, dependent on the goal
• Trying things out, like April fools day in the Riot Games API can have big effects