The future of first-party open source events
Quoting: The future of first-party open source events - Duck Alignment Academy —
I told you there’s no perfect solution, and you’ve probably picked up on a few things already. One of the big concerns I have with my plan is that the social connections are geographically (in the case of social events) or functionally (in the case of workshops) siloed. Colocating several workshops can help with this. For example, if the QA team meets up to develop a new automated test suite at the same time and place as the website team meets up to build a new web application and the documentation team meets up to migrate to a new publishing platform, attendees from all three groups can mingle during breaks and meals. Not everyone who should join a workshop can attend for the same reason they couldn’t attend a status quo event, but they’ll at least not miss out on the talks.
Another issue is that there’s less opportunity for networking, especially with the project leaders. The ideas that spring up in serendipitous hallway conversations can’t happen if people aren’t in the hallways. I don’t have a pat solution for this one. Some online event platforms have a general chat not tied to a specific section, and that helps, but it isn’t the same.
Despite these problems, this approach helps broaden the community’s reach and brings people in who couldn’t participate before. It conserves the project’s limited travel funds (if any!) for travel that has a well-understood — and, critically, easier to defend to the budget holder — outcome. On balance, it seems to be the least-bad of all options.