Planning virtual events, user groups, meetings, and conferences

BOB SNODGRASS:
So what Tim had posted was planning virtual events, user groups, meetings and conferences and talking about how the end of the pandemic for a full year and experimenting with a lot of different things, including two versions of med camp. And he wanted to talk about other virtual event planners about what was working, what was not working in the future of online events after face to face, feds also come back into style. So, one thing that I had on my mind or have had on my mind is how do I best move to with our local user group? I do my best move to like a more of a hybrid type. Of the thing. So that we can keep our audience that we've gathered from around the world and have that still available to them as well. Kevin goes. (LAUGHTER)

KEVIN:
I mean, that's a joke. Alright, good, we've got a doc. I mean, that's a challenge. Sorry, opening a tab, I need access.

APRIL:
Hang on, please hold. (LAUGHTER) I put it in the wrong place to begin with.

KEVIN:
That's cool. Like I know, early days of mid camp, we struggled with getting everyone in the same room physically. And so we tried a hybrid approach of our planning meetings. That was challenging just because... Audio issues, et cetera, about just great, I don't know how it's evolved since then to like, have people participate virtually plus in real life over the same medium. And maybe that was maybe that was our problem is like we were having a Zoom talk with several people in the room, and so you're having all the audio echo issues and stuff like that. But like London, where they kind of had to force hybridize their event last March, they had people in person and then the presenters were presenting via Zoom. But again, attendees weren't really presenting via Zoom, so I don't know, I guess testing. But I agree, like that's going to be the next challenge, because I think if there's a in-person boot camp next year, we need to figure out the hybrid component. Which raises a question that April asked at one point in slack is how do you cross the bandwidth barrier?

Because not all venues can support the band with needs of essentially a streaming event.

APRIL:
I have put a link. The link in the chat should work now.

BOB SNODGRASS:
Yeah,

APRIL:
and you can put your name in as an attendee if you want.

BOB SNODGRASS:
So, just logistically thinking about that, if I'm in a small meeting space and it's a really small group, user group type of thing and we have the bandwidth, I guess I'm kind of thinking right now that we would have the person doing the presenting, if they're live, having them on a mic and mic'ed up to share either the presentation screen or a presentation that they might have online showing on a screen. And then have someone running as some kind of mentoring, Zoom or something like that with the remote people so that they can be watching the chat and asking questions and relaying back and forth that way. But I'm also thinking, if we have a speaker that's external, we've tried that a couple of times and we really need a more powerful set of speakers and we really need a you know, something that's going to project a little better than a projector does because they're just not worth anything on, you know, showing a Zoom screen. So, that's kind of my thinking right now, is that we'd have an MC, a speaker either remote or live in a mentor or someone kind of facilitating the Zoom and of things.

That's as far as I thought about it. And I haven't done any testing at all with any of that kind of thing. So, I'm not sure what kind of equipment to even look at.

KEVIN:
Yeah, that makes sense. And I would definitely again, it's too bad Tim's not here because I've just seen the TC Drupal on Twitter, images of their lunch and learn. Where they've got people in person and on Zoom. So, there's people like in a U-shaped seating arrangement watching a live speaker and you can see the speaker slides, there's, you know, the Zoom bubbles of virtual attendees. So, TC Drupal is doing that now, too. But I don't know to what extent or the level of their success.

BOB SNODGRASS:
Cool.

KEVIN:
Because it could just be that your rather than maybe the presenter is actually presenting via Zoom in the room. And it's just a matter of managing audio for a live presenter.

BOB SNODGRASS:
And I know there are schools, I mean, that teachers are doing this right now.

KEVIN:
Yeah.

BOB SNODGRASS:
And my wife is having only moderate success with it. She's really struggling because, you know, trying to present, watch the kids by herself. It's like impossible. I don't know how she's even coming close.

APRIL:
It definitely helps to have a second person. So, that's why I was putting on there, like, it'd be good to have an in-person host and a virtual host for each sort of space, like even for like if you were doing a camp and you had a session, having someone in person to run things with someone, getting questions from the Zoom and managing any technical issues between the session and the Zoom. And you know Zoom, just do whatever it is, something similar.

BOB SNODGRASS:
Yes.

KEVIN:
I mean, the added benefit is it really lowers the barrier of recording sessions regardless of format. So, then it just becomes a matter of processing the recorded videos and uploading them somewhere.

BOB SNODGRASS:
Right.

KEVIN:
And they like it for discreet sessions. There's a new tool that I've checked out. I think David Needham, you recommended is that of course, I'm forgetting the name of it. Begins with a D

DAVID:
script?

KEVIN:
D-script. Yes. It's very low cost, it does basically you upload a video, it will transcribe it, and then as you edit the transcription, you can fix words and it will kind of deep fake or edit the video so that you can actually change what the video says, which is a little terrifying. But by editing the start stop by deleting text, it trims the video that way. So, you take away the need for any video editing software or skill, really, because you're just editing text and the system is figuring out how the video matches that. It was incredibly impressive. And it's a real low cost from what I remember, it's I think you get a few hours free of transcriptions. It's all based on transcription length, so, like if you have a monthly meetup and you've got an hour of transcription a month, it's probably free. For a camp, it would probably be less than 100$. I think it's because you pay by number of hours and seats, so if you've got two or three people working on videos, you know, you're going to see maybe 200$ cost if you got 40 or so videos.

But it also goes beyond like you can remove all the arms instantly. I don't know how that would work with like that, the issue with that, then it's like, well, how does that work with any transcription service? Right. So, you almost have to then throw away all that and count on user edited transcriptions, which again, it's just the giant text editor. Interesting. And you can share from there directly to your YouTube channel. There is a bandwidth issue of downloading videos from whatever recorded them and then uploading them to descript, but then you don't have to re-download and re-upload. So, that at least saves that. What I'm seeing is like for Florida, I got all day recording's, so, that doesn't work in that model because you can look...

APRIL:
All the sessions for one video? They are all stacked in the one video.

KEVIN:
Yes, and that's how we did it for Midcap because it worked out well for me. But I think the traditional method of start stop, you then have a very easy way to trim. I forget, I took a camp, a couple of camp videos from a virtual camp and used that as a test and it was just super simple.

APRIL:
What about platforms? We're using Gather town, we've used Toppin and anybody want to talk about a platform?

BOB SNODGRASS:
I have an observation on platforms, and that is that, too many people are trying to do too many things with too many things.

KEVIN:
It feels like they're getting in the way.

BOB SNODGRASS:
It's like, where the hell am I going?

APRIL:
I know. I remember your comment when we were using Hoppin, but we were also chatting in Slack. And so there was a lot of like, you know, (CROSSTALK) tasks switching brain is like exploding.

KEVIN:
And it only increases because like Gather Town is Gathertown plus Slack plus Zoom, because Gather Town just sends you to Zoom for the session.

BOB SNODGRASS:
Yes, so, I mean, I think the fewer tools used across the board, the better ultimately to make it easier for people to deal with, you know, in a perfect world, everybody would have known how to use Mirror this morning and all the people would have been there. But even I was struggling with it because I haven't had enough time with it and I had the benefit of being able to be on it.

MATHEW:
For work, we've used Jitsi. But the reason we chose Jitsi is that we had a requirement, but it had to be self hosted and we had to be able to control everything which, you know, basically logistics. And it worked well for us.

KEVIN:
And remind me what Jitsi is? Like what flavor of platform?

BOB SNODGRASS:
It is like Zoom, right?

MATHEW:
Yeah, it's basically, it's like Zoom,

KEVIN:
OK, I got it. I wasn't sure if it was also like that because Hoppin has stuff like schedule overlay and rooms for things all in one spot. Gather Town is a little less than that. So, I guess that's the ultimate, it's like what problem or experience are we trying to deliver?

MATHEW:
Yeah, and with Jitsi, we had pre-created rooms, but we also gave people the ability to create their own ad hoc rooms on the floor, which increased the amount of support that was needed, but that was just something that was part of the requirements we were given. But it seemed to work well and, you know, the situation that we had was maybe odd, but we had people on site that were mostly gathered together in a room, some people that were on site, but kind of out in the field using cell phones to connect in and then people across the country that were most like, they were all connected using the DMs in Amazon. So it was it was kind of convoluted. But again, it gave us control over everything because one of the odd, unusual feature requirements is that we had to be able to keep anybody from getting data out of the system, so by them connecting to our portal, which then got them to a VM and then within the VM, they had all tools, including Jitsi and some other stuff. And despite all of the various steps that all seem to actually work really well.

BOB SNODGRASS:
How many people did you host on that?

MATHEW:
There were a few hundred, I'm not sure the exact number, but I think it was between 200 and 300. Servers... The VMs were in Amazon, the AWS gov cloud, and the Jitsi server was on site at University of Illinois. And here we have a 10 gig connection and then also we had a 10 gig connection at a remote location. So that, you know, that helps.

BOB SNODGRASS:
Yes. And doing it that way, did you have, were you going through the Jitsi communications? Hug type of thing, too, or does the server take care of all the direct connections for the remotes or.

MATHEW:
I mean, because everybody had to access Jitsi via a VM in Amazon. Yes, I mean, I guess you could say it was all managed by the Jitsi server.

BOB SNODGRASS:
OK. Cool.

KEVIN:
I think it's also worth discussing expectations about attendance in relation to virtual burnout whether for local meet ups or larger events. Like, I feel the intent of this mid camp to be something different helped. Hard to say how successful it was yet, because attendance seems lower today than any of the days and today was the content day. But it's also non-conference, which is not for everybody. But also, our intent wasn't to have a packed place. It was to give people the choice to hop in, hop off. Sorry for hopping,(LAUGHTER) but not that platform, but I think it's a change in expectation from the organizers perspective is like recognizing, thanks to Avi, that it is important that we still do this. And just manage, just change our expectations of what the outcome, what outcome means success, right? Anything? It doesn't work.

APRIL:
I also like to hear your schedule for doing things, I mean, this may just be because I'm not in the Central Time Zone, but it feels like the schedule is kind of condensed. It starts later. It ends early. Social events are earlier, so people can take care of their home responsibilities. I thought that that was kind of nice and it does feel nice. Like I don't feel too I'm tired of my headphones being on my head for sure, but it's doable and I can still see people and then go eat dinner and do whatever and then also weekdays instead of weekends because we're so like Zoom burned out. Like, I don't want to sit in front of a computer on the weekend. It would be different. It would be totally different if it were in person because it's not sitting in front of a computer than being with people. So, there's this weird dynamic there.

AVI:
Yes, the timing was very much intentional, like get work done before you show up if you need to. I actually like I did some karaoke on Wednesday at 4 o'clock, and I was like, OK, I could go (INAUDIBLE). I'm like, yes, it's been nice.

KEVIN:
We almost pushed the social's to later because some of the feedback internally is like, it's awfully early to start, but my thinking was if you stop at 4:00 and then have a gap now someone has a harder choice to come back, then like at a live event. Right? Whereas if you just keep going and people you already have some critical mass. And if people are there and enjoying it and want to step away, then they've already got some stake in coming back. The hard part is figuring what is the stop time. We just put 7:00, but it's like it can go for whenever, because you're not being kicked out. And it's like we've had people go like they're officially 4:00 to 7:00, but like easily 8:00 to 9:00 so far on both days. So, we'll see what tonight is, but I think I've been pleased with the social so far.

AVI:
I joined later, I don't know what other stuff you guys talked about, you all talked about?

APRIL:
Here's a duck.

AVI:
Cool, here is a duck. Nice.

KEVIN:
Fast with the copy pasta.

APRIL:
You're just probably better, too, because mine was just out of the browser, not the actual share link.

KEVIN:
Yes, I only recently discovered that copy dot, dot, dot in the Zoom chat. That's super handy.

AVI:
Wait what?

KEVIN:
If you go next to...

AVI:
Oh yes.

KEVIN:
Right, and it literally says copy but it's I guess just for, you know, it's even for text too.

APRIL:
The whole thing.

KEVIN:
Yes. That little, whatever is in that bubble.

AVI:
Yes.

KEVIN:
Well, because I've been doing links throughout the chats and some of the openings because like as people come late it's like what was that link again. It's like, oh it's right here. And there was super handy.

BOB SNODGRASS:
That is handy. I didn't know that one. The demands.

KEVIN:
I always love those TIL moments. (LAUGHTER).

AVI:
I put this in Twitter, I'll put a screenshot in here, too, but the whole ticket sales thing for virtual events. I'm taking a screenshot. So, our ticket sales are silly. We sold 100 tickets this week.

KEVIN:
Yes, super, super last minute.

AVI:
Yes, so like the numbers are absurd, like as of our last official planning meeting last Wednesday, I think we had like 80 or 90 tickets and now we're at like 216.

APRIL:
Well.

KEVIN:
Like weren't there even like 23 last night?

AVI:
Yes...

KEVIN:
I mean, I think free helps a lot.

AVI:
Yes.

KEVIN:
Right. But that also means fewer people might show and again, for virtual event, that's fine.

AVI:
Yes.

KEVIN:
I don't have to deal with catering numbers.

AVI:
Right.

BOB SNODGRASS:
True, if you tried to do that with one that was catered...

KEVIN:
That's why we didn't do a free event for Midcap ever, because we don't have the the voluminous space to deal with. Either they all show or they don't. And then how do you plan catering?

APRIL:
Well, pricing. I mean, the cost for a virtual event, in my experience, has been way lower than in-person.

KEVIN:
Yes.

AVI:
I mean, it very much depends on the platform that you choose, and that was kind of... Sorry I have a lot of thoughts on things, so, I have soar throat. (CROSSTALK)

KEVIN:
plus add ons, because we're doing the video captioning service after the fact. So, yes, there are still costs, but no catering, no venue.

AVI:
Right. But yes, I mean, we had some challenges at the beginning, trying to figure out planning because like, you know, the range of our cost was like, you know, 1000$ to 10,000$. If we decided to use Zoom, which we already had licenses for, you know, the venue is basically free.

KEVIN:
Yes, because there are some great services out there that are super expensive, like what was that one that you demoed for EWG? Like the new one? That was gaining ground after Hoppin but I recall their price being so high.

AVI:
Yes, it was like...

KEVIN:
Like ten grand was discounted.

APRIL:
One called Run The World, I thought it was it.

KEVIN:
No, that wasn't it. I've not heard of that one.

APRIL:
I think it's kind of like Hoppin.

AVI:
This was like made by some Python folks or something,

KEVIN:
friends of Doug Van, that's all I know. (LAUGHTER)

APRIL:
That is their name. Yes, it should be in that demo thing, right?

KEVIN:
Yes, it was. Yes. (LAUGHTER)

AVI:
It was interesting. It looked like a really cool platform, but it was just like...

KEVIN:
High price and low actual street testing because if anyone is going to break an event, it's going to be a Drupal event I think.

AVI:
Right.

KEVIN:
And we will be vocal about it and explain.

APRIL:
Airmeet, I think, was used by Drupal on Europe, but I don't have experience with.

KEVIN:
I guess back to platforms, accessibility is an issue because Gathertown has issues. Zoom has issues, like they all have issues. Right. And it's also a matter of making choices, really.

APRIL:
We have a thing called the river thing called platforms support for the random things, venues/platform. That's probably good.

AVI:
Yes, loud swarm was the one that we got demoed.

APRIL:
Well, that was like a wrap up version, wasn't it?

AVI:
Yes, but with a whole bunch of other stuff. It was like a wrap of resume and Slack and like your website. Is very much like a conference platform built by a bunch of like API nerds.

KEVIN:
Because I do recall an issue of Hoppin, like the video quality was not great.

AVI:
Yes, well, they're using it for Drupal come again this year, so it'll be interesting to see.

APRIL:
You know, also yearning to use that too.

AVI:
Hoppin?

APRIL:
Yes.

AVI:
Yes, I was frustrated with Hoppin last year. It just didn't work great for me. But it'll be interesting to see, like I'm sure they've gotten better.

APRIL:
I am trying to remember what word camp was using, at least early on, because they were sort of leading the way. I can't find it.

AVI:
Swamp card.

KEVIN:
OK, I want to think they used Hoppin too, but I don't know why I think that.

APRIL:
It was something else, at least in the beginning, it was. There's also some different ways that people are doing something similar to Gathertown that I wonder what accessibility they might have. So, it's like, let me see if I bookmarked one of them.

KEVIN:
Yes, they're, a couple came up that...

APRIL:
Wonder? Wonder.me?

KEVIN:
Yes. That one like had no accessibility statement at all. At least Gathertown has. Well, here's what we know.

AVI:
Yes, we had it. Yes, there were a couple. There was a conversation about it at some point. About some of those spatial chat was the other one. Something broader, and they both seem like very slimmed down versions of Gathertown, which is good or bad.

KEVIN:
But I guess they're all pretty young.

AVI:
Yes, and they're all basically just like put some stuff on a canvas and like. I think that works venture that seems much more like we're going to do exactly Gathertown. But I mean, the accessibility for those also seems really hard, like how do you integrate voice accessibility, voice descriptions or whatever like video game, right. Like you're now putting a video game in the Web browser and trying to figure out how to make that work for everybody.

APRIL:
I am adding accessibility at the bottom and just calling them special platforms. So, it's kind of like you're making something that can be flat-ish, like a video with a transcript or a chat window and making it special, which then makes it less accessible.

AVI:
Yes.

APRIL:
Some alternatives like, and you all did this too, in Florida, did this, when you have Gathertown, you also have the ways to access the calls, the Zooms outside of Gathertown, so people can access them in both ways. Working with some people about to make a scavenger hunt and work adventure for Drupal for like a a social event. And so it's a similar kind of thing or it's you come in and you can video chat and we have a scavenger hunt piece to it. But I'm like, this is not very accessible. Like if somebody wanted to participate in some of the group calls, maybe we could make those Jitsi calls available for people to join. Like if they signed up, they would have them in the email so they could just pop in and and interact with people that way. But it's not going to be. You can't make that experience accessible. At least not with today's tools, probably.

AVI:
Correct.

KEVIN:
Indeed, yes.

AVI:
I mean. This goes into the other conversation that we're going to have that at some point. It's accessible doesn't mean the same thing to everyone.

BOB SNODGRASS:
No.

KEVIN:
No, and I think it's just a matter of clarity. Like, I'm advocating next year that we have a code of conduct agreement on our ticket, but also an acknowledgement checkbox to show that as an attendee, I'm aware of what your tools are and what you can provide for me and if that's not adequate, I know what my options are, and I know the extent that your event will go. Because working on assumptions is risk. And good intent. Does it always pan out, I guess. I'm curious, too, about sponsors and how, like I know right now, it's sort of just goodwill. And that doesn't sit great with me because, like, I get it, but depending on how long this goes, you know, events have to provide value to sponsors too. And there's so many, Like, we I don't think we've. I thought of this too late, but we should add like a daily check in with sponsors and we should like do this even for in-person events to like mid camp. We'd never be granted in person. It's easier, but like we were doing a nightly check and call this year.

But it occurred to me that we should be doing that with sponsors and even persons so that we can address needs. At least daily, if not sooner, because obviously, if something comes up, we'll address it, but, you know, we can be we could take advantage of things more quickly if we're just more in touch with various groups. Right.

AVI:
And Kevin did a sponsor check and sponsor tour on Wednesday that was really nice. Like it was basically like got all the sponsors in Gathertown. At the beginning it was like, show them their booths and kind of walk them around. You kind of walked them around. So, that was a really great thing that he kind of took and ran with. So, that's nice. But but checking in more would be good.

APRIL:
I'd be curious to know what the interactions were like in Gathertown. If people are going to the booths, stuff like that.

AVI:
It seemed like not a ton from what I saw.

KEVIN:
Do you think Hoppin provides the better experience for sponsors?

AVI:
Better sponsor experience. Yes.

KEVIN:
And mostly because Hoppin is. The issue with Gathertown for a sponsor booth, is you've already fractured everybody, right, whereas Hoppin is like if your everything's in Hoppin, you don't have an alternate way to get to it. We're giving people Zoom links, which means they never have to go to Gathertown, which means potentially never seeing the sponsors. So, that is, I think, a big pro in the Hoppin experience is that amongst everything I'm seeing, like, well represented sponsor-like imagery, and I know from experience, like chatting with the sponsor booths granted, I'm friends with most of them, was the highlight of my Drupal last year because these were the people I missed seeing in person. Granted, I'm not a lead for them, so I don't know how much value that adds. It's just a tough, you know, which also I know we did have because we sort of missed an opportunity because we didn't change our permissions on the ticket. So, we currently don't give email addresses, but some sponsors kind of pointed out that now that we're not in person, that's even more important than it used to be.

So, I think that's something events and organizers have to change your thinking on is allowing or even encouraging attendees to give their email for spots or contact, possibly with messaging like this, wouldn't happen without sponsors. So, please support them versus don't see them as a nuisance or as a pitch.

APRIL:
Yes, I know Hoppin allows for like you can go and check that you're interested or whatever and like it passes those until it reaches each sponsor. So that's kind of nice. One thing that we were looking at for benefits and at time, so on, and I'll finish this up, and then if anybody wants to finish things up, instead of doing a guaranteed session, doing like a room sponsorship, but like having a sponsor be allowed to either provide content that would be read out before a session by a host or provide a host that can say, hey, I'm with whatever and this is what we do, and then I'm going to introduce the speaker for this room and that sort of thing to have some sort of visibility in front of people.

KEVIN:
Providing a host is a brilliant idea, and why didn't we have this conversation a month ago? Because now you have a volunteer and you have someone that the sponsor is choosing to invest that time specifically to give messaging and keep things smooth. So, that's a win win, right?

AVI:
But I mean, it's hard. I think what we tried to do last year before they got canceled was to kind of have a variety of different options, which made things harder on themselves. But I think having worked with this sponsors for a number of years, like everybody has different needs and so, like, you know, we just wanted to hear that was super interested in getting as many of their people to do talks as they could. Like we have sponsors who really want to do trainings. We have sponsors who just want to give us money in the most complicated way possible and don't want anything for it. They're more than one of us. Yes. Everybody has different needs. From the sponsorship side.

APRIL:
Alright, any closing remarks before we wrap this up? I'm sure we could talk all day.

AVI:
We should talk about the intro to Drupal stuff, we could talk about this on the site April, but this like onboarding thing that we were talking about with the event organizers, working group and trying to have consistent sessions across camps that I attempted this Drupal mid camp. We did, but I think it could have been played better. We could have tried and got that earlier.

APRIL:
So, you think we'll pull that into, like, growing the Drupal community in the next block?

AVI:
Wait, where?

BOB SNODGRASS:
That's in Navy Pier room... to sessions that I put out one more focused on user groups and how to grow those, and King put one out as well. So, both of them were kind of mashing them both together. That's in the Navy Pier room. If we wanted to swing over there to that one. The other ones that are going on next are visual regression testing, gameplay based workflows, hybrid decoupled and hiring with diversity and in... Sorry, I'm losing my voice, I don't know why.

KEVIN:
I'm going to put a link to our notes stock into the session note.

BOB SNODGRASS:
Yes.

APRIL:
Cool.

KEVIN:
Cool. OK, thanks, everyone.

APRIL:
Yes, thank you.