DrupalGov Canberra 2013 Summary Report. Christopher Skene 3rd March 2014

Transcription

1 DrupalGov Canberra 2013 Summary Report Christopher Skene 3rd March 2014

2 General summary DrupalGov Canberra was run on August 23rd, 2013, at University House, at the Australian National University, Canberra. The event was well attended, selling out at 150 tickets. We turned a small profit, of about $1050, which has been returned to the supporting organisation, Linux Australia. The best bits The event ran from 9am to 5pm, with three tracks run throughout the day. Australian Government Chief Technology Officer John Sheridan keynoted the day, which was well received. Attendance from the target markets of Public Sector Drupal users and professionals, and associated vendor s, was very good. Approximately 75% of attendees were from the public sector, with the remainder from other groups. We received good support from several Sponsors, principally (in alphabetical order) Acquia, Agileware, Datacom, OPC IT, Oxide Interactive, and PreviousNext. In addition, Portable Studios and Boab Interactive came on as Supporters, and Datacom supported our Sprint Day. Acquia and PreviousNext ran a parallel roadshow, which turned this into a two day event for those who were interested. Needs improvement There were a couple of factors which could do with improvement in 2014 Finding speakers was difficult (though ultimately not a problem). In particular, encouraging public sector users to present proved difficult. The quality of some talks was not up to scratch. We had no quality control for talks, and left them up to individual speakers, however it may be worth putting more effort in here. Ensure that speakers provide slides. Investigate ways to record sessions, if possible (though this is expensive). If they can t be recorded, investigate Hangouts? Didn t work Sprint day attendance was effectively zero.

3 Recommendations for 2014 Based on how the event ran in 2013 and its feedback, I would recommend the following: Continue to run the event at the current capacity. About 150 is a good number, without getting impractically large, and this allows to maintain existing levels of sponsorship and ticket numbers. Limiting numbers also increases demand. If possible, investigate a venue which allows expansion up to 200, but watch the budget. Continue with the support of Linux Australia. Sponsor support is crucial. This was achieved in 2013 by keeping Sponsor packages relatively inexpensive, and it is recommended to keep similar levels in That said, it may be worth offering a slightly higher tier as well, as this event offers unique access to the Canberra market. Continue with Lanyrd and EventBrite as scheduling and sales providers respectively. These worked well in Look at options to record sessions. Do not run the Sprint Day.

4 Follow-up survey Following DrupalGov Canberra, we ran a short survey to gain feedback on the event. How did people hear about DrupalGov? Most of DrupalGov s marketing was on social media or Drupal Groups. We were interested to find out how people found out about DrupalGov, and which channels were most effective. Ultimately, attendees found out about DrupalGov through a range of channels, with none being significantly important. Word of mouth was the most common, however this could be seen as simply an extension of other channels. How was the event rated? This was a very good result for DrupalGov. The majority of attendees (74%) rated the event in the top two boxes of Very good or Excellent, with the remainder mostly Average (20%). A small minority (7%) said the event needed improvement, and none rated it in the lowest category.

5 What were attendees interested in? The sessions which attendees rated significantly popular were: Drupalising your Intranet (Geoff Dibley and Sarah Roberts) Panel: The Challenge of Drupal for Government (Owen Lansbury, Geoff Dibley, Gregory Holmes and Pamela Phillips) Introducing Drupal 8 (David Peterson) John Sheridan s keynote was the most highly rated session, but had three times the number of attendees as other sessions. Case studies were generally more popular than other sessions, while sessions on niche areas such as CRM or video were the least popular. This comment sums up some of the responses we received: We're usually presented with a lot of theory of what we should do as government agencies (and by when), so I found the most enjoyable sessions to be those that dealt with real life examples and practical advice good take home content. We also received some criticism over the quality and appropriateness of the sessions.

6 Given the event was called DrupalGov, I feel that the sessions should have been tailored more to government. I don't think many presenters gave much thought to making their sessions specifically relevant to the public sector. Need to watch quality but this was very good for a locally organised event. Some speakers were bit weak but I liked that the three streams covered a variety of content. Considering it was the first Canberra Drupal event I think the quality was good, but will hopefully it will improve in future. As we did no vetting or support for speakers, and Drupal speakers are used to presenting to a generally more technical, Drupal oriented audience, this is probably not surprising, and would need attention at future events. What would you like to see at DrupalACT? Attendees were asked what sort of events or activities they would like to see DrupalACT engage in. Technical seminars were seen as the most useful, followed fairly equally by activities useful for networking and facilitation. Help with vendors and staff/contractors was seen as less useful. This last item is surprising, given the difficulty in obtaining Drupal skills in the current market, however the value proposition may not be well understood.

7 Would you be interested in attending DrupalGov or a similar event in 2014/2015? This result was overwhelmingly positive, with over 90% of surveyed attendees indicating they would like to return. Only 3% indicated they would not attend. DrupalACT runs activities throughout the year. What kinds of events or opportunities would most benefit you? These results mirrored other similar questions. Technical seminars were valued most highly, while business seminars came a close second. Opportunities for facilitation, communities of practice and social networking ranked about middle, while help with vendor selection and staff/contractors was rated fairly low.

8 If you plan to attend DrupalACT events, what times suit you best? In general, visitors expressed a preference for events during business hours, however evening events on weekdays and online events also had some traction. These results should be taken with a grain of salt, as actual attendance at all of these times has generally been poor. After hours, weekdays 40.35% Weekends 8.77% Business hours 80.70% Online events 26.32%

9 Demographics Which of the following best describes your role? Which of the following best describes your organisation?

10 Does your organisation currently use Drupal? What is your level of Drupal experience?

11 Appendix 1 Answers to: Did you have any feedback on sessions? Given the event was called DrupalGov, I feel that the sessions should have been tailored more to government. I don't think many presenters gave much thought to making their sessions specifically relevant to the public sector. Need to watch quality but this was very good for a locally organised event. For an event tarteted [sic] at Government, A couple of the sessions, provided information that may potentially conflict with Govenrment [sic] Policy or legislation i.e privacy, spam, accessiblity [sic], advertising. You may have thought it was obvious, but I think you need to explicitly tell your presenters that the audience at a Drupal conference expects to learn something about _why_ they chose Drupal, _how_ they use Drupal or _how to_ use Drupal. Generic pro CMS doesn't cut it, pro dev' doesn't cut it and neither does just saying "it's awesome". Maybe I just saw the wrong speakers but Ollman was easily the pick of sessions I attended, sharing ideas and experience we could take back to the office. PM&C second. Generally good mix of non technical and technical Wasn't enough information prior to event to help making decisions on what sessions to attend. One session was a waste of time as the presenter didn't prepare Toby's I would love to get the slides from the workshops Rapid prototyping was interesting but could have run a bit longer I thought David Petersen was brilliant. All sessions were good but from a development perspective the round tables weren't quite as compelling. Can't comment on a lot of them as I was in and out. Very disappointed in Toby Wild's preparation, the talk ended far too early, and his demeanor towards.net, in saying that Drupal could accomplish in hours what.net couldn't in 6 months was disingenuous at best, and missed the mark of his audience who mostly work in government, and often rolling something out in "hours" isn't a possibility. Would have liked some more meat about dealing with Rapid Prototyping specifically in a government environment, driving change along with it, and generating trust and momentum, which is what I was expecting. Given his standing as a Senior Developer in a large agency, was looking for his experience and

12 anecdotes in achieving this. Some speakers were bit weak but I liked that the three streams covered a variety of content. Considering it was the first Canberra Drupal event I think the quality was good, but will hopefully it will improve in future. Please provide slides/papers post conference it would be very useful, particularly as several sessions were run in tandem. Some of the session titles could have been better named/summarised. The sessions feel like an attempt to drum up community involvement. Being an intermediate Drupal programmer I would gain more from these events if they went into detail. For example the session on Drupal security said "Don't hack core" and I have already heard that a million times. Would be useful if they pointed out some things that people have done, what incident occurred and what they have done since then to fix the vulnerability. These basic high level sessions have caused me to not bother attending any Drupal events in the future because I don't learn anything useful. Asking participants what they wanted to know before the event would have allowed the presenters to target their content to the audience. The streams were not very coherent. Drupal for Government must be completely focussed on the drivers and challenges faced by government agencies striving to achieve compliance. I cannot tick any of the sessions as interesting since I came away with a sense that those speakers I heard were not well prepared. I did enjoy young Robert Caracaus' enthusiastic call for a little Obama gumption in public engagement through technology, but it wasn't quite what I was expecting. As a developer, I would have liked a few more technical in depth sessions. I found Adam Malones session (How to not break your site) to be both interesting and entertaining. I got alot out of it high five to that guy! "We the people" by Robert Caracaus was a little too US patriotic for me. Sure, parts were interesting and amusing, and it went a bit into open source side of drupal development which I found interesting, but at times I couldn't help but feel I was in an American high school political class learning all about Obama and Bush honestly, I don't care. Sadly, the one I was most excited about Rapid Prototyping, turned out to be the most disapointing offering nothing other than "This is who I am, this is what I've developed" and then 10 minutes of "drupal is fast to develop in just because" I caught half of of the Drupalising your intranet really good example of Drupal intranet implementation. The coffee (like all conferences) sucked, but you made up for it with orsm party pies! We're usually presented with a lot of theory of what we should do as government agencies (and by when), so I found the most enjoyable sessions to be those that dealt with real life examples

13 and practical advice good take home content. Difficult to pitch it just right based on the two audiences. Talks such as We the people were educational to both parties.