Thoughts on conferences

Over the last four years or so, I have attended numerous conferences in many different locations. It has been, really without any exceptions, an incredible experience. Conferences are one of the main ways that our communities come together and meet face-to-face—something that's important to counterbalance the standard email and IRC development environment.

In that time, I have also seen many different ways to organize, schedule, and produce those conferences, and, as is the case with free software projects, there are bits and pieces that conferences can learn from each other. What follows is my—fairly opinionated obviously—distillation of what works well and less well, which will hopefully be useful as new conferences spring up, or as existing ones plan for next year.

Location location location

Conferences are generally located in interesting cities throughout the world. This is a good thing as it means that folks get a chance to see different cities and countries. Moving the conferences around every year also means that geographic distance will become less of a factor as the conference will be "nearby" every once in a while. Because of that, those on a limited budget still have a chance to attend. Smaller, regional conferences may not move around very much (or at all), but their focus is typically more on gathering people from the region, rather than trying to attract a large presence from elsewhere.

Regardless of which city the conference is held in, it is very important that it be held in a "downtown" location, close to restaurants, bars, and sightseeing. One of the more important parts of any conference is the so-called "hallway track", where informal gatherings of attendees take place. Nearby bars and restaurants are an integral part of the hallway track. In a well-situated conference setting, it is not unusual to stumble into several different discussions during the conference, when eating dinner or visiting a pub. Requiring taxis, public transportation, or rental cars to access food choices is definitely sub-optimal, especially for lunch breaks.

Being in a downtown location also likely increases the options for hotels or other accommodations. While the rates at the conference hotel are generally pretty reasonable from the standpoint of other, similar hotels, they certainly aren't cheap. Folks that have a limited budget will appreciate having other options that are still within easy walking (or public transport) distance of the conference site.

Putting together a map with the conference venue, the various accommodation options, restaurants, pubs, clubs, and so on, is extremely useful. Adding information about how to use any public transport systems, directions on getting to and from the airport or train stations, as well as a bit of sightseeing information is invaluable as well.

Scheduling

The conference lineup is getting larger each year it seems, which makes it difficult to avoid date conflicts. It's obviously beneficial to do so, but may ultimately be hard to pull off. Even when they don't overlap, it's not uncommon for two conferences, in different places, to bump right up against each other, or only be a few days apart. That will make it difficult or impossible for folks to attend both—making it important to at least try to avoid conflicts between conferences with closely related topics or themes. A recent movement to collect up multiple conferences and run them back-to-back (or even concurrently) in a single location certainly has its advantages, but it also leads to attendees being away from home for up to two weeks—and possibly falling prey to conference burnout part way through. Obviously, there are various pros and cons here.

Something that is more easily controlled by the conference organizers is the actual schedule of talks. There are tradeoffs there as well, of course, but it is important to find the right balance between time for presentations, time for hallway chats, and time to move between various parts of the venue. If there are long distances between the farthest meeting rooms, it may make sense to have larger breaks between sessions. It is frustrating for attendees to be sitting in on a good talk, perhaps one that is running a little bit late, and having to watch the clock so that there is enough time to get to another session all the way across the venue. Worse yet, arriving on-time sometimes means the room is already full.

Timing is tricky too, though, because a staggered schedule (with, say, 50-minute slots and 20 minutes in between) makes it harder for attendees to keep track of when the next session starts. On the other hand, starting each session on the hour (or half-hour) may lead to shortened slots or very short room switching times. One possible solution is to have longer and shorter slots that are alternated in some clear pattern—it is sometimes the case that a speaker doesn't really have enough material for a full slot anyway. For hallway track purposes, 30-minute breaks in the morning and afternoon, as well as a 90-minute lunch break, should be strongly considered. All of that is pretty difficult to balance and still get in plenty of talks—at least in a one or two-day conference—but fewer, higher-quality talks with lots of discussion and social time makes for a better conference in my experience.

Talks

While meeting up with friends and colleagues, and visiting an interesting city, are certainly part of the draw for a conference, it is the presentations that provide much of the impetus for attending. Make no mistake, there have been some excellent talks with great presenters at all of the conferences I have attended. Keynote talks are another story unfortunately. Some conferences choose keynote speakers based on their merits, but some of the bigger conferences give keynote slots to sponsors, which can be something of a mixed bag.

There is nothing inherently wrong with providing keynote slots to sponsors, but those talks often end up being extended advertisements for the company and its products. There are exceptions, and even some of the ad-oriented talks are still interesting, but it is unfortunate that they are often some of the weakest talks at the conference. It may be unavoidable, as large corporate sponsors expect to get something for the money they put in, but there is no reason that the technical level of the talks couldn't be better. There certainly is a lot to be gained both for the company and for the attendees if the talks are genuinely interesting and informative—even if they must stray a ways into marketing.

Conference organizers are largely at the mercy of the presentation proposals that they get, but it is nice to have related talks collected up into themes (or whole tracks if there are enough). It's also important to try to ensure that related subjects are not scheduled at the same time. Scheduling is undoubtedly a tricky balancing act at times, but having several related talks arranged back-to-back in the same room makes it that much easier for attendees.

A grab bag of other thoughts

Conferences often hand out bags with a schedule/program, a T-shirt, and a few handouts (flyers, pens, notebooks, etc.) from sponsors. Most of it is fairly useful (though the flyers generally don't do much for me) and can be used or given to a friend or family member—except the bag itself. One has to wonder how many of the bags—often fairly attractive, made of cloth, with a conference logo—never make it home with attendees.

The reason is that most of those bags are essentially useless for any purpose other than carrying around the small amount of stuff that originally comes in them. In general, they are much too small to do anything with, so they get tossed out—or re-gifted to people who don't know any better. Either spending less money on a paper/plastic bag or, better still, handing out a bag that can be used for other purposes (perhaps a laptop bag or even a cloth grocery bag) would be good. It just seems like most conference bags are an expensive waste. For some, T-shirts may fall into the same category, but at least those can be donated to someone else or to a local organization for the needy.

While schedule apps for mobile phones (or tablets) are all the rage, it's a little hard to see what they offer beyond what a simple—up-to-date!—web page could. If the schedule is changing frequently, an app may remind you to update its data, unlike a web page, but that value is lost in the cumbersome navigation that the apps tend to have. Is it really so hard to recognize what day it is and make that the default? Bonus points would be awarded for noting the time and auto-scrolling to the right place in the schedule. It seems wrong somehow to have a separate app per event that needs to be downloaded before and deleted after, but I guess that's part of what apps are all about.

Of course, either apps or a web page require reasonable WiFi at the conference venue. For the most part, WiFi works pretty well at conferences these days. It can be overwhelmed when the majority of attendees are in one place (like for keynotes), but the rest of the time it seems to work pretty reliably, which stands in (sometimes stark) contrast to five (or even fewer) years ago. It's important for attendees to be able to keep up with email and such, though it can be a distraction as well. It's pretty easy to recognize a talk that isn't going very well by the number of head-down, typing attendees.

In closing ...

Here are some of the things that I noted about some of the conferences I have attended in 2011. It is by no means comprehensive, but just some quick-hit thoughts about things that each did well that other conferences should at least consider as part of their planning. For example, one of the things that struck me about the Prague conferences in October (LinuxCon Europe, Embedded Linux Conference Europe, GStreamer Conference, and Kernel Summit) was the large open area in the center of the venue between all of the rooms. There was plenty of space for chatting, raiding the snack/beverage tables, and even sitting down (if you were quick or paying close attention anyway).

While it probably complicated scheduling even further, I certainly appreciated the 10am start for the second day of the GStreamer Conference. Staying up too late at conferences, whether carousing or writing/editing, is all too common, so a later start (with perhaps a correspondingly late finish) is welcome. Like many conferences, Ubuntu Developer Summit in Budapest had an excellent location, with plenty of nearby restaurants and a walking mall with lots of food and beverage choices just two blocks away. Not to mention the fact that it was close enough to walk to some of the sightseeing highlights of the city.

The Desktop Summit in Berlin was memorable for many reasons, but one thing that really stood out was the wiki with a great deal of useful information about the city, how to get around, and so on. The Embedded Linux Conference Europe had videos (in free formats) available soon after the conference from Free Electrons (the GStreamer conference also had prompt videos that were made by UbiCast). It should also be noted that the Linux Foundation either runs or assists with many of the conferences that I have attended and it does a uniformly great job in putting those conferences on, from the venues to the program and keeping everything running smoothly as well.

We are lucky to have so many high quality conferences for Linux and free software. The schedule is packed, and there are good choices for most any area of our communities. While there are clearly areas where conferences could do better, it's hardly a weak point. It's certainly worth finding the time and budget to attend those that are in your areas of interest.