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Jul 30 2012
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Community Leadership Summit, Events, Presentations

Can Webinars Die Now?

At Community Leadership Summit, Tamao Nakahara from VMware led a session called “Can Webinars Die Now?!” It was a lively discussion on the challenges of engaging and educating communities through online events. We all agreed that organizing events online is a great way to reach a broader audience, but execution of a high-quality online event is very difficult. The “slides on a screen” webinar format isn’t very engaging, and has become a form of lazy marketing. In our CLS session, we brainstormed lots of methods for moving beyond the standard webinar, many of which I will share below.

Platforms and tools

There’s no perfect tool for online event, but there are many options that provide different degrees of interactivity. Here are some tools and platforms to consider:

  • GoToMeeting: GoToMeeting offers a paid webinar product to share screen, webcam, and audio. It also provides international dial-in numbers. Having used many of these platforms, I would consider it the most feature-rich. However, we’ve opted against using it at 10gen because it doesn’t officially support Linux. (Many of our participants are using Linux.)
  • WebEx: Webex is a Cisco product providing screen and document sharing, audio broadcasts, and dial-in numbers. Unlike GoToMeeting, you can’t view the speaker while they are presenting. While it (mostly) has cross-platform support, in my experience, it can be a bit finnicky. When it works, it’s awesome, but we almost always have users that can’t log in for inexplicable reasons.
  • Adobe Connect: I’ve been consistently impressed with O’Reilly webcasts, which uses Adobe Connect for their sessions. It’s one of the more expensive options but seems to have less issues than WebEx.
  • Google+ Hangouts On Air: A Google Hangout provides a video and audio meeting in browser. While the number of participants in a Hangout is limited to 10 people, you can stream that meeting to a larger audience using the On Air feature. The recording is then published to YouTube. Using G+ requires a Gmail account, and their may be accessibility issues in China and at large cooperations that block social networks. (For more info, check out tips and tricks for hangouts on air.)
  • Streaming platforms like Justin.tv, uStream, and LiveStream are also worth investigating.
  • Wacom: Wacom produces tablets for interactive writing, drawing, and white boarding. With screen sharing using one of the platforms above, integrating the Wacom can make a session far more interactive and engaging. We recently used Wacom for an online MongoDB conference and it was a huge success. However, we had to spend some time with the presenters beforehand to get them comfortable using the tool — it takes some practice to be proficient.

Case Studies

With so many possible tools and formats for online events, it’s interesting to see how different organizations put it all together. Here are some real world examples of successful online events.

MongoDB Online Conference

The CLS session proposal was particularly timely for me, as we recently hosted our first MongoDB Online Conference. It was a two-track conference, with presentations broadcast via WebEx and live Q&A using Justin.tv with a Wacom tablet. We hired a film crew to record the event so that the presenter could focus on presenting, and not on the technology or switching between screens. The presentations sessions and Q&A are now posted online if you’d like to get an idea of how the event went.

We’re now in the process of planning our second online conference, which will be focused on MongoDB version 2.2. This time, we decided to do a single track using Justin.tv. While Justin.tv doesn’t provide registration as WebEx does, the audio quality and the ability to show video of the presenter made it a better experience for the attendees.

CloudCamp Online

Dave Nielsen, the prolific organizer of CloudCamps, participated in the CLS session to share his experiences bringing unconferences online. Dave has successfully organized and facilitated dozens of unconferences around the world where people can exchange ideas on cloud computing. In an unconference, the schedule of session is organized by participants on the day of the event. It’s already a chaotic process in person, so I was surprised to hear that Dave attempted this format online!

Dave organized a two-hour event with 250 participants. In order to simplify the scheduling process, the online unconference was a single track event. He used UserVoice to let people propose and vote on sessions, scheduling the most popular sessions at the beginning of the conference. The sessions took place using GoToWebinar, where attendees could use the “hand raising” functionality to ask questions. There was also a chat room for backchannel conversations.

Alfresco Virtual Meetup

The Alfresco team organized a virtual meetup using Google Hangout on Air. Jeff Potts, the Chief Community Officer, moderated the session. Rather than show slides, he made the session interactive and conversational. Google Hangout allows up to 10 presenters who can broadcast video and audio online. The live stream was embedded on the Alfresco web sites, and after the event was published on YouTube. YouTube also has some light editing capabilities so they could clean up the broadcast after the event. The Alfresco team plans to make these tech talks a monthly event in order to better engage the community.

One drawback is that there isn’t a registration system built into Google Hangouts, which makes it challenging to track participation and follow up with viewers after the event.

Ultimately, content is key

After lots of discussion on the tools and formats, the CLS discussion group reached the conclusion that a better technology platform won’t fix a boring slide deck. Online or in-person, creating great content is crucial for a successful event. And unlike at a conference or a meetup where you have a (mostly) captive audience, during a webinar there are many more opportunities for attendees to zone out, get distracted, or start multi-tasking.

The purpose of a live, online event should be to make the experience as interesting and interactive as possible. Otherwise, people can watch a video on the topic or read about it in the docs or a book. Having a face on the screen can make a huge difference in engaging people, as can using interactive tools during your online session.

For more information on this section, please see the notes on the CLS Wiki.

Jul 01 2012
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Community, Events, Open Source, Presentations

Thoughts on Open Source Bridge

This week I attended Open Source Bridge, a completely community and volunteer run conference in Portland. Having attended many large corporate trade shows, OS Bridge felt incredibly refreshing. The diversity of the audience impressed me: in addition to open source developers I met project managers, designers, entrepreneurs, and even a lawyer. I also saw greater participation from women than I’ve seen at any other tech event. The schedule included technical sessions as well as presentations on culture, community, and business. Participants were encouraged to make notes and share knowledge on the sessions using the event wiki. The conference also included some fun perks, including excellent, locally catered food, a massage therapist on site, and a yoga class.

During the two days that I spent at the event, I attended several other fascinating talks. Here are some highlights from my favorite sessions.

Be Bold: An Origin Story

I arrived on Tuesday morning to attend Sumana’s keynote on being bold. Her inspiring talk covered her upbringing, her parents, and her interest in computers as a child. It included a great call to action about empowering young people to get involved in open source.

Text Lacks Empathy

I learned about the challenges of geek communication in Text Lacks Empathy, where Noirin Plunkett and Michael Schwern gave several practical suggestions for reducing miscommunications over email, forum discussions, and bug reports:

  • Perception is reality and by default, when we read factual text we assume the worst emotion
  • State your feelings or use emoticons
  • Geeks can lack tact so it’s always important to apply a little bit of tact in communications by default
  • Consider paraphrasing what the other person is saying to reduce confusion
  • Assume sincerity instead of sarcasm
  • IM is better than email, phone is better than IM, Skype/Video chat is better than phone, but in person communication is best
  • Use the passive voice: “Someone broke the build” implies accusation or blame, so consider “The build is broken.”
  • Start with the summary, then go to the detailed explaination

How We Went Remote

Immediately prior to Text Lacks Empathy, I attended a session from VM Brasseur on How We Went Remote. The challenges that the presenter discussed exemplified many of the concepts covered in Text Lacks Empathy. After discussing the benefits of building a remote team, including access to talent and reduced cost, VM gave some practical tips:

  • Being “in the office” is being logged into the team chat room
  • Documentation is critical! VM would open tickets for her team to update the docs so that it was included in their daily workflow.
  • Getting the team together in person a few times a year is important in order for the staff to gel

What We Talk About When We Talk About Project Management

On Wednesday, I participated in a fun and interactive session called What We Talk About When We Talk About Project Management. Presenter Amye Scavarda, a Drupal Project Manager from Acquia, clearly defined the role of a project manager. She then proceeded to pull up several job descriptions for project managers, demonstrating how a very specific skill set is becoming a catch-all for many companies. The group reviewed and debated the different job listings in a fun and lively discussion.

Scaling Community By Nurturing Leaders

I also presented on Wednesday, giving the presentation version of my recent blog posts on scaling community and why we should invest in community leaders. I posted my slides on SpeakerDeck and look forward to your feedback.

Thanks to everyone at OSB for an amazing and inspiring event. I look forward to next year’s conference, and hopefully I will see some of my new friends at OSCON in a few weeks!

Feb 12 2012
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Adoption, Marketing, MongoDB, Presentations, Sales

WebFWD Presentation on Building an Open Source Community & Business: Lessons from MongoDB

I recently had the opportunity to present to the Mozilla WebFWD program. WebFWD is a Mozilla incubator for startups building businesses around open source software. I talked to the group about how we are building the MongoDB community and ultimately, the 10gen business. My talk is now featured on the Mozilla blog, and I think that they actually did a better job of summarizing my points than I would:

  • Pivoting from being a Platform provider to being a database provider.
  • Getting people to “pay for free software” by developing revenue models around support, training and subscriptions, etc.
  • Treating support “as the most important marketing.”
  • Scaling their community by breaking it out geographically, achieving a multiplier effect: in Meghan’s words, “We see our community as a product manager.
  • Growing from zero sales reps to a position where they are now investing in their sales & marketing team over the past 1.5 years (12-15 sales reps worldwide today).
  • Managing and prioritizing large volume of users and lead flow that comes from being an open source project.

You can watch the entire talk on the WebFWD blog.

Jan 24 2012
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Adoption, Community, MongoDB, Presentations

Care and Feeding of an Open Source Community – My Slides from SCALE 10x

Yesterday I gave a presentation at the Southern California Linux Expo (SCALE) in Los Angeles on the Care and Feeding of an Open Source Community. My talk was fun, but even better was the great conversation the audience had after my session. I was surprised so many people made it out for the last session of the conference!

Overall I was really impressed with SCALE. It’s a completely community-organized event that brings together thousands of people every year. It had, by far, the most diverse audience I’ve ever seen at a tech conference. With both a children’s track and a new to programming track, the event felt very welcoming to people from all backgrounds. Kudos to Ilan and the rest of the team who puts on this amazing event.

Here are my slides for your reference :) Enjoy!

Aug 02 2011
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Adoption, Community, MongoDB, Presentations

OSCON interview and slides from my talk on building open source community

I had an amazing time at Community Leadership Summit and OSCON last week. I will probably post more about things I learned at CLS, but in the interim I thought that I would share the slides from my talk at OSCON. The presentation went well and I got some great feedback and questions from the audience. Luckily there were many friendly and familiar faces from CLS in attendance!

I was also interviewed live by O’Reilly at the event.

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