# Contributor Summit Copenhagen Retrospective

Date:  2018-05-07
Authors: @parispittman @castrojo @jberkus @idvoretskyi
Project Team: Ihor, jberkus, guin, castrojo, parispittman, zach, vanessa
   
# Project Overview

An event tailored to Kubernetes contributors with the following tracks:

*   Hallway
*   New Contributor Workshop
*   Current Contributor 
*   Doc Sprint
*   Steering Committee Update

# Key Accomplishments

*   _Ran the first ever new contributor workshop! _
    *   _The videos are amazing and will also be used to help out with mentoring initiatives [paris]_
*    _ Double? the amount of people we had last time?[jorge]_
    *   _35 more people; 20% increase [paris]_
*   _100% notes again for the day [paris]_
*   _Hallway track continues to thrive [paris]_
*   _Successful doc sprint which tested new website serving infrastructure for K8s.io. [jared]_

# Lessons Learned

*   Have a full AV check the day before
    *   CNCF has a different audio company for the keynotes that they always use and trust, we should investigate perhaps if this would make sense for the contributor summit?
    *   (Jorge) On the room with the missing microphones, Vanessa did check that they were set there the night before.
    *   (Jorge) AV company didn’t seem professional. If you held the microphones wrong they don’t work? And then I asked to swap it out for another hand mic and they “didn’t have any”. What? How? 
    *   AV was very lackluster and AV techs were hard to find during troubleshooting (paris)
    *   The AV equipment set up was shady and haphazard. I tripped over one of their unmarked black boxes that was in the middle of the floor and others did, too. (paris)
*   Having the doc sprint and breakouts across the venue did not work out
    *   2 out of 62+ people showed up
    *   It feels like sessions put in the “B” rooms in general had lower attendance throughout the week. 
    *   Doc sprint wasn’t clearly communicated to conference attendees. Time and date change and competition with contributor summit led to a lack of attendance. Should reconsider how we schedule this in the future. 

_What went well?  Why?_

*   (Jorge): Seems like all the feedback from the new contributor side was overwhelmingly positive
*   The actual content that was delivered at the current contributor summit was valuable to attendees regardless if goal of discussion wasn’t met. They are all very hot topics within the community right now and on point for that. (paris)
*   Food was good and the staff was very helpful and nice to let us happy hour early (paris)
*   Accomplished the goals of the doc sprint at the event (despite poor attendance). (jared)

_What went wrong?  Why?_

*   (Jorge): SIG Updates finished much earlier than we anticipated. If it was any much longer people would have gotten impatient I think, so not sure if this was good or bad. People seemed ready to go to the meetup/drinks thing at the end, so it felt natural even though we moved the mixer 1.5 hours earlier than planned! 
*   Venue space was not conducive for an unconference and therefore no real discussions were had. The chair set up was the ultimate killer. If we could have known this before voting gone out, we could have tailored the track to something different. Leads ended up making slides in hopes to cater to some kind of conversations but it only lead to them presenting on the topic. (paris)

_What processes did not work well?  Why?_

*   (Jorge): Perhaps consider closing the registration earlier to avoid the tshirt shortage. Better to turn people away? 
    *   I think we should draw out that folks won’t get a shirt unless they sign up by X date and promote that. If we cut early, I don’t know if we will get all of the crowd that we will need, especially leads since they seem to be the ones that sign up the latest. 
*   Space selection. We should have gotten the rooms where Red Hat’s summit was and not across the expo hall. Also, heads up on other requirements from the venue like seating would have been good to know in advance. The venue map made it seem close enough but it wasn’t. (paris)

# Open Items

# Future Considerations

*   All tracks and food need to be in the same area - move sponsor areas if needed (paris)
*   Suggest dropping the SIG Updates from the Summit schedule in Seattle.  Given the SIG Intro and Deep-Dive sessions, the SIG Updates seemed redundant with the rest of the conference, and we could have used more time for contributor discussion sessions (Josh)

# References

*   _[[link to registration list]](https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1S3icAKTsgNUiorV-FtO1bUW2EoY3sYNNfkZfex_QzjE/edit#gid=1155347951); [[link to registration form]](https://goo.gl/forms/ad48t05u2Hgw7Wul2)_
*   _[[link to github page]](https://github.com/kubernetes/community/tree/master/events/2018/05-contributor-summit)_
*   _[[link to cosponsored event page from kubecon]](https://events.linuxfoundation.org/events/kubecon-cloudnativecon-europe-2018/co-located-events/kubernetes-contributor-summit/)_
*   _[[link to feedback survey]](https://goo.gl/forms/9XFCd862vCPJB3c23)_
*   _[New Contributor Workshop Retro Notes](https://docs.google.com/document/d/1GV6y3hmUUBrr1_frvWtAXf-8nEDA0l6IYhBUXz2NP7A/edit)_

VH Post event notes

-Seattle  - 250+ attendees

-Leadership Summit? Dec 9 or Dec 14 or not at all

-2-day event

-6-8 rooms - must be near each other; (1) room 250+ plus smaller rooms