# Contributor Summit Shanghai 2019 Retro

# Summary

## Project Info

# Key Accomplishments [3-5 mins]

*   Second CS in China, ever. Yay!
*   Added a Current Contributor track to the contributor summit.
*   Attendance up from last year, despite competition of more additional events.

# Things That Went Well

*   Show rate of NCW is good, ~50 people in the room for most of the time [idealhack]  
    *   206 of 210 people attended the Contributor Summit.
        *   79 New Contributor Workshop
        *   93 Current Contributor Workshop
        *   22 Documentation Sprint
*   In general, this year's approach to registration seemed to work well, resulting in high show rates and attendees being appropriate to the tracks they were attending. [jberkus]
    *   Using a “decision tree” method worked really well
*   SIG F2F meetings were well-attended, with up to 35 people at each one.  Part of this was that only SIGs with a strong local audience had meetings (Storage, Scheduling, API Machinery), and we pitched the SIG meetings in the main room[jberkus].
*   Doing "201/301" talks for the Current Contributor Day was well-received and seemed to work well. [jberkus].
    *   Codebase tour, more in-depth testing, how to do a KEP
*   We were able to jump-start good discussions in the CCD sessions by having the MC start them and call on people with specific questions or discussion points.  Once folks started talking, some of the Chinese folks were willing to join in[jberkus].
    *   Extensive Q&A didn’t start on its own, having an MC really helped. MCing should be an active part of the session, not just introducing the speaker and topic.
*   The lunch/break food was really, really good[jberkus].
*   A/V "just worked" in the CCD room, plus A/V staff were on the ball[jberkus].
*   Having CS on the same floor as Colo events wasn't a problem for this event[jberkus].
    *   Phenomenal signage helped
    *   Size of the CS is also a factor
*   Very nice contributor summit shirt [Rui] (thanks!  --Josh)
*   **_Good to have separate contributor summit badge [Rui]_**
*   Like mentioned above, the discussion in the CCD that morning was led very well (mainly by Josh) when some speakers finished their sessions earlier than expected. The discussion covered the time gap between sessions. [Peter]
    *   Having an MC for these sessions was very important
*   Created a survey to go out with the post-event email right after the event [jberkus]
*   Power bricks were a great solution to the "no outlets" problem; we should hold onto them for next year [jberkus]
*   There was a good mix of people at CCD [puja]
    *   More diverse nationalities
*   People enjoyed the NCW [puja]
    *   A lot of good feedback, people thought it was great and they had fun.
    *   They got a better feeling about the community.
    *   People are using the workshop as an entrypoint to the community as a whole.
*   In the NCW, essentially everyone there was a first timer at a KubeCon. I thought it was great that they jumped right in [carlisia]
    *   Data point, fwiw: In the NCW, most ppl did not use Twitter [carlisia]
*   In the NCW, Most people were able to get through the CLA pretty smoothly, and people generally were able to follow along for exercises (PR, etc) [Jerry] (+1 and Jerry did a good job helping with CLA and other questions  --Yang)
*   In the NCW, the retention rate was around half (or slightly less) by the end of the day, which I thought was pretty good given that it was pretty long (and people were obviously tired). [Jerry]
*   In the NCW, I feel that overall audience engagement was pretty good (especially in the morning sections, but that might be due to people having more energy). People were listening relatively attentively instead of looking at their phones or laptops [Jerry]
*   Thing here [your name]

# What could be improved?

*   Harbor box got impounded by customs.  Any servers we use need to be built in China in the future [jberkus]
*   While we use git.k8s.io and slack.k8s.io a lot across the community, they are not accessible in China. People need VPN to contribute anyway, but this confuses newcomers. Also, lots of VPN not worked in June. [idealhack]
    *   k8s.io was an unexpected problem. [jberkus]  You can't make it work even on some VPNs.
*   Didn't pull together a schedule for the CCD until 10 days before the conference, mostly due to presenter unavailability because of Barcelona[jberkus].
    *   Organizers and speakers were involved in multiple conferences at the same time, which affected things
*   Compressed schedule due to conference schedule issues.[jberkus].
*   We didn't have any SIG buttons for two of the 3 SIGs who had meetings (Storage & API Machinery) because we used them up in Barcelona[jberkus].
    *   Deb: Order 10,000 buttons for each SIG :)
*   Should have scheduled translators for the main presentations for the Current Contributor Day[jberkus].
    *   Need to have translators for the Q&A portions
*   Should have scheduled video recording of CCD sessions[jberkus].
*   Josh was supposed to delegate more of the CCD stuff to Puja, but because we didn't have a plan for the day he did too much himself[jberkus].
*   Having the CCD a long walk from the NCW/DS rooms made it very difficult for staff, who had to run back and forth (although it was not a problem for attendees, except during the morning coffee break)[jberkus].
    *   5-10 minute walk
    *   Should have sessions next to each other
*   Attendees couldn't find the CS badging station.  They didn't see it when they walked in, and the main conference registration staff wasn't directing people there.  (Fortunately, the security staff didn't care, so we just ignored the problem)[jberkus].
    *   Similar to Barcelona
*   We were not able to sort the local VPN gateway issues for this event[jberkus].
*   Yang Li and I weren't able to schedule a meeting with the Barcelona NCW staff in order to understand the program changes until a week before the event, which means that we weren't able to incorporate many of the changes into the Chinese program[jberkus].
*   Several people asked me about contributor patches.  We had no answer for them because we hadn't discussed it, the patches having largely stopped being a thing in the other CSs[jberkus].
    *   They were supposed to be a part of Barcelona, but logis
*   No coffee on the fifth floor [Rui]
*   Badge claim sign for contributor summit is not easy to find [Rui]
*   Google groups links for SIGs do not work in China [puja]
    *   Have the sign-up email addresses in the slides
    *   Emails should work instead when signing up for the mailing list
*   Some of the content on the NCW slides did not carry necessary URLs [puja]
*   People were asking if we could distribute slides for CCD, we had no answer, some speakers uploaded theirs to their github [puja]
    *   Need to set up community location for uploading
*   Surveys should’ve been reviewed before sending out, the NCW one has a bug with it [idealhack]
*   More on the badge: I didn’t know there was a badge needed, and when I asked downstairs where to get it, no one knew. It didn’t help that it was in a corner of the room by the “exit” [carlisia]
*   Tshirts were only at the CCW, which was far from the NCW [carlisia]
*   The security was a bit intense, it was pretty hard to get to the 5th floor [Jerry]
*   For the NCW, people seemed to get fatigued as the day went on, and the afternoon sessions felt less engaged (possibly due to travel and the long day) [Jerry]
*   Thing here [your name]

# Things to Change Next Time

*   _Walk thru the flow and clarify some strategic questions of bootstrapping the new localizations (Hindi, Indonesian) [Rui]_
*   Next time, order translators for the Current Contributor room [jberkus]
*   SIG F2F meetings should have their own room (seating 30), with a projector, next year[jberkus].
*   SAN DIEGO: Consider making 201 (301?) content into alacarte sessions instead of a tutorial[jberkus].
*   Make sure we have aggressive MCing for the CCD sessions discussion periods[jberkus].
*   Print SIG buttons specifically for China, and make sure we have enough for all SIGs having meetings[jberkus].
*   Give bags of SIG buttons to presenters for Intro/Deep-Dive sessions[jberkus].
*   Order Contributor Patches for China next year[jberkus].
*   We need Airbnb-like easy checkin flow for folks to go to the room [Rui]
*   Recording of current contributor session [Rui]
*   I saw many folks are taking pictures of the agenda/schedule, it might be good to distribute some schedule pages for them arrange the sessions between different rooms. [Rui]
*   If speakers have sessions for both NCW and CCD (or Docs Sprint maybe), we’d better consider not scheduling their sessions at a very close time (e.g., 2:30pm for NCW and 3:00pm for CCD. If the session for NCW is delayed but the session for CCD is expected to be started on time, then the CCD may need to wait for the speaker). [Peter]
*   Consider getting a survey ready to go so that a link/QR code can be distributed at the event [jberkus]
*   We need to make a plan for what to do with leftover CS t-shirts, since we'll always have some, and it's too expensive to ship them back to the states.  Maybe organize distributing them among Meetup organizers to use as prizes?  [jberkus]
*   Add email signup option for Google groups (maybe also in general to the SIG page) [puja]
*   Check NCW slides if they carry necessary URLs and add them if not [puja]
*   Have a way to distribute slides for CCD, we can use sched if have all sessions scheduled in advance, otherwise we would need to find a different way to host CCD slides or tell speakers to share them on their on speakerdeck/github/slideshare [puja]
    *   +1 to Puja’s suggestion, I think having slides up before the event would be good for all of them. Attendees can follow along and click links, etc. as they go, instead of having to squint at the projectors and typing them in manually [Jerry]
*   A nice statistic to have is how many people from NCW end up joining communities or make contributions, might be a good way to gauge whether the NCW helps people get started. Have we done this in the past? [Jerry]
*   I think people are generally pretty fatigued by the afternoon, so having a lot of heavy speaking sessions in the afternoon is less engaging for them. Maybe add more demos/workshop examples in the afternoon instead? Although I’m not sure what would be a good topic [Jerry]
*   Thing here [your name]

# Action items (if any):

*   [idealhack] open an issue about git.k8s.io not accessible in China in k/k8s.io
*   B
*   C