# Contributor Summit Barcelona 2019 - Retrospective</p>

# Summary

[Project Team](https://github.com/kubernetes/community/tree/master/events/2019/05-contributor-summit)
Authors: @parispittman and @jrosland

# Project Overview

Continue on our contributor summit event journey to Barcelona to bring contributors together for face to face conversations, fun, learning, and planning. 

# Key Accomplishments [3-5 mins]

*   A lot of high praise by attendees for being a great way to get started contributing to Kubernetes
*   Recording of all the things
*   Successful event planning with CNCF support
*   Had content for everyone
*   Attendance estimates:
    *   Current Contributor: 179
    *   New Contributor: 8
    *   Evening Event: 125
    *   Total: 334

# Lessons Learned 

_What went well?  Why? [10-15 mins]_

**Current Contributor + New Contributor:**

*   **General:**
    *   Jeffrey: The helper boxes/care boxes are a life saver - tissues, cough drops, etc. THANK YOU NOAH
    *   Paris: Venue was good, the only minor negative is the distance of where it was compared to registration - keeping it as a separate space was great
    *   Josh: AV staff was great, and the setup worked great, especially in the larger F2F rooms
    *   Jorge: Near natural light, easy to get out and get some sun and fresh air
    *   Guin: Breaktime and lunch food was well done, much better than the rest of the conference
*   **Swag:**
    *   Inside-joke SIG-Beard buttons went over well, we should consider keeping one “joke” swag item, as long as it doesn’t get too exclusive. 
    *   Jonas: The t-shirts were REALLY liked, great artwork!
    *   Everything was packed already on Sunday
    *   Luggage tags were great
*   **Contributor Celebration:**
    *   Location was beautiful
    *   Music wasn’t too loud
    *   Good turnout
*   **Registration:**
    *   Reg on site was amazingly useful + big +1 to LF staff
    *   LF SSO integration was a nice improvement.
    *   Approval process/spreadsheet was 

**SIG F2F:**



*   Rooms allocated for everyone
*   Signage for each room
*   Great content for some of the SIGs
*   Good attendance for quite a few of them, higher than expected

**New Contributor Workshop:**



*   We did have updated content
*   Conference wifi was stable
*   Harbor box was used in 101, saved ~30GB of downloads
*   Zero technical issues for the AV!
*   Mics were great
*   AV tech team great was great
*   Lots of interaction from the audience
*   Great backup from the workshop assistants during the code walkthrough and other questions
*   Joe and Tim going up on stage welcoming people

**SIG Meet and Greet:**



*   

_What could be improved? [10-15 mins]_

**Contributor Celebration:**



*   Hard to find! Google maps took you to the wrong place.
*   No welcome committee, we want to make sure people feel welcome

**Registration:**



*   Still a lot of back and forth, making sure people are in the right track
*   Attendees pointing to their Slack handle instead of GitHub - GitHub SSO possible?
*   Current contributors: For Seattle, open up for current org members first, then the general public
*   Ensure the workshops are well formulated, so people know exactly what they’re signing up for
*   Have a proper reg plan in place

**Swag: **



*   Tell people to wear the contributor shirt the next day
*   Maybe having a different style for SD

**Venue:	**



*   Some SIG F2F rooms were too small
*   People were expecting breakfast
*   It seemed impossible to get coke/diet coke for people who don’t drink coffee. 
*   Reg desk closer to the venue - and offer just the paper instead of wasting plastic

**Communication:**



*   **Signage and Branding: **
    *   No one ever fixed the community programs slide on the monitors, they remained blurry the entire week. :(
    *   Need even more physical signage!

**SIG F2F:**



*   Better descriptions of the SIG meetings and their purpose in Sched
*   Josh: Release Team live had lower than expected attendance because people were double or triple booked already - shorter and less concurrency possible?
    *   Note that many SIG meetings wanted a longer time.  So the solution to this is to let SIGs ask for specific amounts of time (1 hour vs. 2 hours?)

**New Contributor workshops:**



*   Need better descriptions of the 101 and 201
    *   Someone who has already contributed can be in 201, and completely new should be in 101
*   Copy some of the local build content into 201?
*   Possibly change the titles from 101 and 201 to something more descriptive
*   Paris: Should we run 3 tracks?

**SIG Meet and Greet:**



*   Create a “kit” for each chair that includes sign, buttons, and is labeled with their SIG name, so it’s easy for them to grab when they show up.  Provides a smoother process with the limited time we have to setup for this event.
*   Make sure that the Meet & Greet doesn’t overlap with SIG F2F meetings or other things.
*   Get better commitment from SIGs to make sure an experienced contributor can be there if SIGs cannot and send a calendar notice to make sure people don’t forget.
*   SIGs should have an on-boarding plan for new contributors
*   Decouple this from the NCW, it should be a part of the Contributor Summit so current contributors can get to know new SIGs as well
*   Link to the SIG intros during the conference!
*   Do we have data of successful contributor retention? - Bob? Dan: Lukasz can do a report on commits of attendees.
*   Send out follow-ups in August asking how things are going - Jonas