Hi Matteo, You raised really good points!
I think Apache doesn't have any marketing/design staff to help us. For instance, in 2020 when we did our first NuttX Online Workshop (because pandemic) we asked for a video conference tool and they didn't have it, it was an employee from Apache who temporarily transferred his Zoom account to me. So, at the end of the day it is always voluntary work. The idea of that meeting was to learn from others how we can improve our event, even with the resource constraints we have. The idea of calling some famous people to our event is good, some years ago David Marples suggested calling some famous old Unix guy (associated with IEEE) to talk in our event, but that never happened. Sometimes a good presentation counts more than a famous presenter, your presentation did it. Some people already suggested we need to put your presentation online and promote it. BR, Alan On Wed, Oct 29, 2025 at 10:49 PM Matteo Golin <[email protected]> wrote: > I agree about the interval between presentations. Honestly though, I don't > think you need to have a demo to occupy the space between. Most > people either ran over time or had questions that pushed them over time. I > think 5 minutes of unscheduled time after every 20 minute presentation and > 10 minutes after the 40 minute presentations is just fine, because either: > > - The presenter will run over time and use some of that > - The questions will run over time and use some of that > - There will be some unused time where the stream can display the schedule > and in-person attendees can chat briefly with one another/get a coffee/use > the restroom > > That time will be used up regardless of what happens 99% of the time. > However, the suggestion of a chronometer is smart because it will help > presenters know when to hurry up on their final slides :) I used my phone > as a stopwatch just in case. > > Big emphasis on Apache's help and attracting more developers. I only > learned about the event from a Linked post I saw on Alan's page, right > before the call for presenters ended. Otherwise I would have missed the > deadline. And I'm looking at the mailing list/NuttX every day! It would be > great to have some kind of actual advertising for the events across all the > social platforms, some media (digital banners, clips from the event in > previous years, etc). That's obviously quite difficult to achieve with so > few volunteers, most of whom a) are employed full-time and b) have an > engineering background, not a marketing/events background. That's where it > would be great if Apache had some ability to help out (i.e. spread the news > on their platforms, have maybe some kind of equipment/event budget, etc.). > I also think something that tends to attract a lot of delegates to these > kinds of conferences are big "keynote speakers" that are advertised in the > invitations. This year we of course had Gregory Nutt, which would have been > a great keynote speaker to advertise and attract attendees. But (and no > offense to Greg) Gregory Nutt is not necessarily a super well-known name > outside of the NuttX community. I'm not sure anyone who would be interested > in speaking at these NuttX events are necessarily "famous" people, but > large industry names would attract newcomers as attendees (not presenters > of course) just to see what NuttX is all about. Xiaomi is a pretty big > industry player, and Sony being part of the workshops 2 years ago (?) > definitely drew my interest to the NuttX workshop. I wonder if we could > maybe advertise the speakers/attendees and their companies (with > permission) as part of promotional materials. > > NuttX in educational environments is huge. I don't think that it's really > achievable with the amount of volunteer resources we have now, but it would > be pretty massive for the project. This is what I was all about when using > NuttX on a student engineering design team, because I felt that NuttX gave > a much more "intimate" understanding of RTOSes, contributing to > open-source, practical use-cases and getting close to the hardware than I > saw in literally any other mainstream educational project (i.e. Arduino). I > was very tired of using QNX, which is being pushed quite heavily in > education spaces in an attempt to garner more experienced developers after > they graduate, so I hopped over to NuttX. It has the potential to be > adopted in educational spaces, but I personally think more for "serious > projects" like design teams and capstones as opposed to being the RTOS of > choice for an entry-level course in real-time programming. > > Obviously a lot of feedback to consider, but it should be noted that the > volunteers who made the workshop happen this year did an excellent job. I > really appreciate all their time and effort into making it an enjoyable > experience for everyone. At the end of the day, it's all volunteer based > and we need to be realistic about how much is achievable. > > BR, > Matteo > > On Wed, Oct 29, 2025 at 2:43 PM Tomek CEDRO <[email protected]> wrote: > > > Quick notes from today meeting with some feedback and notes for future > > NuttX Workshop events. Please add your comments if we missed something > > or if you see room for improvement :-) > > > > * Create and follow a checklist. > > > > * We need some interval between presentations, to let the other > > presenter to preparer: it could be some demo or other thing to occupy > > this space > > > > * Include some way to show remaining time, like a chronometer > > > > * Dry-run on real environment > > > > * We need more professional camera, with fixed position > > > > * OBS: Try Studio Mode to be able to do things in the background (i.e. > > edit scenes, add slides) while the stream is live already. > > > > * Slides on the events www after the event. > > > > * More pictures of the local event and the streaming -> www. > > > > * Create a check-list of necessary hardware (i.e. laptops, cameras, > > microphones, projectors, sceens, wifi, streaming box, etc) -> what we > > have -> what we need. > > > > * Can Apache help in organizing event / providing hardware? > > > > * Add the online form to let users to subscribe to the event and get > > certificate at end of the event (only interested people and in a way > > to avoid GDPR like issues. Maybe online certificate generator? > > > > * Attract more users and developers to NuttX project. Make more > > "noise" and bring attention to NuttX. Use / leverage educational > > initiatives to show and learn about NuttX - for kids and students. > > > > Thank you and take care :-) > > Tomek > > > > -- > > CeDeROM, SQ7MHZ, http://www.tomek.cedro.info > > >
