Hello all, John, this is fantastic! Thank you so much!
To the Members of the Professional Development Club: Thank you so much for all of your help, we couldn't have done this without you! You coordinated the on-site setup, produced a poster and advertised on your LinkedIn, liaised between multiple internal and external parties, answered various questions, made sure that the room was reserved and organized, looked into many things for us (ex. masking policy, parking, etc.), and have been wonderful and professional to collaborate with. I look forward to collaborating with you further in the future! To John and Richard: A special thank you to John and Richard for all their extra help on-site, and for being so warm and kind throughout the evening. To everyone: Thank you everyone for helping to organize this event, for completing the survey, offering thoughts and ideas along the way, and attending last night. The Q&A discussion was lively and very interesting for me. This was a really big deal for me. Not only was this the FIRST hybrid event like this I've ever attended on the University of Ottawa campus, it is the first time I have (attempted) to organize something like this, and it is the first time I've ever directly interacted with Dr. David Chan. I was blown away. And it is these kind of experiences that propel my interest and participation in this area - it is so refreshing to see someone else bring passion to a topic that you yourself feel passionate about! That is something we do not have too little of in the open source communities: passion, and it really sets these communities apart. Thank you so much everyone for your openness, technical acumen, and for your passion. Sincerely, Katie ________________________________ From: J C Nash <[email protected]> Sent: 02 September 2022 10:07 To: Linux-Ottawa <[email protected]> Cc: Anahad Pandey <[email protected]>; Binit Pati <[email protected]>; Monika Gwalani <[email protected]>; Katherine Mcmillan <[email protected]>; Abhishek Xavier <[email protected]>; Twinkle Rane <[email protected]>; Krishna Raviteja Maddali <[email protected]> Subject: Post-mortem on Linux-Ottawa Hybrid meeting Attention : courriel externe | external email First, many thanks to all who contributed. I believe Katherine, who did lion's share of run-around that always attaches to meeting organization, deserves applause. She has said she will send thanks to David Chan (but perhaps copy the list -- it would be useful to have his email to share ideas). Second, to the PDC for getting the infrastructure. Third, to everyone who attended for putting up with some of the glitches, which I'll outline below as a way to record what we learned. - traffic and related matters meant Katherine was late, and the two Linux Ottawa Board members present did not know the arrangements for the virtual part of the meeting, nor that David was coming to us that way. We also discovered that the entrance to the building was blocked by construction and the detour was a good 5, possibly 10, minutes via a very convoluted route. It would be unsurprising if we did not lose some participants. - Monika and Binit had things set up and were helpful, but had to leave early. By then we had realized that jitsi link would connect, and people could see the room. What we did NOT know was that we could not be heard. - By chat we got David's talk started. It worked well. Follow-up Q&A was lively. We had to pull the plug as I pointed out uOttawa rooms sometimes have auto-shutdown. I've been in rooms that turned off lights at a given hour and put put doors on exit-only. We had booked to 9 pm. - As David was talking, I realized that the microphone was likely linked to the one used for the lectures. These are clip-on wireless mikes and are stored in a cupboard under the podium. I don't think the PDC people could get at these BUT... - my very old RDID card (from early 2000s when I lectured) still opened the cupboard and when we turned on the mic, we had sound. - A separate and earlier effort to use my laptop (I can connect at U of O with eduroam as Adjunct/Retired) DID give us sound, but also gave us weird beeping feedback. Possibly if we had muted the speakers in the room this would have worked. Some experimentation required if we use uOttawa or similar rooms. But see below for a possibly less demanding option. - We had several cases where microphones were left on interfering with jitsi. We probably need to have a "bouncer" for all such meetings to remotely mute those mics. Summary: uOttawa, or other venues, need access to full capabilities of cameras and microphones. Once we had that sorted out, we were fine, but I suspect that we were lucky my RFID card still worked. Overall: We had only 1 non-Linux-Ottawa person at the room, so a bit of a bust, and only 3 LO present. Despite all the comments of "I'd really like in-person", we saw ghosts (or virtual persons!). On the other hand, the very ease of clicking on the jitsi link suggests that possible we could think of multiple-site hybrid meetings. That would ease some of the burden of parking, distance, buses, time to travel, etc. and all the arguments about not liking different venues that we get into when planning meetings. Moreover, we can likely avoid having to do formal bookings. For example, I would be willing to have a few people at my place (where there is a 90 sq m. dance floor space and TV on wall), though those coming would have to be individually invited because of insurance reasons. Anyone willing to host like this should ensure that they issue an email invite specifically, because residence insurance does not cover a public meeting. There may be restaurants that have small rooms that would work too, and we could even consider having meetings with groups in other cities. The use of multiple but small groups might avoid some of the difficulty in finding a classroom-like venue. My experience is that the organization and booking requires a lot of time and effort, and I'm sure the PDC folk and Katherine will confirm that. Hope I've not forgotten to thank anyone, nor missed any important issues. Best, JN
