Re: [Mesa-dev] XDC 2017 feedback

2017-10-24 Thread Andres Gomez 
Hi,

Just chipping in to leave a couple of additional notes.

As other have said before me, I also think the organization was very
good.

Things mentioned before:

 * Tables layout: kind of agree it was not great for following the
   talks but they were also making it easier to talk with other
   attendees. I have mixed feelings.
 * I agree more power strips would have been welcome.
 * The microphones were having some small problems but it was not too
   bad.

Positive things also mentioned:

 * WiFi worked great.
 * 1 single big room and more time for hallway conversations was good.
 * Food, beverage, snacks, etc. were very good.
 * Google's facilities and staff were great: organization, catering and
   security people. I hope they pass this feedback to them ☺

Additionally:

 * In the "not so good" part; the details (timetable) of the Program
   were published very late (no more than 1 week before the
   conference). I would have liked to know way in advance at what hour
   in the morning the conference was starting. The same with regards to
   the "Social events". I only got to know that there was a "Pre-
   conference social event" the previous evening to the start of the
   conference after that had already happened, for example.

Finally, I took the freedom to complete the Program page with the
missing video links:

https://www.x.org/wiki/Events/XDC2017/Program/


I hope my comments are helpful.

Thanks again for a great conference.

Br.


On Wed, 2017-09-27 at 10:32 -0700, Miguel Angel Vico wrote:
> Hi,
> 
> In general, I think the organization was great. I agree having
> everything happen in a single room was a good point. Here's some of my
> personal feedback:
> 
>  * I didn't like the tables layout at all. I found it to be extremely
>uncomfortable to have to look sideways in order to see the screens
>and presenter.
> 
>  * There were a very few power strips, and not well distributed along
>the tables.
> 
> 
> Also, this is what I've been able to gather from some of my colleagues
> here at NVIDIA::
> 
>  * Some people watching the conference remotely complained about the
>stream quality, and the recordings wouldn't include the presenter.
> 
>In one of the hallway conversations, Martin mentioned in XDC2016
>they had a team of camera experts doing the job, and will try to
>improve that part in future XDC's.
> 
>  * The microphone/audio situation wasn't great either.  I don't know
>how practical it is with something the size of XDC, but at Khronos
>meetings, they usually set up microphones for the audience too, with
>tap-on/tap-off switches, and a ratio of 1:2 or 1:3 for
>microphones:people.  That makes Q a lot easier.  Alternatively,
>having a question queue rather than running mics around the room can
>speed things up, but makes cross-talk harder.
> 
>  * The table/chair layout was really cumbersome. Beyond just the
>orientation, some people had a lot of trouble getting in/out to use
>the restroom, grab snacks, etc.
> 
> 
> On a positive note:
> 
>  * More time for hallway conversations was in general a good thing.
>Some of us got a ton of useful feedback talking to others.
> 
>  * The food was great, and having food on-site gave us even more time
>for hallway-tracking.
> 
>  * Surprisingly, parking was not an issue.
> 
>  * Signage was good, and the security guards were polite/helpful. It
>was easy to find the room and get our badges.
> 
>  * The wifi worked great in general, which is a rarity at conferences.
>It was pretty spotty at XDC 2016.
> 
> 
> Thank you.
> 
> On Tue, 26 Sep 2017 11:49:10 -0700
> Manasi Navare wrote:
> 
> > Hi,
> > 
> > XDC was a really great conference and loved the fact that it was
> > in just one room which kept all the hallway conversations in that room 
> > resulting
> > into more networking.
> > But I agree with Andres that for the videos, it would be great to split the
> > huge youtube video stream per presentation and have seperate links for each
> > talk somewhere on the XDC page.
> > 
> > Regards
> > Manasi
> > 
> > 
> > 
> > On Tue, Sep 26, 2017 at 01:25:15PM -0400, Andres Rodriguez wrote:
> > > Hi,
> > > 
> > > A small piece of feedback from those of us watching remotely. It would be
> > > nice to have a simple to access index for the long livestream videos.
> > > 
> > > I think the XDC 2017 wiki page would be a good place for this 
> > > information. A
> > > brief example:
> > > 
> > > Presentation Title | Presenter Name | Link with timestamp
> > > ---||-
> > > ...| ...| youtu.be/video-id?t=XhYmZs
> > > 
> > > Or alternatively, a list of hyperlinks with the presentation title as text
> > > that point to the correct timestamp in the video would also be sufficient.
> > > 
> > > Really enjoyed the talks, and would like them to be slightly easier to
> > > access and share with others.

Re: [Mesa-dev] XDC 2017 feedback

2017-09-28 Thread Daniel Stone 
Hi,

On 28 September 2017 at 03:49, Ian Romanick  wrote:
> On 09/27/2017 04:55 PM, Rob Clark wrote:
>> Sadly by the time we were aware of the dates for the khronos f2f it
>> was not possible to change the dates for XDC :-(
>>
>> The XDC dates were set in Feb, and afaict the khronos dates were
>> announced in July (?), so take this up with khronos ;-)
>
> Ok... so we're going to go there.
>
> Frankly, that's a giant steaming load of bull.

That's a bit much; can you please tone it down?

> Blocks of hotel rooms,
> multiple conference rooms for 500+ people, and catering for the Khronos
> meeting was booked in late 2016.  We're already working on contracts for
> the September 2018 meeting.  Contracts of this scale are really hard to
> change.  There are 5x to 10x as many people at a Khronos face-to-face as
> at XDC.  Events of that scale have a massively deep pipeline.
>
> Google was just unwilling to find a different dates for space *at their
> own campus*.  That's really, really weak.  This is especially
> infuriating because there are numerous Googlers who attend the Khronos
> meetings.  Did the organizers poll any of them?  The XDC organizers
> clearly did not even exercise due diligence to detect a possible
> conflict.  If the organizers had cared to be aware of dates of
> conflicting events, they would have known.

For starters, yes, it obviously sucks that the two clashed. That being said ...

Logistically, Khronos (and their multiple full-time paid
administrative staff) can move on two axes: time and location.
Location is easy, since any city of any size has a number of four-star
hotels who can host that number of people in exchange for eyewatering
amounts of money directly, as well as guaranteed blocks of rooms at
rates many XDC attendees couldn't afford. With the hosting locked down
to avoid the insane cost, we could only move XDC in time rather than
space.

Time-wise, it's not just Khronos F2F which, being quarterly, is pretty
hard to avoid no matter when you do it. There was Plumbers and OSS NA
before (with the no-go zone of school holidays before that, and
European holidays in August), and afterwards Linaro Connect, Kernel
Recipes, ELCE, GNOME/Qt conferences, the GStreamer conference, and
Kernel Summit. That's before you even touch things like IBC. It really
hurts time-wise, and choosing not to clash means going directly
back-to-back (asking people to be away for 2 weeks at a time), or you
put space between them and ask people to do intercontinental trips
twice in three weeks. At least XDC managed to not overlap the Vulkan
WSI sessions at the F2F: there were people at XDC who'd done both.

I don't know why you think an event of 105 people doesn't have a deep
pipeline either ... ?! Most places don't have a surfeit of 120-person
meeting rooms. The ones they do have tend to book up a long time in
advance, for obvious reasons. Given that we were mostly external,
those rooms have to be not in sensitive buildings, and on the ground
floor close to an exit. Even with that, it required two full-time
dedicated security staff (another logistical dependency) to make sure
the herds of external people didn't end up wandering through an
otherwise badge-only building. The catering also needed to be booked,
and A/V staff to assist. We had a dependency on Jen and Stephane's
time as the local support: they had to be there in person, and be able
to dedicate their full week to the conference.

None of that is being 'unwilling', 'weak', 'not exercis[ing] due
diligence', or not caring. It's organising a conference actually being
really difficult: a deference you're paying Khronos (who have an
objectively easier job), and not the people who organise XDC. Just it
doesn't work out perfectly, doesn't mean it's due to idiocy or lack of
effort.

Even if you do get all your ducks perfectly in a row, sometimes
Network Rail announce a few weeks after you've booked everything that
they're going to close the line to Cambridge for engineering works, so
it's suddenly really difficult to even get there in the first place.
Ho hum.

Hopefully next year it doesn't clash. But I can guarantee you that
even if it doesn't, there will still be people who are unable to come,
because there is just no globally-optimal solution.

Cheers,
Daniel
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Re: [Mesa-dev] XDC 2017 feedback

2017-09-28 Thread Daniel Vetter 
On Thu, Sep 28, 2017 at 7:36 AM, Matt Turner  wrote:
> On Wed, Sep 27, 2017 at 10:07 PM, Rob Clark  wrote:
>> If you had known of the khr dates, and brought it up in Feb (or really
>> somewhat earlier, given that XDC is roughly same time each year +/-
>> few weeks), that *might* have been early enough to move things.
>
> That's unfair. It's part of the X.Org board's responsibilities to plan
> conferences and that means being aware of potential conflicts. In
> February, six of the eight members of the X.Org board worked for
> companies with Khronos access (that's not including Keith who I
> suspect has access as well).
>
> I replied to the 2017-03-02 minutes and noted the conflict, but as you
> say that was too late. Unfortunately that was the first time a date
> was publicly announced, so I'm not really sure what could have been
> done from outside the X.Org board.

I don't remember all the details anymore, but we have plumbers right
before, and Linaro connect right afterwards, both conferences that
also have considerable overlap with XDC (we have a lot more than x86
folks since 2-3 years now). Bunch of people decided not to do XDC this
year even, because too much travelling in one row. Plus Google's limit
in scheduling a room, plus Khr f2f. We'll try to do better next year,
but sometimes perfect scheduling is just not an option.

Thanks, Daniel
-- 
Daniel Vetter
Software Engineer, Intel Corporation
+41 (0) 79 365 57 48 - http://blog.ffwll.ch
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Re: [Mesa-dev] XDC 2017 feedback

2017-09-28 Thread Rob Clark 
On Wed, Sep 27, 2017 at 10:49 PM, Ian Romanick  wrote:
> On 09/27/2017 04:55 PM, Rob Clark wrote:
>> On Wed, Sep 27, 2017 at 7:25 PM, Ian Romanick  wrote:
>>> On 09/26/2017 09:57 AM, Daniel Vetter wrote:
 Hi all,

 First again big thanks to Stéphane and Jennifer for organizing a great XDC.

 Like last year we'd like to hear feedback on how this year's XDC went,
 both the good (and what you'd like to see more of) and the not so
 good. Talk selection, organization, location, scheduling of talks,
 anything really.
>>>
>>> Not scheduling it to conflict with another industry event would be a
>>> good start.  This is the first XDC that I've missed in nearly a decade.
>>> I know I'm not the only person that missed one or the other due to
>>> scheduling fail.
>>
>> Sadly by the time we were aware of the dates for the khronos f2f it
>> was not possible to change the dates for XDC :-(
>>
>> The XDC dates were set in Feb, and afaict the khronos dates were
>> announced in July (?), so take this up with khronos ;-)
>
> Ok... so we're going to go there.
>
> Frankly, that's a giant steaming load of bull.  Blocks of hotel rooms,
> multiple conference rooms for 500+ people, and catering for the Khronos
> meeting was booked in late 2016.  We're already working on contracts for
> the September 2018 meeting.  Contracts of this scale are really hard to
> change.  There are 5x to 10x as many people at a Khronos face-to-face as
> at XDC.  Events of that scale have a massively deep pipeline.
>
> Google was just unwilling to find a different dates for space *at their
> own campus*.  That's really, really weak.  This is especially
> infuriating because there are numerous Googlers who attend the Khronos
> meetings.  Did the organizers poll any of them?  The XDC organizers
> clearly did not even exercise due diligence to detect a possible
> conflict.  If the organizers had cared to be aware of dates of
> conflicting events, they would have known.

I have no doubt there is a long lead time on organizing large conf's..
I wasn't calling that into question.  The July date was based on a
quick search of my khr emails.  I couldn't find any earlier reference
to dates, but I could have missed something.

If you had known of the khr dates, and brought it up in Feb (or really
somewhat earlier, given that XDC is roughly same time each year +/-
few weeks), that *might* have been early enough to move things.  But
IIRC there wasn't much flexibility in booking such a large room from
the google side either.  Plus also trying to fit around LPC/etc..
Khronos isn't the only other conference to avoid.  Once the XDC date
is announced and people have begun booking travel, we can't really
move things.  Sorry, it sucks, I wasn't happy about it either, but it
is what it is.  As far as other conferences that XDC attendees are
likely to go to, and given the turn-out (by far largest XDC in NA), I
think the dates worked out reasonably well overall.

BR,
-R
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Re: [Mesa-dev] XDC 2017 feedback

2017-09-28 Thread Ian Romanick 
On 09/27/2017 04:55 PM, Rob Clark wrote:
> On Wed, Sep 27, 2017 at 7:25 PM, Ian Romanick  wrote:
>> On 09/26/2017 09:57 AM, Daniel Vetter wrote:
>>> Hi all,
>>>
>>> First again big thanks to Stéphane and Jennifer for organizing a great XDC.
>>>
>>> Like last year we'd like to hear feedback on how this year's XDC went,
>>> both the good (and what you'd like to see more of) and the not so
>>> good. Talk selection, organization, location, scheduling of talks,
>>> anything really.
>>
>> Not scheduling it to conflict with another industry event would be a
>> good start.  This is the first XDC that I've missed in nearly a decade.
>> I know I'm not the only person that missed one or the other due to
>> scheduling fail.
> 
> Sadly by the time we were aware of the dates for the khronos f2f it
> was not possible to change the dates for XDC :-(
> 
> The XDC dates were set in Feb, and afaict the khronos dates were
> announced in July (?), so take this up with khronos ;-)

Ok... so we're going to go there.

Frankly, that's a giant steaming load of bull.  Blocks of hotel rooms,
multiple conference rooms for 500+ people, and catering for the Khronos
meeting was booked in late 2016.  We're already working on contracts for
the September 2018 meeting.  Contracts of this scale are really hard to
change.  There are 5x to 10x as many people at a Khronos face-to-face as
at XDC.  Events of that scale have a massively deep pipeline.

Google was just unwilling to find a different dates for space *at their
own campus*.  That's really, really weak.  This is especially
infuriating because there are numerous Googlers who attend the Khronos
meetings.  Did the organizers poll any of them?  The XDC organizers
clearly did not even exercise due diligence to detect a possible
conflict.  If the organizers had cared to be aware of dates of
conflicting events, they would have known.

> BR,
> -R
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Re: [Mesa-dev] XDC 2017 feedback

2017-09-28 Thread Rob Clark 
On Wed, Sep 27, 2017 at 7:25 PM, Ian Romanick  wrote:
> On 09/26/2017 09:57 AM, Daniel Vetter wrote:
>> Hi all,
>>
>> First again big thanks to Stéphane and Jennifer for organizing a great XDC.
>>
>> Like last year we'd like to hear feedback on how this year's XDC went,
>> both the good (and what you'd like to see more of) and the not so
>> good. Talk selection, organization, location, scheduling of talks,
>> anything really.
>
> Not scheduling it to conflict with another industry event would be a
> good start.  This is the first XDC that I've missed in nearly a decade.
> I know I'm not the only person that missed one or the other due to
> scheduling fail.
>

Sadly by the time we were aware of the dates for the khronos f2f it
was not possible to change the dates for XDC :-(

The XDC dates were set in Feb, and afaict the khronos dates were
announced in July (?), so take this up with khronos ;-)

BR,
-R
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Re: [Mesa-dev] XDC 2017 feedback

2017-09-28 Thread Ryan Houdek 
It was a great time! Next year I should pay more attention that this was
happening so I don't sign up at the last moment causing me to miss a day,
and having a fever on the last day.
Looking forward to next year's!

On Wed, Sep 27, 2017 at 4:25 PM, Ian Romanick  wrote:

> On 09/26/2017 09:57 AM, Daniel Vetter wrote:
> > Hi all,
> >
> > First again big thanks to Stéphane and Jennifer for organizing a great
> XDC.
> >
> > Like last year we'd like to hear feedback on how this year's XDC went,
> > both the good (and what you'd like to see more of) and the not so
> > good. Talk selection, organization, location, scheduling of talks,
> > anything really.
>
> Not scheduling it to conflict with another industry event would be a
> good start.  This is the first XDC that I've missed in nearly a decade.
> I know I'm not the only person that missed one or the other due to
> scheduling fail.
>
> > Here's a few things we took into account from Helsinki and tried to
> apply:
> > - More breaks for more hallway track.
> > - Try to schedule the hot topics on the first day (did we pick the
> > right ones) for better hallway track.
> > - More lightning talk time to give all the late/rejected submissions
> > some place to give a quick showcase.
> >
> > Things that didn't work out perfectly this year and that we'll try to
> > get better at next year:
> > - Lots of people missed the submission deadline and their talks were
> > rejected only because of that. We'll do better PR by sending out a
> > pile of reminders.
> > - Comparitively few people asked for travel assistance. No idea
> > whether this was a year with more budget around, or whether this isn't
> > all that well know and we need to make more PR in maybe the call for
> > papers about it.
> >
> > But that's just the stuff we've gathered already, we'd like to hear
> > more feedback. Just reply to this mail or send a mail to
> > bo...@foundation.x.org if you don't want the entire world to read it.
> > And if you want to send at pseudonymous feedback, drop a pastebin onto
> > the #xf-bod channel on the OFTC irc server.
> >
> > Thanks, Daniel
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Re: [Mesa-dev] XDC 2017 feedback

2017-09-28 Thread Ian Romanick 
On 09/27/2017 10:07 PM, Rob Clark wrote:
> On Wed, Sep 27, 2017 at 10:49 PM, Ian Romanick  wrote:
>> On 09/27/2017 04:55 PM, Rob Clark wrote:
>>> On Wed, Sep 27, 2017 at 7:25 PM, Ian Romanick  wrote:
 On 09/26/2017 09:57 AM, Daniel Vetter wrote:
> Hi all,
>
> First again big thanks to Stéphane and Jennifer for organizing a great 
> XDC.
>
> Like last year we'd like to hear feedback on how this year's XDC went,
> both the good (and what you'd like to see more of) and the not so
> good. Talk selection, organization, location, scheduling of talks,
> anything really.

 Not scheduling it to conflict with another industry event would be a
 good start.  This is the first XDC that I've missed in nearly a decade.
 I know I'm not the only person that missed one or the other due to
 scheduling fail.
>>>
>>> Sadly by the time we were aware of the dates for the khronos f2f it
>>> was not possible to change the dates for XDC :-(
>>>
>>> The XDC dates were set in Feb, and afaict the khronos dates were
>>> announced in July (?), so take this up with khronos ;-)
>>
>> Ok... so we're going to go there.
>>
>> Frankly, that's a giant steaming load of bull.  Blocks of hotel rooms,
>> multiple conference rooms for 500+ people, and catering for the Khronos
>> meeting was booked in late 2016.  We're already working on contracts for
>> the September 2018 meeting.  Contracts of this scale are really hard to
>> change.  There are 5x to 10x as many people at a Khronos face-to-face as
>> at XDC.  Events of that scale have a massively deep pipeline.
>>
>> Google was just unwilling to find a different dates for space *at their
>> own campus*.  That's really, really weak.  This is especially
>> infuriating because there are numerous Googlers who attend the Khronos
>> meetings.  Did the organizers poll any of them?  The XDC organizers
>> clearly did not even exercise due diligence to detect a possible
>> conflict.  If the organizers had cared to be aware of dates of
>> conflicting events, they would have known.
> 
> I have no doubt there is a long lead time on organizing large conf's..
> I wasn't calling that into question.  The July date was based on a
> quick search of my khr emails.  I couldn't find any earlier reference
> to dates, but I could have missed something.
> 
> If you had known of the khr dates, and brought it up in Feb (or really
> somewhat earlier, given that XDC is roughly same time each year +/-
> few weeks), that *might* have been early enough to move things.  But
> IIRC there wasn't much flexibility in booking such a large room from
> the google side either.  Plus also trying to fit around LPC/etc..
> Khronos isn't the only other conference to avoid.  Once the XDC date
> is announced and people have begun booking travel, we can't really
> move things.  Sorry, it sucks, I wasn't happy about it either, but it
> is what it is.  As far as other conferences that XDC attendees are
> likely to go to, and given the turn-out (by far largest XDC in NA), I
> think the dates worked out reasonably well overall.

The point of my original post wasn't to start a big to-do.  My point was
just that future organizers should be more careful.

Once school starts in September, other conferences stop.  I had always
assumed that was part of the reason XDC was scheduled the way that it
was scheduled.  There are basically two events from mid-September to
early October to avoid: LPC / kernel summit and Khronos meetings.  At
least as far back as 2008, XDC had always been able to avoid both.
Hopefully that long run will be repeated and improved.

> BR,
> -R
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Re: [Mesa-dev] XDC 2017 feedback

2017-09-28 Thread Matt Turner 
On Wed, Sep 27, 2017 at 10:07 PM, Rob Clark  wrote:
> If you had known of the khr dates, and brought it up in Feb (or really
> somewhat earlier, given that XDC is roughly same time each year +/-
> few weeks), that *might* have been early enough to move things.

That's unfair. It's part of the X.Org board's responsibilities to plan
conferences and that means being aware of potential conflicts. In
February, six of the eight members of the X.Org board worked for
companies with Khronos access (that's not including Keith who I
suspect has access as well).

I replied to the 2017-03-02 minutes and noted the conflict, but as you
say that was too late. Unfortunately that was the first time a date
was publicly announced, so I'm not really sure what could have been
done from outside the X.Org board.
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Re: [Mesa-dev] XDC 2017 feedback

2017-09-28 Thread Ian Romanick 
On 09/26/2017 09:57 AM, Daniel Vetter wrote:
> Hi all,
> 
> First again big thanks to Stéphane and Jennifer for organizing a great XDC.
> 
> Like last year we'd like to hear feedback on how this year's XDC went,
> both the good (and what you'd like to see more of) and the not so
> good. Talk selection, organization, location, scheduling of talks,
> anything really.

Not scheduling it to conflict with another industry event would be a
good start.  This is the first XDC that I've missed in nearly a decade.
I know I'm not the only person that missed one or the other due to
scheduling fail.

> Here's a few things we took into account from Helsinki and tried to apply:
> - More breaks for more hallway track.
> - Try to schedule the hot topics on the first day (did we pick the
> right ones) for better hallway track.
> - More lightning talk time to give all the late/rejected submissions
> some place to give a quick showcase.
> 
> Things that didn't work out perfectly this year and that we'll try to
> get better at next year:
> - Lots of people missed the submission deadline and their talks were
> rejected only because of that. We'll do better PR by sending out a
> pile of reminders.
> - Comparitively few people asked for travel assistance. No idea
> whether this was a year with more budget around, or whether this isn't
> all that well know and we need to make more PR in maybe the call for
> papers about it.
> 
> But that's just the stuff we've gathered already, we'd like to hear
> more feedback. Just reply to this mail or send a mail to
> bo...@foundation.x.org if you don't want the entire world to read it.
> And if you want to send at pseudonymous feedback, drop a pastebin onto
> the #xf-bod channel on the OFTC irc server.
> 
> Thanks, Daniel
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