Hi, Frederik,
Thanks for the compare & contrast and I am happy you have enjoyed SOTM US. I am very happy you could make it and that you got a chance to (re-)connect with members of the US and international community. I have attended a FOSSGIS or two and can relate to your experience. They are very well attended, very professionally run. High quality talks, on average a little more technology-/developer-oriented - as are the attendees, I have a feeling. Serge - agreed the sprint day spaces were perhaps not ideal, but I think we got a lot out of them nonetheless. The turnout was amazing. It is hard to get a good space to allow for breakouts etc for so many people while on a budget. I think given the constraints you did a great job organizing this! So thank you! And point taken re: the lightning talks. It was a tough call with so many good submissions and we wanted to keep the # of tracks down to two. Next year, I want to re-introduce them for sure. On Tue, Jun 18, 2013 at 3:00 PM, Serge Wroclawski <emac...@gmail.com> wrote: > Frederik, > > Thank you for this valuable feedback, in particular regarding the sprints. > > I feel very badly about how the sprints went, and I want to go into > detail why, and what I'm going to try to do next year about them. > > First, I want to say that for those people who were calling this a > "hack day", I don't blame you, for two reasons, but that I hope this > changes in the future. > > 1. OSM does not have institutional experience with sprints > > It was evident to me that many OSMers were interested in the sprints, > but had only attendeded hack days, so to them, the terms were > synonymous. They are not. > > A sprint is far more organized, more like BoF sessions going on, each > with their own space. Imagine if a conference tried to have every BoF > going on simultaneously in one space at the same time. This wouldn't > work, and so what we had at the event was the equivalent. > > 2. There were not sufficient resources were not put into the sprints > > Running sprints is expensive. It requires multiple rooms, or a very > large room with lots of room for groups to work independently of one > another, out of each others way > > In addition, I had expected that we would have a session for > lightening talks, as we'd had in previous years. Lightening talks are > key to getting sprints going, as it gives the opportunity for sprint > organizers to talk about their project and lay out the goals for the > sprints (which are very result-oriented). > > It was a surprise to me that we didn't have lightening talks, and by > the time I found out, it was too late to change the situation, and so > there wasn't any coordinated efforts around the sprints. > > Lastly, the number of days we were sprinting changed from two, to one, > back to two, and the information about the sprints changed on the > website. This lead to a lot of confusion in folks' mind. > > > The feedback I received has been very positive on this topic, though, > with more developers coming together than we had ever had before at a > single OSM event (roughly 10% of attendees attended one or both sprint > days). There is clear willingness by the community to work on > challenging technical issues. > > I am hopeful that given the amount of interest, that sprints will be > featured next year, and will be given proper resources. In addition, > we should re-introduce the lightening talks, and bring up the sprints, > and sprint coordination, at the opening ceremony, and again at a > closing ceremony (which we also didn't have this year). > > > I'll be doing my best to make sure this happens next year so that we > move towards a more successful sprint in 2014. > > - Serge > > _______________________________________________ > Talk-us mailing list > Talk-us@openstreetmap.org > http://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/talk-us > -- Martijn van Exel http://oegeo.wordpress.com/ http://openstreetmap.us/
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