We held a CentOS Connect on February 3, 2023 in Brussels as a fringe
event for FOSDEM. This was our second in-person event since the
pandemic, and we’re continuing to learn how to run effective hybrid
events.
VenueOur venue was the DoubleTree Brussels City Center. We used the Pagoda
room on the eighth floor. The venue worked very well for us. It was our
understanding beforehand that we had a hard limit of 100 guests. In the
past, Dojos at FOSDEM have had over 150 people, but we took the smaller
space because in-person events have been slow to ramp back up. When we
were setting up, we learned that the room was larger. We had it split
in half with partition walls. The session room was able to accommodate
110 seated, and we had a social and registration space in addition to
the smaller foyer where food was served. We allowed walk-ins and had
over 120 people.
Given the interest and turnout, we should look to grow next year. We
can probably fit about 150 in the Pagoda room, assuming that not
everybody will sit for sessions at any given time. The hotel staff also
gave us a tour of their ballroom. The ballroom can be split in half,
with each half holding more than the Pagoda room. This could be used
for two tracks, or for a very nice social space. Renting the ballroom
also includes the hallway in front of it, where registration could be
placed, as well as three small rooms that could be used for meetups or
BOFs. This is probably more space than we need, and there can be a
danger of an event feeling empty because it’s in a space that’s too
large. Regardless, the DoubleTree was a great venue, and we should
consider using it again if we can make the space work.
Registration and Check-inWe used Tito for registration, both in-person and virtual. Tito has a
number of nice features, including asking questions for things like
shirt size and dietary needs, having different ticket types, sending
messages to attendees by ticket type, and having check-in lists that
don’t require registration table workers to have an account. I’ve used
Tito for a number of events in the past, and I’m very happy with it.
Check-in seemed to go smoothly. We had three people actively doing
check-in in the morning when it’s busiest, and two throughout the rest
of the day. A single person could easily handle afternoon check-in. We
had a separate ticket type for walk-ins, and asked people to register
so we had their information. Unfortunately, I had set a limit on the
number of walk-in tickets based on my assumptions about capacity, so
later walk-ins weren’t able to register. Registration staff did ask
these people to write down their name and email address.
We had 100 registered attendees, and 91 check-ins. We had about 20
walk-ins attendees. We had communicated on social media that we were
full, so we might have gotten more if we had encouraged it.
One issue with check-in was that we placed the table toward the back of
the social area. This wasn’t a problem in the morning, because people
clearly saw the line of people checking in. But in the afternoon, it
wasn’t clear to people that there was a table where they should go. We
should make the placement more prominent in the future, although swag
storage put some limitations on us.
We printed badges with a blank space for people to write their names.
This worked very well. Having names pre-printed requires lead time, and
you always need blank ones anyway for late registrations and walk-ins.
We also had a space on the badges for people to place one-inch stickers
for project affiliation. We printed stickers for CentOS, Fedora, Red
Hat, EPEL, RDO, and OKD. I’d like to do this again, but I’m considering
making including a project in exchange for some level of promotion on
social media to help us reach a broader audience.
Virtual EventThis was our second time doing a hybrid event where we live streamed
the presentations. We had feedback from the previous Dojo that we
should have a hallway track for virtual attendees, so we set up a
Google Meet for that. Unfortunately, the settings required people
outside Red Hat to be explicitly let in, and I didn’t have the
bandwidth to watch the Meet and admit people. We should find a hallway
track solution that’s easy to use and just lets people in. However, we
should also strongly consider having a trusted person in that track all
day who can take care of issues (technical or otherwise) that might
arise. This is something that could be done by a remote volunteer.
The live stream was done on YouTube, just as we did in the Dojo in
Boston. YouTube is a popular choice because it has such a low barrier
to entry for attendees. I watched the live stream for questions and
relayed them to speakers. That way, virtual attendees were able to
participate at least somewhat actively in the event.
At the previous Dojo, Boston University supplied us with a camera setup
that let us switch between the camera and the slides. This was great,
so I worked on getting the equipment to allow us to replicate that
setup. For the most part, things worked well. There were some issues,
which I’ll describe in Technical Issues below.
We had asked people to register to attend online, even though the live
stream was open to everybody. This let us get email addresses to send
messages and the post-event survey, as well as collect information to
send people swag. We periodically reminded people in the live stream
chat to register. There were about 50 people registered for online, but
we generally saw ten to fifteen online at any given time. I don’t
really have a good way of knowing who actually attended live. I’d like
to figure out a better solution in the future.
Sessions and ScheduleWe had 13 talks, plus the Board AMA. We had a mix of talk lengths,
offering speakers either short slots (20 minutes) or long slots (45
minutes). We did two talk lengths at the Boston Dojo as well, and it
worked well. Some talks need more time, but most talks don’t, and it
keeps the event moving.
All of the long talks came in under the alotted time. We can consider
shortening the long talk length in the future, but I’m worried about
unnecessarily cutting some talks too short. However, all but two of the
short talks run over. Three of them were nearly 30 minutes, four were
around 25 minutes, and only two stayed inside their 20 minute slot.
We also had a very full schedule, with very little padding. Talks
running over, coupled with some delays due to technical issues, meant
that we were pushing into scheduled breaks. We did have five minutes of
changeover time between talks. Changeovers were usually very fast, so
that helped a little in making up time. Nonetheless, we should change
the short talks to 25 minutes, and ideally have somebody to remind
speakers of their time.
The scheduling problems also meant I didn’t give speakers a proper
intro. I also didn’t have time to talk to speakers beforehand to get
good info to make intros. I’d like to have time to emcee better in the
future, or find a dedicated person to emcee instead.
SwagWe ordered 150 shirts, 300 beanie hats, and 150 mugs. These were all
ordered from a supplier in Brno. Since this event was colocated with
FOSDEM, and we had a booth at FOSDEM, we planned to give out any extras
at FOSDEM. We also had a shipment of shirts and backpacks with the old
logo that we had to clear out. We controlled access to the new swag,
but put the old swag on some tables for people to grab.
This worked out well in general, except we didn’t have enough of the
new shirts to cover shipping to virtual attendees. Because we allowed
in more walk-ins than anticipated, our shirt stash was severely
depleted. I ended up ordering another 150 shirts from a US vendor when
I got home to send to virtual attendees. We did not send virtual
attendees hats or mugs.
One thing I wanted to do was to send shirts to European virtual
attendees before leaving, to save on shipping time and costs. This
didn’t work out, in part because of how low we were on shirts, but also
because it takes time to get stuff together for shipping. To do this in
the future, we should ensure we have enough shirts, prepare as much of
the virtual swag packs beforehand as we can, and plan for either a
post-even wrap day or have a European colleague handle the shipments.
Technical Setup and IssuesAt the Boston Dojo, we had a very nice setup provided by Boston
University to deliver a live stream, so we tried to recreate that
setup. The setup allowed us to switch between a camera feed and the
speakers’ slides for videos, and to deliver pre-mixed audio regardless
of the video feed.
We had the venue provide just an audio setup: speakers, a few
microphones, a line out jack for computer audio, and a mixing board.
The mixing board had an aux out to feed into our setup. We provided a
camera with HDMI output, an HDMI splitter to split speakers’ slides
between the projector and our feed, and an HDMI switching device with
an audio line in. The HDMI switch connects to a computer with USB as if
it were a webcam. We also provided various cables, in particular a 75’
HDMI cable with a built-in repeater. We also provided a computer to
receive the feed and do the streaming. We then streamed over YouTube.
We could switch the HDMI input, and it was seamless to the computer.
This setup worked very well, but we did have various technical issues:
*
We ended up having to use my laptop to stream instead of the
computer we had intended. I had set up the YouTube live stream link
from my laptop, and couldn’t figure out how to make another device
join that stream as the presenter, even though it was logged into
the same account. Joining YouTube as the presenter was a frequent
problem that came up again later.
*
In our testing the day before, we were not getting an audio feed to
the live stream. Tuomas and I were up late trying to solve this.
Eventually we went to bed, and I emailed the venue asking to meet
with their AV team in the morning. We did solve it in the morning.
Their mixer used software on a tablet, instead of physical sliders,
and I didn’t have access to that the night before. I’m honestly not
sure if that was the issue. In the future, we should try to do setup
with the AV team the day before. We should also bring wired
headphones to plug into the jack on the HDMI switch for testing and
monitoring.
*
Apple devices (Macs and iPads) didn’t work. Their video would only
go to the projector, and we got no video to our HDMI switch. This
baffled me at the time. Further research indicates it’s because of
HDCP. HDCP allows an HDMI source device to encrypt data using a key
negotiated with a display device. This is usually used for things
with strong copy protection, like movies, but Apple devices just
always use HDCP when available. I don’t have a solution for this
yet, but it seems there might be HDMI splitters that overcome HDCP.
*
We lost our connection to YouTube twice. When this happened, we
weren’t able to rejoin as the presenting device, which means we had
to create a new live stream and try to contact attendees. That was
really bad. I had done some test streams before coming, but I never
tested disconnecting myself. I need to play with YouTube streaming
more to figure out if there’s a way to rejoin as the presenter.
Ideally, we shouldn’t have connection issues, but if they happen, we
need to be able to recover quickly.
*
On that subject, the connection issues were probably caused by flaky
hotel wifi. After the second disconnection, we managed to find an
ethernet drop, and we didn’t have any more problems. We also had
issues with the wifi when a speaker tried to connect remotely. In
the future, we should make sure we have ethernet for both the
streaming device and the speaker.
*
Also on that subject, we should look into whether we can record
locally while also streaming. That way, even if we have an issue
with the live stream, we still have good recordings. One option is
to use software like OBS to manage to video feed. Alternatively, the
HDMI switch also has an HDMI output, intended for preview. We may be
able to use that with an HDMI capture device.
Other Things to ImproveIn addition to the other gear additions, we should add a longer (10’ or
so) HDMI cable to connect the splitter to the projecter input, to give
us more flexibility in placement. Also, an HDMI extension between the
camera and HDMI switch would give us more flexibility in camera
placement. And we should add a US power strip or two for our equipment
so that we don’t have to find multiple outlets and plug multiple bulky
adapters into them.
We should consider paying the venue for a camera setup. As long as
their camera can provide an HDMI stream, we can use it with our setup.
Packing a camera and (especially) a tripod is bulky and heavy. I ended
up using a less nice tripod just because of packing constraints.
Renting a camera setup would be an added expense, and it might not fit
in the budget, but it’s something worth looking at.
It was very difficult to keep up with social media. I wanted to make a
post just before each talk to draw people to the live stream. Ideally,
it would have a speaker photo, or perhaps the bumper image we put on
the video recordings. The only machine I had logged in for our accounts
was the streaming computer. It would be nice to have a dedicated person
with their own device, and possibly having some posts ready to go
beforehand.
When we went on break, especially to lunch, the live stream was left
with a boring view of a room. At lunch, Tuomas had the idea to create a
quick slide saying we were on lunch and feed it into the HDMI switch.
We could have slides like this already prepared in the future, and add
in information on joining the virtual hallway track. Tuomas also
pointed out we could add an intro slide for each talk, using the same
image we use as a bumper in the recordings we post later. Not only
would this give us a nicer image during changeover, but it would also
put the intro image already in the video for when we create the
individual recording videos afterwards.
--
Shaun McCance
CentOS Community Architect
Red Hat Open Source Program Office
