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NYC09Feedback

Page history last edited by Ernest Y. Koe 14 years, 8 months ago

A great big thank you to everyone who made this possible! Your enthusiasm, excitement and generosity of spirit made this special. We'd appreciate any feedback you want to give. Just drop us a comment below.

 

Many thanks

JS, EK, AG

#pauseonerror

Comments (9)

Oreste Schiavone said

at 2:04 pm on Jul 22, 2009

Hi, when I was in Hunter College Student Government we organized a retreat. They had in house dining and was very informal. It was a break from the NYC hustle. I have started to looking into this type of stuff. Would this be interesting? They have places large enough to house a lot of people and it would just be us. Also I think we should have a thursday evening to sunday evening schedule. TH evening could be when we arrive and then friday morning wake up and talk. The part I liked best was simply talking filemaker and seeing how other peoples minds works. Learning about other peoples business models etc. The Ace was nice, but I think a bit much if I had to pay for a flight and then the hotel. In terms of donations, I think we can get our "stuff" together and get recordings done ourself. Flip camera are not that much. They may stream not sure. If not then webcams are not much either.

I like the live chat thing. We should do that. Have a huge chat room or something. Maybe even have a remote presentation.

John Sindelar said

at 4:56 pm on Jul 20, 2009

From Rusell at the Ace Hotel: "Sincere, sincere thanks from our end as well. I've told you this a few times now, but it really is astonishing-- I had people from our front desk staff going out of their way to tell me that the Pause on Error folks were friendly and easygoing. That NEVER happens. You're a cool group of people."

Bob Patin said

at 1:09 pm on Jul 20, 2009

My thanks to Andy, Ernest, et al for putting together PauseOnError. It was an excellent idea, and turned out to be a great opportunity for me to meet a lot of folks I'd not yet met.

I would echo some of the suggestions made earlier, although, considering the spontaneous nature of this event, it was surprisingly smooth and organized. Some thoughts that I had:

1) Having an in-house restaurant would have been useful, especially for breakfast; I really liked the Ace Hotel, and know that they're adding one in about a month, but I missed my morning breakfasts. I'd put in a vote for selecting hotels with restaurants... :)

2) I like the idea of having more than one of these events during the year; 3 or 4 would be overkill for me, but I could see going to a couple a year, in different locations. Living in the South, I'd be happy to see an event located in our neighborhood perhaps; Atlanta would be a good location--big airport, lots of flights, centrally located.

3) If these events got too large I think the open discussions would become much more unwieldy; I agree that keeping POE a free event is a good idea, but I'm not sure how to keep the events from growing too large.

4) It might be nice to have several slots left open for topics that are selected at the kickoff session. Perhaps in the kickoff session, which I agree would be a great thing to have again, we could let people offer suggestions, and then choose the topics for these ad-hoc sessions by a show of hands.


All in all, I found POE to be a great event--totally different from Devcon, and not at all a substitute. There's not much I would change; hotel was cool, people were great, discussions were insightful. Thanks again guys, for putting this together.

Colin Keefe said

at 9:00 am on Jul 20, 2009

Well done guys.

1. I think one of the key successes here was the fact that the presentations were uStreamed, which made the participant pool much larger. But those watching the stream had no way to contribute directly to the conversation. And I think there was a lot of hunger from those not in NYC to be involved.

As an experiment, it might be interesting to open up one or two sessions to IM/chat participation, with someone in the room charged with selecting and vocalizing questions or comments to the group. I thought about conference calls, but that would likely get manic pretty quickly. There is freeconferencecall.com, though, so it's quite easy to incorporate this for free.

2. I'm a big proponent of "no budget" events. As soon as money gets involved, things get complicated. I think it's true that if the event gets larger (like the 120 number Micah mentioned) things might move beyond the scope of what any one team of people can dedicate pro bono time to.

So maybe the answer is more frequent, localized pauseonerror events - 3 to 5 a year - so there isn't a pent up demand if/when this gets to be a popular event. You can wait until a pauseonerror comes to town, or organize one yourself. Which brings me to #3.

3. Ernest, John, Andy: how do you plan to manage pauseonerror events in London, Portland (Mumbai, Taipei etc :P ) ? I'm wondering if you should pair up with locals in each city and let them bear the brunt of planning. e.g. be a steering committee, not a planning committee per se.

Barb Levine said

at 8:32 am on Jul 20, 2009

Thanks to the organizers, and all who came, for this informative gathering of professional FMP developers. What a tribute to the vitality of both the developer community and the product.

Suggestions for any future unconferences, both my own and from Friday's discussions:
- What if we had a kick-off session, to explain how the unconference works, and maybe even each a 30-second introduction (an elevator pitch for insiders?!)
- What if we had a few standard session start times - say 10 am, 2 pm, and 3:30 pm. Then people could plan sessions of any length starting at those times, and there would be flexible hang-out time in-between.
- A handout at the hotel desk or a lobby table would be helpful, perhaps including a tentative schedule for the first day, and where to find out more details (twitter, website, computer labs located on the x floors, etc.)
- Maybe some locals could compile a list of nearby restaurants, to save time for hunting for them?
- A way to download any files from the wiki?
- More info on the wiki - i.e. if you create an account, you'll get updates that people post ...
- A registration reminder to check back to the wiki for details. Some who registered early had no idea that any schedule was posted in advance ..

But mostly, my thanks to all who participated.

Jesse Barnum said

at 12:40 pm on Jul 19, 2009

I like the positioning of this shortly before DevCon - it gives me a chance to practice elements of my DevCon sessions, and also gives me an idea of what people are interested in in a small area where I can get feedback. My DevCon session will definitely be better after Pause On Error.

Micah Woods said

at 10:47 am on Jul 18, 2009

Notes continued...

7. Apparently we hit the Ace Hotel in NY at the right time and they had plenty of rooms available at a good rate. There's concern about the availability of rooms for the next event. Apparently the Ace in Portland is very popular and may be hard to book.

8. In regards to the number of days, some people said it would take more than 2 days to get them from the East coast to the West and others thought 2 days was just right. We also talked about doing weekend days so that people don't have to take time off.

9. Many people came on their own and sometimes they weren't sure where people were going for lunch, dinner, etc. It might be nice to have people volunteer to organize meals which would just be saying "anyone that wants Chinese, meet me in the lobby at 7". It was nice to have some locals that could show us around. The hotel bar was great but they didn't have a restaurant, which may have been nice (but hey, we were in NY so it was good to go out!).

10. There was some discussion of mixed feelings on part of FMI. We talked about the proximity to DevCon and if it would have made a difference to have the event in January instead. We also talked about whether to have it before or after and the consensus was before is better. There were some heart-felt comments that in no way was this event designed to detract from DevCon. Many people felt this was a big step for the FileMaker community and that it's a very positive thing to have happen.

There was more but that's what I can remember for now. Then we cracked open the mini-keg...

Micah Woods said

at 10:46 am on Jul 18, 2009

A few notes from the feedback session on Friday afternoon.

1. Overall, feedback was very positive. I don't think people really knew what to expect so many were pleasantly surprised that things went as well as they did.

2. Although people said they'd be willing to pay a conference fee, some people, including myself, thought this would change the tone of the conference. I like the idea that this is a community-organized, non-commercial, minimalist event. Yes, it would be nice to have a budget for things like recording equipment, but collecting and managing payments would require an additional level of management. One idea was to accept donations or let people pay whatever amount they wanted (but again, someone would have to manage this). Court offered to once again offer a large room for sessions and said he'd be willing to purchase recording equipment and record all sessions in his room. I would be willing to do the same. My guess is that we can rely on the community to provide the resources needed.

3. We talked about how attendance numbers might change things in the future. Would it be the same if 120 people showed up? Would it have worked as well? At what point does it get so big that it needs dedicated management?

4. There was a big YES when asked if sessions should be recorded.

5. People liked the idea of hosting the sessions in the same set of rooms, ideally on the same floor. This would cut down on confusion regarding where to go, etc. We could post the schedule on the room door making it easy to figure out what's going on where.

6. Some people that weren't staying at the hotel had trouble finding sessions and they didn't get the welcome card from the front desk. Someone may volunteer to print the schedule next time but of course the schedule can change throughout the day. Seems that a laptop or smart phone may be a requirement for the conference. Twitter worked well to keep people in touch and may play a bigger/more formal role next time.

Jonathan Stark said

at 12:28 am on Jul 18, 2009

So bummed that I had a conflict and couldn't make it! I just watched one of the ustream vids and I promise I won't miss next time, assuming there is a bit more lead time ;-) great job y'all

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