Tuesday, January 24, 2012

Future of Eclipse Day India

We have been organizing Eclipse Day India for last two years with mixed success and responses. It has been good experience so far for most of us. But frankly, we still have a long way ahead of us. So far we have been able to keep it a free-to-attend event. However, we now need to brainstorm our way forward. Easiest thing to do would be to run a poll. But who shall decide the choices? Eclipse Day India is a community event so its best that Eclipse community decide its fate.

I request to all Eclipse enthusiasts to come forward and share your 'uncensored' comments with us. I put forward these three challenges

1. Should the event to charged or continue as free-to-attend.
2. Attracting quality speakers
3. Active community participation

Let us know what you want but also tell us how we can do a better job of achieving them. Together lets shape up a great Eclipse Day India 2012.

18 comments:

  1. i think a reasonable fee should not be a harm, moreover the attendees benefit from the event in one way or the other....

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Thanks Nandish. What you think would be the tripping point? That is, when is the fee not reasonable? Rs. 50, 100, 200, 500, 1000? Where you think we shall draw the line?

      Delete
    2. We shall try it for 250 Rs. Based on the response you may move up.

      Delete
    3. i think anything less than 500 should be ok, some companies might reimburse this if negotiated...

      Delete
    4. @Suri am glad to know people wont mind sharing some of the cost :)

      Delete
  2. Dear Ankur & all Eclipse enthusiasts,

    First of all, Congrats on taking this excellent initiative of polling the opinions of the Eclipse enthusiasts in B'lore for sustaining the future of this interesting and useful event. I have attended the last year's event Co-hosted by SAP Labs & Progress S/w. I have to say, it was organized in a fantastic manner and I believe SAP played a perfect host.


    So couple of points from my side: (sorry for rather lengthy comments here... You all need to have lots of patience to read this through :-) )


    1. Could you please elaborate on this: "But frankly, we still have a long way ahead of us." I mean, your ideas and plans to take it forward.

    Because, If corporates like SAP, IBM, Progress Software, Siemens, Bosch etc, are supporting the event by hosting them and providing monetary benefits then probably we can keep it as a free event. After all it's an open source event and these companies are benefiting a lot from the open Eclipse community. So, bearing all the expenses for conducting events like this is a small token of giving back to the community by encouraging the community and developers to thrive. At the EoD, they will also gain the mindspace and brand image of the attendees, more so if the event is free! I believe the word "FREE" just works really well for branding :-)

    What is the primary reason that the event should be charged?

    Probably, to invite Quality speakers from outside India also and bear their travel and stay expenses? If in a strange case of these Big corporate companies are not ready to bear this amount, then this event HAS to be charged. Because, at the end of the day this event should sustain for years and with high quality. But pricing should be a very critical point to sustain the number of attendees as, practically speaking, Eclipse platform users are not high in number. I believe, for a one day event, it should not cross Rs. 200/-. One pointer to this is the currently happening JUDCon of JBoss in B'lore. The organisers are repeatedly calling us by giving huge discounts to the tune of almost Rs. 500- 700/- for 2 days.

    (Continued in next comment...)
    #################################################################

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Thanks Sunil. Thats exactly the kind of feedback I was praying to get. Now to answer and add to your thoughts

      1. I agree SAP was a perfect host, but the event could have been better. Or we had more expectations.

      2. "But frankly, we still have a long way ahead of us.".....well until we get a EclipseCon in India we have a really long way to go :) We have the largest Eclipse user population so I am sure you would agree we deserve more and better

      3. FREE sounds really good but doesnt work well. People would block their tickets but wont show up. It is very difficult to organized for unknown attendance. So one motivation behind the token fee was to motivate attendees to show up.

      4. I am pretty sure there are more Eclipse user than JBoss users. This is a non-profit event. Or shall I say no-profit no-loss event. So someone needs to bear the cost. Typical ost per attendee is around 500 per day. This does not include flying in speakers from outside India. It is a costly affair and am not sure if we can afford it (yet).

      Delete
    2. 1. Since I was just an attendee last time at SAP, it looked fine for me on that day. You would be knowing the issues in organizing the event better.

      2. I agree with you Ankur. Bringing EclipseCon in India should be the target in the years to come.

      3. I agree with you.

      4. One important question here is - Are the BIG companies aren't sponsoring for these required costs like travel and hotel accommodation of the guest speakers?

      Delete
    3. @4 the problem is more basic. We can not receive the money directly (personally) else we have to declare it as personal income and pay taxes on it. Being a to-the-cost event we do/can not take more money then we need (as this is not a money making scheme for us). Now how do you calculate how much will be the exact cost of the event and how much to quote the sponsorship for the event. Ideal way would to create a trust or something like that. I am thinking of outsourcing the organization part to some media organizers but thats a double edged sword as they will act in their interest (money) and not community.

      Delete
    4. Yeah... I agree that these are some complex issues that needed to be sorted out.

      Delete
  3. (Continued from previous first comment)
    #################################################################

    2. Attracting quality speakers?

    Yes of course. Quality content should be the No.1 priority. No second thoughts here. If we take last years talks as barometer then I think it was very good for me (I'm not a Eclipse expert though). So, this depends on and varies from each individual's level of knowledge, expertise and interest areas in Eclipse.

    According to me, few topics that should be a regular in each event apart from the Talks on several Eclipse projects are:

    a. OSGi related stuff (basic to advanced level including the latest developments in this field like App Servers based on OSGi etc). Include Equinox too in this. When I checked with Neil Bartlett through Twitter few months back regarding his plans for conducting his famous sessions on OSGi in India and Bangalore he replied stating and I quote: "Hi! Sorry we have no plans for India, but if a local company wanted to help with organising, it could be done." Can we do something about this? Probably we may need one complete day dedicated to OSGi stuff if need be as it gaining momentum in the mainstream App Servers. It is not uncommon to have two themes sharing one event. In this Eclipse and OSGi are complementary. So we can evaluate this.

    b. Model Driven Architecture/Development (MDA/MDD) related topics from probably IBM Rational folks.

    c. Eclipse platform - a quick primer on basics and continued with deep dive.

    d. The talks dealing with basics should always be there running in one track. I have observed lot of participants involvment there.


    (Continued in the next third comment...)
    #################################################################

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Now we are hitting the right note. We should capture what attendees want to hear/learn. So far it had been what speakers wanted to talk. Its time for IOC now :)
      We will conduct a poll to gauge what would interest community

      Delete
    2. IOC... Haha.. :)
      But not full IOC though. It should be a mix of both to make the event more worthwhile for everyone.

      Delete
  4. (Continued from the previous Second comment)
    #################################################################


    3. Active community participation?

    This is THE major challenge, as per me because the usage of Eclipse platform is lesser compared to the other Web App stuff. If conducting the event on weekends will help improve the numbers then I feel, we should evaluate that option also.

    I have observed in the last year's event at SAP Labs, where some sessions were having hardly single digit audience even for high profile speakers like Werner Kiel's UoMo talk. I felt sad by that sight. One reason for that could be the timing. It was scheduled as the last talk of the day and by that time many participants have already left. Yes, the major blame here should be with the participants than the schedule here. After all, a good speaker expects good audience in good numbers - that motivates them.

    Regards
    Sunil B
    Twitter: @sunilband

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. I agree Sunil but the timing was controlled by the Speakers and not us. They flew into Bangalore so they could not present in opening slots. We should do a better job of scheduling next time

      Delete
  5. Anything less than Rs 500 should be reasonable. Anyway most of the participants are working professionals. May be you can give discounts/free entry for students.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Including students is a good idea. Perhaps we should think of multiple day event instead of multiple tracks

      Delete
    2. Hi Guys

      Sorry for not being in the loop. And to start with Congratulations to Ankur for conducting Eclipse Day India for 2 Consecutive years.

      We had worked very closely with Eclipse Foundation in an attempt to bring EclipseCon to India when we hosted Eclipse Summit India, a 2 Day Conference only on Eclipse with a lot of International Speakers. When we attempted to redo this the consecutive year, we were hit badly due to lack of sponsorship.

      Corporates werent at all interested in sending their employees for the Conference, we then had to invite a lot of them for free ... i wouldnt really want to name the companies but that was the state.

      But i do agree with Ankur / Sunil, it has to be a balance of both. We need corporate sponsors and also local individual registration fees. What we could propose is, if there is a corporate sponsor, the company could get equivalent number of passes for their employees and the other participants who are not from the sponsor companies they need to register themselves independantly.

      Multi Day / Multi Track but including students would definitely be a good idea.
      Also we really dnt need international speakers, there are more than hundreds of indian Eclipse Gurus who can contribute to attractive, amazing, eclipse topics.

      I would always want Eclipse Day to promote Local Speakers and give opportunity to Local Community than have people from outside to speak.

      Malai

      Delete