Am 24. Feb, 2014 schwätzte Gareth J. Greenaway so:
moin moin,
Since it's fresh in everyone's minds now is the perfect time to send feedback on how SCALE 12x went.
Not quite fresh in my mind as I went camping right after SCaLE :)
Even if it were fresh, there was once again a lot of content, so if I say it would have been great to have something that we actually had, please just point out that I overlooked said thing.
What worked?
Once again it was an excellent conference.
Lessig and Game Night were definitely a hit from what I could see. I didn't get to pop in for the game show or UpSCaLE, but heard many good reviews on both. Ruth picked up several new fans for whatever she did during UpSCaLE.
Leslie's keynote was great and got a couple of people I know who have problems with public speaking to get up and participate. Their positive participation says far more about her talk than I can.
Didn't hear much grumbling about wifi this year.
Saw many, many people using the schedule monitors. I also found them to be useful.
What didn't work?
Too many interesting talks at the same time :).
I have to remember to not use Bel Air for BoFs.
The Los Angeles rooms were consistently standing room only for presentations.
It would be nice to have track descriptions for the sponsored tracks.
Zonker's "Intro for the day, talk about the program, outline the schedule, and thanks to sponsors." really isn't very descriptive.
I received several specific comments that people couldn't find the BoF signup and overheard questions about Ubucon and some of the other special events. It was all covered on the special events page, so some people weren't finding it.
Can we link from the schedule headers to descriptions for each of the events next year? We might need new pages or somewhat different setups ( e.g. either a keynote page or a keynote header on the presentations page ). We have a content abundance :).
The MySQL track was back on par with previous years. Last year's was disappointing ( still with at least one good talk ), so I was glad to see a return to normal.
I heard a complaint that the floor plans were missing from the guidebook.
The speakers weren't listed in the guidebook. I have used it the last couple of years to help me get to the correct talks, but I'm often looking for specific speakers, so had to pop back and forth to use guidebook.
What you liked?
The tech shirts were great. Would have been good to have the WiFi passphrase on the badges as well.
The expo floor seemed like a better layout this year. It also seemed like the same layout as last year, so I don't know why it seemed better. I did make it down early on this year and specifically skipped a couple of talks for expo time, so maybe it was just more time with less people.
I like the 30 minute breaks between talks on expo days.
What you didn't like?
Requiring sleep :).
What would you like to see at SCALE 13x that wasn't at SCALE 12x?
Food trucks or other walkable food that isn't carlitos. For burger joints I actually prefer Carl's Jr, but last year it took 45 just to get through the line. This year I brought and ice chest and food :).
Larger presentation rooms.
A charging station in a public area. For instance, the long desk by where we had the jobs/BoFs boards could have several power strips that also have USB ports. Don't know if there are outlets on that wall, but having a desk space for devices would be good.
Thoughts on the Friday Night Keynote
Twas great.
Should it be a permanent thing?
Depends on getting the right speaker. Also, could it be earlier? Would have been nice at 19:00 then conversations, etc. for the rest of the night.
ciao,
der.hans
Any topics not covered in speaker tracks that you would like to see covered?
Thanks!
-- SCALE 13x - 2015 https://www.socallinuxexpo.org/
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