 So welcome everyone. Thanks for joining us. We're really excited to have you today We're going to be talking about how to successfully host a sprint and I think this is really Topical especially with triple eight accelerate and all of the community sprints that are happening all over the world particularly with your plate, but also just You know the involvement and excitement around Sprinting in the triple community So I think this is going to be really useful and we're we're really lucky to have Kathy and David with us today to talk about that. So welcome and thank you for joining us and Our presenters today Kathy and David I'll let them introduce themselves. Kathy is a longtime sprinter and core mentor David is a wonderful sprinter and just hosted a triple eight accelerate sprint in New Jersey So without further ado Kathy Whenever I'm Kathy, I'm yes CT on the internet. I Work for black mesh There are hosting company and my job is part to work on issues part to plan sprints and also to go to them I Have a ton of experience around sprints. I have a small Local sprint which I host once a month which has between like four and six people that come to it every time and I also work on the Drupal con sprints, which are Huge and gigantic and have like 500 people David Hernandez David Hernandez all one word on Drupal at work I've been helping organize New Jersey events for good five or six years now including meet-ups sprints co-workings And Drupal Camp, New Jersey for past four years now So I've had a lot of experience with different kinds of events doing different sprints different locations and Doing a lot of things right and a lot of things wrong. So hopefully we can share that information with you today All right, so let's get right to it The first thing of course we need to talk about what these events are and what a sprint actually is for someone who's never participated a Sprint is exactly what you see in the picture. We have an aside here. It's when people get together with their computers and they Collaborate and contribute that work and that's really the big difference between sprints and other things like meetups Is that your main goal here is to contribute the work that you do? Whether it's to Drupal core to different contribute projects to documentation No matter what it is. You're really contributing everything that you work on We have different kinds of sprints. So you can have a really small sprint You can have a really big sprint like we do at Drupal con And you can have sprints that are for everyone and have mentors Which is a big thing we do at Drupal con making sure people are around to help new people get acclimated And you can also have focus sprints Which we're doing more of now to help get Drupal 8 out the door, which means you take your more Experienced sprinters people who are used to contributing have gone through the process before and they might focus on one particular Subject matter whether it's just Drupal 8's Criticles or just documentation or just front-end work, but they really focus all their efforts toward one goal to accomplish something so part of planning a sprint is a lot about Thinking about what you're gonna need and The most important thing is that you have to have tables and chairs. I once planned a sprint and reserved a venue and did not clarify with the venue that I needed tables and chairs and We ended up scrambling at the last minute to get them The next thing that you need really need to think about is having power directly at the tables with outlet strips and We really need super Wi-Fi there Are some technical details On a sprint planning document page that we have on triple org Which is triple that org slash core dash mentoring slash sprint dash resources and I Would highly recommend Going to the venue in advance and doing some Testing there and checking to see what the bandwidth is like Depending upon the amount of people that you have You need a ton of bandwidth so maybe like 60 megabits down and 20 megabits up and You can plan on each person having two and a half devices So you need more allowed connections that you're gonna have people And that's true no matter the size of your sprint for larger sprints. It's really super helpful to have some real life things on hand like whiteboards or flip charts Post-it notes name tags and markers, but the most important thing is tables chairs electrical and Wi-Fi All right, so your venue this is one of the most important considerations when planning your sprint or really planning any event If you have a bad venue you have problems with your venue. It's really problematic. So Take as much time as you need to find the right place do as much research as possible talk to different people and Use as much as your budget as you might need to to get a better location All right, some of the key factors for me is make sure that your location is easy to get to Don't underestimate How lazy people can be sometimes If you have a location that has an address that's hard to find it's hard to put in with GPS it Requires a lot of directions to get there. It's in a building. That's hidden someplace The the front entrance is not clear, you know all that kind of stuff It makes it very difficult for people to get there and it makes it so they're less likely to come again so try to be near a main road try to be in a building that's Easy to find and easy for people to research on their own something like a library is great because if people don't have the address They can at least Google the name of the library and find out where it is But if you're in some office complex somewhere might be a little more difficult for people to find the exact building a well-known shopping center is another good idea and Any location that has its own website. So maybe run by management company or By a Drupal agency so they have their address listed on their website. It just makes it easier for people to find Have good signs So one thing I like to do is put signs right on the front door with the big Drupal icon on it So it's a giant flag for people that are walking up to the building. Let them know. This is the right entrance This is the right location have signs in the building directing people where to go where the stairs are Where the elevator is where the suite is we know that to the actual sprint location is Make sure the doors are open and unlocked all the time make sure Hours are visible for people and they know exactly when you're going to start and when you're going to end Make sure the building is accessible So if people have a handicap they're able to get into the building and that's it's also great for everybody because sometimes You go and get supplies like you order food and it's nice to have accessible entrances You can get into the building easier and use the elevator and I'd have to walk up flights of stairs with food Also be close to parking or public transit depending on you know if you're in a city or on the suburbs if People have to use street parking pay for meters pay for a parking garage things like that They're less likely to attend and they're less likely to come back So try to find a location that will have free parking that has consistent parking And that's important for the size of your event as well if you're used to running smaller events and People just use street parking that might be fine when you don't expect more than 10 or 20 people But if you're gonna have an event with a hundred people street parking might be a problem so take that under consideration and Be consistent with your locations. I think this is just as important much of your Attendance is going to be based on convenience So if you run meet-ups and you use one location keep using that same location be consistent People will develop habits and they will know how to get there. They will understand how long it takes for them to get there They will understand what a park or what train to take They'll know exactly how to get in the building will get used to where the office is And it makes it easier to then host a sprint because you can say Well, the exact same place we hold our meet-up. This is where the sprint is going to be. It's very easy people for people and Be close to food or drink if you Have a large event you probably are going to cater it which is great, but if you can't Make sure you're close by to something that you know people can just go out quickly and easily and get food Or if you end up in a location that's too far from something like that at least Communicate that to people so that they know ahead of time and they can make preparations All right, so if you're in a very busy business area and there's lots of restaurants nearby cafes The like people can leave quickly and get to something But if you're not near that they might need to bring food and water coffee or whatever with them So just let them know ahead of time if you're going to do that Yeah, letting people know ahead of time is really super regarding any of these things There is no such thing as too much advanced communication There's a really great resource which will have a link to at the end which is a model view culture post on Getting people to attend your conference who have Trouble moving around and they will not show up and Assume that you've thought about these things in advance. So when you communicate that you've thought about Where it is? How you're going to enter what the location is like whether or not it's accessible How long it takes to walk from the front door to the location when you communicate that stuff ahead of time It will increase your attendance on the day Yeah, definitely Wait, let's go back a little bit We skipped a slide No, that was good so during the presentation You can ask questions in the Q&A section as we're going along It's totally okay, and then we'll also do Q&A at the end in addition and We'll have a survey at the end so Along those same lines Communicating in advance whether or not you will be providing the food or if Expected to take a break and go get food on their end on their own is really nice if you have Food that you're providing Do a lot of different Options and you don't necessarily need to pull people in advance to find out if they're gluten-free or vegetarian or vegan if you communicate With the people who are providing the food that you need all of those options For everyone and then it's really helpful to have signs Which label the ingredients of the food and then people can pick what they Need to eat on their own we have a White tradition Of in the past we would have sprints and we would say oh, let's order some pizzas or let's have coffee all the time and we're getting a little bit wiser now and realizing that what we provide is In part a reflection of how we respect the people who are attending so Recently we have a lot more examples of having healthy food For the people who are working all day long sprinting and That is really great in terms of what they want and also In terms of the output that we're going to get from people They do better when we provide them with better food A lot of times when you're planning an event we think about the work hours from the morning and until the evening but Especially Well, I guess it's no matter whether or not you're having people from out of town or in town There is a really nice chance to Get together at the end of the day so when you're thinking about what to what to do after the sprint if you can have a social thing on at the same location you Will have more people show up for it And it's really good to have choices that are not alcohol centric there are a lot of conversations happening at the moment around tech events and Alcohol and we can do a really good job of incorporating feedback from those wider conversations by making sure that we have as high quality choices for things to Drink like tea and craft sodas And it will make people feel Safer and more respected It's also really nice to have some kind of social thing in the evening where people can hear each other and actually Communicate Yeah, we actually had a change this year at my Drupal camp we used to do an after-party at a bar nearby and This year we changed it up and actually did the after-party in a private room that we rented in the next building over The number of people that actually stayed for that was Significantly greater than when we just met the bar so people do prefer that it was much nicer time We were in a private room. It was quieter. Everyone was there. It was from the event It was much better experience All right marketing communications For a lot of people and especially for developers We know that you're maybe not the best communicators and so you're not great at this and may not want to do it But it's kind of too bad You're gonna have to get good at it or find somebody who knows how to do it well Because if you want to get attendance you have to communicate with people you have to let them know that you're having an event You have to use social media outlets. You have to be very clear and specific with your information That's probably the biggest point as soon as you Make decisions and you have things set in stone like your dates your venue things like that Let people know and give them specifics don't just say like oh this weekend or We're gonna be here some place or just or tell them the location But don't give them the exact address. No, give people the exact address give them contact information Give them a map link if necessary. Give them directions Give them the specific hours that you're gonna start and you're gonna end You know tell people if you're going to have food catered and tell them what those food options are Or if you're not going to tell them that you're not going to so that people can make Preparations right usually it's fine if you don't cater for lunch people can bring their own lunch or make their own arrangements But they don't know that if you don't tell them ahead of time, right? So be specific about it and let them know exactly what you're going to do and what you're not going to do Depending on what kind of event you're gonna have it's gonna be small. It's gonna be big Tell people if you're gonna have a focused sprint that's on a particular subject matter Tell people exactly what it is and what's expected of them So they know ahead of time how to prepare for that or they know ahead of time that it's an event That's not for them and they shouldn't show up, right? We like to think that every event is you know inclusive and it's for everybody But sometimes we do have events that are very specific and it might not be right for that person That's okay. Just let people know and they can make the decision that it's not best for them And maybe they don't attend that event, but they attend the events That's two weeks later or a month later that is for everybody. It's okay to do that what you don't want to have happen is People not have the right information show up and then have a bad experience because then they will leave they will Be less likely to show up again And we really don't want that so just be clear With everyone and usually everything will be just fine I also like to have a contact person that's specific If you're running a big event like a camp you probably have a camp email address and a camp Twitter account And all that kind of stuff. So that's okay. If it's a smaller event have one person who's handling the communications So assign that person and tell people if you have questions you can contact this person Maybe that person is just you because you're the organizer and you might be the only person But let them know how they can reach you now either through your Drupal or profile or they can find you on IRC and ask you Questions or they can ping you on Twitter or whatever but have an actual person that people could communicate with as opposed to just Posting something on groups at Drupal.org and maybe you don't go by often enough to see if there's comments or anything like that And a lot of people don't post comments, but they might email you or just tweet you or pin you on IRC or something like that Yeah, there is no such thing as too much advanced communication and the sooner you can announce the date of your sprint the better Even local people Need time to arrange their lives In advance so they need to make arrangements for child care Or get time off of work and the sooner you can announce a date the better and Wide broadcast announcements like Making making an event on groups dot Drupal.org which ends up Causing something to show up on the Drupal Cal map Using your local meetup to announce a special sprint all of those things are really good but something else that helps a lot is personal communication so emailing specific people and And Asking them like can you come is this a good time for you? We really want you to go Going that extra mile will also increase The amount of people that show up for your sprint One of the things that you can do in advance is make sure that a code of conduct is Posted publicly so you can mention it in in your post if you have a website for your sprint you can link to it there We recently held mid-camp and It was in the footer on every single page of the website and this is a big deal in terms of Publishing ahead of time so that people understand that it is safe for them to attend your event Kathy a quick question. What do you mean by can you elaborate on safe to attend the event like what would What would the code of conduct Encompass for someone that might be newer to the community so The code of conduct usually will say something like we treat each other with respect We don't tolerate harassment in terms of gender identity Your body type all of those different Things that can come up and one of the most important parts of a code of conduct is That it will explicitly say if you have an issue at our event This is the person to talk to and it will give an email address a text number and their name and a way to identify them at the event so An opening somebody would mention the code of conduct and they'll say hey if you have any issues Go talk to so-and-so so-and-so. Please stand up. So it has a really easily Identifiable person That is a point of contact at the event to talk to in case anything comes up and The other important thing about having a code of conduct is talking to the organizers and Volunteers that are at your event, which could just be you Or it could be a group of people that are helping you and letting them know how they should respond when somebody Comes up to them and says hey this thing happened And I don't feel good about it and making it very clear that the way that you respond to that is with finding More information About what happened and redirecting to the specific person Who is the point of contact? And let them handle it so in general not not challenging whether or not something happened but gathering information and Directing them to the person who's gonna deal with whatever has happened and There are Open-source code of conducts available. You don't have to make up your own. So If you're having organizing events, you don't have to be an expert or have a ton of experience You can just go to one of the example code of conducts and just copy it and Put it up and say hey, we have a code of conduct. It's really super easy to do Actually, there's some examples so triple org slash DC OC and also Los Angeles Drupal con coming up has a code of conduct and there are some other open-source ones On the internet that you can search for so you don't have to make it up from scratch There's a lot of resources to do but the important things are to say that your sprint has one and Have a person Who is the primary point of contact? Great? And also just as a note Things are kept confidential while Working on whatever the situation may be I think that's really important for people to know so that they feel like they can share Okay funding. That's another big one So if you're running a small event Obviously, you can do that fairly cheap so we don't want to discourage anyone to think that you need a huge amount of resources and a huge amount of funding to pull off any Events you can do something small you can do something free And you know you just need to tell that for your local group But if you start getting into larger events multi-day events You're gonna have to start worrying about money Locations cost money catering cost money. There's a lot of things to consider So you have to figure out some funding sources Look for local sponsors If there are any Drupal agencies or web agencies in your area They are probably willing to give you some sponsor money They like to help out they like to Give people money for sprints because they appreciate the cause and are willing to have these events and they can do things like Let you use their office as your venue for free. So that's a great way for them to give back But usually a small amount of money, maybe one or two hundred dollars It's not a big deal for an agency and that might help you out a lot But if you're going to try to get a lot of sponsors for your big event, you need visibility You have to have a website and you have to have a social media presence You have to have a way to publicize the sponsors if you don't have that You're not going to be able to get a lot of sponsorship So keep that in mind if it's not something you think you're going to be able to do You probably shouldn't try to host too large of an event So I would say the first thing if you've never done this before and you've never contacted sponsors is to talk to the Drupal Association They know exactly how to do this. All right, the DA hosts a lot of events They know all the sponsors. They know all the Drupal agencies They know who the point of contact is for each one of them So talk to them they can help you find out who's in your area Who might be a good person to talk to and get the ball rolling for you Also talk to the DA about the cultivation grants. This is something that they've given out for a long time I don't remember exactly how much it is Lauren. Do you know how much the grants are now? I believe About a thousand seven fifty a thousand depending on you know, what the ask is for Wow, that's gone up I don't make the decision it's a it's a community led group that makes the decision and awards the amount But I okay, I saw seven fifty ones. I'm but the point being Talk to the DA about that because that is money that they will give you and you can use for startup When we first ran Drupal Camp New Jersey, that was the first thing that we did We got money from the DA and we were able to use that for things that we needed right away like Down payments for caring and venues and different things like that I don't encourage you to spend money out of your own pocket find a way to get some funding resources So that you don't have to do this this shouldn't you're organizing So it shouldn't be if you burden on you try to find some other sources for that income And talk to your venues if you have to rent a space Talk to the people who are running that venue You might be able to get discounts or even get it for free and you might have to talk to them about it to Do it they may not list that information on their website or whatever place that you do the renting I've we've done this with libraries Where you can rent a library space and it might have a small fee some of them are more expensive might cost a hundred dollars a day But if you talk to the library, they may know that you're a nonprofit you're a tech group You're an open-source group and they might sponsor you and let you use the venue for free or at a discount So definitely talk to them first about it Don't just assume that the cost listed on a website somewhere is exactly what the cost is going to be And then if your your budget is tight and you don't have a lot of funding sources Be careful about what you spend your money on and worry about the things that you have to have Not just things that you think are going to be fun So your venue is one of the most important things If you need to spend extra money to get a better venue and then not pay for something else I would do that. So you don't need t-shirts. You don't need stickers don't have to have More coffee or the fancier food option or you know different things You don't have to have badges and lanyards and things like that You need to worry about the sprint itself and make sure that the sprint is successful first and foremost So if getting a better venue means you cut out something else I would probably do that And then of course be transparent This is all nonprofit People in your local community might be interested in where the money's coming from and how it's being spent The DA might be interested in that So just share it with them. This protects everyone else, but it also protects you So the more people that see the finances the better off you're going to be You might make a mistake in your accounting. You might get overcharged for something And you may not realize it if you're not experienced person handling budgets and finances, but if somebody else sees that That's a mistake that they can help you correct. So just be very transparent and clear about it and Lastly if you really have to Don't be afraid to charge for tickets to your event We've seen that for camps obviously, but sometimes we actually will charge tickets for attending a sprint as well If we just leave the money To handle catering or something like that. It's not a big deal. Especially if you're dealing with a small amount 10 or $20 or something like that. It makes it easier to coordinate food Instead of having 20 people try to pull out whatever money they have in their pocket Go get lunch or something like that. It's basically those people give you the money ahead of time You can arrange the catering and just have everything And Charging tickets is actually So if you just have a free event and you say hey anybody wants to come can just come you don't really have a good idea who's gonna show up But if you actually set up tickets for the events and have people pay for them You're essentially having them register and give you money It's a little more formal and those people that actually go through the process or a lot more likely to actually Absolutely, it's really hard to plan things when you don't know who is going to show up All right, so now we're gonna get past the logistics part of things and talk about the event itself and the audience is really your attendees right so this is incredibly important you need to Think carefully about the events that you're trying to organize and make sure that it's tailored for the people who are attending Right, you are running it for them Right, so if you have a local community and you want to run a sprint for those people You have to know who those people are if you know what they're interested in with their experience level is What things are familiar with and what they're not familiar with it and make sure that your event is geared towards them If you don't have a lot of experience people Then having a highly focused sprint is probably not right for them and they're probably less likely to show up But if you hold a general sprints where it's more about mentoring and getting people started and you have a lot of exercises and organization around new people getting acclimated They're gonna think it's more fun. They're gonna show up. They're gonna learn a lot of things If you have a lot of people who aren't developers don't have just a developer only sprints work on documentation Work on organization work on You know tasks that are great for new people like doing some of the issue Q triage And you know different things like that and and just you know teaching people new things Those people are gonna show up if they see that the event Matches what they're interested in doing and think about the kind of event you're running and Who you want to communicate that to so if you're running a one-day event That is not an event that's geared towards people who are traveling along distance So don't try to communicate with them or try to recruit those people to show up If someone's coming from out of town from several hours away or they a flight away Your event really needs to be at least two or three days long at least No one wants to fly in Stay at a hotel You know do everything associated with taking time off from work or arranging for our babysitters or the like To come in for like a six-hour event. That doesn't make sense. They're not going to come So don't gear your communications to them gear your communications and the topic of your events to the people that are local if you are Having an event a sprint where your target audience is people who have not yet contributed and you want to Introduce contributing to them you can expect That you'll have a bunch of setup time and Need to plan for that. So if you have a one-day event And it's geared towards new contributors You'll spend probably about half of your day getting people oriented as to what a sprint is like and Getting them ready to work on issues You can mitigate that a little bit by having a repeat event So one of the things we do in my local community is we have a monthly sprint so We get people coming back over and over again. We don't have to have a four-day long event It's more reasonable. We have a half-day event, but we have it Every month so that setup time happens once and then people come back to the next thing And they are more ready to go if you're only going to have a sprint Once it can be really advantageous To have it be a multi-day thing The day that you have it depends upon who you're trying to attract So it might be on a weekend, which is typically not a workday for people or it could be on Monday or a Friday and People might be able to convince their employers to send them it's tricky when we're doing something like this because Not everybody has free time to Come to an event and I Think we need to think we need to be thoughtful when we're planning something about who we're trying to attract and Whether or not they can attend the event on their own cost And it's okay to allocate part of your budget to actually paying somebody to attend a sprint This helps a lot in terms of diversity in our Open-source projects if we have some money set aside from that because if we don't do that What we get are only the people who can afford to fund themselves to Both attend in terms of travel and also spend the time at the event so the audience thing relates back to the funding thing especially in terms of thinking about Having a diverse set of people who can be there there's a thing in the Drupal community, which is Really makes me smile, which is that we have this thing called mentoring that that happens at sprints and so one of the things you want to think about when you're planning a sprint is Do you need any mentors and how many do you need and? That depends upon the target audience of your sprint who's attending and also who those mentors are so If you're having a small Sprint and it's focused on a topic your Mentor is probably just going to be the person who has experience in that topic they're going to be the lead for your sprint and That will happen very organically especially if you have a small event But if you're having something larger You can plan on having You can plan to need to have a few people who are not going to be doing the work working on issues And improving Drupal themselves, but who are going to dedicate their time at the event to helping other people Figure out how to get things accomplished In the project if your mentors are experienced they can probably help eight people throughout the day If your mentors are new then they are going to need you're gonna need more mentors because they're gonna Focus on fewer people throughout the day It's really important to Have Anybody whether it's an official mentor or in a grant or organic thing to make sure that people are working together And then the mentoring happens automatically if you do have a big event though It's nice to ask for people to sign up to mentor in advance and also have a way to identify who the mentors are Different colored t-shirts are nice Or certain kinds of badges so People know they can go up to this person and they can ask for something and get the information that they need And I'm big on the one-on-one mentoring especially for smaller local events. I think it's When people get started and they've never contributed before they are having trouble with their local development environment things like that It can be a really frustrating experience and it's really nice for those people when they have That one person who just sits next to them and helps them the whole time that they're there Make sure that they solve all the problems that they have that creates a really great experience on that person And they're more likely to come back When we're talking about these sprints. We are talking about in-person events so the whole point is that we get together in person and So when we do that working together Really is what makes these things shine Kathy we have a question really quick Do you look for any qualifications for an official work? Oh, that's interesting Well for one thing I would say make sure that the mentor wants to do it Say sometimes you go to an event and new people show up and they go Oh, why don't you just talk to Joe and like you'll like help you work through that problem Well, make sure that Joe actually wants to do that first and that he doesn't think he's just there to sprint Doesn't want to be bothered with something like that. So enthusiasm definitely helps and wanting helps Yeah, setting up expectations ahead of time both for people who are attending maybe their first sprint and also For people who are attending their 20th sprint is really good and Qualifications I Are really quite low though in terms of who can mentor and who can't because if you have Well, let's for example, let's take triple con so triple con we have a Sprint day which is get involved with core and so our expectations for people who mentor during that day are that they have previous experience working on core and We will have mentors that maybe have worked on three core issues or 300 core issues and Any of those people are going to be valuable mentors Because the person who's worked on three core issues can help somebody work on something for their first time Because they've done it before they know the basic things the person who's worked on 300 core issues will help somebody else who maybe is more in the weeds of something Some difficult problem. So I I think the qualifications for Mentors are around their expectations They really need to be able to devote their time while they're mentoring to not Accomplishing anything themselves and understand that their job is To help other people Accomplish things and if they have those expectations and a little bit of experience In the area of the sprint then things are going to work out fine. We do not Turn away mentors at triple con you can sign up to mentor and I'm like great. You're you're on the team Yeah, I would say that the only real qualification is just experience Working in the issue queues and experience contributing because that's what you're mentoring on you don't need to have Expertise in the software So you're not necessarily there to answer every technical question that people have you're there to help them get started Navigate issue queue use triple at work Understand where the tools are things like that Yeah, so for example if if I'm at an event and somebody asked me a question about twig I Don't know anything about it. But that doesn't mean I can't mentor them at the sprint and help them Work on an issue about that because my job as a mentor is really to expose to this person how to Do the work and how to find out answers to their questions. I don't actually need to know answers to their questions I just need to show them how they can find out The answers to their questions. That's much more empowering And prepares that person to continue to contribute even after the event if they can know how you find out things Not just the answers to things that that they have questions about Yeah, it's also good to communicate that to the people who are attending because you get people that will show up and Expect that the mentors are there to help them with a project or answer all their triple questions and things like that And then they may get frustrated like what your mentor? Why are you not? You know able to solve all my technical problems, but they're not there for that. So make sure people understand that before they come Is there really quick is there a pro tip you guys have in the past on how to identify your mentors to the general attendees at your sprint At a small event at the beginning of the day, I would just have people stand up and say hey This is Sally, you know there they can help you with whatever questions you have at big events If you can plan in advance a special colored t-shirt actually helps but if you can't do that just any kind of like I like throw a sticker on somebody's shoulder and And so they can walk around with that throughout the day. Yeah, you guys did that with Bogota, right? Yeah, that that was really good and what we what we did is we Bogota had like 270 people at the event and we had a hundred and one people at the sprint We had a ton of people at the sprint and we didn't have special bright yellow t-shirts or anything like that. What we had was black t-shirts and and We had a pile of them that blue host provided They had just brought a bunch of t-shirts and they just happened to all be a dark color Other people were already wearing a dark colored shirt that day What we did was we sent somebody out the day before to the local like hardware store and they bought A bright colored tape so we had green tape So we just put like stripes on the backs of people's black t-shirts And they were bright green and then you knew throughout the day. So It's I think having some kind of identifying simple on people Helps reduce the barrier it makes people more likely when they have a question to be willing to ask it because they're like Oh, that's what this person is for her. I'm supposed to ask them all the things and it just it reduces that Friction And it makes people much more willing to ask things they might be a little reluctant to ask Awesome, that's great When running your sprints make sure that you have goals, right? You You're not gonna be very successful if you decide to run an event and you say well We're just we're gonna handle all these things or the venue the catering all this sort of stuff And then everyone will just come and we'll just sit around and we'll just do stuff What stuff are you gonna do right? You need to figure out exactly how your events gonna go? Are you going to have mentoring or not if you are gonna have mentoring? Figure out what the goals are for the mentoring right make sure that People have accomplishments if it's a focused sprint make sure that You're focused on it and you're working on issues specific for that but manage those expectations don't think that You're gonna run a general sprint and everyone's gonna work on everything and you're gonna solve all the problems in the world Right, that's not going to happen. It's never going to happen. So keep it simpler know What makes sense and for me what makes sense is making sure That everyone who comes to your event Accomplishes something no matter what that is so an experienced person Might just work on one issue and get it solved and for them. That's a success for someone who's brand new They may just go through the mentoring process and get used to all the tools get their laptop set up And at the end of the day comment on one or two issues Maybe write a patch and upload it and that's it But they at least get to that point where they've done something make sure every single person at your sprint Has an experience like that if that happens they'll feel good about it and they're more likely to come back Right. So this is where it's important to communicate your type of event to everyone So they understand what they're getting involved with right so that if the event is not right for them They won't attend the event, which is okay But if they attend the event with different expectations than what you had That's when they're gonna have a bad time Mm-hmm and when I say don't do it all I don't just refer to the sprint itself I'm referring to you as the organizer Right. Don't try to organize a big sprint by yourself handle the venue handle all the catering Do the mentoring think you're also going to do sprinting as well It's just not gonna work if you're large enough that you need multiple people to volunteer Get multiple volunteers have people concentrate on their particular task and just worry about doing that task and doing it Well, so if you are mentoring just mentor don't worry about sprinting If you were just handling the catering just handle the catering and make sure that all works well Yeah, I would I would say that if part of your goal of your sprint is includes new people the the most difficult thing to accomplish is having people click save on their comment on an issue and Encouraging them to do that Will give them a result that they can look back on and say yes. I did something So helping people do that is really good. If if if you're having a sprint for Encouraging people to start contributing Before the sprint It's a lot of work for the organizer so the organizer of the sprint might want to Pick a different person to specifically handle this but it is really important to Go through Whatever kind of project you have and pick out some issues that are going to be good to work on the next day or that weekend The other thing that's important to do beforehand is Remind people of all the logistics Tell them, you know come this is what you need to bring. This is what you should wear This is how to get to it like all of the reminders. You cannot communicate too much in advance It really makes for a much better event If you're having a large sprint You will need to warn Free-node that you're gonna have a bunch of people connecting on IRC from the same IP address If you're having a large sprint you need to warn the Drupal Association so they can make sure that the there are enough test spots up to handle the amount of Patches that are going to be coming up in the queue and the contact information for who to Tell about those things is in the we'll have a link for that for you at the end But you want to do that a couple of days beforehand Use whatever tool you're comfortable with that people will have access to For looking at what issues you're gonna work on So if you're leading Contrib project or if you're a lead a On a component of core you might tag issues with the upcoming sprint thing if you're not a Maintainer of a specific thing then you're not gonna use tags. You're gonna just make a guldock And put a bunch of issue Links in them or you're gonna make a Trello board and keep that up to date Use whatever tools you want, but you definitely want to pick out the issues to focus on in advance Yeah, if you're new people to come it's really handy to have One or two really simple tasks that you know need to get done that you can do really quick yourself but just hold on to them like Writing a change record or doing an issue summary update or like something like that So like you know when there's someone new without walking through the door like okay I can give this specific thing to you I don't have to spend a half an hour trying to find an issue for you to work on when When you're actually at the event the main benefit that we have is that we're all in the same place so we might as well work together and I think it's a difficult to maybe explain to your boss or The person who's funding the event, but it is not important how many patches are put on how many issues the important outcome that we have is working together and moving a very small set of issues further and So doing reviews is really important to do at a sprint And review something multiple times throughout the day so that it gets closer and closer to what we call our TBC, which is reviewed and tested by the community and it means that Something has happened and it's gotten to a sufficient point where it can actually go into the project like the issue is done and So adjusting expectations of the people who are funding it the people who are organizing it and the people who are working on it Instead of let's do a ton a ton of work to let's work on a small amount of things, but let's get it done is really nice and it will Not only be good for the project, but good for the people who are working on it to see that their work was effective All right, and at the sprint make sure you document everything that you can It's easy to forget it while to you know to do all the documentation while you're there And it might be nice to assign that task to another person that this is all they do But make sure you do things like Record all of the issues that get worked on at that sprint So you can share that information later with other people and you can keep track of those issues and see that they get Done and see that the work you did at the sprint was effective in moving all those issues forward Take notes about what things worked and what didn't work and do it during the event or right after the event So it's fresh in your mind, and you know things like Okay, we did have a problem with the doors I need a checklist of all the things I have to do before the event next time and this is what that checklist is or These food options didn't work We order coffee. We actually had too much coffee or we had too little coffee So we can adjust our budget next time do all those things during the event and immediately after the event while they're fresh And take pictures because you're gonna want to remember the event. You're gonna remember want to remember who attended the event It's easy to look through pictures and remember. Oh, that's right Those people were there and if you're gonna blog about it afterwards It's nice to include the picture so you can show everybody how many people were there and what a good time you had So go ahead and do that But when you're taking pictures make sure that you're careful about Asking for people's permission before taking the pictures and posting them online A lot of people don't want their pictures taken. They don't want them online Just be respectful of that choice And usually we don't have too many problems One thing that I do sometimes is if there's one person in the room or a couple people who don't want to have their picture taken Have them take the pictures That's a real nice simple solution. Then you don't have to worry about it And Kathy, why don't you tell them what you guys did at mid-camp, which I thought was actually a really great solution So at mid-camp we had two different color lanyards. We had green lanyards people could pick if they Did not want their picture used and blue lanyards if they were okay with their picture being used and We also had people who's like one task We asked them to do was like take a bunch of pictures and it was Really helpful and there were a couple of pictures Which I was looking at after the event which were posted online And I'm like hey There's a person in this picture with a green lanyard and we took their picture down It was made it super easy to know whether or not a picture was okay to use later the other nice thing to do especially if you're having a multi-day event is to Summarize the work that was done that day and put that online for each day of the sprint that happened in New Jersey when we did the menu links sprint and it happened at the CI sprint that was just in Portland and it really helps people Not Like decide to attend the second day of the sprint But what it helps them do is decide that they're gonna attend something in the future so Publishing a wrap-up blog post and including pictures Makes people see what happens so they know What a sprint is like and they can identify themselves as somebody who should attend it in the future So it will increase future attendance when you do all this really good communication Yeah, and these post write-ups are actually quite good for letting us all understand how effective some of the sprints are Which is really helpful for the community for the project for the DA for sponsors for everybody Okay, now last of course for your event is to have fun this I actually had to add this slide to remind myself to talk about this because It's so easy to forget that you know these events all the events that you're running They're about the people All right You're running a sprint or any kind of event because you care about your local community and you want to run a social event You know so make sure that everyone that's there is having a pleasant experience Make sure your attendees have a pleasant experience or your volunteers have a pleasant experience and that you as an organizer Are having a good experience, right? Don't take on too many responsibilities or try to host an event that is too big for what you're capable of and what your Resources are we don't want you to get too stressed out about it, right? That doesn't make sense if you are having too many problems and you think it's too much of a burden Just scale your event back, you know ask for help get more volunteers But if anything is happening either for your attendees or your volunteers or organizers That's a really a problem that you need to do something about Right don't burden yourself don't create a bad environment for your attendees And if any of that is happening just ask for help you can talk to the DA if you need help You can reach out to some of your local mentors Experience contributors reach out to the core mentor group the core mentor leadership and ask them for advice Ask them, you know, what you might have to do about certain situations If you need conflict resolution talk to the DA and if you're really not sure what to do Find one of us Talk to Lauren talk to find me or Kathy. We both have contact forms on our Group of our profiles. We're an IRC all the time if you really think you need help and you don't know where to turn Turn to one of us. We'll give you advice. We'll tell you what to do. Yeah It's much better to scale back your event and have it do less so that you can enjoy it. It's It's almost always people who are doing this on their own time So they're not doing it as part of their job So if it isn't fun people aren't gonna want to go and as an organizer it should be enjoyable for you too Yeah, you are a volunteer people should be respectful of your time and energy So if it's too much for you just scale it back So a lot of this like documenting that we were talking about comes in really handy after the event and it is Super helpful to make a blog post about your Sprint make a comment on the announcement of your event so that people know what happened and Thank anybody who volunteered and your sponsors That's one of the ways that they get paid if they're not getting paid is by recognition. So dish it out liberally and then after your event think about What you want to do differently next time and share that with the world it will help future planners plan things So we we talked a lot about like all these things right the logistics and the planning and what to do at the event and it seems kind of Overwhelming and it also varies depending upon what kind of events you're gonna have whether or not you're gonna have something small or something big Yeah, so for small sprint and you can host a sprint of any kind any shape any form You know just tailor it to what your resources are But for a small sprint concentrate on your location Your venues gonna be the most important part if you have 10 people showing up or fewer than that You don't have to worry about catering. You don't have to worry about sponsors You don't need t-shirts. You don't need stickers. You don't need any of these things Just worry about having the right venue with properly working Wi-Fi and then your basic logistics You know that you have power strips and things like that and that's about it For a larger event It's gonna need a lot more planning in advance and you're gonna need a lot of help You're gonna need volunteers to help with the logistics ahead of time And these don't have to be people that are necessarily good at working on issues This can be a whole new people a pool of people to draw on you're gonna need to be a lot more organized in terms of communicating with your volunteers and the people who are involved with planning and Everything just needs to be done ahead of time way ahead of time the bigger your sprint Gets so you can totally handle a gigantic sprint, but it means a lot more planning in advance We have a Lot of things that we talked about and we have links for them which we're gonna share with you Later we're gonna post those slides but the main thing to do If you want more detail about planning a sprint is to check out the sprint resources page that we have That is a child of the core mentoring page on Drupal dot org So it's Drupal dot org slash core dash mentoring slash sprint resources and This is the like the canonical place to go to when you're like, oh my god. I'm planning a sprint What the heck should I do? This is it come here and if If there's not something that answers your question about sprint planning on this page Let one of us know and we'll improve the document if you think of something to improve This is something anybody can edit So you can improve this page yourself and then we have a ton more links, which we will share with you later Yes, that's it That is it. We had a couple of questions one was about and this is I'm sure a sticky situation for others How do you address personal hygiene prior to the event and You know treat it proactively before Getting into a group setting. Is this ever happened to either of you? Well, I know that one of the things that we might send out in an announcement before the event is will remind people of What kind of weather they're expecting and Like hey, it might be cold or it might be super hot. So people know how to address ahead of time but I don't think that Particular thing has come up at any event that I've Been at so I I would plan on not addressing it in advance and just dealing with it with The particular individuals involved and making recommendations for the future Cross that in the past not at any Drupal events. Thankfully but other things unrelated and I Agree cap it. I don't think it's something that probably occurs often enough that you would address it in advance like sending out emails saying Hey, make sure you take a shower before you go up, right? But it happens at an event You probably need to at least keep an eye on it You're probably not going to do anything about it the first time But if it's a particular individual Who comes to multiple events and it's a problem then you do need to address it? I would probably encourage you to talk to the DA about some conflict resolutions If you don't know how to handle that on a personal level, but at some point you you're gonna have to do that You're gonna have to talk to that individual and let them know that this is a concern Maybe they don't know about it. Maybe they do but That kind of problem the the issue is we don't want to offend anyone and we don't want to tell people don't turn people away But they also create a problem for everyone else who's attending So if it's really a major issue and that person does not want to address it and it means Excluding that person you might have to do that Yeah Yeah, I would just say overall um, you know make sure of its sensitivity and Discretion is used when you're addressing the issue Which you know would be common sense for any particular sensitive topic We do have another question What kind of return should or can we provide a sprint sponsor? So one of the things that is really nice is if a sprint sponsor can actually attend the event Or send one of their people that's part of their organization to the event and then have that person say like Something at the event either in the beginning or at lunch or something like that and just say, you know Like give them five minutes and say Hey, everybody, you know, this was made possible by this person and this organization You know, let's let's thank them And It goes back to your visibility again making sure that you have avenues to thank them thank them at the event Before after if you have a website, you know making sure they're visible But as far as like actual business returns themselves, I don't think you can give them any particular Expectation that's really for them to determine most of the sponsors that are giving you money are gonna base it on Sort of goodwill and to get visibility for themselves and they're gonna do some Calculations to determine what kind of return they're getting on that visibility But I don't think that you in particular can set that expectation for them at events right it it it's possible To It depends on the focus of your event and the audience and the people who are attending But if you're trying to like for example Dev days is coming up in France and one of the things that we're gonna focus on there is performance, so If you have a sponsor who is running a gigantic Project and performance is really important to them right the return that they could get on helping to sponsor this event is you know better performance, but I Most I think practical returns that you can tell like you can communicate with your sponsors Like if you're gonna talk to them and they're gonna say well, what am I gonna get out of this? It's gonna be visibility in the community and the way that that ends up benefiting a lot of organizations is That they are going to be able to hire better people and better people are going to want to work for them So I think the return for investors is a very long term Return and revolves more about around visibility and what you get from that visibility is you get better people working for you Great We've got a couple comments. Just thanking our presenters and I will join them thank you Kathy and David for taking the time to work on this and Of course being a mentor in your own Local area and globally. I think it is it is really fantastic to Be able to work with such enthusiastic volunteers So I really appreciate your time just a quick reminder. If you're still on the call, please take the survey It's just five questions. It will help us Go forward and know a little bit about who is planning sprints and how can we address that properly so We thank you for your time. We will be recording this session and posting it on our YouTube channel And then of course we will have the slides available. So you can share that with your local community As well. Thank you for your time the one thing we forgot to mention sure that the DA has a newsletter for organizers so in addition to the sprint resources page that we have people should watch out for An email that they get or announcements about that and I highly encourage people to sign up for that newsletter and that will Help disseminate some of the more details about information about having events and organizing things Great. Thanks. Kathy completely forgot Anyways, thank you for your time. You know, of course we have listed In our email that you'll get later this week with the recording. You can see our other webcasts coming up. We have one on triple 8 accessibility that is going to be really exciting. Hopefully at the end of april and We'll have another one coming up on triple ci and a wrap-up of what happened at the last sprint So we look forward to seeing you there. Thanks so much