 Right shall we try and actually start this? Quick review of DevCon 16 organization. What was what went well what went badly? What went badly? We started things too late. I think every team says that every year Yeah So after DevCon 15 a final report didn't happen We had the big blow up with the that resulted in chairs resigning. I Think we tried to fix that a bit and then People burnt out from that and nothing happened for a few months Yeah There were things that kept moving forward, but we took way too long to get the sponsorship brochure done We just we blocked the sponsorship brochure on a website And I don't think anyone was actually putting that much time into the website at that point So we sat around for a few months. We could have been chasing sponsorship, but weren't Yeah, there's a mic here. There's two more handheld mics somewhere I mean we we could have been chasing it anyway So like the problem is not any of those like we didn't have the brochure We didn't have the final report. We didn't have the the problem was just we didn't have a team for sponsorship And in the end a lot of it came down to like just me and I had actually only volunteered this year To be a a like remote resource So I hadn't I was not in theory an active sponsorship team member this year, but it ended up coming all down to me So let's not do that again next year too Good good As someone it wasn't no it didn't actually so it came there came down to a week So we're in the red this year and there came down to a week when if I had sent out a hundred extra emails We probably wouldn't be in the red and I was like doing other things because I didn't have time for it So if we had five people even if I could have just said to someone Please go send out a hundred emails and know that it would happen like we would we would be okay So I mean I kind of see that as the bus factor thing never never never have a bus factor of one As someone who wasn't in the sponsorship team. I didn't even know that was a problem I assumed I thought we were waiting on a flyer and that's why nothing was happening Weekly meetings would have would have helped we did have those for a while We had weekly meetings ever since before DC 15 there was also the issue that people said they had contacted sponsors And they hadn't and because we have this odd RT where you know nobody reads the spam actually you're not tracking it So one of the things that we need to improve and we already said that and the DC 17 both is that we really put into these sponsor list files When people have contacted sponsors and if it's only like the initial product something But that means you take ownership of that sponsor and you follow up with that and if you if you don't do that You either tell people practically or after a few weeks somebody else will basically try to take over if you just go on missing so this this would be I guess the process for DC 17 because that was actually a lack of communication We were thinking people work had contacted the sponsors and the sponsors came back to me during that conflict 60 now said Why didn't nobody contact us? I suppose part of that is also CC the team on everything so that everyone can see what's going on Yeah, so that was a policy and we we actually talked about this in the fundraising off and I think we've got a pretty good So drop our tea that's going away focus on the sponsors list and get the The Sort of text-formatted files that with nice scripts to do reports and things like that one thing that would also be handy You weren't there But is the script that you did just undoubt automated emails for wafer speaker notifications It would actually be really handy to create a version of that that reads from those sponsor list files and can automatically Send out like a hundred messages because part of the time I was spending was not necessary I would spend three days sending out a hundred messages when I could have done in five minutes With it with a good email template and a quick script Do we have We have lots of people that can do things like this. Yes Yes, but they're not they're in one of our silos. They're not Right, so I mean we have five versions of the scripts. Well, that's something we can do this But that's a too late. That's an that's the kind of problem that we actually love to solve Yeah, well, it's the kind of hard ones. It's the kind of problem I love to solve too usually but when I have three days and I have to scramble and it takes me longer to figure all that out Then to just send the hundred ma'am messages and get at least 70k of sponsorship. It's It's falling apart when I mean finding all our scripts and organizing things and making a pretty tools set up for that sounds like a volunteer is Yeah, we'll see is the kind of tasks that We like to do so. Yeah, do we have a sponsorship team for next year that doesn't have a bus factor of what? We have two locals, which is good Okay And I don't know who else is is is committed. Okay. Do you like is committed? Can I just add from a personal point of view my feedback as an Experience was the only local on the sponsorship team We did in fact ask multiple times on IRC in person on the team lists for more volunteers I think what I could take As a message to the next team and to future teams people don't like being on the sponsorship team They find it intimidating But that's not an excuse I Think more people needs to be on the sponsorship teams from local teams Yeah, I eventually joined and started working people I mean, I knew I raised a couple of sponsorships like that everybody on the team should be doing that It's the only way you're going to get local sponsorship Yeah, but we have to be realistic about What people are able to do too? Should we move on from sponsorship team? What was next in the timeline registration probably and venue contracts We probably left our venue contracts and food contracts far long later than we should have That's because they were giving us a hard time and we were being disorganized They were being far more disorganized But everything was sort of fine because we were committed to being at UCT and they couldn't do anything They weren't going to kick us out It would have been a bit nicer to have signed the contract or at least a letter of intent to you in advance and Be in negotiating fine points at the end rather than which food which cater are we going to be using a week before they start serving us food? But that was all that all worked out fine Except that we overcame we overcame a dead camper bit We had got caterers beforehand, but we just decided very late to go with them. That's the point So but also with this we assumed we could bring outside caterers to the venue and then they told us we couldn't at the last minute And we scrambled to find options that would work and they just dragged and dragged because We couldn't find something that fit the budget and was reasonable. It was the same with the venue contract per se Right. I think that was pretty much ready to be signed around June July Last year as far as I remember my conversations with Bernal But then then we didn't know who was going to sign it and the whole legal representation and stuff And so that dragged on for a long time. Yeah, so that's something that we should Do with DC 17 straight away then they needed a huge deposit which delayed things further Except that that really shouldn't be a problem like in the future we can do that But if we know what the process is and if we're if we know what we're doing so with regard to The I don't expect a long legal representation delay for DC 17 because I'm already looking into that And we've got a letter of intent signed already which makes everything a lot more concrete Thanks, and again just from a team dynamic point of view where I got frustrated there is sometimes someone needs to make Unpopular decisions and I think from a team dynamic point of view Tape company to improve that ability The the problem we had there was making unpopular decisions on your own without talking to anyone I'm not just talking about the Molly Blackburn Hall I'm talking the frustration that led me to make the decision was because we've dragged on stuff that actually had an inevitable outcome But I don't want to dwell on that I just there are future things and I think that's where the chase issue also came in sometimes We need to make unpopular decisions my approach for that was to try and deal with those in team meetings If it wasn't too contentious, and we could actually get a decision in the meeting it was seemed to be the only way we could get a decision But then you've got to stick on that agenda item and force people to make the decision and still get through the rest of the agenda A point I can add to that it it's a very hard problem, and it has not really been solved for Quite a number of years I think it's probably good for the next teams to actually have a tie-breaking team Or tie-breaking members one or two persons that are entitled to take these hard decisions that might be an idea to Try I think we kind of did that informally Well, yeah, sure it happens informally, but then it frustrates people and things so doing that explicitly might be So I mean of course we will not go into a full government governance session here because say this could end up Tomorrow night and most of us would miss a flight or something But yet that was one of the important things that the chair or the chair figures had and I think that's something that's missing a small group of people that can as you say work as tie-breakers and I think that should be what Looked into again, maybe reappointed or seeking something but the thing is Waiting for a consensus to emerge is often very frustrating and very inefficient. Yeah, I Think practically in the last year with Daniel and I reached an agreement on something then That was how that was a decided decision Of course because you're the people doing the work and that that that's worth But I think that's that's a lesson learned in DC 15. We had people doing the decisions that didn't do the work and Here we basically kind of decided among the team and that worked really nicely Obviously, you always have the issue with too much too few manpower and things delaying and you know Many things actually only kicked up when Stefano came to South Africa Because things have just been you know, not possible without him on the floor Because this kid discussions weren't going going back and forth and he actually kind of tie broke by being physically present But that was a very specific situation that not you know some important people on the local team were not local all the time So that won't be an issue. I guess for DC 17. I Don't think that the tie-breakers are necessarily going to solve Our problems we've had it in the past and it just resulted in a situation where The entire people doing the work were no longer willing to make any decisions But shoved everything onto the chairs plates who were then overworked and eventually quit I mean there were other factors involved, but it they really didn't want to be in at the the decision-making body So it's a lot more about Empowering the local team or the people who are doing the work to make the decisions and I think that the so it really worked Well, if you guys managed to make decisions and and you know, you didn't cause any conflict Over them. I think that the best thing we can do in the future is to be very transparent about how these decisions are getting made Like you know, I've considered this I've considered that and therefore we decided to do this and and then just move on with Things rather than to discuss and try to strive for consensus. Yeah, I think the struggle really is to You don't want to make the decision because this is hard work And it's gonna be politically difficult and all of that but you've got to force yourself to do it And when you do that, it's mostly fine Well, it is it is hard work It needs to be done because you need to move on and it's only politically difficult if the rest of the team sort of have this Feeling that everybody needs to be making the decision when when everybody accepts the fact that the decision needs to get made And that the people closest to the decision are probably the best people to make the decision Then it's also not no longer really a political issue. Yeah, I don't think that was a problem So so something I want to give here is actually something that worked really well So I know we blew up at the end of the last year and we were Scrambling for time trying to get things done But what that brought about was an attitude of let's just get it done It's like let's not waste a lot of time on politics less not waste a lot of time on Discussing structure. Let's just get it done and that actually worked incredibly well So I'm kind of encouraged this year. We can just let the new team. Yeah Just get things done. Just let them get things done and let's not get in their way too much And I'm really encouraged that it may possibly be the best deb-conf here. We've had in like, I don't know Yeah, I can fully second that the difference between DC 15 and DC 16 was DC 16 was a group of people that work together and grew closer as they did and DC 15 was like Different compartments that were doing awesome work and you need to remember DC 15 was like three times the size of DC 16 So it's a bit harder to organize when it gets like really that large But there were like really, you know, secret cabals and open cabals and any cabals And so we didn't have any of that in DC 16 and that was just awesome So if if you DC if you DC 17 people can try to prevent that from the very beginning You'll have a lovely time over the next I completely agree with what you say, but you cannot Forget you cannot stop thing taking into account that after all the the culture where you grow affects How how the work is done? So yeah here the team integrated very very very good but every team will will interact differently and What I mean, I think it's completely consistent with what we expected from Germans to be and what we expect from Africans to be it's just Well, yeah, it certainly your culture does affect how you operate. That's that's true But you you can also be intentional about what culture you want to adopt and adjust in a direction My my employer is doing something similar because we're all remote and that's unusual for everyone And they're being intentional about culture we can too fact fact of the matter is that we've had in the past a couple of depth cons where the you know the manana culture kind of Ended up in the successful depth con but it also made it very difficult for the rest of the team Like the ones that are not local to work with with the local team And I think a lot of the sort of I'm just gonna talk freely This is not intended to be contentious But a lot of the sort of protective behavior on this on behalf of the global team stems from the fact that we've had depth conf local teams who were like You know Maybe maybe they had everything under control But it certainly didn't seem like that in the weekly team meetings at all points in time Like you know changing the venue three weeks before the conference and all this kind of stuff but and so so but somewhere in the middle is the key and I think still communication and and And and trying to find the middle ground of cooperation between the different diverse backgrounds that we have is gonna be the best way to go Yeah, I and I think on the question the issue we came from of Making decisions and so on I think it is it sometimes is necessary to bring a decision to a meeting but also we can Try harder to have things prepared as I mean as people often do to put make sure it's on a list in advance The options and just make the actual so the meeting is just make a decision rather than Discuss every issue and people raising a thousand questions about details and so on the problem is people don't read any of those things until the meeting Especially the people who aren't yeah, I deeply tied in the local team. I think maybe we could take an event Better example from thumb over the other organizations out there who managed to have like SPI sometimes having their five-minute meetings Where they just say yes, yes, yes, that's it Maybe we should get used to Organize meetings and make sure that decision are being made at the end of the meeting It's unlike Debian when we can make decision when it's ready for the comfort commit on dates and Things don't wait because time is going and that's I mean it's cultural thing And we have to accept the for the comfort. We have to make decision in a timely manner. I just think it's good to have to like with Stefan and Daniel just making the final decision and that's probably the best thing to do is you have someone who says okay We all chat about it. This is the time limit. We've got to chat about it. And this is the final decision That's it now we move on and and that helps less discussion and trying to overanalyze everything So I completely agree with that The missing factor or or the The recipe that we need to install for this to work in the future is trust in many ways Because apparently this team trusted Stefano and then Daniel to make these decisions and we're happy to go along with it But it is not always going to be the case or it maybe maybe it will be in the past it has not always been the case and One of the reasons I think that is is because we don't have at least this it's not obvious to me I sort of shared understanding of what depth conf is among the entire team among all the people So that that leads to people going looking very closely to individual decisions to make sure that their own very view or desires of depth conf are being are being fulfilled and I hope maybe you're gonna introduce the idea that you mentioned the other day I'm how to bootstrap the exact answer to your right because I think that that is a very Something we could try it's a way to share a common ground and be sure that we share the common the same goals and the same way We want to be and that to evade to avoid any Consumption the sort of I think the basic idea is something to give them then local team An opportunity to write down What their vision of depth conf is like how they want their depth conf? I know this is also contentious to say their depth conf because we do it all together But what do they imagine what are the ideas they want to take from the past put into their conference? What are the new ideas? They want to do and then when this document exists then the the experienced people Try to find holes, you know not criticize like this is not gonna work or like this is We've never done this blah blah But like find holes make sure that we don't leave anything out that the attendees expect from it And then at the end if we have a document that sort of describes This is going to be the upcoming depth conf and everybody's happy with that Then it's gonna be much easier to defer to some people to make decisions because they are all we're all in line We have to keep an eye on time. We've got 20 minutes remaining in the session Yeah, I also wanted to share the fact that let me just yeah I think that having lost the bid for DC 16 was a really interesting experience for us And it really helped us organize ourselves and have the venues and understand how things work Then I think this I don't think this should be a formal thing But it looks like if you know if Prague if the Prague team does a good job They're gonna have a lot of stuff that they're only bit the whole build a whole bid for last year So maybe this year just gonna be the same and I think it's it's something We should maybe encourage people to do and tell them that you know Building a whole bit in a year is maybe a bit ambitious You know building a team takes more time than that and approaching people So I'm just wanting to share that Jonathan and I were hoping to lose our bid to the first time around so we'd have more So we'd get we'd do some work on a bit and then we work on a dev conf later Unfortunately, we had a dev conf I think we should be walking through our Part here, which says how do we help the tip come 17 team get started About this well as you can see we sort of already got started one of the things I think was a really interesting learning experience was our Because we were talking about making difficult decisions and we already had one of these very heart-wrenching decisions regarding the choice of our venue and We sort of like learned a lot about how the the dev conf works in terms of these making these difficult decisions I mean, I think it's not gonna be surprising if I say we didn't have as much support and We had some but not as much as we envisioned about getting global global team members to help us decide on on the venue and so we really had to We had a quite a long meeting and we had to decide at the end we had basically just a vote and Majority like slight majority one for For the venue and that for us that I feel that was our moment of deciding what we wanted dev conf to be So so yeah, we're I feel we're we're we're well on our way to to organizing We're not I don't feel we're at a point where we're we have to start thinking about the big things certainly there's a lot of Details and a lot of small things that that we want to get right and we've already we've already started listing a bunch of those we At the right at the beginning of the conference Gabrielle opened Etherpad document Where he started putting two three things and and now it's like we have like 40 points of little little things that we now don't necessarily have to think about one year before but who that we we felt Really improved the experience for attendees so so yeah, we're obviously gonna be sharing this and and Yeah, there's of course lots of works lots of work in front of us I can't say anything about that It's those last those things you think you don't need to deal about now deal with them as soon as you possibly can because at the Last minute you've got so much other stuff to do So what you're saying is it a hybrid manana not manana culture I plan a year in advance for things are going to deal three months in advance If we'd bought more coffee in advance and consider how much coffee people actually needed the coffee machine wouldn't have run out It also doesn't have any more beans and they wouldn't sell us more beans well They wouldn't sell us any yesterday. It was a Friday. So they don't sell beans on Fridays for some reason The next item I have on here is what are the first steps? Yeah, I think you've kind of covered some of that What's coming next? Well, we've we've gotten Nonlocal people on to our can board instance. That's like shaping up to be our main task tracking tool So obviously whoever is not on there Still not on there and wants to be part of the deptconf 17 effort come and see me. I'll I'll get you on there and Yeah, I mean there's there's there's still stuff to do like for for catering for Treasury sponsorship I think one of the big takeaways I personally have and I guess this is also shared by the team is that we really need to get our Stuff together for sponsorship. We sort of delayed a bit on on this this front we've we've had we've had like informal discussions, but But yeah, one of the takeaways is that we want we want sponsorship to be as as concrete as possible as soon as possible and We also don't want to delegate this. Okay, like one person takes care of sponsorship But really that that should be that should be a task that that's Distributed as much as possible over the the entire team last subject the best one How people see the chairs and what should be the role the delegates So one of the things that have has been said earlier that The role main mainly wasn't passed to after the tiebreaker body so was seen as frustrating and I mean my hope is would be that the body will be an enabling thing rather than blocking thing in the future and So how to get this done? I mean how what are the expectations of people and I think the biggest thing is Ability to sign documents and approve budgets and doing that early on and that not having chairs We kind of ended up in a bad position in a few ways there and and Beyond that I mean there's lots of things they could be and people have different ideas and what they should be But beyond that it doesn't actually matter all that much We just need chairs delegated by the DPL with the authority to do the essentials And if we start there and iterate we would probably be okay We did get a DPL to sign documents fairly quickly when we needed it, but yeah This is this is potentially contentious as well, of course, but we have had situations in the past where The local team took decisions that were not okay in terms of the depth conf values or whatever And so it could be the DPL because we hope that it's not going to happen very often But previously also the chairs role was to to have the authority to say no to something Of course that then ended up in the steering committee And it wasn't very clear And it is very very much in conflict with the whole idea of like letting the local team Get the work done and supporting them, but it's hard to be lived correctly I don't know if it is in conflict. I mean, I think FTP masters, you know, you delegate the authority you let them get their job done You don't veto unless absolutely necessary I think the same philosophy works with a very active vibrant local team that we just let them get their work done You know, you were there to be responsible when needed, but it don't get in the way I think it's fine and it seems very dubbying. It feels very dubbying Oh, I think um, I mean it became easier in the end In the towards the end of this cycle because they weren't that many people who were active apart from people who considered themselves to be local team whatever In I in the idea we would well from my point of view I would I probably to keep things running in general. We would like there to be more people who are staying on from year to year and As much as at different times in the past we've tried to Do things to avoid that kind of conflict there's a kind of natural break between the two parts of the team in that way because just because of there's some group of people who have physical meetings See each other chatting the bar about something and they'll tend to make a decision informally And then if you go to a wider meeting, of course You get some kind of conflict if the other people don't share the same I mean, it's you can do a lot of different things to try and smooth that and thinking about it actively and so on but There's always going to be a slight risk of tension there. I mean, whatever you do It's mostly difficult for the chairs to fulfill that role properly and it's really hard to do that I guess when it's not publicly accepted what their role is Maybe one one piece of advice for the next year's locals who would also be to act as if you are working remote and Even if you meet in the in the same room and discuss things make sure you have at least Minutes of that meeting outside to the list and might sound obvious, but it's really important to be reminded of that If you want anyone out who is not a local to help you you need to include them It's it's kind of up to you Thank you No, the thing is yeah, you can see I'm like Going through my thoughts. I think there is a lot to say but many of us have already said it over and over It is a very hard decision How how the governance for that comes works? I am on the opinion that a chair like figure Works better than not having it but but I think we have iterated the The Topic enough. I know the opinion of many people in this room. Of course not not of everybody and I think well We need the opinion of somebody with a higher authority to to give it to tell us what we what what will happen So I think the delegation is needed to avoid any doubt on that I think that in the past we've put too much pressure on the chairs Because the delegation says they are responsible of the organization of debcoff When it's not totally the case because one things happen badly. They don't have necessarily the tools the mechanisms to the budget the people to get it fixed So we cannot have Very high expectations from what the chairs can do. That's why I want them to be like I mean helping the team and powering them To do the stuff finding new volunteers making call for helps. I didn't see them see that happening for in the past For example, so that's how I see the future delegates to act So they are not there to frustrate people to block them for doing the work But they are helping helping them to get the things done And well just to add a final point to my to what I was thinking The problem is very hard to solve on the air Well also because it's a lot of dealing with people so so if the local team and the Delegates or the global team or whatever don't get along It will be very hard to find a Workable solution And I think that's a well what happened when when we have this mass resignation There was not and there was no way to get them to work together So so of course they they felt they they could not continue pretending to do so Okay, thank you everybody. Thank you