 Thank you for tuning in. My name is Dorka Valalkova and I am a community architect in the open-source program office at Redhead and I'm going to talk about six tips I've learned from working with the team of volunteers at DefConf CZ. So my goal today is to share a bit about my work and the best practices I've learned first as a volunteer at DefConf and then second as a leader of the group of volunteers at DefConf. So DefConf CZ is a community conference usually held in Bernal, Czech Republic and it actually has a strong Fedora presence. It actually has a track so I thought I'll ask first like is there anyone who ever attended DefConf CZ and if yes were you an attendee or a speaker or a volunteer. I just want to learn more about about the audience today. Oh yeah Langdon, hey. I see some familiar names so it's great to see you and I'll ask your questions to help me drive the conference in the future so this is awesome. Okay so before I start with the lessons let me just click to another slide. If you forgot, this is how it looks like. So since I am going to talk about the conference so we are at the conference I wanted to say a huge thank you to all the organizers and especially to Marine Nordin who is basically thriving this event. Marie and I were colleagues we're both community architects at Red Hat and it might seem that our work is like totally different core it's very similar. So Marie is involved in a specific project I was talking about Fedora and I am involved in a specific location Bernal Czech Republic. So what I do in my community architecture work is that I often look for speakers to talk about specific topics I support local events I support content creation and I often look for volunteers to various projects and programs and DefconnCZ is by far the biggest project I am responsible for and what I really want to say is that we try to stick to open source principles and that's why I really hope anyone who's interested in volunteer-driven projects and anyone who's interested in leading volunteer-driven projects is going to talk interesting or anyone who's just in want to increase your influence or anyone who's working with people as a people manager or a team way. Okay let's just go to dive into the tips I wanted to share with you. So tape promote the perks of volunteering so obviously when you're looking for people to join your project you should start with what you expect from them. What is the type of work that you need help with when they should be available how much time they should invest in it but equally important to mention what they can gain from participating in your project. So at DefconnCZ what I often say to help motivate people to join the volunteering group is that they can learn something new they can expand their source or network they can expect they can use this experience to advance in their career and many people say that they do it before because they want to give back to me and any and for many people it's a it's a combination of these things but you should not be surprised to find out that some people do it just for one reason and not for like a deeper sense of belonging so if someone wants a hoodie or a mug and they get it and they are absolutely okay with it you should be okay with that too which brings me to a quick question to the audience like what motivates you to do extra work is it what I mentioned is it something else if it's something from what I mentioned tell me what it is I'm curious to see whether it's the same or really different for everyone let me know in chat would really appreciate that okay so once you use or mentioned what people can gain get them motivated oh the options where um learn something new expand your network swag advancement in a career and give back to community sometimes people say they do it for fun so that's also an option yep totally agree just in some people do it because they like the feeling of being a part of something bigger okay let's continue with the lessons we'll have a time to look at your answers so once you mention this all it will hopefully help you create a diverse team so and when I'm talking about diversity I just don't mean I don't just mean different backgrounds or different knowledge different level of experience I like to look at the ratio of new people and returning volunteers so and those new people questions can really help you make better decisions like once you have to explain something to someone who's completely new that really helps you reevaluate whether you're doing the right things and what I also find useful is that is when you call for volunteers more than once at the beginning during the whole your whole project because people who are already participating can be advocates and you'll get that new person perspective even during during the planning and the third lesson or the third tip I wanted to cover here is leading by example so leading by example I have to say I truly learned what it means when I was a volunteer so when I saw other leaders and what they do and I'm trying to just copy that so I try to bring positive attitudes to our meetings and to everything that we do I try to focus on like what we've already achieved and I don't mind getting my hands dirty so in other words no work is beneath me and I feel like this is really important because in every project there is a number of tasks that are not so popular they might be boring they might be repetitive and it's important to find or it's important to distribute this work equally and let's have a look at what one of the volunteers is saying and I think Pepe is also here so this is a shout out to you when I asked him about what motivates him to participate in Defcom CZ so Pepe is Pepe in other words Yosef that's how we change names in Czech language is volunteering I don't know for four or five years he is helping us with the website with the CFP with schedules so many things and very grateful for your appreciated work and this is a great time for me to look at what you answered to my questions hey everyone once again I see some people joined a bit later give back to the community yeah that's what I hear a lot that people do extra work because they want to give back to the community and learn new things then I love it our overwhelming feeling of obligation oh Paul sorry I only got to it now thank you Matt that's um I'm very interested in the results okay let's continue with another set of tips I've learned for working with the team of volunteers at Defcom CZ um so it's crucial that there is someone sort of overlooking maybe a group of someone's over your project someone who identifies um what you want to accomplish and how you want to accomplish it um who sets the deadlines priorities and defines the structure that volunteers can contribute to so some pieces of these structures are defined it cannot be changed and it's important that everyone understands it so for example we use we also used hopping at Defcom CZ same as here at Nest and that was one of the defined pieces of structure so there were people who wanted to hop out with the virtual environment and they were asked to work with hopping but everything else should be up in tears so what they want to do how they want to do with with whom they want to collaborate that's up to them so as as soon as you start micromanaging people they will not enjoy it it's not volunteering anymore anymore since this is usually extra work for them they should enjoy it at some level and since we still have enough time I will share I will share like what we actually specifically do at Defcom CZ so we use Trello to track uh tasks in progress but you can use anything as as as far as you have things that are to do in progress and who should do them I usually define that structure by creating working groups that are necessary for the success of the conference such as CF offer proposals schedule registration venue or virtual environment and then ask people to choose what they want to do what I like to do is also encourage those returning volunteers to step up and take upon more of a leadership role within this working groups so it's it's beneficial mainly for two reasons because it's kind of more challenging for them so it's not the same work that they've done one year ago but also it gives them a bit of influence over what how the conference is going to look like or how your project is going to look like and um yeah many people want to do extra things which is awesome it give it really gives character to your event or your project but it's important to let kind of everyone know that if you want to do something extra it's up to you to find those people to help you drive it and it's up to you to promote what you want to do so this these are the activities that we've done at DefConf like coffee meetup or coffee tasting um by hunting challenges um anything music related that moises us um so but these really gave the character to the conference okay so once you have the structure you have the people you should definitely meet regularly and this is I mean even if you feel like you don't have to and believe me that happened a lot during the call during the pandemic I was like oh I kind of know everything that's happening but it's important to to let people feel like they're involved to give them space to suggest better solutions or new ideas and many times I almost canceled the meeting I was really productive at the end um and um maybe since I see you're really uh interactive in chat I have a question another one for you so um I also feel like it's important to have like equal footing at the meetings so one since uh this is really like local thing uh when we were organizing an in-person conference the planning was meeting in person when we're organizing a virtual conference the planning team was meeting virtually now we're probably going to organize a hybrid event and I don't feel like uh some people in the room and some individuals joining virtually is the equal footing I saw Fedora is doing text meetings um and I wanted to ask you like what do you think will work for event organization would you would you prefer a text meeting overseeing people in the room and you joining from your kitchen or your bedroom or your office let me know in chat I'm just curious to see um whether that's something that can work I feel like we will try it with Defconn Suzy okay um thank you Ben so you say that video chat wherever remote would work best texture is good but slow both in person and virtual thank you okay if one person is remote everyone is remote principle yeah we can definitely try that I think that thank you thank you everyone okay we're um almost at the end uh with my save and it's all about recognition um so there are many ways to reward and recognize people and everyone's a bit different and enjoys a different way of recognition um so um at in Brno at Red Hat we have many people that do extra work and we have a recognition program or a process where we um say thank people uh directly we reach out to um their managers or their superiors and let them know that people actually done extra work and how actually they contributed when it comes to Defconn we publish a list of volunteers uh that made a conference happen and as I said uh beginning when you mentioned what people can gain this is really crucial it's important to review what you said at the beginning and make sure that you deliver so if you say that people can get swag make sure they can get swag um and all the other things um and um the nicest ways or ones that I really like to see the most is seeing people grow uh with the conference so this is uh about those returning volunteers um who really now have influence over the conference okay so I think that's it me however uh since we're obviously going to plan another conference um I'd like to hear from you like did I get did I get it right did I get anything what would you add and I think you can also share your video and audio if you want to we can just look at chat or if you have any questions just ask those questions oh questions in q and a thank you it's loading oh by the way I forgot to show you the last slide that one is also important another evidence of what we do with Defconn so they say Skatka she is participating in Defconn like I think for the second year she's driving social media mainly and for the first year she was um sort of a member of the working group and this year in 2021 she was leading the group and also I appreciate you q and a um so how do you handle cases where people are really enthusiastic to vote but take on too much or just don't follow through with their commitment commitments yeah that happens quite often so when I see someone is I'll do it I'll do that too volunteering too much I'll try I try to explain them that just like it's uh like take one thing that you enjoy most out of these and focus on that once it's like going well you can do something else but people sometimes do not follow through that's true that's why I try to build that structure in a way that everyone has a backup so that's why we're working groups and if there is really really at the end there's no work beneath me so I'll do it okay how do you handle cases now the second question that I saw before and I will return to the last one what is one of the most effective ways you have seen at Defconn to recognize reward volunteers um so I think what works is the recognition like saying who did what and then encouraging others to say thank you to all the volunteers and also people like swag that's like that works well everywhere I feel um how does the structure and priorities of an event in person and virtual whoo good question so structure is kind of similar I'd say the structure is kind of similar because for an event you need to like you need to build that schedule that's a lot of work you need to come up with like what are the formats that's a huge change but then it's kind of same like some people have to look at the submissions rate them evaluate then we'll build then we publish the schedule open the registration so that's almost the same but you need additional time to test everything and to set up everything because it kind of takes a longer time virtually somehow fewer people can do it and priorities I think you have to very much think about the engagement with the audience and that's that's hard especially now when we're second year pandemic okay what if you run a project but aren't able to meet regularly or can't guarantee you can make it um so this is if you are here or if you are a contributor not entirely sure so as a leader um you know what doesn't matter I'll try to reply to both of these uh so um you don't really I mean if you can't you don't have to it's important then it's important to uh it's important to like know what's happening what everyone's doing like think on what's done what needs to be what needs to be done and like who will do it by when will you know people do it who's like responsible for tasks I mean meeting meetings work really well but it can be done in like a written form with reminders and stuff and um tips on how we can learn skills and send us a word on the same project and how contributing can increase our learning curve by deploying the same skills and getting feedback from other depths not entirely sure where the question's there and also I can't see q&a and chat at the same time just that's why I so if anyone's let me check the chat real quick you oh okay hey bex swag okay um I see some really valuable suggestions here thank you everyone who's sharing that in chat and if you want to check out more about the conference uh you can find us everywhere at defconvcz so I'll write it and chat or this okay I think that's it from me um since there is no moderator I'm not entirely sure I will just thank you all for participating uh in chat uh and like tuning in for this talk um and thanks again to all the organizers