OSGeo - User contributions [en]

FOSS4GUK 2020 Online - Lessons Learnt

2020-07-03T14:46:56Z

Wiki-Antonys: /* Finances */

'''This is a draft at the moment!'''

== Summary ==

[https://uk.osgeo.org/foss4gukonline2020/ FOSS4GUK 2020 Online] was hosted by the [https://uk.osgeo.org OSGeo:UK] committee on 17th June 2020 from 9.00am to 17.30pm UTC+1

The event was free to attend with all of the costs (see below) funded from OSGeo:UK reserves.

=== Delegates ===

* 1,000 people registered
* We estimate that between 500 and 600 attended
* Maximum number online at any time was 460, minimum was 205
* Delegates from 77 countries
** 48% from GB, 8% US, 4% India

[[File:FOSS4GUK Attendee Countries.png|frameless]]

=== [https://uk.osgeo.org/foss4gukonline2020/programme.html Programme] ===

* 3 streams running for the whole day (except during keynotes)
** 2 keynotes
** 29 talks and demos
** 4 Lightning talks
* 38 Speakers (10 women)
* Coffee bar stream where delegates could hang out and chat (not heavily used)

=== Finances ===
* The only costs were the fees for the zoom account for 1 month: £198
* Delegate donations:
** OSGeo:UK 63 individual donations - gross £1,810, net after Paypal fees £1,744 (as of 2020-06-20)
** MapAction c. £600

== Feedback ==

As of 2020-06-22 we had 210 feedback responses:
* 95% rated the event experience very good or excellent
* 93% were happy with the technology platform
* 27% attended for the whole day, 27% attended 7-11 sessions, 45% attended 2-6 sessions
* 16% used the coffee bar
* 47% of respondents (but not attendees) made a donation to OSGeo:UK (34%) or MapAction (13%). The average donation was ca £20
[[File:FOSS4GUK Satisfaction.png|frameless]]
[[File:FOSS4GUK Technology satisfaction.png|frameless]]
[[File:FOSS4GUK No of sessions attended.png|frameless]]

== Tech and tools ==

=== Choice of video conferencing platform ===

==== We considered ====

* webex (we had an offer of a free account from a sponsor) - problems with audio, uncertain linux support, limit on numbers
* hopin.to - a virtual conference application, unfortunately the demo the we attended was not successful and we did not feel comfortable taking the risk on a new service but it looks promising for the future
* several other services that did not seem to fit our needs
* jitsi - our experience of using the free hosted version left us uncomfortable with jitsi as platform for a large event with 3 streams. None of us had the experience or access to hardware and bandwidth to consider running a large self-hosted version of jitsi. We were also concerned about how we could control access or restrict anyone breaching our CoC
* several of us had experience of running large meetings on zoom and were confident that we could host the event on zoom and leverage it's capabilities.

==== What we learnt ====

* zoom worked as anticipated. We had no major technical problems and as far as we know very few participants experienced problems, zoom offers clients for Linux, Mac and Windows, iOS and Android.
* we were able to manage participants by muting everyone on entry and restricting chat within the app to messages to one of the hosts and from the hosts to the whole audience.
* the recording worked well, a co-host was asked to remind the host to start and stop the recording for each session to keep videos at a manageable size
* we saved all of the chat transcripts as part of our CoC policy (fortunately unnecessary)

We purchased:
* 1 account for up to 1,000 people for the keynotes
* 2 accounts for up to 500 people for the other streams
* 1 account for up to 100 people for the coffee bar
* An add on for large cloud storage for all of the video recordings
* '''Total cost £198''' (a month's licenses)

We over-provisioned because we did not know how many people would actually log-in. We could have managed with smaller accounts and saved some money.

It is unclear whether we would have been better off purchasing zoom webinar licenses rather than large meetings.

We were aware that the zoom meetings could have been streamed to youtube but we did not see any significant benefit from doing that.

==== Options for the future ====

We have received some retrospective suggestions for alternative tech approaches to running an online event. Hopefully others will be inspired to run further online FOSS4G events and they will experiment with these.

Our choices were based on a need for a low effort tech approach given our small team and pressures on our time. Despite the poor publicity that zoom had received re security during the COVID crisis we found that the security features available were sufficient for our needs.

=== Eventbrite ===

We used eventbrite for our registration system.

* It was free as the event was a free event, if we had charged £10 per registration we would have incurred cost including credit card fees of about 10%
* Eventbrite has an online event page which is only accessible to people who have registered, we only exposed the links to the conference streams via this page to minimise the risks of being overloaded or trolled.
* We added a registration question to request permission to add registrants to the global FOSS4G mailing list (we had a very high acceptance rate). '''This should be highly recommended practice for future FOSS4Gs'''
* We made the completion of a company address mandatory on registration because it forced people to provide their 2 digit country code which enabled us to analyse the locations of registrants. This will enable future FOSS4G to geographically segment the audience.
* We used the attendee mailing features to send a a series of emails to participants in the build up and post event. Its a bit clunky but it works fine and avoided having to maintain an alternative email list.

=== WhatsAppp ===

We used WhatsApp for team communications in the build up and on the day. We also had a group for our volunteers and were able to share updates with the volunteers before the event and it was the main channel of communication on the day

We could have considered a speakers group in addition.

=== Twitter ===

We used twitter as our main channel for publicity prior to the event. It is important to recognise that not everyone is on twitter, future events should consider what other channels to use for communication with potential participants.

We used twitter on the day for announcements, publicity and encouraged the participants to chat via twitter.

== Event organisation ==

* The event team was the 6 members of the OSGeo:UK organising committee we held our first call to discuss the event on 2020-04-13.
* We hosted our event website on the OSGeo:UK site at GitHub.
* We used Google forms for the call for papers and for a request for volunteers

=== Hosts and co-hosts ===

* For each stream of the event we had a host (one of the organising team + Nick Bearman) and co-host (volunteers).
* The [https://docs.google.com/document/d/1hlNl1EhbWa4ZjpXvsxz_V9Rid2VpIPmcnKBQ5089Jkg/edit?usp=sharing Host Guide] provided detailed guidance for hosts and co-hosts on how to run the session on zoom, detailed settings and what to do in the event of a code of conduct violation or other issue. This doc evolved as we ran a couple of trial sessions with volunteers.
* We recruited volunteers in the initial stages, though about half of those who put themselves forward dropped out or didn't respond later in the process. The main task for volunteering was co-hosting
* Because of a shortage of volunteers, we targetted people we knew to recruit the last three or so, and we had one reserve who wasn't needed
* We held a couple of briefing/test sessions for all volunteers on Zoom, and this also enabled us to get to know them a bit as well as test their tech
* On the day, the co-hosts were effectively 'reserve hosts', and on a few occasions, had to step in because the host had connection or other issues

=== Recording and publishing ===

* We asked hosts to start the recording before introducing the speaker and to stop the recording after questions. This created a separate recording for each speaker and made it a lot easier for the video team.
* It's easy to forget to start/stop the recordings so we asked the co-hosts to remind the hosts
* We purchased a large amount of cloud storage for recordings in preference to each host recording locally. This enabled the volunteers post-processing the video to access all of the recordings in one place.
* Our video volunteers topped and tailed each recording with an intro slide and closing slide
* Video was uploaded to the [http://www.youtube.com/c/FOSS4GUK FOSS4GUK YouTube] on 2020-06-23 and is linked from the [https://uk.osgeo.org/foss4gukonline2020/sessions.html programme] on the website where we also linked to the slides where provided.

=== What worked ===

* We kept to schedule throughout the day
* The 10 minute gaps between sessions stopped the day being too frantic
* We kept the 4 streams open for the whole day and swapped hosts to give everyone a break. This avoided having to share login details and seemed to work well
* Zoom proved to be adequate for our requirements, we had no trolling or security issues
* Speakers seemed happy presenting on zoom although most commented that presenting to a screen was very different to being in front of an audience.
* Restricting the chat to participants to hosts only prevented too much distraction.
* Hosts received questions via chat and asked them on behalf of participants, this enabled us to get through more questions than if we had virtually "handed the mike" to the questioners. We think it also encouraged some less confident people (and those for whom English is a second language) to ask questions.
* Co-hosts were available as backup to hosts, able to step in if needed (which it was in some cases)
* The volunteers were from a range of locations, and a number hadn't been involved in FOSS4G before - so it was a great way to introduce new people
* We kept the website simple (in Markdown on the OSGoe:UK site) and manually updated, with no app. This made it easy to update through the lifecycle of the conference, adding links to slides and recordings
* Hosting the recordings on a dedicated FOSS4G UK channel

=== What didn't work so well ===

* A tiny number of people did not get the link info via the eventbrite website for reasons that we don't understand (spam filters possibly) - if they mailed us we provided the link info to them directly.
* The coffee bar was not heavily used
* restricting the chat to participants to hosts only prevented interaction between delegates during and after the talk
* We had a high level of no-shows. A free sign-up encourages no shows but we wanted to make the event as accessible as possible.
* We had a low proportion of voluntary donations (<20%)
* Some people would have preferred there to be a lunch break, that might have been an opportunity to encourage people to try out the coffee bar.
* In the end we were a bit short of volunteers, and had to strongarm some friends to step in - this was a shame, as it was a great opportunity for new people to get involved. We should perhaps been more specific with the requirements (ie co-hosting), and pushed the volunteering a bit more - it seemed we were OK, but the dropout rate was about 50%

== What would we try to do if we ran another event? ==

FOSS4GUK 2020 Online - Lessons Learnt

2020-07-03T14:46:02Z

Wiki-Antonys: /* What worked */

'''This is a draft at the moment!'''

== Summary ==

[https://uk.osgeo.org/foss4gukonline2020/ FOSS4GUK 2020 Online] was hosted by the [https://uk.osgeo.org OSGeo:UK] committee on 17th June 2020 from 9.00am to 17.30pm UTC+1

The event was free to attend with all of the costs (see below) funded from OSGeo:UK reserves.

=== Delegates ===

* 1,000 people registered
* We estimate that between 500 and 600 attended
* Maximum number online at any time was 460, minimum was 205
* Delegates from 77 countries
** 48% from GB, 8% US, 4% India

[[File:FOSS4GUK Attendee Countries.png|frameless]]

=== [https://uk.osgeo.org/foss4gukonline2020/programme.html Programme] ===

* 3 streams running for the whole day (except during keynotes)
** 2 keynotes
** 29 talks and demos
** 4 Lightning talks
* 38 Speakers (10 women)
* Coffee bar stream where delegates could hang out and chat (not heavily used)

=== Finances ===
* The only costs were the fees for the zoom account for 1 month: £198
* Delegate donations:
** OSGeo:UK 63 individual donations - gross £1,810, net after Paypal fees £1,744 (as of 2020-06-20)
** MapAction ?

== Feedback ==

As of 2020-06-22 we had 210 feedback responses:
* 95% rated the event experience very good or excellent
* 93% were happy with the technology platform
* 27% attended for the whole day, 27% attended 7-11 sessions, 45% attended 2-6 sessions
* 16% used the coffee bar
* 47% of respondents (but not attendees) made a donation to OSGeo:UK (34%) or MapAction (13%). The average donation was ca £20
[[File:FOSS4GUK Satisfaction.png|frameless]]
[[File:FOSS4GUK Technology satisfaction.png|frameless]]
[[File:FOSS4GUK No of sessions attended.png|frameless]]

== Tech and tools ==

=== Choice of video conferencing platform ===

==== We considered ====

* webex (we had an offer of a free account from a sponsor) - problems with audio, uncertain linux support, limit on numbers
* hopin.to - a virtual conference application, unfortunately the demo the we attended was not successful and we did not feel comfortable taking the risk on a new service but it looks promising for the future
* several other services that did not seem to fit our needs
* jitsi - our experience of using the free hosted version left us uncomfortable with jitsi as platform for a large event with 3 streams. None of us had the experience or access to hardware and bandwidth to consider running a large self-hosted version of jitsi. We were also concerned about how we could control access or restrict anyone breaching our CoC
* several of us had experience of running large meetings on zoom and were confident that we could host the event on zoom and leverage it's capabilities.

==== What we learnt ====

* zoom worked as anticipated. We had no major technical problems and as far as we know very few participants experienced problems, zoom offers clients for Linux, Mac and Windows, iOS and Android.
* we were able to manage participants by muting everyone on entry and restricting chat within the app to messages to one of the hosts and from the hosts to the whole audience.
* the recording worked well, a co-host was asked to remind the host to start and stop the recording for each session to keep videos at a manageable size
* we saved all of the chat transcripts as part of our CoC policy (fortunately unnecessary)

We purchased:
* 1 account for up to 1,000 people for the keynotes
* 2 accounts for up to 500 people for the other streams
* 1 account for up to 100 people for the coffee bar
* An add on for large cloud storage for all of the video recordings
* '''Total cost £198''' (a month's licenses)

We over-provisioned because we did not know how many people would actually log-in. We could have managed with smaller accounts and saved some money.

It is unclear whether we would have been better off purchasing zoom webinar licenses rather than large meetings.

We were aware that the zoom meetings could have been streamed to youtube but we did not see any significant benefit from doing that.

==== Options for the future ====

We have received some retrospective suggestions for alternative tech approaches to running an online event. Hopefully others will be inspired to run further online FOSS4G events and they will experiment with these.

Our choices were based on a need for a low effort tech approach given our small team and pressures on our time. Despite the poor publicity that zoom had received re security during the COVID crisis we found that the security features available were sufficient for our needs.

=== Eventbrite ===

We used eventbrite for our registration system.

* It was free as the event was a free event, if we had charged £10 per registration we would have incurred cost including credit card fees of about 10%
* Eventbrite has an online event page which is only accessible to people who have registered, we only exposed the links to the conference streams via this page to minimise the risks of being overloaded or trolled.
* We added a registration question to request permission to add registrants to the global FOSS4G mailing list (we had a very high acceptance rate). '''This should be highly recommended practice for future FOSS4Gs'''
* We made the completion of a company address mandatory on registration because it forced people to provide their 2 digit country code which enabled us to analyse the locations of registrants. This will enable future FOSS4G to geographically segment the audience.
* We used the attendee mailing features to send a a series of emails to participants in the build up and post event. Its a bit clunky but it works fine and avoided having to maintain an alternative email list.

=== WhatsAppp ===

We used WhatsApp for team communications in the build up and on the day. We also had a group for our volunteers and were able to share updates with the volunteers before the event and it was the main channel of communication on the day

We could have considered a speakers group in addition.

=== Twitter ===

We used twitter as our main channel for publicity prior to the event. It is important to recognise that not everyone is on twitter, future events should consider what other channels to use for communication with potential participants.

We used twitter on the day for announcements, publicity and encouraged the participants to chat via twitter.

== Event organisation ==

* The event team was the 6 members of the OSGeo:UK organising committee we held our first call to discuss the event on 2020-04-13.
* We hosted our event website on the OSGeo:UK site at GitHub.
* We used Google forms for the call for papers and for a request for volunteers

=== Hosts and co-hosts ===

* For each stream of the event we had a host (one of the organising team + Nick Bearman) and co-host (volunteers).
* The [https://docs.google.com/document/d/1hlNl1EhbWa4ZjpXvsxz_V9Rid2VpIPmcnKBQ5089Jkg/edit?usp=sharing Host Guide] provided detailed guidance for hosts and co-hosts on how to run the session on zoom, detailed settings and what to do in the event of a code of conduct violation or other issue. This doc evolved as we ran a couple of trial sessions with volunteers.
* We recruited volunteers in the initial stages, though about half of those who put themselves forward dropped out or didn't respond later in the process. The main task for volunteering was co-hosting
* Because of a shortage of volunteers, we targetted people we knew to recruit the last three or so, and we had one reserve who wasn't needed
* We held a couple of briefing/test sessions for all volunteers on Zoom, and this also enabled us to get to know them a bit as well as test their tech
* On the day, the co-hosts were effectively 'reserve hosts', and on a few occasions, had to step in because the host had connection or other issues

=== Recording and publishing ===

* We asked hosts to start the recording before introducing the speaker and to stop the recording after questions. This created a separate recording for each speaker and made it a lot easier for the video team.
* It's easy to forget to start/stop the recordings so we asked the co-hosts to remind the hosts
* We purchased a large amount of cloud storage for recordings in preference to each host recording locally. This enabled the volunteers post-processing the video to access all of the recordings in one place.
* Our video volunteers topped and tailed each recording with an intro slide and closing slide
* Video was uploaded to the [http://www.youtube.com/c/FOSS4GUK FOSS4GUK YouTube] on 2020-06-23 and is linked from the [https://uk.osgeo.org/foss4gukonline2020/sessions.html programme] on the website where we also linked to the slides where provided.

=== What worked ===

* We kept to schedule throughout the day
* The 10 minute gaps between sessions stopped the day being too frantic
* We kept the 4 streams open for the whole day and swapped hosts to give everyone a break. This avoided having to share login details and seemed to work well
* Zoom proved to be adequate for our requirements, we had no trolling or security issues
* Speakers seemed happy presenting on zoom although most commented that presenting to a screen was very different to being in front of an audience.
* Restricting the chat to participants to hosts only prevented too much distraction.
* Hosts received questions via chat and asked them on behalf of participants, this enabled us to get through more questions than if we had virtually "handed the mike" to the questioners. We think it also encouraged some less confident people (and those for whom English is a second language) to ask questions.
* Co-hosts were available as backup to hosts, able to step in if needed (which it was in some cases)
* The volunteers were from a range of locations, and a number hadn't been involved in FOSS4G before - so it was a great way to introduce new people
* We kept the website simple (in Markdown on the OSGoe:UK site) and manually updated, with no app. This made it easy to update through the lifecycle of the conference, adding links to slides and recordings
* Hosting the recordings on a dedicated FOSS4G UK channel

=== What didn't work so well ===

* A tiny number of people did not get the link info via the eventbrite website for reasons that we don't understand (spam filters possibly) - if they mailed us we provided the link info to them directly.
* The coffee bar was not heavily used
* restricting the chat to participants to hosts only prevented interaction between delegates during and after the talk
* We had a high level of no-shows. A free sign-up encourages no shows but we wanted to make the event as accessible as possible.
* We had a low proportion of voluntary donations (<20%)
* Some people would have preferred there to be a lunch break, that might have been an opportunity to encourage people to try out the coffee bar.
* In the end we were a bit short of volunteers, and had to strongarm some friends to step in - this was a shame, as it was a great opportunity for new people to get involved. We should perhaps been more specific with the requirements (ie co-hosting), and pushed the volunteering a bit more - it seemed we were OK, but the dropout rate was about 50%

== What would we try to do if we ran another event? ==

FOSS4GUK 2020 Online - Lessons Learnt

2020-07-03T14:41:37Z

Wiki-Antonys: /* What didn't work so well */

'''This is a draft at the moment!'''

== Summary ==

[https://uk.osgeo.org/foss4gukonline2020/ FOSS4GUK 2020 Online] was hosted by the [https://uk.osgeo.org OSGeo:UK] committee on 17th June 2020 from 9.00am to 17.30pm UTC+1

The event was free to attend with all of the costs (see below) funded from OSGeo:UK reserves.

=== Delegates ===

* 1,000 people registered
* We estimate that between 500 and 600 attended
* Maximum number online at any time was 460, minimum was 205
* Delegates from 77 countries
** 48% from GB, 8% US, 4% India

[[File:FOSS4GUK Attendee Countries.png|frameless]]

=== [https://uk.osgeo.org/foss4gukonline2020/programme.html Programme] ===

* 3 streams running for the whole day (except during keynotes)
** 2 keynotes
** 29 talks and demos
** 4 Lightning talks
* 38 Speakers (10 women)
* Coffee bar stream where delegates could hang out and chat (not heavily used)

=== Finances ===
* The only costs were the fees for the zoom account for 1 month: £198
* Delegate donations:
** OSGeo:UK 63 individual donations - gross £1,810, net after Paypal fees £1,744 (as of 2020-06-20)
** MapAction ?

== Feedback ==

As of 2020-06-22 we had 210 feedback responses:
* 95% rated the event experience very good or excellent
* 93% were happy with the technology platform
* 27% attended for the whole day, 27% attended 7-11 sessions, 45% attended 2-6 sessions
* 16% used the coffee bar
* 47% of respondents (but not attendees) made a donation to OSGeo:UK (34%) or MapAction (13%). The average donation was ca £20
[[File:FOSS4GUK Satisfaction.png|frameless]]
[[File:FOSS4GUK Technology satisfaction.png|frameless]]
[[File:FOSS4GUK No of sessions attended.png|frameless]]

== Tech and tools ==

=== Choice of video conferencing platform ===

==== We considered ====

* webex (we had an offer of a free account from a sponsor) - problems with audio, uncertain linux support, limit on numbers
* hopin.to - a virtual conference application, unfortunately the demo the we attended was not successful and we did not feel comfortable taking the risk on a new service but it looks promising for the future
* several other services that did not seem to fit our needs
* jitsi - our experience of using the free hosted version left us uncomfortable with jitsi as platform for a large event with 3 streams. None of us had the experience or access to hardware and bandwidth to consider running a large self-hosted version of jitsi. We were also concerned about how we could control access or restrict anyone breaching our CoC
* several of us had experience of running large meetings on zoom and were confident that we could host the event on zoom and leverage it's capabilities.

==== What we learnt ====

* zoom worked as anticipated. We had no major technical problems and as far as we know very few participants experienced problems, zoom offers clients for Linux, Mac and Windows, iOS and Android.
* we were able to manage participants by muting everyone on entry and restricting chat within the app to messages to one of the hosts and from the hosts to the whole audience.
* the recording worked well, a co-host was asked to remind the host to start and stop the recording for each session to keep videos at a manageable size
* we saved all of the chat transcripts as part of our CoC policy (fortunately unnecessary)

We purchased:
* 1 account for up to 1,000 people for the keynotes
* 2 accounts for up to 500 people for the other streams
* 1 account for up to 100 people for the coffee bar
* An add on for large cloud storage for all of the video recordings
* '''Total cost £198''' (a month's licenses)

We over-provisioned because we did not know how many people would actually log-in. We could have managed with smaller accounts and saved some money.

It is unclear whether we would have been better off purchasing zoom webinar licenses rather than large meetings.

We were aware that the zoom meetings could have been streamed to youtube but we did not see any significant benefit from doing that.

==== Options for the future ====

We have received some retrospective suggestions for alternative tech approaches to running an online event. Hopefully others will be inspired to run further online FOSS4G events and they will experiment with these.

Our choices were based on a need for a low effort tech approach given our small team and pressures on our time. Despite the poor publicity that zoom had received re security during the COVID crisis we found that the security features available were sufficient for our needs.

=== Eventbrite ===

We used eventbrite for our registration system.

* It was free as the event was a free event, if we had charged £10 per registration we would have incurred cost including credit card fees of about 10%
* Eventbrite has an online event page which is only accessible to people who have registered, we only exposed the links to the conference streams via this page to minimise the risks of being overloaded or trolled.
* We added a registration question to request permission to add registrants to the global FOSS4G mailing list (we had a very high acceptance rate). '''This should be highly recommended practice for future FOSS4Gs'''
* We made the completion of a company address mandatory on registration because it forced people to provide their 2 digit country code which enabled us to analyse the locations of registrants. This will enable future FOSS4G to geographically segment the audience.
* We used the attendee mailing features to send a a series of emails to participants in the build up and post event. Its a bit clunky but it works fine and avoided having to maintain an alternative email list.

=== WhatsAppp ===

We used WhatsApp for team communications in the build up and on the day. We also had a group for our volunteers and were able to share updates with the volunteers before the event and it was the main channel of communication on the day

We could have considered a speakers group in addition.

=== Twitter ===

We used twitter as our main channel for publicity prior to the event. It is important to recognise that not everyone is on twitter, future events should consider what other channels to use for communication with potential participants.

We used twitter on the day for announcements, publicity and encouraged the participants to chat via twitter.

== Event organisation ==

* The event team was the 6 members of the OSGeo:UK organising committee we held our first call to discuss the event on 2020-04-13.
* We hosted our event website on the OSGeo:UK site at GitHub.
* We used Google forms for the call for papers and for a request for volunteers

=== Hosts and co-hosts ===

* For each stream of the event we had a host (one of the organising team + Nick Bearman) and co-host (volunteers).
* The [https://docs.google.com/document/d/1hlNl1EhbWa4ZjpXvsxz_V9Rid2VpIPmcnKBQ5089Jkg/edit?usp=sharing Host Guide] provided detailed guidance for hosts and co-hosts on how to run the session on zoom, detailed settings and what to do in the event of a code of conduct violation or other issue. This doc evolved as we ran a couple of trial sessions with volunteers.
* We recruited volunteers in the initial stages, though about half of those who put themselves forward dropped out or didn't respond later in the process. The main task for volunteering was co-hosting
* Because of a shortage of volunteers, we targetted people we knew to recruit the last three or so, and we had one reserve who wasn't needed
* We held a couple of briefing/test sessions for all volunteers on Zoom, and this also enabled us to get to know them a bit as well as test their tech
* On the day, the co-hosts were effectively 'reserve hosts', and on a few occasions, had to step in because the host had connection or other issues

=== Recording and publishing ===

* We asked hosts to start the recording before introducing the speaker and to stop the recording after questions. This created a separate recording for each speaker and made it a lot easier for the video team.
* It's easy to forget to start/stop the recordings so we asked the co-hosts to remind the hosts
* We purchased a large amount of cloud storage for recordings in preference to each host recording locally. This enabled the volunteers post-processing the video to access all of the recordings in one place.
* Our video volunteers topped and tailed each recording with an intro slide and closing slide
* Video was uploaded to the [http://www.youtube.com/c/FOSS4GUK FOSS4GUK YouTube] on 2020-06-23 and is linked from the [https://uk.osgeo.org/foss4gukonline2020/sessions.html programme] on the website where we also linked to the slides where provided.

=== What worked ===

* We kept to schedule throughout the day
* The 10 minute gaps between sessions stopped the day being too frantic
* We kept the 4 streams open for the whole day and swapped hosts to give everyone a break. This avoided having to share login details and seemed to work well
* Zoom proved to be adequate for our requirements, we had no trolling or security issues
* Speakers seemed happy presenting on zoom although most commented that presenting to a screen was very different to being in front of an audience.
* Restricting the chat to participants to hosts only prevented too much distraction.
* Hosts received questions via chat and asked them on behalf of participants, this enabled us to get through more questions than if we had virtually "handed the mike" to the questioners. We think it also encouraged some less confident people (and those for whom English is a second language) to ask questions.
* Co-hosts were available as backup to hosts, able to step in if needed (which it was in some cases)
* The volunteers were from a range of locations, and a number hadn't been involved in FOSS4G before - so it was a great way to introduce new people

=== What didn't work so well ===

* A tiny number of people did not get the link info via the eventbrite website for reasons that we don't understand (spam filters possibly) - if they mailed us we provided the link info to them directly.
* The coffee bar was not heavily used
* restricting the chat to participants to hosts only prevented interaction between delegates during and after the talk
* We had a high level of no-shows. A free sign-up encourages no shows but we wanted to make the event as accessible as possible.
* We had a low proportion of voluntary donations (<20%)
* Some people would have preferred there to be a lunch break, that might have been an opportunity to encourage people to try out the coffee bar.
* In the end we were a bit short of volunteers, and had to strongarm some friends to step in - this was a shame, as it was a great opportunity for new people to get involved. We should perhaps been more specific with the requirements (ie co-hosting), and pushed the volunteering a bit more - it seemed we were OK, but the dropout rate was about 50%

== What would we try to do if we ran another event? ==

FOSS4GUK 2020 Online - Lessons Learnt

2020-07-03T14:38:44Z

Wiki-Antonys: /* What worked */

'''This is a draft at the moment!'''

== Summary ==

[https://uk.osgeo.org/foss4gukonline2020/ FOSS4GUK 2020 Online] was hosted by the [https://uk.osgeo.org OSGeo:UK] committee on 17th June 2020 from 9.00am to 17.30pm UTC+1

The event was free to attend with all of the costs (see below) funded from OSGeo:UK reserves.

=== Delegates ===

* 1,000 people registered
* We estimate that between 500 and 600 attended
* Maximum number online at any time was 460, minimum was 205
* Delegates from 77 countries
** 48% from GB, 8% US, 4% India

[[File:FOSS4GUK Attendee Countries.png|frameless]]

=== [https://uk.osgeo.org/foss4gukonline2020/programme.html Programme] ===

* 3 streams running for the whole day (except during keynotes)
** 2 keynotes
** 29 talks and demos
** 4 Lightning talks
* 38 Speakers (10 women)
* Coffee bar stream where delegates could hang out and chat (not heavily used)

=== Finances ===
* The only costs were the fees for the zoom account for 1 month: £198
* Delegate donations:
** OSGeo:UK 63 individual donations - gross £1,810, net after Paypal fees £1,744 (as of 2020-06-20)
** MapAction ?

== Feedback ==

As of 2020-06-22 we had 210 feedback responses:
* 95% rated the event experience very good or excellent
* 93% were happy with the technology platform
* 27% attended for the whole day, 27% attended 7-11 sessions, 45% attended 2-6 sessions
* 16% used the coffee bar
* 47% of respondents (but not attendees) made a donation to OSGeo:UK (34%) or MapAction (13%). The average donation was ca £20
[[File:FOSS4GUK Satisfaction.png|frameless]]
[[File:FOSS4GUK Technology satisfaction.png|frameless]]
[[File:FOSS4GUK No of sessions attended.png|frameless]]

== Tech and tools ==

=== Choice of video conferencing platform ===

==== We considered ====

* webex (we had an offer of a free account from a sponsor) - problems with audio, uncertain linux support, limit on numbers
* hopin.to - a virtual conference application, unfortunately the demo the we attended was not successful and we did not feel comfortable taking the risk on a new service but it looks promising for the future
* several other services that did not seem to fit our needs
* jitsi - our experience of using the free hosted version left us uncomfortable with jitsi as platform for a large event with 3 streams. None of us had the experience or access to hardware and bandwidth to consider running a large self-hosted version of jitsi. We were also concerned about how we could control access or restrict anyone breaching our CoC
* several of us had experience of running large meetings on zoom and were confident that we could host the event on zoom and leverage it's capabilities.

==== What we learnt ====

* zoom worked as anticipated. We had no major technical problems and as far as we know very few participants experienced problems, zoom offers clients for Linux, Mac and Windows, iOS and Android.
* we were able to manage participants by muting everyone on entry and restricting chat within the app to messages to one of the hosts and from the hosts to the whole audience.
* the recording worked well, a co-host was asked to remind the host to start and stop the recording for each session to keep videos at a manageable size
* we saved all of the chat transcripts as part of our CoC policy (fortunately unnecessary)

We purchased:
* 1 account for up to 1,000 people for the keynotes
* 2 accounts for up to 500 people for the other streams
* 1 account for up to 100 people for the coffee bar
* An add on for large cloud storage for all of the video recordings
* '''Total cost £198''' (a month's licenses)

We over-provisioned because we did not know how many people would actually log-in. We could have managed with smaller accounts and saved some money.

It is unclear whether we would have been better off purchasing zoom webinar licenses rather than large meetings.

We were aware that the zoom meetings could have been streamed to youtube but we did not see any significant benefit from doing that.

==== Options for the future ====

We have received some retrospective suggestions for alternative tech approaches to running an online event. Hopefully others will be inspired to run further online FOSS4G events and they will experiment with these.

Our choices were based on a need for a low effort tech approach given our small team and pressures on our time. Despite the poor publicity that zoom had received re security during the COVID crisis we found that the security features available were sufficient for our needs.

=== Eventbrite ===

We used eventbrite for our registration system.

* It was free as the event was a free event, if we had charged £10 per registration we would have incurred cost including credit card fees of about 10%
* Eventbrite has an online event page which is only accessible to people who have registered, we only exposed the links to the conference streams via this page to minimise the risks of being overloaded or trolled.
* We added a registration question to request permission to add registrants to the global FOSS4G mailing list (we had a very high acceptance rate). '''This should be highly recommended practice for future FOSS4Gs'''
* We made the completion of a company address mandatory on registration because it forced people to provide their 2 digit country code which enabled us to analyse the locations of registrants. This will enable future FOSS4G to geographically segment the audience.
* We used the attendee mailing features to send a a series of emails to participants in the build up and post event. Its a bit clunky but it works fine and avoided having to maintain an alternative email list.

=== WhatsAppp ===

We used WhatsApp for team communications in the build up and on the day. We also had a group for our volunteers and were able to share updates with the volunteers before the event and it was the main channel of communication on the day

We could have considered a speakers group in addition.

=== Twitter ===

We used twitter as our main channel for publicity prior to the event. It is important to recognise that not everyone is on twitter, future events should consider what other channels to use for communication with potential participants.

We used twitter on the day for announcements, publicity and encouraged the participants to chat via twitter.

== Event organisation ==

* The event team was the 6 members of the OSGeo:UK organising committee we held our first call to discuss the event on 2020-04-13.
* We hosted our event website on the OSGeo:UK site at GitHub.
* We used Google forms for the call for papers and for a request for volunteers

=== Hosts and co-hosts ===

* For each stream of the event we had a host (one of the organising team + Nick Bearman) and co-host (volunteers).
* The [https://docs.google.com/document/d/1hlNl1EhbWa4ZjpXvsxz_V9Rid2VpIPmcnKBQ5089Jkg/edit?usp=sharing Host Guide] provided detailed guidance for hosts and co-hosts on how to run the session on zoom, detailed settings and what to do in the event of a code of conduct violation or other issue. This doc evolved as we ran a couple of trial sessions with volunteers.
* We recruited volunteers in the initial stages, though about half of those who put themselves forward dropped out or didn't respond later in the process. The main task for volunteering was co-hosting
* Because of a shortage of volunteers, we targetted people we knew to recruit the last three or so, and we had one reserve who wasn't needed
* We held a couple of briefing/test sessions for all volunteers on Zoom, and this also enabled us to get to know them a bit as well as test their tech
* On the day, the co-hosts were effectively 'reserve hosts', and on a few occasions, had to step in because the host had connection or other issues

=== Recording and publishing ===

* We asked hosts to start the recording before introducing the speaker and to stop the recording after questions. This created a separate recording for each speaker and made it a lot easier for the video team.
* It's easy to forget to start/stop the recordings so we asked the co-hosts to remind the hosts
* We purchased a large amount of cloud storage for recordings in preference to each host recording locally. This enabled the volunteers post-processing the video to access all of the recordings in one place.
* Our video volunteers topped and tailed each recording with an intro slide and closing slide
* Video was uploaded to the [http://www.youtube.com/c/FOSS4GUK FOSS4GUK YouTube] on 2020-06-23 and is linked from the [https://uk.osgeo.org/foss4gukonline2020/sessions.html programme] on the website where we also linked to the slides where provided.

=== What worked ===

* We kept to schedule throughout the day
* The 10 minute gaps between sessions stopped the day being too frantic
* We kept the 4 streams open for the whole day and swapped hosts to give everyone a break. This avoided having to share login details and seemed to work well
* Zoom proved to be adequate for our requirements, we had no trolling or security issues
* Speakers seemed happy presenting on zoom although most commented that presenting to a screen was very different to being in front of an audience.
* Restricting the chat to participants to hosts only prevented too much distraction.
* Hosts received questions via chat and asked them on behalf of participants, this enabled us to get through more questions than if we had virtually "handed the mike" to the questioners. We think it also encouraged some less confident people (and those for whom English is a second language) to ask questions.
* Co-hosts were available as backup to hosts, able to step in if needed (which it was in some cases)
* The volunteers were from a range of locations, and a number hadn't been involved in FOSS4G before - so it was a great way to introduce new people

=== What didn't work so well ===

* A tiny number of people did not get the link info via the eventbrite website for reasons that we don't understand (spam filters possibly) - if they mailed us we provided the link info to them directly.
* The coffee bar was not heavily used
* restricting the chat to participants to hosts only prevented interaction between delegates during and after the talk
* We had a high level of no-shows. A free sign-up encourages no shows but we wanted to make the event as accessible as possible.
* We had a low proportion of voluntary donations (<20%)
* Some people would have preferred there to be a lunch break, that might have been an opportunity to encourage people to try out the coffee bar.

== What would we try to do if we ran another event? ==

FOSS4GUK 2020 Online - Lessons Learnt

2020-07-03T14:37:36Z

Wiki-Antonys: /* What worked */

'''This is a draft at the moment!'''

== Summary ==

[https://uk.osgeo.org/foss4gukonline2020/ FOSS4GUK 2020 Online] was hosted by the [https://uk.osgeo.org OSGeo:UK] committee on 17th June 2020 from 9.00am to 17.30pm UTC+1

The event was free to attend with all of the costs (see below) funded from OSGeo:UK reserves.

=== Delegates ===

* 1,000 people registered
* We estimate that between 500 and 600 attended
* Maximum number online at any time was 460, minimum was 205
* Delegates from 77 countries
** 48% from GB, 8% US, 4% India

[[File:FOSS4GUK Attendee Countries.png|frameless]]

=== [https://uk.osgeo.org/foss4gukonline2020/programme.html Programme] ===

* 3 streams running for the whole day (except during keynotes)
** 2 keynotes
** 29 talks and demos
** 4 Lightning talks
* 38 Speakers (10 women)
* Coffee bar stream where delegates could hang out and chat (not heavily used)

=== Finances ===
* The only costs were the fees for the zoom account for 1 month: £198
* Delegate donations:
** OSGeo:UK 63 individual donations - gross £1,810, net after Paypal fees £1,744 (as of 2020-06-20)
** MapAction ?

== Feedback ==

As of 2020-06-22 we had 210 feedback responses:
* 95% rated the event experience very good or excellent
* 93% were happy with the technology platform
* 27% attended for the whole day, 27% attended 7-11 sessions, 45% attended 2-6 sessions
* 16% used the coffee bar
* 47% of respondents (but not attendees) made a donation to OSGeo:UK (34%) or MapAction (13%). The average donation was ca £20
[[File:FOSS4GUK Satisfaction.png|frameless]]
[[File:FOSS4GUK Technology satisfaction.png|frameless]]
[[File:FOSS4GUK No of sessions attended.png|frameless]]

== Tech and tools ==

=== Choice of video conferencing platform ===

==== We considered ====

* webex (we had an offer of a free account from a sponsor) - problems with audio, uncertain linux support, limit on numbers
* hopin.to - a virtual conference application, unfortunately the demo the we attended was not successful and we did not feel comfortable taking the risk on a new service but it looks promising for the future
* several other services that did not seem to fit our needs
* jitsi - our experience of using the free hosted version left us uncomfortable with jitsi as platform for a large event with 3 streams. None of us had the experience or access to hardware and bandwidth to consider running a large self-hosted version of jitsi. We were also concerned about how we could control access or restrict anyone breaching our CoC
* several of us had experience of running large meetings on zoom and were confident that we could host the event on zoom and leverage it's capabilities.

==== What we learnt ====

* zoom worked as anticipated. We had no major technical problems and as far as we know very few participants experienced problems, zoom offers clients for Linux, Mac and Windows, iOS and Android.
* we were able to manage participants by muting everyone on entry and restricting chat within the app to messages to one of the hosts and from the hosts to the whole audience.
* the recording worked well, a co-host was asked to remind the host to start and stop the recording for each session to keep videos at a manageable size
* we saved all of the chat transcripts as part of our CoC policy (fortunately unnecessary)

We purchased:
* 1 account for up to 1,000 people for the keynotes
* 2 accounts for up to 500 people for the other streams
* 1 account for up to 100 people for the coffee bar
* An add on for large cloud storage for all of the video recordings
* '''Total cost £198''' (a month's licenses)

We over-provisioned because we did not know how many people would actually log-in. We could have managed with smaller accounts and saved some money.

It is unclear whether we would have been better off purchasing zoom webinar licenses rather than large meetings.

We were aware that the zoom meetings could have been streamed to youtube but we did not see any significant benefit from doing that.

==== Options for the future ====

We have received some retrospective suggestions for alternative tech approaches to running an online event. Hopefully others will be inspired to run further online FOSS4G events and they will experiment with these.

Our choices were based on a need for a low effort tech approach given our small team and pressures on our time. Despite the poor publicity that zoom had received re security during the COVID crisis we found that the security features available were sufficient for our needs.

=== Eventbrite ===

We used eventbrite for our registration system.

* It was free as the event was a free event, if we had charged £10 per registration we would have incurred cost including credit card fees of about 10%
* Eventbrite has an online event page which is only accessible to people who have registered, we only exposed the links to the conference streams via this page to minimise the risks of being overloaded or trolled.
* We added a registration question to request permission to add registrants to the global FOSS4G mailing list (we had a very high acceptance rate). '''This should be highly recommended practice for future FOSS4Gs'''
* We made the completion of a company address mandatory on registration because it forced people to provide their 2 digit country code which enabled us to analyse the locations of registrants. This will enable future FOSS4G to geographically segment the audience.
* We used the attendee mailing features to send a a series of emails to participants in the build up and post event. Its a bit clunky but it works fine and avoided having to maintain an alternative email list.

=== WhatsAppp ===

We used WhatsApp for team communications in the build up and on the day. We also had a group for our volunteers and were able to share updates with the volunteers before the event and it was the main channel of communication on the day

We could have considered a speakers group in addition.

=== Twitter ===

We used twitter as our main channel for publicity prior to the event. It is important to recognise that not everyone is on twitter, future events should consider what other channels to use for communication with potential participants.

We used twitter on the day for announcements, publicity and encouraged the participants to chat via twitter.

== Event organisation ==

* The event team was the 6 members of the OSGeo:UK organising committee we held our first call to discuss the event on 2020-04-13.
* We hosted our event website on the OSGeo:UK site at GitHub.
* We used Google forms for the call for papers and for a request for volunteers

=== Hosts and co-hosts ===

* For each stream of the event we had a host (one of the organising team + Nick Bearman) and co-host (volunteers).
* The [https://docs.google.com/document/d/1hlNl1EhbWa4ZjpXvsxz_V9Rid2VpIPmcnKBQ5089Jkg/edit?usp=sharing Host Guide] provided detailed guidance for hosts and co-hosts on how to run the session on zoom, detailed settings and what to do in the event of a code of conduct violation or other issue. This doc evolved as we ran a couple of trial sessions with volunteers.
* We recruited volunteers in the initial stages, though about half of those who put themselves forward dropped out or didn't respond later in the process. The main task for volunteering was co-hosting
* Because of a shortage of volunteers, we targetted people we knew to recruit the last three or so, and we had one reserve who wasn't needed
* We held a couple of briefing/test sessions for all volunteers on Zoom, and this also enabled us to get to know them a bit as well as test their tech
* On the day, the co-hosts were effectively 'reserve hosts', and on a few occasions, had to step in because the host had connection or other issues

=== Recording and publishing ===

* We asked hosts to start the recording before introducing the speaker and to stop the recording after questions. This created a separate recording for each speaker and made it a lot easier for the video team.
* It's easy to forget to start/stop the recordings so we asked the co-hosts to remind the hosts
* We purchased a large amount of cloud storage for recordings in preference to each host recording locally. This enabled the volunteers post-processing the video to access all of the recordings in one place.
* Our video volunteers topped and tailed each recording with an intro slide and closing slide
* Video was uploaded to the [http://www.youtube.com/c/FOSS4GUK FOSS4GUK YouTube] on 2020-06-23 and is linked from the [https://uk.osgeo.org/foss4gukonline2020/sessions.html programme] on the website where we also linked to the slides where provided.

=== What worked ===

* We kept to schedule throughout the day
* The 10 minute gaps between sessions stopped the day being too frantic
* We kept the 4 streams open for the whole day and swapped hosts to give everyone a break. This avoided having to share login details and seemed to work well
* Zoom proved to be adequate for our requirements, we had no trolling or security issues
* Speakers seemed happy presenting on zoom although most commented that presenting to a screen was very different to being in front of an audience.
* Restricting the chat to participants to hosts only prevented too much distraction.
* Hosts received questions via chat and asked them on behalf of participants, this enabled us to get through more questions than if we had virtually "handed the mike" to the questioners. We think it also encouraged some less confident people (and those for whom English is a second language) to ask questions.
* Co-hosts were available as backup to hosts, able to step in if needed (which it was in some cases)

=== What didn't work so well ===

* A tiny number of people did not get the link info via the eventbrite website for reasons that we don't understand (spam filters possibly) - if they mailed us we provided the link info to them directly.
* The coffee bar was not heavily used
* restricting the chat to participants to hosts only prevented interaction between delegates during and after the talk
* We had a high level of no-shows. A free sign-up encourages no shows but we wanted to make the event as accessible as possible.
* We had a low proportion of voluntary donations (<20%)
* Some people would have preferred there to be a lunch break, that might have been an opportunity to encourage people to try out the coffee bar.

== What would we try to do if we ran another event? ==

FOSS4GUK 2020 Online - Lessons Learnt

2020-07-03T14:35:33Z

Wiki-Antonys: /* Hosts and co-hosts */

'''This is a draft at the moment!'''

== Summary ==

[https://uk.osgeo.org/foss4gukonline2020/ FOSS4GUK 2020 Online] was hosted by the [https://uk.osgeo.org OSGeo:UK] committee on 17th June 2020 from 9.00am to 17.30pm UTC+1

The event was free to attend with all of the costs (see below) funded from OSGeo:UK reserves.

=== Delegates ===

* 1,000 people registered
* We estimate that between 500 and 600 attended
* Maximum number online at any time was 460, minimum was 205
* Delegates from 77 countries
** 48% from GB, 8% US, 4% India

[[File:FOSS4GUK Attendee Countries.png|frameless]]

=== [https://uk.osgeo.org/foss4gukonline2020/programme.html Programme] ===

* 3 streams running for the whole day (except during keynotes)
** 2 keynotes
** 29 talks and demos
** 4 Lightning talks
* 38 Speakers (10 women)
* Coffee bar stream where delegates could hang out and chat (not heavily used)

=== Finances ===
* The only costs were the fees for the zoom account for 1 month: £198
* Delegate donations:
** OSGeo:UK 63 individual donations - gross £1,810, net after Paypal fees £1,744 (as of 2020-06-20)
** MapAction ?

== Feedback ==

As of 2020-06-22 we had 210 feedback responses:
* 95% rated the event experience very good or excellent
* 93% were happy with the technology platform
* 27% attended for the whole day, 27% attended 7-11 sessions, 45% attended 2-6 sessions
* 16% used the coffee bar
* 47% of respondents (but not attendees) made a donation to OSGeo:UK (34%) or MapAction (13%). The average donation was ca £20
[[File:FOSS4GUK Satisfaction.png|frameless]]
[[File:FOSS4GUK Technology satisfaction.png|frameless]]
[[File:FOSS4GUK No of sessions attended.png|frameless]]

== Tech and tools ==

=== Choice of video conferencing platform ===

==== We considered ====

* webex (we had an offer of a free account from a sponsor) - problems with audio, uncertain linux support, limit on numbers
* hopin.to - a virtual conference application, unfortunately the demo the we attended was not successful and we did not feel comfortable taking the risk on a new service but it looks promising for the future
* several other services that did not seem to fit our needs
* jitsi - our experience of using the free hosted version left us uncomfortable with jitsi as platform for a large event with 3 streams. None of us had the experience or access to hardware and bandwidth to consider running a large self-hosted version of jitsi. We were also concerned about how we could control access or restrict anyone breaching our CoC
* several of us had experience of running large meetings on zoom and were confident that we could host the event on zoom and leverage it's capabilities.

==== What we learnt ====

* zoom worked as anticipated. We had no major technical problems and as far as we know very few participants experienced problems, zoom offers clients for Linux, Mac and Windows, iOS and Android.
* we were able to manage participants by muting everyone on entry and restricting chat within the app to messages to one of the hosts and from the hosts to the whole audience.
* the recording worked well, a co-host was asked to remind the host to start and stop the recording for each session to keep videos at a manageable size
* we saved all of the chat transcripts as part of our CoC policy (fortunately unnecessary)

We purchased:
* 1 account for up to 1,000 people for the keynotes
* 2 accounts for up to 500 people for the other streams
* 1 account for up to 100 people for the coffee bar
* An add on for large cloud storage for all of the video recordings
* '''Total cost £198''' (a month's licenses)

We over-provisioned because we did not know how many people would actually log-in. We could have managed with smaller accounts and saved some money.

It is unclear whether we would have been better off purchasing zoom webinar licenses rather than large meetings.

We were aware that the zoom meetings could have been streamed to youtube but we did not see any significant benefit from doing that.

==== Options for the future ====

We have received some retrospective suggestions for alternative tech approaches to running an online event. Hopefully others will be inspired to run further online FOSS4G events and they will experiment with these.

Our choices were based on a need for a low effort tech approach given our small team and pressures on our time. Despite the poor publicity that zoom had received re security during the COVID crisis we found that the security features available were sufficient for our needs.

=== Eventbrite ===

We used eventbrite for our registration system.

* It was free as the event was a free event, if we had charged £10 per registration we would have incurred cost including credit card fees of about 10%
* Eventbrite has an online event page which is only accessible to people who have registered, we only exposed the links to the conference streams via this page to minimise the risks of being overloaded or trolled.
* We added a registration question to request permission to add registrants to the global FOSS4G mailing list (we had a very high acceptance rate). '''This should be highly recommended practice for future FOSS4Gs'''
* We made the completion of a company address mandatory on registration because it forced people to provide their 2 digit country code which enabled us to analyse the locations of registrants. This will enable future FOSS4G to geographically segment the audience.
* We used the attendee mailing features to send a a series of emails to participants in the build up and post event. Its a bit clunky but it works fine and avoided having to maintain an alternative email list.

=== WhatsAppp ===

We used WhatsApp for team communications in the build up and on the day. We also had a group for our volunteers and were able to share updates with the volunteers before the event and it was the main channel of communication on the day

We could have considered a speakers group in addition.

=== Twitter ===

We used twitter as our main channel for publicity prior to the event. It is important to recognise that not everyone is on twitter, future events should consider what other channels to use for communication with potential participants.

We used twitter on the day for announcements, publicity and encouraged the participants to chat via twitter.

== Event organisation ==

* The event team was the 6 members of the OSGeo:UK organising committee we held our first call to discuss the event on 2020-04-13.
* We hosted our event website on the OSGeo:UK site at GitHub.
* We used Google forms for the call for papers and for a request for volunteers

=== Hosts and co-hosts ===

* For each stream of the event we had a host (one of the organising team + Nick Bearman) and co-host (volunteers).
* The [https://docs.google.com/document/d/1hlNl1EhbWa4ZjpXvsxz_V9Rid2VpIPmcnKBQ5089Jkg/edit?usp=sharing Host Guide] provided detailed guidance for hosts and co-hosts on how to run the session on zoom, detailed settings and what to do in the event of a code of conduct violation or other issue. This doc evolved as we ran a couple of trial sessions with volunteers.
* We recruited volunteers in the initial stages, though about half of those who put themselves forward dropped out or didn't respond later in the process. The main task for volunteering was co-hosting
* Because of a shortage of volunteers, we targetted people we knew to recruit the last three or so, and we had one reserve who wasn't needed
* We held a couple of briefing/test sessions for all volunteers on Zoom, and this also enabled us to get to know them a bit as well as test their tech
* On the day, the co-hosts were effectively 'reserve hosts', and on a few occasions, had to step in because the host had connection or other issues

=== Recording and publishing ===

* We asked hosts to start the recording before introducing the speaker and to stop the recording after questions. This created a separate recording for each speaker and made it a lot easier for the video team.
* It's easy to forget to start/stop the recordings so we asked the co-hosts to remind the hosts
* We purchased a large amount of cloud storage for recordings in preference to each host recording locally. This enabled the volunteers post-processing the video to access all of the recordings in one place.
* Our video volunteers topped and tailed each recording with an intro slide and closing slide
* Video was uploaded to the [http://www.youtube.com/c/FOSS4GUK FOSS4GUK YouTube] on 2020-06-23 and is linked from the [https://uk.osgeo.org/foss4gukonline2020/sessions.html programme] on the website where we also linked to the slides where provided.

=== What worked ===

* We kept to schedule throughout the day
* The 10 minute gaps between sessions stopped the day being too frantic
* We kept the 4 streams open for the whole day and swapped hosts to give everyone a break. This avoided having to share login details and seemed to work well
* zoom proved to be adequate for our requirements, we had no trolling or security issues
* speakers seemed happy presenting on zoom although most commented that presenting to a screen was very different to being in front of an audience.
* restricting the chat to participants to hosts only prevented too much distraction.
* Hosts received questions via chat and asked them on behalf of participants, this enabled us to get through more questions than if we had virtually "handed the mike" to the questioners. We think it also encouraged some less confident people (and those for whom English is a second language) to ask questions.

=== What didn't work so well ===

* A tiny number of people did not get the link info via the eventbrite website for reasons that we don't understand (spam filters possibly) - if they mailed us we provided the link info to them directly.
* The coffee bar was not heavily used
* restricting the chat to participants to hosts only prevented interaction between delegates during and after the talk
* We had a high level of no-shows. A free sign-up encourages no shows but we wanted to make the event as accessible as possible.
* We had a low proportion of voluntary donations (<20%)
* Some people would have preferred there to be a lunch break, that might have been an opportunity to encourage people to try out the coffee bar.

== What would we try to do if we ran another event? ==

Ant Scott

2017-09-07T06:35:50Z

Wiki-Antonys:

{{OSGeo Member
|Name=Ant Scott
|JobTitle=Geospatial Consultant
|Company=Astun Technology
|Address=17 West St, Epsom KT18 7RL
|Country=United Kingdom
|City=Epsom
|Coordinate=51.33321, -0.27288
|LocalChapter=OSGeo UK
|Email=antony.scott@gmail.com
|Phone=07866455515
|SocialMedia=@antscott;
|Languages=English; French;
}}
{{OSGeo Experience
|User=Yes
|Committee=Yes
|Board=No
|Coder=No
|Translate=No
|PSC=No
|ExBoard=No
|Charter=No
|Chair=No
|SolKatz=No
|Committer=No
}}
I've been using OSGeo software since 2010, as a student and a consultant. I was a member of the Local Organising Committee for FOSS4G 2013 in the UK, and of the Committee for FOSS4GUK on 2016. I'm currently secretary of OSGeo:UK, and run QGIS training (amongst other activities) for Astun Technology, and for MapAction, for whom I'm a volunteer.
[[Category:OSGeo_Advocate]]

Ant Scott

2017-09-07T06:33:24Z

Wiki-Antonys:

Ant Scott

2017-09-06T15:16:36Z

Wiki-Antonys:

Ant Scott

2017-09-06T15:15:57Z

Wiki-Antonys: Created page with "{{OSGeo Member |Name=Ant Scott |JobTitle=Geospatial Consultant |Company=Astun Technology |Address=17 West St, Epsom KT18 7RL |Country=United Kingdom |City=Epsom |Coordinate=-0..."

United Kingdom

2012-09-07T13:07:12Z

Wiki-Antonys: /* People */

== Mission ==

The UK local chapter of OSGeo wishes to establish a focal point for developers and users of open source geospatial software within the UK, for networking and advice, and to raise the profile of open source geospatial development within the UK. It wishes to promote open source geospatial software as a viable choice for all types of user. While it has been suggested that a separate local chapter could better serve the particular geographic and logistical requirements of Scotland, the UK chapter wishes to include all regions and countries within the UK and Ireland. If there is significant interest in forming geographically separate chapters, then the UK chapter will promote these sister organisations, assist with formation and growth, and collaborate in the holding of international events.

'''Objectives'''

*To provide a forum for discussion and promotion of Open Source Geospatial Software in the UK, and provide networking opportunities for developers and users
*To help more UK organisations discover the opportunity of open source geospatial tools, and collate business studies of successful transitions
*To raise awareness of the benefits of public access to geodata in the UK by collating links to sources of legitimate free data

In addition we would like to work towards the following:
*A fully-featured open access UK SDI
*Someday hosting the FOSS4G conference in the UK

'''Official representative'''

Ian Edwards, Met Office

If the majority of chapter members wish, the post of official representative will be elected on a periodic basis.

== Links to Case Studies ==

Please add any appropriate links here

* City of Munich move to a completely open source software solution [http://wiki.osgeo.org/wiki/Image:Free_softw.pdf (pdf)]
* Interview with CIO of Oxford Archaeology on the move towards open source [http://searchenterpriselinux.techtarget.com/news/article/0,289142,sid39_gci1315258,00.html]
* Not strictly a Case Study, but a useful discussion on the differences between Open Source Business Models in Europe and the US [http://lmaugustin.typepad.com/lma/2008/09/commercial-open-source-in-europe-verses-the-us.html]
* Actuate Annual Open Source Survey 2008 shows open source is entering the business mainstream in both Europe and the US [http://www.actuate.com/company/news/press-releases-resources.asp?ArticleId=13847]
* The British Transport Police are embracing an open source geospatial business model [http://www.geoconnexion.com/uploads/open-source_ukv6i5.pdf (pdf)]

== Publicly Available Geodata ==

In progress- please contact the mailing list if you have any legitimate free sources of geospatial data that you would like to include

[[Public Geodata for the UK]]

Also check the [http://ckan.net/tag/read/geodata CKAN pages] for geodata sources- mainly global but some UK. The [[Open Knowledge Foundation]] maintains CKAN and is interested in putting more [[Location in CKAN]].

== Open Source Tools for Ordnance Survey's products ==
[http://wiki.osgeo.org/wiki/os_tools_for_os OS Tools]

== Mailing List ==

http://lists.osgeo.org/mailman/listinfo/uk

== Meetings and Events ==

One really useful role of a UK OSGeo chapter would be as a focal point for organising meetings - evening presentation sessions or short seminars with Q and A afterwards.

=== Upcoming Events ===

'''11th March 2009''' The Association for Geographic Information (AGI) Technical Special Interest Group are organising an open source event to be held at the British Antarctic Survey HQ in Cambridge. I assume you have to be a member of the AGI to go, but will ask.

'''22nd June 2009''' [http://www.opensourcegis.org.uk/ Open Source GIS conference]. The local chapter are co-organising this event in conjunction with the University of Nottingham Centre for Geospatial Sciences, which is a great chance to find out what's really happening in open source GIS in the UK. See the website for details and get in touch if you want to be involved.

=== Recent Events ===

'''22nd January 2009''' [http://geospatial.bcs.org/web/?q=osgeo British Computing Society Geospatial Specialist Group]. Jo talked about OSGeo, and about open source GIS in the UK at the BCS headquarters in London.

'''29th September - 3rd October 2008:''' [http://conference.osgeo.org/foss4g/2008 FOSS4G 2008].

'''24-25th September 2008:''' [http://www.agi.org.uk/ AGI Geocommunity 08].

'''16-17th June 2008:''' Meetup during the University of Nottingham's [http://www.nottingham.ac.uk/geography/geowebservices/ Geowebservices workshop].

'''1st May 2008:''' UK OSGEO meetup after 1Spatial Conference at Radisson Hotel, Stansted.

'''8th-10th December 2006''':
The UK-originated [http://openguides.org/ OpenGuides] Open Source spatial wiki project meetup and "hackfest" in Oxford - http://dev.openguides.org/wiki/OxfordMeetup2006

'''
Tuesday September, 26th 2006''': Steve Coast of OpenStreetmap fame gave a talk to the BCS entitled Geospatial Open Source Activity. Details at [http://geospatial.bcs.org/site/index.php?s=future-events#3 http://geospatial.bcs.org/site/index.php?s=future-events#3]

[http://openstreetmap.org/ OpenStreetmap] also have regular UK mapping parties in different cities

== People ==

Sign up here to show interest! Also join the [http://lists.osgeo.org/mailman/listinfo/uk mailing list] so we can be in touch directly.

* [[User:Chrisputtick]]- Yes, definitely worth doing
* [[User:JoCook| Jo Cook]] - woohoo!
* [[User:Leifuss]]
* [[User:Stuarteve]] - +1
* [[User:JoWalsh]]
* [[User:andyt]]
* [[User:Davidjlock]]
* [[User:Simon]] - Excellent! All for this!!
* [[User:Graeme]]
* [[User:SteveW]]
* [[User::andrewlarcombe]]
* [[User:Gagravarr]] - involved in OpenGuides and OpenStreetMap in the UK
* [[User:Mdgreaney]]
* [[User:Mander]] - New to all this, but it sounds interesting and I'd like to be involved.
* [[User:rollo]] - sign me up!
* [[User:SimonAbele]]
* [[User:Borntopedal]]
* [[User:Jcrone]]
* [[User:AntBeck]]
* [[User:Robert Newnham]]
* Suchith Anand
* [[User:Bill Wilcox]]
* [[User:JonathanGray]]
* [[User:Amarti]]
* [[User:Dan Olner|Dan Olner]]: [http://www.geog.leeds.ac.uk/ Department at Leeds]; [http://www.coveredinbees.org blog]
* [[User:Barryrowlingson]]
* [[User:doublebyte]]: [http://casa.ucl.ac.uk/JoanaMargarida/ hi there]
* [[User:Hurston|David Staveley]] - Archaeological geophysicist, and just starting to get into GIS
* [[User:Walkermatt|Matt Walker]] - [http://www.astuntechnology.com Astun Technology]
* [[User:giuliop|Giulio Pagan]] - [MapGuide Open Source and FDO specialists at Autodesk Consulting]
* [[User:mikesaunt|Mike Saunt]] - [http://www.isharemaps.com Astun Technology Ltd]
* [[User:sabb|Saber Razmjooei]] - [http://www.faunalia.co.uk Faunalia]
* [[User:chris.little|Chris Little]] - [http://www.opengeospatial.org/ OGC Chair Met-Ocean DWG], [http://www.metoffice.gov.uk/ Met Office] & [http://www.wmo.int/ WMO]
* [[User:tanoshimi]]
* [[User:antonys|Antony Scott]]

== See Also ==

[[Useful Links UK]]

[[Category:United Kingdom]]
[[Category:Local Chapter]]

FOSS4G 2010 Breakout Sessions

2010-09-08T14:50:57Z

Wiki-Antonys:

[[Category:FOSS4G]]
[[Category:FOSS4G2010]]

back to [[FOSS4G 2010]]

= Introduction =
During the [http://2010.foss4g.org/ FOSS4G2010 conference] in Barcelona, Spain, there will be conference rooms available for people to hold Breakout Sessions (aka Birds-of-a-Feather).

Breakout Sessions sessions are unstructured timeslots where people can self-organise themselves to discuss topics of interest.

This year, Breakout Sessions sessions will be held on Wednesday 8th September ('''and possibly at other times as well - depending on interest'''). A number of rooms will be available. Most popular sessions will get bigger rooms.

'''Room allocation to be determined'''

==Organising Contact==
* [[Tyler Mitchell]]
* [[Mauricio Miranda]]
* Other volunteers welcome - sign up here!

==Timeslots Available==

At this stage, each room is scheduled for one hour between 18:00 to 19:00.

Remember the Gala Dinner is scheduled at 20:00.

=Room Assignments=
== Rooms Available ==

We will need to share the biggest rooms because we have more sessions than rooms.

Add your name to the "Moderator" column if you feel as a session's leader.

Please, contact us to ask for changes.

{| class="wikitable" border="1"
|-
! width="120" | Room
! width="250" | Tuesday 07
! width="250" | Wednesday 08
! width="300" | Moderator
|-
| Room 3
|
*Flex Mapping (Alternatives to HTML)
|
|
Sébastien Deleuze
|-
| Room 4 (75 pax)
|
|
*QGIS user & developer meeting
*Tiling meeting
|
|-
| Room 5 (250 pax)
|
|
*Spatial Data Infrastructure
*Virtualization and Cloud Computing BoF
*Java GeoSpatial

|
|-
| Room 6 (320 pax)
|
|
*Sensor Web BoF
*Biodiversity/conservation projects and FOSS4G tools
*Spatial OLAP

|
*Simon Jirka
*Javier de la Torre 
*-

|-
| Room 8 (100 pax)
|
|
*Web Client (OpenLayers/GeoExt)

|
|-
| Room 11 (78 pax)
|
|
*WPS BoF

|
*Bastian Schäffer
|-
| Room 12 (90 pax)
|
|
*Spatial Databases BoF

|
|}

= Proposed Topics =

* Add yours below...

==Web Client (OpenLayers/GeoExt)==

The first half of this session will be focused on OpenLayers, and the second half will focus on GeoExt. We can decide on topics at the start of each session, but we'll likely cover ideas for OpenLayers 3.0/GeoExt 1.0, getting more developers involved, and just some general Q/A time.

'''Coming:'''

* Tim Schaub
* Eric Lemoine
* Frédéric Junod
* David Jonglez - for the first half, at least
* Florin Iosub
* Xurxo Méndez
* [[Ricardo Pinho|Ricardo Pinho]] (depending on the schedule)
* [[Nuno Guerreiro|Nuno Guerreiro]]
* Hugo Pereira
* [[Just van den Broecke|Just van den Broecke]]
* Simon Lopez
* Richard Greenwood
* Andreas Hocevar
* Volker Grabsch
* Matthias Pohl
* Kris Geusebroek - for the first (OpenLayers) half at least
* Jeroen van Wilgenburg
* Edwin Commandeur
* Cédric Moullet
* Julien-Samuel Lacroix
* Add your name here

==Spatial Databases BoF==

Relational and non-relational persistence layers, let's get together and talk about interoperability, appropriate use cases, architecture and where we should be moving the spatial persistence state-of-the-art!

'''Coming:'''

* Paul Ramsey (PostGIS)
* Nicklas Avén (PostGIS)
* Brent Wood (NIWA)
* Peter Baumann (Jacobs University / rasdaman)
* Vincent Picavet (Oslandia/PostGIS)
* [[Nuno Guerreiro|Nuno Guerreiro]]
* Olivier Courtin (PostGIS)
* Hugo Pereira
* Volker Mische (CouchDB/GeoCouch)
* [[user:sebastian.ovide|Sebastián Ovide]]
* [[user:hal_sk | Haruyuki Seki]]
* [[user:aross | Andrew Ross]] (Ingres)
* Alex Trofast (Ingres)
* Paolo Corti
* Add your name here

==WPS BoF==

Several presentation on Web Processing selected
for presentation at FOSS4G2010 indicates a growing
interest amongst the communities.

If you are interested please add your names below...

'''Who's coming:'''

* Venkatesh Raghavan
* [[Markus Neteler]]
* [[Daniel Kastl]]
* Maria Brovelli
* [[Ian Turton]]
* [[Gerald Fenoy]]
* Nicolas Bozon
* [[Jody Garnett]]
* [[User:fpenarru | Fran Peñarrubia]]
* [[User:MarkusSchneider | Markus Schneider]]
* Luca Delucchi
* Milan Antonovic
* [[User:Maxi71 | Massimiliano cannata]]
* Luca Casagrande
* [[User:Rajsingh| Raj Singh ]]
* [[User:Jesus|Jorge de Jesus]] (Plymouth Marine Laboratory)
* Bertrand Gervais
* [[User:Schpidi | Stephan Meissl]]
* [[Sebastián Cruz|Sebastián Cruz]]
* Fernando González
* Víctor González
* Bastian Schäffer
* Add your name here

==Sensor Web BoF==

The use of Sensor Web implementations has constantly increased during the last years.

If you are interested please add your names below...

'''Who's coming:'''

* Simon Jirka
* Marjorie Robert
* [[User:Maxi71 | Massimiliano cannata]]
* Graeme Mcferren
* Sarawut Ninsawat
* Brent Wood (NIWA)
* Jorge Piera
* Alain Tamayo
* Maria Brovelli
* Add your name here

==Biodiversity/conservation projects and FOSS4G tools==

More and more Open Source is catching on Biodiversity and conservation projects. Most of them are publicly funded so most of the time all the source they develop is Open Source. Aditionally Biodiversity and conservation heavily rely on GIS and they have specific needs. From geospatial niche modeling to species distributions, occurrence catalog, etc, there is a lot to talk about!

If you are interested please add your names below...

'''Coming:'''

* Javier de la Torre (Vizzuality)
* Brent Wood (NIWA)
* [[Markus Neteler]]
* [[User:jesus| Jorge de Jesus]] (Plymouth Marine Laboratory)
* [[User:Aghisla|Anne Ghisla]]
* Andrew W Hill (University of Colorado, Boulder)
* Add your name here

==Spatial Data Infrastructure==

A birds of a feather session about using open source for spatial data infrastructure. Come discuss implementation strategies, best practices, INSPIRE.

'''Who's coming:'''

* Sebastian Benthall (GeoNode)
* David Winslow (GeoNode)
* Ariel Núñez (GeoNode)
* David Jonglez
* [[Ricardo Pinho|Ricardo Pinho]] (depending on the schedule)
* Hugo Pereira
* Maria Brovelli
* [[Sebastián Cruz|Sebastián Cruz]]
* [[user:sebastian.ovide|Sebastián Ovide]]
* Sébastien Deleuze
* Add your name here

==Virtualization and Cloud Computing BoF==

Virtualization and Cloud Computing is growing fast on the GIS world, let's get together and talk about the use cases and share opinions and suggestions about how can we take the most out of this new technology!

If you are interested please add your name below...

'''Coming:'''
* [[Ricardo Pinho|Ricardo Pinho]]
* Hugo Pereira
* [[Sebastián Cruz|Sebastián Cruz]]
* [[user:sebastian.ovide|Sebastián Ovide]]
* Cédric Moullet
* Add your name here

==Spatial OLAP==

Spatial OLAP can be defined as a visual platform built especially to support rapid and easy spatiotemporal analysis and exploration of data following a multidimensional approach comprised of aggregation levels available in cartographic displays as well as in tabular and diagram displays. Let's talk about new improvements combining GIS and BI technologies.

If you are interested please add your name below...

'''Coming:'''
* [[Nuno Guerreiro|Nuno Guerreiro]]
* [[User:Rajsingh| Raj Singh ]]
* Add your name here

==Flex Mapping (Alternatives to HTML)==

Flex is a highly productive, free, open source framework for building expressive web applications that deploy consistently on all major browsers, desktops, and operating systems.
OpenScales is an open source (LGPL) mapping framework written in ActionScript 3 and Flex that allows developers to building Rich Internet Mapping Applications.
There are alternatives to HTML mapping, let's discuss about them...

If you are interested please add your name below...

'''Coming:'''
* Sébastien Deleuze (OpenScales)
* Simon Lopez (OpenScales)
* Fabio Panettieri
* Marjorie Robert (if the session is planned on tuesday)
* [[Ricardo Pinho|Ricardo Pinho]] (depending on the schedule)
* David Jonglez (depending on the schedule)
* Javier de la Torre - Vizzuality (depending on the schedule)
* Add your name here

This session is scheduled tuesday in Room3 at 18:00

==QGIS user & developer meeting==

Topics:
* What's new in QGIS 1.5
* Interesting plugins
* What's coming in the next QGIS release
* Discussion

If you are interested please add your name below...

'''Coming:'''
* Marco Hugentobler
* [[User:Pirmin_Kalberer| Pirmin Kalberer]]
* Mathias Walker
* [[User:Vasile| Vasile Crăciunescu]]
* [[User:Lmotta| Luiz Motta]]
* Richard Duivenvoorde
* [[User:hdus | Horst Düster]]
* [[User:yoichi | Yoichi Kayama]]
* Nobusuke Iwasaki
* [[Milena Nowotarska | Milena Nowotarska]]
* [[User:antonys | Antony Scott]]
* Add your name here

== Java GeoSpatial (GeoTools, GeoServer, uDig, etc...) ==

Topics:

If you are a user or developer in the "Java Tribe" come check out this BOF. You can let the developers know what you like, what you don't like, and what sorts of features and developments you would like to see in the future.

'''Coming:'''

* [[User:jdeolive | Justin Deoliveira]]
* [[User:cholmes | Chris Holmes]]
* Add your name here

==Tiling meeting==

At the moment we're planning to use the back half of room 4, but may move depending on size. Just follow Chris Schmidt.

Topics:
* current state of tiling implementations
* future of our implementations

'''Coming:'''

* [[User:stvn | Steven Ottens]]