[Talk-us] SOTM-US compared

[Alex Barth]

Serge -

You're not doing yourself justice as initiator and organizer of what are
the first sprint days at a US State of the Map. I actually think the sprint
days went very well - we had amazing turn out for both days and great work
happened. So: I see absolutely no need to feel badly and thank you for
pushing on making them happen.

I agree there is room for improvement. Aside from clearer comms, the
biggest challenge is a great venue that has great internet, is accessible,
allows for being all in the same general space while breaking out into
groups. All within budget :) We know what's needed here, looking forward to
nailing this next year.

I also like the idea of lightning talks for next year's conference.


On Tue, Jun 18, 2013 at 5:00 PM, Serge Wroclawski <emacsen at gmail.com> wrote:

> Frederik,
>
> Thank you for this valuable feedback, in particular regarding the sprints.
>
> I feel very badly about how the sprints went, and I want to go into
> detail why, and what I'm going to try to do next year about them.
>
> First, I want to say that for those people who were calling this a
> "hack day", I don't blame you, for two reasons, but that I hope this
> changes in the future.
>
> 1. OSM does not have institutional experience with sprints
>
> It was evident to me that many OSMers were interested in the sprints,
> but had only attendeded hack days, so to them, the terms were
> synonymous. They are not.
>
> A sprint is far more organized, more like BoF sessions going on, each
> with their own space. Imagine if a conference tried to have every BoF
> going on simultaneously in one space at the same time. This wouldn't
> work, and so what we had at the event was the equivalent.
>
> 2. There were not sufficient resources were not put into the sprints
>
> Running sprints is expensive. It requires multiple rooms, or a very
> large room with lots of room for groups to work independently of one
> another, out of each others way
>
> In addition, I had expected that we would have a session for
> lightening talks, as we'd had in previous years. Lightening talks are
> key to getting sprints going, as it gives the opportunity for sprint
> organizers to talk about their project and lay out the goals for the
> sprints (which are very result-oriented).
>
> It was a surprise to me that we didn't have lightening talks, and by
> the time I found out, it was too late to change the situation, and so
> there wasn't any coordinated efforts around the sprints.
>
> Lastly, the number of days we were sprinting changed from two, to one,
> back to two, and the information about the sprints changed on the
> website. This lead to a lot of confusion in folks' mind.
>
>
> The feedback I received has been very positive on this topic, though,
> with more developers coming together than we had ever had before at a
> single OSM event (roughly 10% of attendees attended one or both sprint
> days). There is clear willingness by the community to work on
> challenging technical issues.
>
> I am hopeful that given the amount of interest, that sprints will be
> featured next year, and will be given proper resources. In addition,
> we should re-introduce the lightening talks, and bring up the sprints,
> and sprint coordination, at the opening ceremony, and again at a
> closing ceremony (which we also didn't have this year).
>
>
> I'll be doing my best to make sure this happens next year so that we
> move towards a more successful sprint in 2014.
>
> - Serge
>
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