Subscription Conference

Because of the whole pandemic story, many conferences were canceled or transferred online.

Leading Podcast “Dry the oars” they invited Alexei Fedorov (23derevo), the organizer of TechTrain, Heisen Bug, Holy JS, JPoint and other events. To understand, has it become worse or better?

Developers Redmadrobot Roma (zestxx) and Artyom (fi5t) record a podcast where they discuss life with IT with guests. In the ninth issue, they talked about how the new reality affected the conference format. They also found out what the pros and cons of online are, how people relate to the changes, and “is it necessary at all.” As always, we attach a podcast and a few answers to the main questions.

Offtop. “Dry the oars” hit in the top 5 podcasts for developers on iOS and Android. Thanks to everyone who listens. Now to the point.

Timing

How did you decide to go online instead of canceling / rescheduling events – 13:40.

Online Conferencing Issues:

  1. How people relate to the new format – 21:00
  2. Which platform to use – 36:55
  3. At the conference, everyone goes for networking; reports are not the main thing. How does this fit into the online format – 30:25
  4. How have ticket prices changed? Why? – 53:25
  5. How to deal with those who want to “streamer” the paid event “for the whole YouTube” – 1:01:52

The benefits of online conferences:

  1. Will the videos be available immediately and to everyone – 1:14:45
  2. Is there a future for fully online conferences – 1:27:13

About the pros and cons

The studio discussed that many go to conferences for networking, this is a fact. Such events are a place where you can chat with the best from the field and make new acquaintances.

To transfer networking to online, consider that it is impossible, which means that the lion’s share of the profit from conferences disappears? Andrei agreed that this part is lost, but you can invite guests who could not have arrived earlier.

You cannot directly communicate, but you can replace it with something else. In our case, we are actively attracting cool speakers from around the world in order to compensate for the lack of communication with more interesting reports.

For example, this year the events will be “reached”: Joel Spolsky – programmer and writer, author of the blog Joel on Software, Björn Straustrup – author of C ++, James Gosling – author of Java, John Willis – one of the authors DevOps Guides other.

And here the plus of “conference by subscription” appears: those who have a “full pass” will be able to attend reports at various events and on different days. And this is a really useful online feature.

Another specificity of online is that if a person is not interested, then he will most likely leave and not return, or simply hush up the online report with a twentieth tab in the browser. It’s easier to get distracted at home: work, family. Therefore, the guys are working on the whole broadcast so that it is packed with as much interesting content as possible. Without “picking your nose”, with an alternative choice and with a “minimum of problems” on broadcasting.

Which platform to use

From 36:55, Andrei talks a lot and technically that there is a platform in general. How everything works inside the broadcasts: what are the limitations, opportunities and other nuances. That 720p resolution greatly affects the quality of the report: the presentation of speakers, in particular, those parts where there are pieces of code, it becomes difficult to consider. That is why the guys are investing in broadcasting in 4K.

In general, if you are conducting or planning something online, well, or you are interested in sorting out the issue, then shake it off right away.

What to do with those who stream the paid event “for the whole youtube”

The guest noticed that anyway a person, if he wants, can always deceive the system.

But he also explained that there are many different video labeling systems. Tags are added to the video streams and each stream becomes individual. Therefore, if information about a leak appears, the organizers can quickly identify the intruder and ban him.

Artyom asked a reasonable question: “What if you just take a computer screen, for example, on a phone?”. It turned out that there is no difference, the tags can be seen even on the telephone record. By the way, the option when several people enter the same account also does not work, this is also monitored.

What about ticket prices

Good news for everyone who planned to attend the conference from the list: tickets this year will be cheaper by half. And it will be possible to purchase a “full pass” – a ticket to several conferences at once.

But it turns out that online translation is easier or cheaper to organize. You don’t need to spend money on rent, but you have to rebuild processes and infrastructure for online. You need to retrain the team on live broadcasts, set up work with new contractors, convert offices into independent streaming platforms and much more.

Is there a future for online conferences

The final question was: what will happen next? Will the guys stay online or gladly return offline?

And the answer is this: an offline conference is a great opportunity to gather people and give them a productive chat. Therefore, of course, there is a desire to do as it was before. But, on the other hand, the situation “kicked” and forced to pay closer attention to the online side.

Therefore, you need to think, and it is possible that over time, conferences will transform into a double history.

It seems to us that all this can be crossed with each other and have some kind of a single service, which is partly conducted online and partly offline.

Now the company holds 2-3 conferences a year, and with this approach there will be more useful content. But for this, you need to successfully broadcast this year and secure the technology of online events.

Useful materials

Previous issues of the Dry Oars podcast

Software Architect: why is it needed and what is its curse
Source of truth: how an analyst teaches a manager and a developer to work together
CTO all startup
QA for beginners: how to test a rocket or plane
Queue in the backend: what are we standing for and where to start our journey?

Promised Promo Code DRY2020pc – to any conference of the season and to the “full pass”. Valid promotional code for Personal ticket types only.

Listen to us wherever convenient: Soundcloud, Apple, Google podcasts.
You can discuss the issue in a comfortable Telegram chat.

Similar Posts

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *