Carol Chen

I have been organizing open-source related meetups and conferences for more than a decade. The past two years have been exceptionally trying. Any guesses as to why that is? :)

In this session, I will share our experiences from the 6 online Ansible Contributor Summits that we have held through 2020-2021. While the virtual platform gave us more flexibility in many ways (such as having 3 events in a year instead of the usual 1), it definitely presented many new challenges as well. From pre-event marketing to technologies used during the summits, post-event surveys + feedback that feed into the next event, it's a continuous cycle of trials, errors, and improvements.

There is also a major shift towards using open source tools and workflows for the summits, at the request of some community memebers as well as the desire within our team. I'll share what fell short and what thrived, and how the changes impacted not just conference management for our team, but also how the Ansible community received these events. Because at the end of the day, these conferences are for the community contributors and participants!

I'm not a designer, but I've lived and worked in 3 different continents with both proprietary and open source software, and find my appreciation and idea of what "good design" is has changed with my experience and exposure. As I moved from software development to community outreach and marketing, I learn more about how design affects every aspect of the product and promotion. To top it off, I've encountered many different understanding of what openness is, especially when related to design. In this presentation I'd like to share some observations and lessons learned, and hope it can help designers, especially open source designers, navigate and negotiate the diversity in cultures and expectations.