Balkans/Events:2012/Zagreb/Aftermath/Feedback

Participant's thoughts

Aleksandar Savić

What was good

• Hotel, Venue
• WiFi everywhere
• Food
• Tour over the city (great time to socialize more with other mozillians)
• sessions were interesting
• Croatian Community were there whole time and waited to give help where it was needed

What was bad

• mozillians didn't take real all instructions that we got in the morning or before lunch
• agenda was like weather
• only SWOT was real community discussion and even SWOT wasn't done (did we made final analyses of every SWOT element ?? I don't think so )
• not all communities participate
• low number of huge MoStaff were present in Zagreb

Suggestions for improvement

• more community talks , workshops , sprints (I really like those we had in Slovenia)
• should not party every night (I mean so late in the night) but we should have After Party late in the night but only one after the all important discussions are done
• the schedule should not wait for latecomers
• the agenda should be 100% ready when people arrived in Zagreb
• start preparation of event more early so we have slides , agenda , and others prepared before we come to event

Adi Zeljković

What was good

• Organisation
• Hotel
• Food
• Croatian Community (especially Nikola) were there whole time and was available to provide help whenever it was needed

What was bad

• Agenda
• Lot of alcohol :)
• Not all communities participated

Suggestions for improvement

• More community talks
• Agenda should be 100% ready when people arrived in Zagreb

Gent Thaci

What was good

• Venue
• Hotel
• Food
• Organization
• Community Balkans Members

What was bad

• Postponing sessions,
• Wake and meetup up in time to leave hotel.

Suggestions for improvement

• Agenda pre-set in time
• Etherpads prepared
• Different places to eat, more tradinional food.

Altin Ukshini

What was good

• Places (Hotel, Restaurants)
• Lunch, Dinner
• People (very friendly)

What was bad

• All things went up in hurry
• Agenda changed so often because speakers didnt prepare their presentations in time, and Etherpads should have been prepared earlier.

Suggestions for improvement

• Start preparing documents earlier for participants who have to apply for Visas.
• More places to visit...
• More hands on code/hacking/sessions

Novica Nakov

What was good

• big turnout
• meeting the local hacker community
• axel's and brian's patience

What was bad

• not enough hands-on stuff
• not enough power cords
• we should have spend more time on the swot.
• t-shirts with big football-like prints on the back :)

Suggestions for improvement

• more hands-on stuff

Damjan Georgievski

Reflecting after this much time, I can't remember I picked much from the meetup. The venue and hotel was nice, but that's not something that makes or breaks an event like this. I don't mind staying at a hostel (with wifi).

I wish there was more technical content, and more discussion about policy issues - a good example, at the Skopje meetup we had a wide ranging open discussion on internet regulation, which started with an "intervention in space".

Meeting the community in person was the only positive thing I remember. But maybe I missed the point of the event.

One more good thing in Skopje was the involvement of the wider FLOSS and even IT community (mostly students) at the event. It was an open event that showed to the general public that Mozilla is not so scary. I think that opportunity was missed in Zagreb.

Ioana Chiorean

What was good

• Mostly all logistics were good
• Having more than one direction for presentations:
  • Community grow- help us to build up country communities, regional communities
  • Technical presentation - tough us the latest technology adopted so we can coach in our countries.
• SWOT analysis
• Axel's sharing of information
• USTREAM (Thanks AleksandarS)
• Mascots bought from the ZOO (also TShirts)
• Every problems was solved :)

What was bad

• Agenda - all about it
• Many delays due to people getting late to meetups
• Conference development - coffee, food supplies
• Some communities were missing : Greece, Bulgaria, Montenegro(?)
• Late official announce for the Balkans meeting
• Lack of Mozilla official Swag
• Lack of Name tags.

Suggestions for improvement

• Prepare adequate logistic for everybody - transformers, power supplies, etc.
• Clear agenda; clear separation of topics - post it early so people can document on it
• More practical work, group work- like the SWOT Analysis
• For breaks in the conference meetings set everything in same place- food, coffee etc.
• Organized city tour- sightseeing
• Officials form Mozilla should be present to guide the information (More Axeles)
• Announce earlier the meeting
• Communities that are missing to the event should prepare information about their work, contributions, and try tot attend online the meetings (AirMozilla, UStream, IRC, etc)
• Marketing Campaing - for a dino, a logo in the city - post a banner in major places- take a photo of it
• More public sessions - other FLOSS supports can join us for Technical presentations and even community growth ones
• Actions determined for near future or the Mozilla Balkans

Alex Lakatos

What was good

• there was hacking going on
• there were mozilla employees to give us the latest news
• food was great

What was bad

• we lost a lot of time in the morning waiting for everyone
• there were no scheduled hacking sessions
• wifi was not good enough for cloning mozilla-central
• we lost a lot of time going to/from lunch

Suggestions for improvement

• have cabled internet access if needed
• meals don't need to all be big, but definitely lunches need to be faster
• don't pay for everything, leave us with the bill once in a while (i.e. taxis)
• have a "In the hotel by 23:00" policy for minors
• schedule morning wake-up calls everyday for everyone

Oskar Ivanić

What was good

• Hotel, food, positive atmosphere, learned interesting stuff from presentations, especially about Summer Campaign 2012 in which I'm interested. Croatian team took a really good care of us.

What was bad

• Weather -_- , Sunday should be day for hangouts (because workshop ended up early) .

Suggestions for improvement

• More hands on sessions.

Get some sleep so you could be more organized and less stressful. :)

Dejan Binder

What was good

Totel,Mozillians,positive atmosphere,food,visit to the hack lab, logistics

What was bad

Not enough sights visited, the mix up around the agenda, the weather :D

Suggestions for improvement

Brian King

What was good

• Nikola / Niko / Vedran / Lahorka
• Hotel
• Venue / WiFi
• Food
• People - passionate and engaged
• Axel's guidance on socialising
• T-Shirt
• SWOT Session
• Talks most were good, a mix of technical and non-technical
  • Mike's talks on community and how he setup an FLOSS community in Kosovo
  • Selim's talk on the press
• Pranks on Nikola

What was bad

• No show of Greece and Bulgaria
• Sessions started too late every day
• Poor moderation of sessions
• Schedule was not advertised well enough / clear enough
• Late nights
• Slightly disappointing turnout from the Mozilla Croatia community
• Pranks on Brian

Suggestions for improvement

• Better coffee setup in the room
• More snacks, e.g. fruit
• More power cords
• Don't wait for latecomers in the morning, they should not hold up the schedule
• Organisers should focus on getting more sleep
• More workshops / hands-on sessions
• Assign moderator to sessions to:
  • make sure everything goes on time
  • introduce sessions and speakers
  • make organisational announcements
• More variation in restaurants, perhaps closer to hotel / venue
• More pranks on Nikola

Nino Vranešič

What was good

• Excellent logistic
• Hotel
• Venue of presentations (Hypo Center)
• Great to see new people
• Food & drinks
• SWOT analysis
• Interesting guests with lot of useful tips & information (Pike, Brian, Michelle, Mike)
• People - very nice & frendly.
• Positive atmosphere was a big plus
• WiFi was stable & (almost) everywhere
• Topics were interesting
• serbo-croatian language :-)

What was bad

• Agenda must be prepared at least one day before the meeting.
• Croatian community was full of worries = lack of participaton, tired & stressed members
• No plans after SWOT analysis.
• Greece & Bulgaria didn't attend the meeting
• delays, postponing the sessions
• lack of Balkans topics (Goals, discussions, etc.)

Suggestions for improvement

• Workshops, most topics were presentations.
• After community presentations we should share ideas for events, marketing campaigns, etc. between communities (or even have "Balkans project" in each community)
• Agenda & topics must be fixed at least few days before event (so that people can prepare there slides and materials and themselves for presentation, discussion, workshop, etc. )
• More sharing information, learning between communities
• "To make some noise" - Mozilla is in town (posters, public presentation, swag)
• Inviting other FLOSS activists from local country

Selim Sumlu

What was good

• Location
• Enough time too see the city and socialize
• Stable WiFi almost everywhere
• Friendliness of the Croatian team
• Fitting t-shirt
• Red pandas
• Logistics

What was bad

• Agenda (not many detailed talks and broad range of topics)
• Scheduling (too many timing changes)
• Missing communities
• Not enough attendance by Mozilla officials

Suggestions for improvement

• Have the schedule and people prepared earlier
• Not everyone is able to give an effective talk, need to choose good speakers to talk
• More space for official news (like Axel's talks)
• Friday was absolutely good. It was a rewarding free day for Mozillians. IMO, we need to stick with it.

Michelle Thorne

What was good

• Good turnout, good level of cooperation and interest
• Nice location, comfortable hotel
• Well-organized pick-up and drop-off for airport bus
• Yummy food
• Great to hear the country reports
• Friendly host team, very considerate and fun to work with.

What was bad

• More hands-on sessions would've helped create good energy, learn and discuss more intensely. Can be in small groups and allow people to participate in session that interest them.
• Important to give clear meeting times. Often confusion about when meeting vs. when things are starting.
• No plan for next steps. The SWOT analysis was helpful, but it would've been good to decide on next steps as a group.

Suggestions for improvement

• Mix up the groups. Not everything has to be in plenary with everyone. Sometimes smaller discussion/hacking groups are more effective.
• Structure the one day of sessions so that Sunday is for exploring, relaxing, hanging out together.
• Etherpads set up in advance for collaborative note-taking.

Axel Hecht

What was good

• outlook for balkans intercommunity reestablished
• got some messaging ported from mozcamps
• peaceful atmosphere

What was bad

• schedule not tight
• too many visits to the same restaurants
• too much worry
• not everybody was comfortable speaking

Suggestions for improvement

• more focus on inter-community in the schedule
  • don't teach a man how to fish, teach him how to teach fishing
• more alliance with mozcamps
  • take stuff from mozcamps to intercommunity meetup
  • take stuff from icm to mozcamps
• establish an environment in which everybody feels comfortable in actively participating
  • pull harder to make people talk english
  • offer to talk in non-english with translation
  • maybe even restrict some discussions to serbo-croatian (shoots the balkans a bit, last resort)

James Michael Dupont

What was good

• Food, Hotel, Travel, Rooms, people.

What was bad

• Planning was a bit chaotic.
• too much beer and energy drinks.

Suggestions for improvement

• get more sleep for the organizers
• we could have skipped friday, it would have been fine in two days. only sat was really used.

Ioan Marius Chiorean

What was good

• Hotel - very nice and comfortable, good wifi
• Venue - hypocenter was nice, also good wifi
• People - very nice and friendly,
• Thanks for their support in helpind the coordinators to Lahorka and Vedran
• Food - very good location, good food
• The presence of Axel and Brian was very productive
• Mike's presentation about FLOSS
• Interesting discussions at Hack Lab
• Very good idea from michelle with the sandwiches, saved time

What was bad

• The agenda changeing too much
• Too much hurry at some points
• Late sessions because of late nights
• Not enough workshops
• Too much last minute solutions

Suggestions for improvement

• More workshops
• Better preparations on venue( coffe there all time, some snacks, some fruits)
• Better moderations of the sessions
• Maybe closer restaurants
• The schedule should not wait for latecomers
• The agenda should be 100% ready when people arived in Zagreb
• Dont skip friday, fiday's are for the zoo, red pandas, remember foxy's mike?