[Cbr2021] Hybrid conference versus online only justification

[Rob Bolin]

Hi James,

Thanks for that question.  My position on online-only is based on:

*  While I recognise that vaccines are rolling out around the world, I 
feel there is still too much uncertainty about what could happen.  Bear 
in mind that there are currently 3 recognised covid mutations and the 
vaccine is confirmed to be effective against only 1 (the other 2 are 
currently uncertain).  There may be others that appear between now and 
January. This was certainly the stated position of Norman Swan on ABC24 
moments ago (as I write this).

*  Approximately 1/4 to 1/3 of usual attendees and probably around half 
of speakers are international.  Assuming that quarantine is still in 
effect (and I can't see any reason why it wouldn't be at this stage), 
attendance could result in 5 weeks out of the workplace for a 1 week 
conference (2 weeks quarantine coming into Australia, 1 week of LCA and 
2 weeks quarantine returning home).  This also assumes that lock downs 
won't be happening between Australian states

*  While LCA is 10 months away, speakers will need to put forward 
proposals for papers in a month or two.  I believe that the 5 week 
period above will weigh heavily on international speakers' decisions to 
put forward proposals, reducing proposals to mostly Australian speakers. 
  Not that we don't have an outstanding crop of Australian developers, 
but as conference organisers, we want the best of the best talks.

*  Assuming that we utilise technology to remove the issues with 
quarantine and international travel, and stream international speakers 
into the venue, we all agree that we will need to maintain an online 
presence even for a face to face conference.  Given the success of this 
year's LCA, I suspect that quite a number of the potential attendees 
would still opt for streaming the conference, rather than attending in 
person.  Personally, I know I would (though I will admit to being an 
avowed introvert).

*  The budget, as initially approved by LA, was built around an 
attendance of approximately 570 attendees to break even.  One third of 
these were expected to be professionals, which contributed roughly 60% 
of the delegate contribution to the budget.  Given uncertainty and 
potentially 5 weeks out of the office, I doubt many bosses would be 
happy for these professionals to attend in person, despite the wishes of 
the staff member (I'm happy to be corrected about this, if any one wants 
to ask their boss now).

*  Given the budget issue above, we would need to adjust the budget (I 
believe Neill is on to this now), but we would need to be careful not to 
boost the online ticket price to subsidise the in-person price, which 
will generate push back - after all, the face to face has social 
activities that online wouldn't participate in (even if we don't have any).

*  Another point about the budget, I believe that if given the option of 
streaming verses attendance in person, hobbyists may also opt for the 
cheaper option (I certainly would).  After all, we (hobbyists) don't 
have a corporate sponsor that will send us along, so we have to find the 
conference fee plus accommodation, travel and food.  Personally, that's 
a major reason why I volunteer as many years as I can - free entry into 
the conference and I don't mind helping out.

*  A hybrid model introduces additional issues and work versus a face to 
face only or online only conference.  From past experience, a face to 
face conference is a lot of work (which we all signed on for, so I was 
happy to do it), however Sae Ra and Joel advise that there are new and 
different challenges inherent in an online conference.  What is 
currently being proposed actually combines both.  Are we up for an 
increase in work load?  For a start, we would need volunteers in both 
the online and real world spheres.  Granted some of their work, I 
believe, was due to the reduced time frame they were working with, 
compared to our 10-ish month time frame, I think Sae Ra and Joel would 
be better placed to explain their workload at the Wednesday meeting.

*  Finally, one of the reasons put forward to go for a hybrid model is 
that our theme is "Community", and face to face interaction is an 
important part of building a community. As I have pointed out before, 
*we* chose "Community" and we have only announced that to LA, not the 
wider community.  As such, there is nothing stopping us from coming up 
with a different theme, or re-define it to something like "Open Source 
supporting Community in Difficult Times", which would include last 
year's fires in addition to the current pandemic.

I am certainly disappointed that I can't host the face to face 
conference that I wanted to hold when I first started agitating after 
LCA2018, but I have to be realistic - It's important to put on an LCA 
and it's important to LA that it doesn't make a huge loss (which I 
suspect would happen if we held the hybrid version).

Cheers

Rob

On 22/2/21 9:14 pm, James Iseppi wrote:
> Hi Rob,
> 
> While I didn’t attend the entire meeting, from what I gathered the majority of the people attending wanted to do a Hybrid conference, while their were only two (yourself included) that said that we should not. From that perspective, I think we as the presumptive team need some convincing that what LA and yourself are proposing (an online only event) is something we want to run.
> 
> While I appreciate that LA have to manage the risks around losing money from a failed conference (no matter the format), I think we need some actual arguments that an online conference is easier, less resource intensive, more likely to succeed, etc when compared to a F2F/Hybrid event. Whatever the LCA2021 team are able to share about what they did, how well it worked, the challenges they faced, the number of people hours it took to deliver, etc before our meeting on Wednesday would be very helpful in informing our understanding of what an online only event entails and would allow us to more reasonably respond to the question being posed.
> 
> Thanks
> James
> 
>> On 22 Feb 2021, at 20:11, Rob Bolin via CBR2021 <cbr2021 at lists.linux.org.au> wrote:
>>
>> Hi everyone,
>>
>> Miles, Neill and I have just met with Sae Ra and Joel on our way forward.  Sae Ra has requested that the team put forward, in writing, some good reasons why we should go ahead with a hybrid model, to be forwarded to LA.
>>
>> To be honest, I can't really think of any good reasons why we should (as I expressed in our meeting), so can I ask those that expressed a preference for Hybrid over online-only please provide a couple of paragraphs why we should go ahead with the Hybrid model.
>>
>> Sorry to be brutally frank, but if I don't get any responses, the LA will make their decision based on available information which, most likely, will be to go ahead with an online only.
>>
>> Cheers
>>
>> Rob
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