So you're almost having like a synchronous Q&A session and I, you know, that just makes
life easier for a lot of people, including presenters, right?
Because you know what to sort of expect.
The last one is sort of similar.
I saw this, like, Linux Foundation did this, like, a few years ago.
I, you know, I made a presentation, again, with Sophia on documentation, and then there
was like a Slack channel for Q&As, and after our presentation, we were on there for like
30, 45 minutes, which I thought was great, because typically when you're at a convention
center, you kind of get shoot out after your presentation, so people only have like a five
minute window to ask you questions, like if you ran out of time, right?
This just gave us a lot more time to answer questions, and also for people to be, you
know, vocal with their comments and feedback, which I thought was great, and I made sure
that I let a lot of people know that I thought that was pretty awesome.
So I know I'm almost out of time, so I think I've covered most of these.
So it's not either or.
The virtual events can complement what you're doing, like, in person, and, you know, just
remember that we've been doing, like, a virtual collaboration for a long time, and this is
definitely an important toolkit to help community members, and then especially for people who
can't always travel for whatever reason, financial or otherwise.
And the final point I want to make, actually, the platforms that we're using for online
events, like including Hopin, I mean, I'm not saying that's my favorite tool, but even
Hopin has really evolved over time, and one of the things I noticed when I talked to event
manager and vendors is that they'll give a list of, here are the virtual event platforms
that we support.
One company, they provided, like, 15 logos, including, like, Hopin, so there are just
more alternatives available, so I think we have better platforms and tools to run events
virtually, and, yeah, I just, I think that's it, I just want to make sure I have time for
questions.
Hopefully you'll leave it to me after I thank you.
Great, because it's you, you can do one question, even though we're over time, because we think
you're awesome.
All right, thank you.
Anyone want to ask a question?
I see a hand.
Off we go.
You are the final question of the community, Debra, for FOSDOM 2023, congratulations.
Well, thank you very much for the talk.
We have a global market, but obviously we don't have big resources like big companies,
so I wonder how much it is to set up the whole logistic of the virtual event live streaming.
Because we definitely have a global market, so obviously you can't be relying on everyone
assisting to your event if you do it in person, but I'm thinking probably the best thing is
to just record it and then put it available online a week later or something like that,
rather than having to live stream it as a proper hybrid event, what do you think?
Well, the question for people online, because even Zoom is not free, and then is it okay
to pre-record things and make content available for people to consume and ask questions to?
I think that's completely valid, actually one of the things I learned from these vendors,
they don't, on a virtual platform, they actually don't encourage you to have a live presentation
in a Q&A, because there's just a lot more technical difficulties that you can run through.
They call us senior lives, they prefer that they have the presenter record and be available
for 10 minutes of questioning, as an example, but if you don't want to have a person available
10 minutes online for questioning, you can still have a create a Google Doc, here's a
recording, please submit your questions over this period of time and the presenter or other
people can answer them, so it's all documented, right?
So I think that's completely valid, so you don't have to use Zoom, I mean, I just happened
to be, I've been using Zoom for the past few years, so that's what I'm comfortable with,
but you can do a live stream from Google Hangout, but I haven't tried to hands on myself, but
I know it's doable, so that's an option, but having something pre-recorded available
on YouTube channel, but here's a documentation, it could be a Wiki page or Google Docs, please
submit your questions, we'll close the questioning in like seven days and whoever the presenter
was, whoever the content expert is, we'll get back to you with their answers, so I think
that's a completely valid thing to do, it doesn't have to be like 100% interactive, so.