London Perl & Raku Workshop 2025 + 2024 Feedback
Do you want LPW to happen again in 2025? Then you need to make it happen. You need to start thinking about this now. After Lee's closing talk, which detailed how organisation of the 2024 workshop worked and effectively put out a call for organisers for the future, a small number of attendees hinted they would be able to help out in one way or another. For that we are grateful.
However there is no core organising team yet for 2025. Someone, ideally two or three people, need to step up and explicitly say "we are going to organise LPW 2025". If you need help around any of this then we (the 2024 organisers) can guide you. The TPRF have also said they would like to explore how to support LPW 2025 and welcome potential organisers to join the monthly community meeting to discuss this.
Failing that LPW will be going on an indefinite hiatus again.
Responding to the 2024 feedback
Roughly one fifth of the attendees completed the feedback form, I'm showing the results here and will respond to (paraphrased-to-reatain-anonymity) feedback below.
I think it's clear that a variety of subjects is beneficial, with Perl still having the core focus. I should also say that I hope it was relatively clear that if you didn't attend certain topics then you pick the "did not attend" option not the "not useful" option (you don't know if something is useful or not unless you attend it). I don't know if that was the case though and there was some gaming of the form, which was a bit... well, whatever.
I think this is fair - as I explained in my talk, the venue is always a set of compromises and here I think we found the correct ones. Catering is a bonus, we could have spent more but decided not to. The size issue was probably the difference between the two rooms, which I cover below.
I think it's clear here as well that most people are satisfied with the current setup. Maybe there's some demand or appetite to have a longer workshop (2 days) but not enough for demand to change this. Most comments about the above essentially confirmed what we suspected (or Lee asked/questioned in his talk).
Well that's nice to know, thanks. And we also got positive feedback and thanks in the form as comments, so thanks for that as well. Below I'll respond to some suggestions, comments, and so on.
Acoustics in ballroom could be better / Some sound issues - yes, it was maybe down to the nature of the space.
The Library was too small for some talks. Mayby make it clear the size of the room will be selected based on signups so people pay more attention? / Second track was sometimes too full - When announcing the schedule I made it clear that attendees need to mark talks they plan to see in advance so we can choose the right rooms. In fact, it was the second sentence of the announcement. This was cross posted to the usual places. I did the same in another post a bit later. I don't know how I can make it clearer. This is always a problem at multi track events, I think we do OK. Roughly 50% of attendees marked their talks.
It was hard to find the venue, as it was tucked back and not obvious. - The workshop site had details of the venue, including a map. We had signs up on the venue doors. Maybe we could have had one outside, but I'm not convinced that's a viable option given the location. We will put a photo of the venue on the site next time.
Allow more "general open source" topics, and possibly including topics intended/useful for managers - We allow just about any talk on just about any subject, people need to submit them.
A Telegram or Whatsapp or whatsoever chat group for the attendees would have been nice. - Good idea.
Do not need to provide swag - Yes, but some people complain when they don't get a t-shirt. I don't want to do t-shirts anyway, but thought the scarves were a nice thing (and useful). Plus cheaper and easier. All other swag was provided by sponsors, which we allow them to do because it is an incentive for them to sponsor us.
Next time, maybe allow one or two "partner" level sponsors? - Getting companies to sponsor us is hard. Really really hard. I talked about this at the end. That said, this might work so we will look into it.
Probably also a Wiki [would be useful], though I'm not sure about the costs. - The workshop site (ACT) supports a wiki. We will add a link to it on future workshop sites and suggest attendees use it.
That's all for now. Thanks to this year's sponsors, without whom LPW would not have happened:
The London Perl & Raku Workshop is a free one-day technical conference for anyone interested in Perl 5, Raku, and related topics.
It is on Saturday 26th October 2024 in central London. Check out the workshop site for more information
Most people who filled out the survey are satisfied with the current set up. People dissatisfied with the current set up likely didn't attend, so didn't even find out about the survey. A business looking to expand shouldn't just survey their current customers, but also their potential customers, the customers they hope to attract.
> People dissatisfied with the current set up likely didn't attend
Valid point, but IMO that needs to be an entirely different survey. This was a feedback form intended for those who did attend, and was largely to evaluate the venue we had chosen and the the talks and sessions that were scheduled.
The question also becomes - how do we reach those people and those who don't even know about the event (we had some success with that this year, but it remains a very difficult thing)
> The question also becomes - how do we reach those people and those who don't even know about the event
ah-ha!.jpeg