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Moving a Conference Online: InnerSource Commons Summit Experience

Homemade slippers, T-shirts and long zoom rings are in fashion this spring. Conference activities are also keeping pace with trends. Large Russian of IT-events go to online and international giants, who have traditionally collected at the sites of thousands of visitors, is now sprayed virtual corona viruses . We do not lag behind either, a small group of enthusiasts from the InnerSource Commons community , who, according to our plans, were supposed to discuss the problems of using Open source approaches within the organization in Madrid for paella, and now, in between reports, we are organizing a competition for the most delicious cake made in the microwave.

InnerSource Commons Summit

According to Johannes Tigges, the author of the cake and the photo, it turned out deliciously

InnerSource commons is a small international community of people interested in the InnerSource theme: applying Open Source principles within a company. The topic is interesting, complex, requiring attention and special approaches. Many companies apply practice, and in each case the path to success is different: somewhere, a small company decided to host an open mature development culture, where engineers communicate among themselves in an engineering language, somewhere a large corporation solves the problems of excessive dependence between teams and copes with language barriers between business units. This is discussed once every six months offline: once in America and once in Europe. This time, for obvious reasons, we couldn’t meet offline, and in order not to lose the opportunity to share our experiences and talk, we decided to transfer the event online.I will share this experience.

How good it was at the beginning


A typical format for preparing for the summit: for a couple of months, we call up once a week, plan an awesome weekend, filled with useful communication and Spanish beer. The process is like in adult children: receiving reports, working with speakers, registering participants, finding sponsors, selecting catering and renting a room. Selection of a suitable venue - one room for the main track of reports, the second, smaller, for “breakout sessions” - chamber discussions. Most of the people involved in the preparation work remotely, while for the receiving party (the summit takes place each time in a new country), there is more work. At the same time we make a sortieto a major Open source conference to talk about InnerSource. We sent a message to all participants that the conference, as planned, will be held in Madrid. A week later, a few weeks before the start of the conference, the borders were closed, airplanes stopped flying, the “confinado” regime began around the world, as the Spaniards sitting at home said.

It comes to understanding that there can be no offline event and you need to go online. First of all, we change the format: the three initial full days of the event turn into two days for four hours. As practice has shown, it is difficult to keep people's attention more, visitors get tired. Some speakers immediately fall off, as they are not ready to go online. Participation in a virtual format implied a departure from the community-accepted Chatham House Rule rulepromising some level of privacy, to complete publicity. The report timings were cut - instead of 30-40 minutes, 15 minutes were left for the presentation for presentations and 20 minutes for the main keynotes. The decision is risky, but what to do. The format of the speeches was changed - instead of a live performance, the speakers recorded the video report in advance.


Participants in the Coffee Cup Contest

An important part of the conference is live communication: if it weren’t for this, you could have dropped the playlist on YouTube, and the thing is in the hat. This has focused offline summits. This was emphasized this time, and, as feedback showed after the event, not in vain. It all started with the opening of the entrance to the conference 20 minutes before the start, where people got to know each other and talked about free topics, and it always happened, with the exception of the time for reports. Constantly turned on webcams of participants gave the effect of personal presence.

Conference preparations


The first task is the choice of platform. Since there was not much time before the start of the conference, we chose a reliable option that takes into account the criteria:

  • support for up to one hundred participants with video;
  • broadcast video content;
  • chat and moderation of participants;
  • dividing the audience into small discussion rooms.

Then we wrote down a detailed plan of the event indicating the roles, created a marketing plan with the prepared tweets and publications, prepared a video of the speeches and beats. We made instructions for participants and speakers and rehearsed the process. Sent invitations to the calendar in advance.

The roles were as follows.

  • The host is responsible for entering the conference from the waiting room, distributing the participants to the discussion rooms, and peeping at following the plan.
  • MC (emc or ringleader) - party leader. Starts a conversation between the participants, tells the rules, announces speakers, streams the video, jokes during breaks.
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Of the 80 people present on the first day, 70 held out until the very end. Most of the visitors from Europe participated in the evening, for the inhabitants of America it was morning, and for a couple of guys from China - deep night. On the second day they offered to call friends and gathered a little more than a hundred people. Despite the onlineness and the total number of participants, judging by the reviews, it was possible to maintain the sincerity of the offline format. This was achieved using interactive inserts.

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Online is worse than offline. Nothing beats personal communication. But in the current realities, online events with a focus on communication have the right to life. In the virtual format, there is a tough battle for attention: you have to compete with notifications, YouTube and the desire to shop around at sales that are just a click away. Without changing the format of the event, monotonous hour lectures will be unproductive. According to reviews, we managed to overcome it.

PS If your company uses the principles of InnerSource, please write in PM or on the contacts in the profile.

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