Thoughts about target audience, agenda and speakers
Hi all,
I had quite some thoughts in the last weeks about who will attend the event, or better whom we will focus at that they can attend. The background of these thoughts is the feedback we got on the last JoomlaDay in Germany as well as my personal observations. So I like to share these thoughts to get some feeling if the situation here in Germany is similar in other countries or regions.
A JoomlaDay has the intention to bring the regional community together on one spot. Making it possible for the people to meet in real life while be working in the virtual world normally. The past experience was that the attendees are mostly members of the Joomla community in that region and may be some additional people which are interested in the Joomla CMS but not yet members of the community. We attract very rare people that have never been in contact with Joomla yet.
On the last event we had feedback indicating that Joomla is really grown in Germany and far more mature that we might have thought. Especially on the business and community day the people expected real practical classes/sessions like "how to setup a template?", "how to make my site secure?", "how to develop my first extension?" rather than the high level development sessions in which people talk about the new features Joomla will include sometimes in future. So basically people expected a training track on how to use Joomla rather than see the developers of the project or international people.
My personal thought was: Should we give every day a topic rather than saying it is a business day or community day?
The idea I have is, that we e.g. say:
- on day 1 we talk about Joomla based website in general. With e.g. 3 tracks such as "SME websites", "social media or community websites", "high profile/load websites".
- on day 2 we talk about Joomla extensions and addons, Tracks could be "extend my Joomla site with existing modules", "Special purpose extensions such as shops, community and ...", "Developing of extensions; best practice"
It would be great if you can give me some feedback about your region and may be the events you had in the past. I would be very interested to learn about the other JoomlaDays world wide and your experience with the audience and what they like to listen too.
Thanks
Alex
I had quite some thoughts in the last weeks about who will attend the event, or better whom we will focus at that they can attend. The background of these thoughts is the feedback we got on the last JoomlaDay in Germany as well as my personal observations. So I like to share these thoughts to get some feeling if the situation here in Germany is similar in other countries or regions.
A JoomlaDay has the intention to bring the regional community together on one spot. Making it possible for the people to meet in real life while be working in the virtual world normally. The past experience was that the attendees are mostly members of the Joomla community in that region and may be some additional people which are interested in the Joomla CMS but not yet members of the community. We attract very rare people that have never been in contact with Joomla yet.
On the last event we had feedback indicating that Joomla is really grown in Germany and far more mature that we might have thought. Especially on the business and community day the people expected real practical classes/sessions like "how to setup a template?", "how to make my site secure?", "how to develop my first extension?" rather than the high level development sessions in which people talk about the new features Joomla will include sometimes in future. So basically people expected a training track on how to use Joomla rather than see the developers of the project or international people.
My personal thought was: Should we give every day a topic rather than saying it is a business day or community day?
The idea I have is, that we e.g. say:
- on day 1 we talk about Joomla based website in general. With e.g. 3 tracks such as "SME websites", "social media or community websites", "high profile/load websites".
- on day 2 we talk about Joomla extensions and addons, Tracks could be "extend my Joomla site with existing modules", "Special purpose extensions such as shops, community and ...", "Developing of extensions; best practice"
It would be great if you can give me some feedback about your region and may be the events you had in the past. I would be very interested to learn about the other JoomlaDays world wide and your experience with the audience and what they like to listen too.
Thanks
Alex
Views: 63
Replies to This Discussion
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Permalink Reply by Ken McD on -
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Some thoughts:
"We attract very rare people that have never been in contact with Joomla yet."
In the past 5 years I not seen any PR directed outside the community itself. (Mambno and Joomla)
Basically all communication has been "preaching to the choir" - to people already in the community.
To attract other audiences you need to go where they are to communicate to them.
For example, let's say we wanted to attract people in medium sized businesses who are in charge of moving their old website into the modern age of the CMS.
They may stumble upon the Joomla website and forum in their quest for knowledge,
and then they may stumble upon a Joomla conference website, just maybe.
To directly connect to this audience you need to communicate via the forums they read,
via the news they read, and via the publications they read.
They do not subscribe to the Joomla RSS feed.
It is quite possible to attract many more attendees from other audiences.
- Provide the presentations they need to solve their problems
- Communicate this to them via the channels they already read
The Linux News and CMS Today type publication does not connect to this audience.
If an additional goal is to evangelize and to cross boundaries, continuing to only communicate
via the channels within the existing community is not going to do it.
Which brings up the next point:
The feedback loop discussed here regarding topics is only going to connect with the existing audience, and only a subset of that audience.
If the only desired audience is the existing Joomla fan and forum follower, this may be appropriate feedback from which to construct a program.
Which brings up another point:
For some potential speakers who is the more desirable audience?
- the Joomla faithful, do-it-your-selfer, or
- the business person looking for help converting their website to a CMS
Yes, some speakers enjoy helping the masses learn. Admirable work.
If that is the only desired audience at the conference, all will be happy.
But some potential speakers may be more interested in speaking to potential clients.
Some sponsors may be more interested in connecting to the business audience.
There is no way to ask these other audiences what they want to see.
If a conference program is communicated to them,
and it has sessions addressing their needs, they will attend.
So I guess it gets back to defining the target audiences.
I have compiled a brainstorming summary list of:
- target audiences
- session topic ideas
There are three threads about audiences and topics now.
Not sure if it should go here or in another thread.
The audiences and topics discussions are closely related.
Maybe a new combined thread.
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Permalink Reply by Alex Kempkens on -
Thank's for your feedback Ken - it is really great to see how these things evolve.
@Amy does ning allow us to structure the threads a bit more efficient? As Ken mentioned there are a couple of threads in various topics and I would love to merge or split the threads a bit so that we have many be one thread per major topic to discuss.
@all - does this make sense for you too?
Alex -
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Permalink Reply by Erik Werner on -
Hi all,
I could see some argument for a day-wise increase in experience level. day 1 for beginners (also trying to attract new users - e.g. the 101 talks as mentioned in the other thread), day 2 for intermediates (experienced people who use the tools) and day 3 for advanced users (programmers who develop tools), with the topics and applications as discussed, just on different levels on each day.
Disadvantage would be that very few people would be interested in all three days (unless the experienced day3 programmers do the presentations on day 1). So maybe a 101 pre-afternoon on day -1?
In all cases, before I buy a ticket, I definitely need to know the agenda, at least an outline! Voting is nice but impractical and often biased. Speakers need time to prepare as well.
I personally am not too much of a friend of parallel sessions as I tend to find everything interesting :-)
Practical hands-on workshops (rather than frontal presentations) could be an element for a half-day session, as could be an exhibition-type session (including a fee for commercial J businesses) where individual solutions (mostly extensions I would assume) could be presented, explained and tried. Could be combined on the intermediate day afternoon and evening. A computer lab would be needed for that.
Just a few thoughts.
Erik
(my own interest is in community/intranet site development - for multi-location research projects in my case / happy to contribute a short case study) -
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Permalink Reply by Ken McD on
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Erik,
Could you please post the specifics of this case study idea in the Audiences and Topics brainstorm?
These are the type of ideas which may be also be appropriate for a Roundtable Discussion.
Thanks!
Ken
Erik Werner said:Erik
(my own interest is in community/intranet site development - for multi-location research projects in my case / happy to contribute a short case study) -
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Permalink Reply by Javier Gómez on -
In the last Joomla!Day Spain, there where some opinions of attendees that said that they would like to have not only speeches, but also, as @Martin Blodau says, activities to know the other Joomla! geeks. It is my firm believe that the off-line meetings is a cornerstone for building community.
Maybe you found it a silly idea, but I think that there are a lot of fantastic persons participating on the Joomla! project, but we don't know each other very much. In my opinion we need more physical contact. So I suggest on the first day to spend some hours doing activities instead of speeches. Activities like a paintball, or games (like the word map game http://www.salto-youth.net/find-a-tool/1040.html?&date_from=200...). -
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Permalink Reply by Amy Stephen on
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Geeks and Paintball? FUN!
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Permalink Reply by Fotis Evangelou on
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I like Javier's proposal. And to add to that: I can definitely shoot some kick ass pool and I dare other Joomla! devs for a match...
On other off speech activities: throw in some extra beer to Mr. Teeman, Jansens and Van Agtmaal... and you'll get a whole night of Joomla! stories and an angry bartender... LOL
@Robert Deutz @Alex My part for the event will be ready by Jan 11th, as moving to the new office withheld back lots of work for us (sorry guys :( ) -
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Permalink Reply by Javier Gómez on
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Brian Teeman said:Definitely agree with you and we have two "social" activities planned.
Great! If I can help on that just tell me. -
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Permalink Reply by Javier Gómez on
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I like the idea, but actually I think that there is still a very important difference between the community members and those who meet Joomla! for first time. And the second group is big, at least in Spain.
I think that the business/community day is an internal way for split the target. So while the organisers easily understand the difference the attendees don't.
In my opinion we need to create activities for the both kind of people that we meet on the Joomla!Days: community member, and the one that has his first contact. But we need to communicate that it in a understandable way, so I totally agree with the idea of a topic for each day.
So I understand that one is an internal definition and the other is a communication action. -
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Permalink Reply by Marcos Peebles on -
I think we're all very excited about all this, special thanks to all the pple behind it, great work has been done already and more great things to come, I'm 110% sure. We also could look at Drupalcon San Fransisco 2010 and see what's cooking over there ;)
On a more sad note (frustrated maybe more then sad or a mix of both) they're announcing "1216 Attendees Signed Up" and they're expecting +/- 2000 on being there. I am not blaming or pointing fingers (who am I to do that) but it kinda shows where we the numero uno (yes we, Joomla) is in terms of gathering/community/communication , grrrrrrrrrr
On another hand jab10 is not an "official" OSM/Joomla conference so we should compare what is comparable, nevertheless grrrrrrrrrr
Anyway, hope that the first JAB will be as excited as it looks! Already very nice speakers and proposals :) -
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