2018 Conference - Some ideas

Hi all,

It was a very interesting conference.

Thanks to everybody that attended the conference either in person, or on the live stream, and to the Frappe team that put together a brilliant conference.

I have a few proposals about the 2018 conference:

  1. We separate out the Developer and the User Conferences.
  2. The Developer Conference is targeted at people that want to do intense development on ERPNext and Frappe and is open to user organizations, service providers and individuals. A set of prerequisites would be published for people to get the maximum out of the conference, but people are welcome to attend even if they don’t meet the prerequisites
  3. The User Conference is targeted at users that want to implement ERPNext for their own organizations or for Service Providers
  4. The Developer Conference will have a session that will talk about their legal obligation to contribute code back to ERPNext and how to integrate their code with ERPNext.
  5. The user conference will a common day for both users and service providers and the second day will break out separately into a User session and a Service Provider session.
    4.1 The user session will talk about how to do basic customization on ERPNext - like Custom Fields, Custom Reports, Custom Print Formats, HTML print formats, custom scripts, SQL & Query reports, etc.
    4.2 The Service Provider session will talk about: How to position ERPNext, Solution Selling, Uncovering Pain Points of Customers, etc.
  6. The Developer Conference will always be in Mumbai in October; the user conference will travel to a different part of India or the world.
  7. The User Conference will be made replicable so that chapter heads can conduct User Conferences Lite in their own countries, cities, regions, etc.

Of course this means that the community has to chip in and contribute to make these conferences successful.

Your thoughts and feedback please!

Thanks

Jay

6 Likes

I’ve not been here but followed on remote many talks, thanks to live streaming (have yet to finish…).

I agree. It can be chained but marketed as two separate events (or not, as you propose) .

I don’t want to pollute these topic with that but as I’m all for core contribution, there is no legal obligation, only moral obligation (with GPL, you must redistribute source code with software, so to the users / customers; you are not forced to contribute…).

I guess chapter heads can also replicate developer conference too.

Thanks for the proposal. I’m not really part of the community yet (just begun to work with ERPNext), real contributor views will be more meaningful :wink:

4 Likes

Thanks for viewing the conference and for your inputs. Welcome to ERPNext. Here’s hoping you have a great experience.

Thanks

Jay

I will only not agree with that. For example, traveling from Europe to India for this it will be too expensive for many devs (mostly freelancers).

2 Likes

True. But for the next couple of years at least, we will have all our development talent concentrated around the Mumbai area. Maybe we can do a few workshops in other parts of the world till then, even if we can’t send all our development talent.

Thanks

Jay

with all my good intentions, this sound like monolithic approach to a world that finally can communicate instantly all around (assuming that you not believe that earth is flat, :stuck_out_tongue: just joking).
This is also sound as race differentiated. Only Mumbai dev resident will have the “inside” indepth learning for the framework.

again @jayram with good intentions, please consider my comments in your final thoughts.

4 Likes

True! It would be awesome if we developed developer talent outside of Mumbai. I wasn’t meaning like Mumbai is some hotbed of super smart developers - just that Frappe and Foundation resources are concentrated in this area and since they only do development on ERPNext for a living, I assume that this part of the world is where we will see the maximum concentration of ERPNext resources for the next couple of years.

I’d love to be wrong about it though.

Thanks

Jay

1 Like

Thanks @Yakulu for putting the point out. I think when Jay is stating of obligation, its more about inspiring people to become a giver, and giver to the community in larger good are respected more within community & outside.

Further, people who do not want to contribute back and have clear intention of doing so, such people should make it explicitly open & clear, passively participate in community and not make community dangling on the hope that one day such & such contribution would come back. Regards.
_Liyakat

@Jay: i beg to differ of separating it, because development is closely linked with users need. The current format of dedicated last day as user conference is perfect, but next time may be we non-programmer needs to pitch in while agenda is being designed & see if user conference becomes really an user beneficial day. Other points on what could be an agenda items, that’s awesome - i believe for coming 2-3 years only that should be implemented.

i don’t think its good idea to completely split and make it two different event. It could be at any part of the world, but should be together. Live streaming would never replace in-person interaction, else we would not have seen Eric, Alain & other from far away countries.

Regards.
_Liyakat

@kickapoo and @JayRam i think this can be solved easy having 2 conference for developers one in Europe (April?) and one in Mumbay (October?) …so more chance to exchange ideas and knowledge …and some money saving

3 Likes

I agree with @JoEz.
On top of that, why not to try to apply for the FOSDEM participation? There is still a bit of time to submit main tracks and stands proposals. It’s a good chance to increase awareness of ERPNext in the broader world and engage developers, from Europe as well. Also, both participation and attendance are free.
I’ve never participated in ERPNext conference so please correct me if I’m wrong, but it looks like majority of its participants are already aware of ERPNext, while expanding to the events like FOSDEM should theoretically bring totally new community members. By the way, recent @jparikh’s suggestion reveals similar concern.

1 Like