EclipseCon talk feedback is out...

EclipseCon was very good this year. The new venue and some new format ideas seemed to work. It was a lot more intimate and easier to spot people. Lunch was packed but that made it harder for people to sit isolated in their own little group (that’s a good thing).  Moreover, the talks were very good. I made a concerted effort to go to more talks and was well rewarded. It seems that others were as well.

One of the great things we’ve been doing for a few years now is the talk voting.  Simply by dropping a card in one of three buckets as you exit the talk you can signal a +1, 0 or -1 for the talk. You can also leave text comments which the team collects, transcribes and eventually distributes to the speakers.

The talk voting results were put up on the EclipseCon site recently. There are a number of interesting points.

• Of course, Jeff Norris’ keynote got rave reviews. Nearly 300 people cast their +1 for the talk and not a single -1.  Surprisingly three lost soles voted 0. Not sure what what it would take to get their approval but…
• We don’t know the full number of people at each talk but based on the keynote responses, it seems like roughly 50-60% talk attendees vote. I figure there were about 500 people at each keynote and there were 250-300 votes in each. Not sure if that translates for the smaller sessions but its a data point. Would be good to get the voter turn out up next year. I mean, you’re right there…
• Of the over 6500 votes cast, only ~7% of attendees did not like (-1) the talk they went to and over 70% were very pleased (+1) with what they saw. That is pretty impressive with such a varied group.
• About half of the talks received no -1 votes!

I was particularly pleased to see that the OSGi Best Practices talk I did with Paul, Martin and Chris was well received (111 +1’s, 8 0’s and no -1’s).

We were less lucky on the OSGi tutorial.  72% where very pleased but a few (4%) were disappointed and the rest were, well, ok with it. We’ll have to see what the write-in reports say. For sure the room was packed and there were a few issues getting setup and running. Seems par for the tutorial course but still not satisfactory. Perhaps next year we can do better both on the setup and structure but also on the facilities.

In any event, another great EclipseCon done.  Everyone involved in running the show and presenting should be proud.  Thanks for all your hard work. Well done.