stackconf: in-person or online? In the beginning of the year, this was the most talked about question in the NETWAYS Events Team. In March it became quite clear. We have not really had a choice in this one: If we wanted stackconf 2020 to happen, we had to hold it online. Soon we realized though that what was born from necessity also carried a big chance. The chance to try something new, to leave the comfort zone.
Really overwhelming and convincing us that we were on the right path, was the support of the many of our speakers. Having handed in their talks when stackconf was still planned as taking place in Berlin, they sticked to their contribution for the online event too. Even though we extended stackconf with one more day.
Which path to take? Take them all!
Three days was the amount we needed to make sure to be able to show all presentations in just one track.
In this way we have freed our participants from extremely difficult decisions: Should I watch this or that talk? What interests me more: The Path to a Serverless-native era with Kubernetes? Or: The Path to OpenSource DBaaS with Kubernetes? No, you could just stay wherever you were and follow the first path first and the second path later. You could watch all talks in one row over the course of our three conference days. And during talks, which were pre-recorded and streamed, you could even get your questions directly answered by the speaker in the live chat.
What happened in between the presentations was surely worth to follow. The breaks were partly as enlightening as the talks, and for long stretches it was very exhilarating too.
From deep dive to offbeat and back
In charge of the break program: Our CEO Bernd Erk and Christian Stein, responsible for our NETWAYS webinars. The two made a wonderful team of moderators that brought us to and through discussions about challenges in our own industry, announced talks, welcomed speakers, and entertained us with wonderfully offbeat topics in best webcast manner. From favourite movies, to sustainability, to technical matters. The attendees had fun participating in the „Hallway Chat“ – being it hardest question or random stuff. Another fun part was the community evening playing Mario Kart.
This or that? That was the question in the small polls in our Twitter channel @NetwaysEvents. And the winners are awesome (88.9%), Kubernetes (90%), Remote Work (100%), YouTube (75%), Building (75%), Meeting in-person (62.5%), Cloud ( 71.4%), VxLAN & VLAN (50/50), Elastic (81.8%), Batman (55%) and DevOps (80%).
Thanks to all who joined our small survey. And of course and above all: Thanks to all of you who joined stackconf online! It was a blast! See you in 2021 for stackconf, this time hopefully in-person again in Berlin. Save the date: June 14 & 15, 2021.
If you are interested in reading about the talks and seeing some pictures, read more here:
stackconf online – Recap of Day 01
