AsyncAPI Conf on Tour 2023

[thulieblack]

Hello everyone,

One of our main goals as a community is to host multiple micro conferences/events in different locations this year. In context, this is what we are envisioning cc. @derberg :

• Have a minimum of 5 events in different locations (one event per continent).
• Host in a location where one of our current sponsors is. If this is not feasible we approach others who might be interested.
• Have a TSC member present at the events.
• Have a mix of presentations, sponsored talks, and workshops (maybe do competitions/quizzes and swag giveaways).
• Keeping the community and sponsors happy.
• Have the conference dates and locations confirmed upfront, so that everyone has time to plan and prepare for traveling.
• Find ways to make the conference inclusive and accessible to everyone by opting to host at locations where we have the majority of contributors.

To make all this happen, we need to start actively planning and coordinating as soon as possible. Please do share your thoughts, inputs, and ideas.

Thank you in advance and let's work together to make AACOT (AsyncAPI Conference On Tour) a success!!

@asyncapi/tsc_members

[derberg]

Let's do it!!!

I have already started initial discussions with different companies, and for now, candidates locations are:

• Europe
  • London, England
  • Berlin, Germany
  • Madrid, Spain
• Asia
  • Bengaluru, India

I'm not sharing companies' names yet, as there is no final "YES - location and time booked". Not sharing names to avoid any hate towards them in case in the end the event will not take place.

Find ways to make the conference inclusive and accessible to everyone by opting to host at locations where we have the majority of contributors.

Would be nice to add some location from Nigeria and North America, and it would be a fantastic AACOT 2023!

@AceTheCreator man, go and make some noise in Lagos 😄 maybe organizers of the conference that you attended last year can connect you with someone.

[thulieblack]

Do we have anyone in the community from North America that would be interested in being part of the coordination??

[derberg]

Not yet. I'm gonna reach out again to one company to remind them + I just had a call with one more company that could maybe help with North America 🤞🏼

Once any of the candidates say YES, I will always send them here to this discussion to make a clear statement that offers help, and you can take it from here further, I mean discussing details in more transparent way than I'm doing it now.

[ivangsa]

Hi I can confirm we will be hosting one AACOT in Madrid in Sngular offices arround Q4 2023

In "Stage One" which is a modest TV set/studio we can host arround 50 people confortably and have like 4 cameras to make a great hybrid event

I suppose we can count on @fmvilas in person for the key-note ＼ ⍢⃝／

Let me know of next steps to start organizing this...

[fmvilas]

You can indeed count with me for that, @ivangsa :)

[ivangsa]

Proposed dates: Wed 18 and Thu 19, October so we can start the Call for Papers
Focusing on quality over quantity, so depending on recived talks we can decide to go for a one-day or two-days event

[thulieblack]

A quick update:
Our Call for Speakers page for AACoT Madrid Edition is 75% done waiting for some banners from @AceTheCreator and @Mayaleeeee. I would like to hear your feedback, especially on the information details.

[Mayaleeeee]

Hi Thulie, thanks for tagging me here.

This page looks cool, well done. For the banner, I will work on something and share with the team.

Thank you 🤗

[thulieblack]

Important Update on AACoT Madrid

We'll have a one-day event on the 19th of October, 2023. Please mark your calendars.

Do also share your opinions on how best we can distribute tickets

[derberg]

I got confirmation from folks running Postman office in Bengaluru, India that we can do event there. Basing on today's community meeting I understand best to target November-December.

I'm checking with them dates 16-17 November or 30 November - 1 December

@thulieblack I hope I can engage them in further agreements here, so discussion do not have to run through me 😅

[derberg]

I'll push for 30 November - 1 December.

[derberg]

ok, final date is 30 of November, Thursday -> recommended by locals that know how people operate there and when they join events.

[thulieblack]

It's official, folks; AACoT'23 is going to Bangalore, India, on the 30th of November!!

The event will be held at one of Postman's offices in Bangalore, and we'll be accommodating a max of ~100 people.

CFPs will open soon!

Hope to see y'all there!!

[Ruchip16]

cant wait to meet ya'll sooon !!

[AnimeshKumar923]

Sadly, won't be able to attend this in-person and meet the amazing people due to exams. 😞
I'm aiming for the virtual mode 😁 All the best for the event! 🚀 Welcome to India! 🥳

[danielkocot]

@thulieblack send me to this discussion. I would like to bring Dortmund, Germany with the codecentric office there for November into play :).

[derberg]

@thulieblack hey, I had a chat with Mehdi Medjaoui from APIDays about a possibility to host AsyncAPI Conf on Tour at APIDays in Paris in December.

There are options like:

• free conference tickets from our community
• possible sponsorship of a speaker to travel
• additional dedicated sponsors that could sponsor even more conference travels
• we would need someone to be the master of the ceremony for AsyncAPI track. Pack your bags 😄
• there is even an option for joining event in Australia in October. Very close to what we have for Madrid, but this is other part of the world. I think we can assume nobody will fly from Madrid to Australia for AsyncAPI Conf, and nobody will fly from Australia to Madrid for the same. So there should be no problem that events are on the same month.

---

I'll connect you with Mehdi over email as I'm not sure what is his GitHub handle

[jonaslagoni]

Any update on Paris? 🤔

[thulieblack]

Yes, announcements coming after the London conference😉

[dalelane]

@thulieblack hiya - we'd love to host an AsyncAPI Conference on Tour at our office in London.

The site has a large conference room that can fit 100 people, and we could have that for the day on 20th September

[thulieblack]

[jonaslagoni]

Is this something we can add to the calendar (i.e. it is confirmed to happen)?

cc @dalelane @thulieblack

[thulieblack]

Yes @jonaslagoni 😉

[jonaslagoni]

Any updates on the other conferences, location, date, CFP, tickets, etc?

I.e. for London and Paris?

[thulieblack]

Hey @jonaslagoni, we have London coming up on the 20th of September. CFP and tickets will be announced next week

[thulieblack]

Conference tickets for London will be available and ready before the end of the week. Will share the link soon.

P.S.
If you are TSC or an Ambassador attending the event in person in London, please let us know through the thread or DM so that we can provide you with a 100% discount on your tickets.

[jonaslagoni]

👋

[derberg]

👋🏼 - nevermind, I just purchased it, forgot it is just 25bucks

[derberg]

ok, so, throwing a bomb into discussion. After having a convo with Postman folks in regards Bengaluru edition, and they suggested small fee for the event as it happens quite often that with free events people quite often subscribe but do not come.

what about if we consult with hosts and actually introduce fee?

well event would still be free imho

fee would be to make sure people that register come to the event.

fee would be small, max $50, and 100% of fee would be redeemed in the way that we spend them on swags and bring in the package to the event and hand them over during the event. We do not give coupon, you have to come to the event to collect the package.

thoughts?

I hear from people that organize events that people usually do not respect free events much, they apply and then just do not come

[Barbanio]

What do you think about putting this logo also on the bottle?

[Mayaleeeee]

Yes, that should work too.

[derberg]

The best swags are these that are universal, and you do not need to know the "size" of the person that will receive it:

• stickers
• socks
• bottle
• bag
• beer opener

pick the one that you think is the best, always available, and in budget 😄

[Barbanio]

Hi! @ivangsa sent me the merchandising companies that Sngular usually works with. One offers us the same prices as the one I proposed, so it makes sense for us to work with them since Sngular has had a good experience.

If we choose a bottle, stickers and bag, the final price for each swag in Madrid would be $20,34. @derberg, can we afford this?

@dalelane, could you recommend any merchandising company you have worked with in London? Thanks!

[dalelane]

sorry - I've not done anything like that before, so don't know of any

[ivangsa]

Regarding AACoT/Madrid we got one challenge for distributing the tickets b/c the venue can host only 50 people and 14 speackers count as seats. That leaves 30 tickets for the public.

Charging for the tickets is not posible, we would like to avoid empty seats from people not showing up, and also avoid giving the tickets to the "fastest clickers" in eventbright...

So one idea is to distribute them by invitation for the community and interested individuals. From sngular will be easy to find some higly motivated and interested s/w engineers in learning about AsyncAPI, because we work with many companies as consultancy.

What do you all think about distributing the tickets by invitation?

[ivangsa]

On the other hand this will be a lovely networking oportunity as we will be having lunch and coffee breaks all together, we have some catering being organized...

[dalelane]

avoid giving the tickets to the "fastest clickers" in eventbright...

If this is a concern, something like a random draw might be fairer - open a signup for an agreed time (e.g. couple days) and then put all the names of people who sign up in a virtual hat, and pick the first 30 at random.

[ivangsa]

Yes, this is an issue we are aware of from the beginning, and random allocation may look fairer, but we may end up with half the seats empty from people not showing up... ☹️

Certainly, the delivery of tickets should be fair and look fair.

There is time until September to think about this...

My favorite outcome for this would be to have a small audience of highly interested and motivated individuals, ideally already engaged in the AsyncAPI community in one way or another... interested in networking with the speakers and providing high-quality feedback and interesting ideas. Among the speakers, there are tool builders, technical writers, and advanced users/experts... And there will be catering for all the attendees and speakers, so networking is at the center.

I'm thinking about conducting an inquiry/survey 🙋 around the beginning of September for people interested in attending and their expertise, interests, and demographics... so we have an idea of how many people are interested and also try to build a diverse audience.

Also reserving some of the tickets for "IT Architects/Engineering Managers/Whatever.." may look like cherry-picking on one hand, but it may also help better advance the adoption of AsyncAPI on the other hand... and make the event more outstanding.

The venue at sngular/madrid will be small in size, but we will count on very good technical means for an engaging broadcast.

In summary, my mind is on surveying the community and distributing the tickets by invitation, making sure everybody that gets a ticket will be attending. And also doing this transparently as usual in the community.

(I don't think this is easy, but I think it's the best alternative and is worth trying it)

[thulieblack]

To tackle the tickets issue and allocate fairly, we will use a form to collect responses from interested individuals who'd like to attend AACoT'23 Madrid. This gives everyone a fair chance and a shot at attendance.

We will select the best responses and award them tickets.

🔗 https://forms.gle/NW5B97mYFuCN8wEd9

[thulieblack]

Tickets to AACoT'23 Paris x APIdays

Hey Ambassadors and TSC members, we have free RegularTickets for those interested in attending both the AACoT'23 Paris conference and APIdays on December 6,7, and 8.

Tickets Link: https://ticket.apidays.global/event/apidays-paris-2023/8a1f3904-e2be-4c69-a880-37d2ddf1027d/cart?coupon=ASYNCAPICONF23
Promo Code: ASYNCAPICONF23

Please redeem within the next 5 days before we share them with the community.

[thulieblack]

We have like 100

[M3lkior]

Wow, ok ! Very nice ; Thanks a lot i book my tickets 👌 See you in Paris if you participate !

[kennethaasan]

Thanks! I got one and looking forward to meeting y'all.

[derberg]

@asyncapi/ambassadors @asyncapi/tsc_members and maintainers

if you're coming to the event, like @M3lkior or @kennethaasan, then there is important and I think great news.

APIDays sponsors for us a booth at the event that typically bronze sponsors get. We will use it as an experiment, to see how important such booth presence is aside of typical speaker presentation or conference track. Idea for 2023 is that we do a shared "API specs and standards" booth with experts from different communities (we accept only people that are active members of such communities, like in come committees, maintainers, ambassadors and stuff like that).

So far we have confirmation from:

• AsyncAPI
• OpenAPI
• JSON Schema

grpc.io folks confirmed nobody from they side will be at the Paris event. GraphQL person from LF did not respond to me.

So,

@M3lkior , @kennethaasan and others, if you can, it would be awesome if you join our booth duty schedule.
So basically the idea is that we are there 2 days, 6-7 to meet community and also to advertise our conference track on 8th.
Once you confirm you wanna help, I will include you in an email where I send a link to the schedule, so you can put your name that for example "you will show up at the booth on 6th, at 1PM for an hour to answer questions about AsyncAPI, and maybe 7th at 10AM" (it is ok if you are just an expert in part of it). Whatever you can commit to, even 1h will be amazing, and it will also show how big we are and how many of us represent the initiative.

Interested, share your email with me in Slack or send it to [email protected]

[derberg]

btw, for now I know I will be there and @Amzani 💯

[thulieblack]

Okay, so AACoT'23 came with a lot of new experiences. We got to learn, grow, and network as a community, which is one of the greatest goals we achieved this year.

I'm in high anticipation and looking forward to the coming AACoT'24 🚀

[derberg]

yes, learn, improve and make it even bigger in 2024 🚀 congrats on great work 🍺