NgColombia: Our Community 💜
We carried out NgColombia a couple of days ago and we couldn’t be more proud of the impact achieved.
I will tell you 1) The What, 2) The How, and 3) The Why of NgColombia along with our very own retrospective on 4) What went well, 5) What went wrong, and 6) What can be improved.
TL;DR
- 💜 The What: NgColombia is the first Angular Conference in Latin America, and on September 6th and 7th we hosted the second edition.
- 👫 The How: The inspiration for NgColombia is based on a strong “People First” conviction. Whether it was an attendee, a speaker, or a member of the staff. People were at the center of all our conversations and our top priority, not processes. Every single decision was made with this in mind.
- 🌎 The Why: NgColombia was created because we need it, Colombia needs it, and Latin America needs it. Attending a conference in the USA or Europe is out of the reach of many, and alternatives such as NgColombia, bring our people together around a compelling cause, not Angular, Angular is just a means, the real purpose is the positive impact communities can achieve in its members.
- 👍 What went well: Organization, decoration, and how we conducted the ceremony were among the things people loved the most.
- 👎 What went wrong: The seats were very uncomfortable. People complained about them enough for us to take note. They also expressed some aversion over the English level of some of the speakers.
- 🙌 What can be improved: There’s always room for improvement, yet the CFP is the one we believe can benefit from a major reexamination.
1) The What 💜
NgColombia 2017 💙
It was April 2017, after attending NgConf for the first time, I came back to Colombia with the idea of starting an Angular meetup in Medellin. I thought it would be fun to meet folks who were also interested in the framework.
I told Yuxi Global about it (the company I work for). I asked them if they’d be somehow, maybe, perhaps interested, in helping us out with some snacks.
They said: “Whatever you need”.
Okay then! I created the meetup page and posted the first meetup expecting around 20 to 30 people.
Narrator: “Huh! Silly boy”.
Over 80 people showed up! 🎉.
A great crowd for the first time. Their participation revealed the potential of our region, but also a big demand for an Angular community.
Whether we wanted or not, with only 6 meetups we had experienced a substantial growth that made us very excited:
But not only that, our meetups were crowded with more than 100 attendees per event:
This is when Josue Gutierrez mentioned the idea of running a conference. At first, I was reluctant about it, but then I realized a conference is just a bigger meetup.
Narrator: “He was wrong”.
Well, the truth is that a conference is just a “little” bit more complicated than coding.
Narrator: “He really means it is too damn hard”.
I told Yuxi Global about it. We needed a sponsor that could provide enough investment for the conference. Also, I required time from my day-to-day activities.
They said: “Whatever you need”.
Alright then! We drew the layout and set on the journey of hosting the first edition of NgColombia 🎉.
In only two months we planned and brought to life the first Angular Conference of Latin America 💙.
We were very happy with the results, people really enjoyed it to the point 98.2% of them agreed to join us again in 2018.
So be it! 💪.
NgColombia 2018 💜
In January 2018, we had a meeting at Yuxi about moving forward with the second edition of NgColombia. This time we had bigger and brighter ideas. Although, the board of directors agreed on one thing:
As a tech company, we will only focus on what we do well, and outsource the rest.
Separation of concerns applied to conference organizing 😏.
Here’s when Federico Jimenez (my boss) comes up with the brilliant idea of running an RFP for running the conference. It was aimed at logistic agencies in the city:
- 📋 First, we outlined the guidelines and requirements.
- 💻 Then, they presented their proposals.
- 🥇 We picked one.
- 🔒 And finally the selected agency signed a contract with us.
That was it. No turning back at this point 😬 NgColombia was going to happen one way or another!
Narrator: “He was scared”
The actual work 🔥
At this point, the real work was about to start:
- 📺 Create the website.
- 📣 Announce the CFP.
- 📻 Tell everyone about it.
On the marketing side led by Camila Cardenas:
- 📬 Send mailings.
- 🔊 Pay advertisement.
- 📱 Have daily communication with the logistic agency.
On social media led by Ana Sanchez and her team:
- 📝 Non-stop copywriting.
- 🕵️ Curate the arts and contents.
- 🎥 Record videos inviting people to the conference.
On the financial side led by Federico, he had to:
- 📈 Convince the upper management in Yuxi of investing threefold the initial budget.
- 💳 Make sure the budget was allocated correctly.
- 🕺 Orchestrate every effort of the conference.
We can’t possibly mention ALL the great contributors to this event, but we tried mentioning some in a very special section we made for them.
In general terms, the following months felt like this cat:
At the end, it was an overall success and people loved learning and sharing this special moment with their peers in the community. We are very proud of it. Take a look:
Day 1 ☝️
Day 2 ✌
2) The How 👨👩👦👦👨👩👧👦
Anyone can run a meetup or conference, but not anyone can build up a community.
The difference resides on who you are doing it for and how you are doing it. Answering those questions from the beginning can tremendously shift the impact you achieve.
Our mantra was simple: People come first 👫
We constantly ask them for feedback and try to steer the wheel based on their needs. For example:
- 📱 We strive to answer every question or comment they post on any of our channels with a lot of enthusiasm (and emojis ⭐️). As if they were the clients of a business called Angular Medellin.
- 🙋 During meetups we constantly assess everything, from the A/C, to the food, the venue, or even how visible the slides are for the people in the back.
- 👨👩👧👧 During presentations we (gently) interrupt the speaker from time to time, to validate if the audience is understanding what’s being presented or we need to provide some sort of context.
It’s paying careful attention to the details what makes a community a welcoming environment for everyone.
Our Speakers 🎤
On the other side, we have the speakers.
Being speaker is for some, an opportunity to do something they have never done before. We want to make sure they take advantage of it while enjoying it.
Public speaking is among the most dreadful and challenging undertakings for the human being. That’s why we assist them by:
- 📋 Providing them with a set of guidelines.
- 📣 Reviewing their slides and giving them feedback.
- 🤵 Going through dry-run tests that allows them to practice beforehand.
When the big day arrives, we motivate them and support them by:
- 🕺 Introducing them to the audience along with the topic they are going to talk about.
- 🙋 Helping them out when the audience raises a tough question to the speaker.
- 🏅 Giving them positive feedback as soon as they leave the stage.
Not all speakers are great. If we are running a community for the people, we also need to consider the attendees. They are eager to listen to what our speaker have to say, so speakers better take full responsibility for their keynote. Some of the actions we find unacceptable are:
- 👎 Preparing your slides last minute because they didn’t spend enough time to work on them.
- 👎 Refusing to take feedback or not responding to our communications.
- 👎 Reading your slides because you didn’t prepare them enough.
- 👎 Using content that goes against our Code of Conduct.
When this is the case, we reserve the right of rejecting or not inviting them again.
By putting people first we endorse our mission: The community
3) The Why
Running meetups or conferences have some positive outcomes:
- ⭐️ I joined the GDE program thanks to the community work.
- 🥇 I perceived a growth in my professional curriculum.
- 🤵 I became a renowned person in the industry.
On the other hand:
- 👷 Yuxi found a lot more talent to hire.
- 💼 Yuxi gained a few clients.
Those are side effects, but those are NOT the units by which we are measuring success. Our success is measured by:
- 📊 How members are being positively impacted
- 📚 How their professional careers are being boosted
- 🌎 How our region is growing and becoming a tech hub
Those are the question we ask ourselves every day.
4) What went well 👍
The Organization 🏅
We are not conference organizers. This was the first time we ever organized something as big as the second edition of NgColombia. Another reason why bringing a logistic operator to the table was a great idea.
We are very rational, logical, and organized, but the logistic operator had the experience we lack, and together we certainly run a careful plan that was executed dexterously. They specially liked:
- How fast the lines were - Registration was a quick and easy. Same for the snacks.
- Breaks were spot on, well-scheduled, and had the right duration.
- The general execution of the conference.
The Ceremony 🎤
Carlos Angulo and I knew our role very well. However being master of ceremony was going to be a difficult task for two programmers. That’s why Yuxi hired 4 different professionals to train us on public speaking:
- 📣 Vocal Technique
- 🕺 Body Language
- 🤵 Improvisation
- 🧠 Mind Focus
Carlos and I spent around 4 months getting ready to present NgColombia and it certainly paid off. People especially liked how:
- 🚀 We kept the good vibe in between talks (specially for dense talks).
- ⏰ We kept the agenda on time (this is a tough one).
- 🎮 The interactive games we prepared to assess the audience attention to the talks. Whoever answered first entered in a raffle to win a prize 🎉.
The Decoration 🎨
Another point for the logistic operator. We certainly gave them ideas, but they were the mastermind behind details such as: lightning, stage setup, screens, backings, space distribution, etc.
4) What went wrong 👎
The seats 💺
It’s a hard to admit but yes, the grandstands were a bad idea.
We had two types of seats: Bean bags and grandstands.
- Bean bags were perfect, comfortable, and comfy.
- Grandstands were not accessible nor comfortable. A bit disappointing considering the majority of people were seated on these 😪.
Not happening again. This is how we learn, we know not to repeat the same mistake twice.
English level 👄
A lot of people felt disappointed of the English level of some speakers.
At NgColombia we were aware of some speakers whose native language was not English. To mitigate this, we offered dry run sessions to give feedback on every matter including language skills.
Some of them even took their presentations so seriously that they added daily habits to ingrain English in their lives.
Apparently, these efforts were not enough 😪.
We assume responsibility for this and we will make sure to fix this for 2019.
5) What can be improved 🙌
There are PLENTY of things that need improvement. But there is one thing we will change for the better: Our CFP.
Not that it was bad, Martin and many people thought it was great:
But for the sake of continuously improving and the maturing of our conference we will:
- 🖐 Rebalance our selection criteria and make it more explicit.
- 👀 Our selection process will be completely transparent and will most likely be public.
- 👨👩👧👧 Our Academic Committee, in charge of selecting the proposals will be even more diverse.
- 📋 Our policies in relation to responsibilities of the speaker will be stricter to ensure better quality.
- 🌏 Our budget for speakers will be more generous. We need to ensure that everyone can apply, even if they live on the other side of the world.
This is it! I hope you enjoyed it! If you found this inspiring, share it with your peers 💜 or clap many times 👏!
Special thanks to Andres Concha who proof-read this article.
👉 Read Why we run NgColombia in English.
