#DFUA without pink glasses
tl;dr: Running a big community-based event is super-exhausting. Especially when your team is doing that during their free time. You’ll struggle in a lot of moments and argue with each other.
SOLUTION: Find some big idea that will keep your team motivated, otherwise emotional burnout is inevitable.
This article is based on a presentation we did at GDG Summit in Warsaw on October 19th 2018. If you are interested, check the video.
We like to talk about failures
Epic fails are an endless source of precious experience. A simple wish “not to repeat this terrible mistake” motivates us to become better and compare our conference not only with the best tech conferences in the world but with the previous editions of DevFest Ukraine.
BTW, check our life rules article where we talk about our mistakes.
That’s why we have a famous How not to f*ck up doc for each year. Important rule: do not repeat your f*ck ups from year to year. You’ll definitely have new ones and… put them into the doc.
Do not repeat your f*ck ups from the last years
The [epic] growth
During the last 5 years #DFUA has grown more than 3 times:
- From 300 to 1000 attendees
- From 30 to 80 volunteers
- From 3 to 14 core team members
This growth sometimes was hard to handle: despite the need to deal with physical space for all your attendees, endless tasks for your volunteers, you need to remember about keeping all the details that make your event special.
We have a team of perfectionists and attention to the details is a distinctive feature of #DFUA:
- tech jokes in toilets
- welcoming each speaker at the airport personally with a local sim card and (!) a pin for it
- branded coffee and popcorn cups
- special pointers on the floor coloured according to the tech track colours (e.g. Android is green etc)
Each year the list of such details growth exponentially.
When your team grows linearly, the load grows exponentially
We are working according to the Scrum framework with 2-week sprints, sprint plannings, and retrospectives. Our sprint plannings doc with short notes took 71 pages in 2018. Our conference retrospective after 2016 last for 7+ hours. Let me remind you that we organize DevFest Ukraine in our free time besides our main jobs…🙀
Collective responsibility is bad
It’s worse than you can imagine. When a task/Trello ticket doesn’t have a single responsible person it won’t be done. It’s great to have a team of highly-motivated people (which is definitely about our team), but everyone is so overwhelmed with their own tasks. A rule of thumb from us: add a responsible person as soon as task appears and put it to the sprint planning notes and then to Trello with a clear deadline. Yeah, SMART principle applies here very well.
Side note: when talking about areas of responsibility in general (like speakers, contractors, media etc) we also have a single responsible person + 1–2 people who can handle the needed tasks when the main person is sick/on B̶u̶r̶n̶i̶n̶g̶ ̶M̶a̶n̶ vacation, overloaded with main job tasks. At the beginning of conference preparation, we split the areas of responsibility between all of us (as DevFest Ukraine preparation takes 365 days/year activity, we do that on the first sprint planning when a previous conference just finished and a new one is started).
One more important note: areas split works great when people in micro teams communicate with each other, and the main responsible person is able to delegate the tasks…
Tasks delegation 😬
Ouch, it’s one of the hardest topics. There are many reasons why people do not delegate their work:
- wish to not screw up their team
- think that no one will do their tasks better
- lack of trust with their peers
- inability to share the needed knowledge and skills with their peers
Problem with tasks delegation is one that repeats from year to year, but it jumps from one team member to another. It’s like a crappy relay race: last year these 2 people took too many tasks and were so exhausted that they wanted to quit, this year 2 new people repeat the same mistake.
How to overcome with delegation problem:
- Ask for help. If you can’t — practice talking to people and… asking for some assistance.
- Learn basic management. Practice is brilliant, but some theory in estimates and conflict resolving would be very helpful. We constantly share the useful content in our slack channel (check our must-read list in this article).
- One more mechanics that appeared in our team: when you don’t have much work to do ask others what can you help. Or even proactively propose your assistance when you see an overloaded buddy. Tech conference backlog is endless and if you wanna gain a new skill that’s a perfect opportunity.
The sooner you start delegating your tasks, the healthier you’ll survive the event
Survive?
I’m not joking about surviving: all the madness that happens the last couple of weeks before the conference and during the conference will take all your nerves and cognitive efforts. If you are constantly exhausted you stop enjoying the event. Even if it’s the best tech conference in the world.
That’s mind-blowing: a lot of people say that your event is amazing, but you know so many details when everything went wrong. And all you can do is keep your face and fix all the troubles faster than attendees will notice. In some moment you stop feeling any emotions. And then all you can think about is a wish to end this as soon as possible with everyone safe and then NEVER REPEAT THIS AGAIN. Like in Rick and Morty episode.
Why you keep going
We had a lot of cases when people were come and go from our community. When organizers wanted to quit. When efforts spent were much bigger than the result. When wish “to have a year without DevFest and live a normal life” was so strong.
But we kept going and putting even more efforts. Making #DFUA even better. Making our visitors and speakers even more excited. Making our content the best.
We did that because of a big idea: bring a world-class conference experience to Ukraine. This idea is bigger than our personal struggles or fatigue. This idea is challenging enough to try and do the best we can. This idea is courage enough to do 100% commit to it. It’s not just a conference for us, it’s our child, it’s a phenomenon: what crazy people can do when they are not professionals but they have a big dream.
We kept going because of a great idea
Afterwards
#DFUA 2018 was the best one made by our team for the moment speaking. We brought speakers we were hunting for the last 5 years. We did this conference in a cinema as it was 5 years ago (but this time the cinema was much bigger than in 2014).
We decided to stop “on the top”, take a break and “live a normal life”. Because any further work requires fulltime commitment and quitting our jobs. And we want to try something new.
It’s not the end, it’s a great opportunity to share our experience and our products: check the other articles in our blog, Hoverboard project for conference websites, Tardis project used for #DFUA 2018 mobile app, #DFUA slides at SpeakerDeck, and our YouTube channel with talks recordings from all the DevFests.
We have more videos for you to check: GDG community talk with Martina Blahova. We’ve talked about conflict prevention, motivation, how to overcome emotional exhaustion and how to motivate yourself and your team.
