DevFest Hellas 2020 — behind the scenes!
What is DevFest?
DevFest is community-led developer events hosted by Google Developer Groups (GDG) around the globe annually.
Technologies
Whether it be through technical talks delivered in local languages, a keynote provided by Google Developers, or by simply meeting fellow local developers, DevFest attendees learn about how Google developer products can help them do what they do best, develop. Sessions cover a wide variety of technologies with speakers from Google, Google Developer Groups (GDG), Women Techmakers (WTM), Google Developer Experts (GDE), and more.
Now that we have specified the basics of what it is and what can you learn attending it let’s start our story. The story of DevFest Hellas 2020
How everything started
As a Lead of GDG Cloud Thessaloniki, I attended GDG’s Europe Virtual Summit in July. Until then I wasn’t sure if we could do it. If we could host and support it. But at the Summit everything became clear and so easy to do. So easy? Not exactly! 😂 But I was confident that we could do it.
So the next morning I talked with the other 2 people, Panagiotis & George, from my chapter, I explained to them what DevFest is and what we have to do. They were willing to help. And so we began our preparations.
Did I write preparations? Sorry, my mistake.
First I wrote down a list of what we need to know.
- Is it going to be a one-day event or more days?
- Do we need workshops?
- How many speakers are we going to have?
- Are swags necessary for this event?
- Is the logo gonna be provided to us or should we create it?
- … and a douzaine of questions
which I usually ask them to Katha, my Region Lead. But not this time.
Katha introduced me to Alessandro. He was (and still is) responsible for the DevFest in Europe. I was, more than, 100% sure that we’ll have a great time working together because we support the same team and have pictures with this guy
With Alessandro’s support and the Community Leads Platform, things were taking their place.
In the meantime, I informed my friends Magy and Leonidas from GDG Athens but also Andreas and Maria from GDG Cyprus. We had a very successful collaboration for the Android 11 event and I thought that we could repeat it. And I was so right about that!
We had our first, among more, Hangout calls. I explained to them about the DevFest and they agreed to host it together. For the calls we decided to use Hangout and for fast everyday communication to use WhatsApp.
On the WhatsApp, Andreas introduced us the rest of the GDG Cyprus team. Galatia, Andreas & Michalis.
So our team was a collaboration of 3 GDG chapters and 10 people. All of us have hosted onsite and online events but not an event as big as the DevFest. We can say that we were Professional Amateurs. 😁
And then August come. Time for vacations.
First days of September we had another call and decided who should do what. Or something like that.
When we created our event we didn’t know if we were going to have speakers 🤞🏻.
So we had our:
Call for Proposals,
Call for Talks,
Call for Speakers,
Calls in general! 🤣
Until then we knew that it was going to be a one-day event, from 10:00 until 15:00 Greek Time Zone.
Our deadline for the Call for Speakers was on mid of September. Before the deadline, 2 new members joined our team, DSC University of Athens with Konstantinos & DSC University of Macedonia with Ilias, they were Rookie Amateurs. The DSC’s were started in the summertime. And we were glad to have them with us!
After the deadline, we understood that we were going to have a really hard time. We needed only 8 but we had 16 awesome talks and we had to choose between them.
We made it and we informed all the speakers about the results. We prepared their slides, posts for the social media and everything was shared on Google Drive.
Every day we were chatting and had the disaster-recovery game. We always had something to do… yesterday and we were going to do it today or tomorrow 😂 (Miss these times!)
Our agenda was ready! 8 speakers from various seniority, with different backgrounds and companies. Isn’t that diversity or not?
And we decided to share prizes with 3 quizzes, of 7–10 questions, between the talks. The questions had nothing to do with coding and programming. Just general knowledge of movies, cartoons, comics, gaming. All the good stuff of life!
Only a few days were remaining and we were sure about us. On the 30th of September, just three days before our event there was another Virtual Summit which of course I attended it. Glad that I did that. Never thought about the Code of Conduct. And Tim’s talk was very crucial. Next day I wrote our Code of Conduct and informed everyone from the team what it means and how important it is.
Scheduled our jobs for the big day. Did the last check connection at the place of the event and was absolutely sure that nothing could go wrong!
Three PC's in the room and one TV from our side. Checking the live event real-time, checking the attendee's video with a small-time delay from the platform, checking on LinkedIn’s event page for messages and answering back, checking on Facebook’s event page for messages and answering back. WhatsApp messages. Slack messages. SMS. Even phone calls from a speaker (thanks to this phone call I was informed by Ilias who was watching the YouTube Live that I haven’t muted my microphone 🤣). DM’s, chat on the platform…
No, it’s not as crazy as it looks. It’s completely totally more crazy than you can even imagine! 🤣 But I loved it! 🧡
And so it began. Our first speaker. Everything went so smooth. He went to his dedicated room on our Slack channel to answer questions and to network. Second speaker. I forgot to stop sharing my screen. So, the speaker couldn’t share her screen. Did it a minute later. And then it was our Quiz time. Problems are coming!
Our two platforms (event + gaming) had a problem. Due to 30'’ delay, the question was on the screen when the time was over. But the players could see the 4 options on their mobile phone and they had to choose one. We did our best and finally finished it and we got 3 winners.
Next round of talks. People were still signing in to attend DevFest Hellas 2020. I was accepting them as featured attendees (those who applied). The rest of the team was checking if everything was going as it should be. Checking the speakers if they were ready. If the winners of the 1st game have shared their screenshot to verify that they won… And we did a debugging for the next round of gaming. Instead of 30'’ time for each question to have 1min and 30 sec.
It was time for our second game. This time the internet connection crashed. But we were ready for this. Our speaker was already informed to be ready. So we continued with the last 3 talks.
In the meantime, we changed the Gaming Moderator (GM) and we were anxious to see our results. Guess what! 5 -10 minutes before Sophie, our last speaker, finishes her talk we got a message from our new GM that his PC crashed and he was restarting it. 🤣
Thankfully everything went just fine. We did our two games and had a lot of fun! It was the best ending for the day!
All these ups and downs, the way we talked and behaved to each other, not only during the preparation but at these difficulties is what turned us from a team to The Dream Team!
Would I do it again? Sure, I would! Absolutely Yes! As long as it is with the same Dream Team!
I’m really grateful for having the opportunity to work alongside these remarkable people! Our DevFest was a hit. Not because I say it so. But because from 359 people, only one was disappointed (the exception that confirms the rule). We got great feedback from our attendees and a lot of thankful messages!
We really appreciate it because this is what moves us to continue our efforts and to host more events!
You can find the recordings from the DevFest Hellas 2020 here: https://bit.ly/AheadOfTech
My overall experience as an organizer in a sentence: It was a beautiful dream with spicy stings of nightmares!
But as I wrote on the beginning this was the result of our collaboration. Some of my remarkable teammates decided to share their experience as well:
As #DevFestHellas2020 event was a collaboration between many chapters, different communities and attendees all across the world — we all wanted to make sure that everyone will feel welcome, no matter their background. As both GDG co-organizer and Women Techmakers Ambassador, diversity and inclusion were a priority, starting from our agenda. I’m so glad we managed to have 3 (out of 8) female speakers and a young student sharing his experience on Google Summer of Code. I had an amazing time working with all these amazing co-organizers. Many laughs, new friends and late-night talks — this is how I sum up my experience as a first-time DevFest co-organizer. I can’t wait for our upcoming events!
Magy
GDG Athens & WTM
The #DevFestHellas2020 was a clear example that even a new GDG Chapter can accomplish so much if you put the right energy and embrace collaboration. HUGE Kudos to our captain Ilias from GDG Cloud Thessaloniki the guys at GDG Athens, DSC University of Athens, DSC University of Macedonia as well as my co-leads at GDG Cyprus. We were all amazed by the big turnout and the quality talks we hosted.
So thankful to attend the GDG European Summit back in 2019 where I met all of the guys from Greece.
Andreas Lefkatis
GDG Cyprus
#DevFestHellas2020 was an amazing experience and I thoroughly enjoyed both the preparation and the execution phases!
Challenges were there but this didn’t stop us or the audience from having a great time, all while learning from the extraordinary speakers that we had!
Immediately after the end and of the event and while the thanks and congratulations were still flowing in on all channels, the first thing I that came to my mind and typed was:
We should do more of these :)
Indeed, a dream team!
Michalis
GDG Cyprus
Hope to see you all on our next events!
Take Care and Stay Safe!
