One month on — our NODES experience
Musings about Neo4j’s first online developer conference
In the beginning…
A long time ago (at the start of the year, anyway!) we wanted to explore something new and novel. Something that would enable our wonderful community to show to the world what amazing Neo4j projects they’ve been working on.
Whilst in-person conferences are a great way to do this, (and we do this via GraphTour and GraphConnect), it’s not always easy for everyone to travel to attend or speak. After some deliberation, we decided that doing an online conference would be a great way to do this — not only do we remove the challenges of travel, but we still get the opportunity to interact as a group as well.
And soon enough, NODES 2019 was born!
The journey continued …
We were really keen to have an interactive event — not just a conference, but have many ways for our active community members to get involved. As well as the the summit itself, we also included:
- A Global GraphHack — a spin on the usual events run at GraphConnect, these would be a worldwide affair.
- The Hunger Games — a live, 5-minute challenge to answer questions at the end of each session (if you paid attention), with prizes to be won.
In addition, our community was actively organizing viewing parties around the world.
Call for papers
The start of June marked the call for papers, along with the announcement of NODES2019 to the world. The original plan was to have three tracks in total, two standard-length talk tracks, with a third lightning talks track. Little did we realize the number of high-quality, fascinating proposals we would receive. The participation and level was so high that we decided to increase the total number of talk tracks to five, totaling over 50 sessions for the day.
We also had many excellent proposed questions for the Hunger Games which would go on to make the day itself more engaging, with attendees eager to take part in each round.
A couple of bumps in the road
It wasn’t completely smooth, and due to a couple of challenges, we decided that we needed to change over to a different conferencing platform to meet some specific needs. So we switched from Crowdcast, which is more suitable for single track events, to BigMarker which met more of our requirements. Being so close to the 10th October wasn’t ideal, but all involved were able to adjust accordingly.
Unfortunately, a couple of speakers also had to pull out weeks before the event. Again, our great community was able to be ready and able to step up and ensure we had a packed schedule full of excellent talks to enjoy.
Global GraphHack kick-off
Previous GraphHack events took place before or after GraphConnect. These are always popular events, and we were keen to have something for NODES. Given the global reach of the online summit, we wanted something equally fitting for the GraphHack. Thus the Global GraphHack was born. Teams could be made up of individuals, or groups; either friends or colleagues, or virtually across the Neo4j community.
With the theme announced at the start of September (Extending the Graph Ecosystem), participants had a month to build their projects. As for the prizes, there were some fabulous ones up for grabs. The teams were competing for flights and hotels to GraphConnect 2020, along with other exclusive perks.
The close of the competition saw 17 projects submitted. We were truly impressed with the range of submissions. What was equally impressive was the number of participants new on their graph journey taking part, alongside seasoned graphistas. These projects really fit the soul of the competition, which was to expand the realm of graphs to the whole community.
Such was the level of submissions, it was a difficult task to decide who the ultimate winners would be. We are grateful to all who took part in the voting, and to our judges who had a tough time scoring each submission. Ultimately, we had to pick winners from these fine submissions, and they were:
- neomap: a Neo4j Desktop application to visualize nodes with geographic attributes on a map
- Meetup Mixer: an educational tool to teach people at a Meetup about graphs and Cypher
- Neo4j Jmeter load testing: a custom procedure that incorporates native bolt protocol support, along with example load test plans
What is inspirational, is the different levels of experience the winners had. Anybody can win a GraphHack with a great idea, irrespective of ability!
On the day
It was just before 7am (CEST), on the 10th October when the team set off towards Malmö, Sweden to do the final preparations for the online summit. Neo4j was born in Malmö and is still developed close to its place of birth. These days the Malmö office is our main engineering base with London coming 2nd. Half of the Developer Relations team headed off to the recording studio to set up, whilst the other half dropped into the office to say our hellos and pick up supplies.
As the time drew near, we all reconvened to the recording studio. At the location, we were in the throes of the final set up to start the conference for 2pm WEST. With moderators allocated to tracks, and everybody raring to go, the summit started with Emil Eifrem’s keynote.
Following a short break, all five tracks began! The spirit of attendee interaction was alive and well, and as a moderator of one of the tracks I really enjoyed seeing the interesting questions being asked, as well as the involved discussions taking place during the talks.
The day lasted for us till 11pm in the studio and we were back at our offsite place after midnight and properly tired but very happy.
Thank you all for making it an active and engaging day!
Viewing parties
It just wouldn’t have been the same without a few viewing parties happening around the world. Following from the success of the Graph Day parties, the Neo4j Community delivered, hosting a number of public and private NODES2019 viewing parties.
We loved the pictures coming in of the viewing parties, and it was fantastic to see the active participation in the session chat channels.
The Hunger Games
Of course, we couldn’t avoid talking about… The Hunger Games! We saw fantastic participation in the end of talk questions which we hoped not only brought an enjoyable element to the day, but also an opportunity to test knowledge gained. Up for grabs were 20 x $50 vouchers for swag from the GraphGear store. We could certainly tell it was getting competitive, and we loved the enthusiasm. We look forward to round two in the future.
It’s a wrap!
In the end, we had over 4,600 registered attendees and over 50 talks with 60 speakers from 15 countries, covering topics from spatial, complete solutions to software analytics and construction applications. It was truly a ground-breaking day. We are so glad that you could be a part of it with us.
Where are all these wonderful talks?
I’m glad you asked! You can catch up on all of the videos in a variety of ways:
- You can get the slides as well as the videos from the schedule if you’re logged in
- Alternatively you can have a YouTube video binge
We’d love to hear your feedback!
Do let us know your thoughts. Either comment here, or drop us a line on devrel@neo4j.com. Tweet us your favorite talks @neo4j tagged #NODES2019.
What’s next?
It was an amazing event and we enjoyed every minute of it! It would not have been the success it was without you being a part of it. Thank you!
Keep your eyes peeled for NODES2020.
In the meantime, GraphConnect 2020 is just around the corner. We would love to hear your Neo4j story, get your paper proposals in.
The closing date for the CfP is 15th November 2019, so don’t be a late submitter!
Don’t forget that we do have a speaker program as well for those of you who want to share your Neo4j story around the world.
