Eventbrite
I’ve recently started using the Eventbrite Web site [1] and the associated Eventbrite Android app [2] to discover public events in my area. Both the web site and the Android app lack features for searching (I’d like to save alerts for my accounts and have my phone notify me when new events are added to their database) but it is basically functional. The main issue is content, Eventbrite has a lot of good events in their database (I’ve got tickets for 6 free events in the next month). I assume that Eventbrite also has many people attending their events, otherwise the events wouldn’t be promoted there.
At this time I haven’t compared Eventbrite to any similar services, Eventbrite events have taken up much of my available time for the next 6 weeks (I appreciate the button on the app to add an entry to my calendar) so I don’t have much incentive to find other web sites that list events. I would appreciate comments from users of competing event registration systems and may write a post in future comparing different systems. Also I have only checked for events in Melbourne, Australia as I don’t have any personal interest in events in other places. For the topic of this post Eventbrite is good enough, it meets all requirements for Melbourne and I’m sure that if it isn’t useful in other cities then there are competing services.
I think that we need to have free FOSS events announced through Eventbrite. We regularly have experts in various fields related to FOSS visiting Melbourne who give a talk for the Linux Users of Victoria (and sometimes other technical groups). This is a good thing but I think we could do better. Most people in Melbourne probably won’t attend a LUG meeting and if they did they probably wouldn’t find it a welcoming experience.
Also I recommend that anyone who is looking for educational things to do in Melbourne visit the Eventbrite web site and/or install the Android app.
Accessible Events
I recently attended an Eventbrite event where a professor described the work of his research team, it was a really good talk that made the topic of his research accessible to random members of the public like me. Then when it came to question time the questions were mostly opinion pieces disguised as questions which used a lot of industry specific jargon and probably lost the interest of most people in the audience who wasn’t from the university department that hosted the lecture. I spent the last 15 minutes in that lecture hall reading Wikipedia and resisted the temptation to load an Android game.
Based on this lecture (and many other lectures I’ve seen) I get the impression that when the speaker or the MC addresses a member of the audience by name (EG “John Smith has a question”) then it’s strongly correlated with a low quality question. See my previous post about the Length of Conference Questions for more on this topic [3].
It seems to me that when running a lecture everyone involved has to agree about whether it’s a public lecture (IE one that is for any random people) as opposed to a society meeting (which while free for anyone to attend in the case of a LUG is for people with specific background knowledge). For a society meeting (for want of a better term) it’s OK to assume a minimum level of knowledge that rules out some people. If 5% of the audience of a LUG don’t understand a lecture that doesn’t necessarily mean it’s a bad lecture, sometimes it’s not possible to give a lecture that is easily understood by those with the least knowledge that also teaches the most experienced members of the audience.
For a public lecture the speaker has to give a talk for people with little background knowledge. Then the speaker and/or the MC have to discourage or reject questions that are for a higher level of knowledge.
As an example of how this might work consider the case of an introductory lecture about how an OS kernel works. When one of the experienced Linux kernel programmers visits Melbourne we could have an Eventbrite event organised for a lecture introducing the basic concepts of an OS kernel (with Linux as an example). At such a lecture any questions about more technical topics (such as specific issues related to compilers, drivers, etc) could be met with “we are having a meeting for more technical people at the Linux Users of Victoria meeting tomorrow night” or “we are having coffee at a nearby cafe afterwards and you can ask technical questions there”.
Planning Eventbrite Events
When experts in various areas of FOSS visit Melbourne they often offer a talk for LUV. For any such experts who read this post please note that most lectures at LUV meetings are by locals who can reschedule, so if you are only in town for a short time we can give you an opportunity to speak at short notice.
I would like to arrange to have some of those people give a talk aimed at a less experienced audience which we can promote through Eventbrite. The venue for LUV talks (Melbourne University 7PM on the first Tuesday of the month) might not work for all speakers so we need to find a sponsor for another venue.
I will contact Linux companies that are active in Melbourne and ask whether they would be prepared to sponsor the venue for such a talk. The fallback option would be to have such a lecture at a LUV meeting.
I will talk to some of the organisers of science and technology events advertised on Eventbrite and ask why they chose the times that they did. Maybe they have some insight into which times are best for getting an audience. Also I will probably get some idea of the best times by just attending many events and observing the attendance. I think that the aim of an Eventbrite event is to attract delegates who wouldn’t attend other meetings, so it is a priority to choose a suitable time and place.
Finally please note that while I am a member of the LUV committee I’m not representing LUV in this post. My aim is that community feedback on this post will help me plan such events. I will discuss this with the LUV committee after I get some comments here.
Please comment if you would like to give such a public lecture, attend such a lecture, or if you just have any general ideas.
Hi,
I am interested to attend F/OSS event in Melbourne. It will be great experience for me to attend such event.