RIT ++: how the largest Russian technology festival appeared
Today RIT ++ is a large-scale Russian IT event. But he was not always so. We started with a small party for a few hundred people, and the concept of the festival came only eight years later.
In this article I will talk about what RIT ++ was like before and what it has become now: what made you move from the bar to the event site, which bumps were the most painful than Moscow is worse than St. Petersburg, how we almost went bankrupt, and why it is easier now to pass the selection of the speakers of the conference than to stay them before the speech.
12 years ago, RIT ++ began with quite prosaic evening programmer gatherings. At that time I was still working at the Rambler, and in the evenings we with colleagues from Yandex and other companies for a glass of beer exchanged approaches to solving various tasks. We all worked in large, not the simplest projects, but at the same time invented bicycles, because no one knew how to approach the solution of certain tasks. It is now established approaches, architectural patterns, frameworks and other things. Then they were not there, and we were very interested in how the same tasks are solved for others.
')
At that time, of the technological events in Russia, there were only a few narrow-profile events, most of which no one will remember. There was also RIF - Russian Internet Forum, to a large extent dedicated to management and marketing. But there were no platforms where Internet users could meet each other and just talk about technology. Joker, CodeFest, Dump, Strike and other serious events arose later, in five to seven years. Literature did not help either: the first book on the field in which I then specialized (the development of large complex projects) appeared a few years later. Therefore, the bar was actually the only source of knowledge about the experience of others.
At some point, the bar was not enough. So we, programmers, inspired by the world's largest World Wide Web Conference at the time (then still 2006 - by our standards, a huge event with ten parallel tracks), set about organizing a conference for ourselves. True, none of us had any experience in preparing events. Frankly, few people are well versed in management. But, despite repeated postponement, in 2007 we collected the first RIT ++.
Later we analyzed what prompted not only us, but many other teams to create platforms for the exchange of experience exactly then, at the end of the first decade of the new century. And they came to the conclusion that this is due to the Gartner technology development curve. After the so-called peak of high expectations, a decline in the popularity of technology begins, while the demand for professionalism is growing: the websites have simply not been launched and the money has not been collected. It was necessary to search and apply some professional approaches, to change the logic of work. At this point, and there is a need for professional get-togethers.
The development of technology always follows the same pattern. New items are tested in large companies that are faced with heavy loads and traffic volumes. They have the resources to experiment, so large companies try and implement, and then talk about their experiences. As the community sees that the technology is not so complicated, and all the bumps that could be collected during the implementation are already known and packed, the tested ideas go down to ordinary projects and SMB.
The first few conferences were held in the info-hall Infospace in Moscow. With this site we are still friends. RHS ++ has already outgrown it, but on it we are holding our new narrowly themed activities.
RIT 2007
In 2007, the first year of RIT ++ was visited by about 450 people, and then collecting so many IT people in one place was an achievement. We, representatives of different specialties, for the first time on such scales met each other and talked. Since it was still a product of the environment, we were made by virtually everyone who knew and was heard: Igor Sysoev (the developer of the Ngnix web server, which employs about 30–40% of Russian and 20–30% of world websites ), Alexey Rybak (developer of mass social services), Ilya Segalovich (co-founder of Yandex), Vladimir Gabrielyan (now Vice President and CTO Mail.Ru Group) and others.
Of course, we gathered the first conferences spontaneously, one might say, but merrily and even with a certain touch of romance.
RIT 2007
Over the years of RIT ++ organization, we have made all the mistakes that could be made. For the first RIT ++, we even built our own printing house. We bought inkjet printers with continuous ink supply and tried to print all the prepared materials. Of course, it ended up that two hours before the opening of the conference we were still typing, cutting and stitching in several pairs of hands.
We have repeatedly faced with the problems of placement - with the wrong choice or overloading the site. Strangely enough, in Moscow it is difficult with places to organize professional events (where you need sound, silence, chairs, large halls of different formats, projectors). Probably, even in St. Petersburg or in Novosibirsk, things are better than here. It is difficult to say whether this hindered the growth of the conference, but we always had to somehow spin, to actively look for new opportunities. Once we almost went bankrupt because of the site. Signed a contract, began to build, sold more than 70% of tickets. And here the management of the site requires to move or cancel the event, since their main thing is their birthday. Happiness that we were able to agree: the organizers of the holiday on the other side and the site managers went to meet us, as a result, we held our conference in half of the territory, and in the second half the organizers of the holiday were already built. If we didn’t miss each other then, by and large there wouldn’t be RIT ++, Highload, or other events, since for us this would mean returning most of the tickets, and the money invested would not be possible to return.
All this experience has led us to a more systematic, quiet work: now we follow the guidelines, we act according to internal standards, we use Jira with a huge list of tasks. Although the share of romance in this work still remained.
Critics love to count our money - how much we earn at conferences. But any organizer knows that earnings start in the last two days before the event. Before that, everything goes to renting the site, food, printing, etc.
By and large, you don’t know until the last moment whether you’ll stay in the black or in the red. This is a hassle. But almost before your eyes, your thoughts and desires turn into something material: people are running, a playground is being built up. You really create with your team, every time you think about how it will be, you can change the appearance of the event, its concept and program. So you create space, and then people come and fill it with content. And great pleasure to see that people like it.
RIT 2017
Such an attitude, of course, cannot be called professional. We must move away from romance, replacing it with systematic work. But we, on our part, try not to lose in the conferences of “tube heat”. Yes, this is no longer the backstage closed event “for one’s own”, but also not “stream production”. This is a place of communication and meeting with friends.
RIT 2017
Evolving and themes. At the initial stage, the speakers talked about everything. But gradually we tightened the requirements for the reports. We have become more serious.
Despite the status of a commercial company, we try to remain a kind of community operator - the executor of his will. I was lucky that a rather serious circle of professionals gathered around the conference. We have a very strong program committee that selects reports - real pros are sitting there. And we always keep track of everything that happens in the industry - the newest technology, interesting cases.
For example, at one time we had a whole section about Sochi 2014. There were a lot of reports that looked at this large-scale and quite strong Russian project from all sides: architecture, layout, programming, CDN, management, etc. The speakers talked about how to handle so many threads, how to manage such projects. We even had representatives of the organizing committee and performer. We are very deep in the subject.
At the same time, we have always tried (and we are trying) to act as a kind of brake for an extra hyip. Over the years, we have seen the ups and downs of clouds, MongoDB and the overall concept of NoSQL, and many other technologies - all, again, according to the Gartner curve.
First, everything is out of place and out of place trying to talk about the new product, and then gradually calm down. The specificity of our conferences, and, probably, many technological ones, is that the first question we ask the speaker is, and what problem did you solve? And the solution proposed by him is in some sense checked for adequacy, so as not to miss HYIP and trash on the stage. During the peak of interest, the same MongoDB filed five to ten reports per conference, but we understood that there were few practical solutions, people just want to talk on a fashionable topic. And they cut the reports, which slightly harmonized the technological Universe.
Every year we try to reassess the situation. Our final questionnaire includes more than 400 questions. Based on the analysis of the answers, each time we adjust not only the program, but also the concept.
So, about five years ago, we discovered that different parts of the community gathering for RIT ++ stopped understanding each other. By this time, separate directions of server and client development were formed, and it became very difficult to assemble them within one space. It was then that RIT ++ turned from a conference into a festival, within which several parallel events are held on different topics - on frontend, server programming, DevOps, management, etc. This year there are six such separate events, and in the past there were eight.
The selection of narrow-profile events within RIT ++ has had a good impact on the audience: we used to gather about 800 people, and RIT ++ in the festival format attracted 1,200 visitors in the second year. This year we focus on two thousand. And Skolkovo has become an almost ideal base for this, where there are not only large conference rooms, but also zones for micro-meetings that are the hallmark of RHS ++.
Initially we focused on the reports. But reports, though useful, are not always interesting. As the number of technologies and specializations grows, we all have more and more “pinpoint” problems, and the report does not always fall into them. Therefore, we have an increasing number of threads, and everyone can choose a more suitable one for themselves. In addition, we have two more mechanisms for maximizing the benefits of communication within the community. The first is questions to the speaker, for which separate small rooms are provided, and the second, so-called user meetings, small meetings of 10–20 people on a very narrow topic, for example, “using Lua in Tarantool”. What are we talking about here, knows from strength a couple of dozen people all over the country, and they have no place to talk about this topic at all, except at the meeting.
140 reports and 40 similar meetings are scheduled for the nearest RHS ++. And this means that we need not only large halls, but also many micro-zones where such meetings can be held. From this point of view, in my opinion, there is no alternative to Skolkovo: there are 15 large halls and 30 halls for meetings, and we will use everything. If somewhere else and it is possible to find such a combination (for example, in the World Trade Center), then zones for mitaps turn out to be somewhere out of place, you have to go there specifically. But so they do not work; participants must see them, they must be in the center of the movement - this has to be taken into account.
At the first events, we mostly talked about what, how and for whom it works. Now there are almost no reports in the style of “we have such an architecture”: we have matured and we understand that architecture is just a consequence of the original task. Therefore, we are going deep - every year more and more.
At the same time, we are tightening the demands on ourselves. For example, we do not repeat - if the topic was disclosed, even if two or three years ago, we try not to take it. Therefore, each time the program branches into narrower topics, the number of streams is growing, and now there are also independent events that are meaningless to merge beyond networking or evening communication. Completely independent tracks are being formed: for example, last year the topic of microservices was relevant, and we made a separate track for them (microconference).
We grow with the industry and the people who make it. Those guys who programmed five or ten years ago now lead programmers, their tastes, interests and needs for knowledge are shifting. Now we understand that it is important not only to program, but also to speak correctly with people: set tasks, receive feedback. Therefore, two of the six conferences within the framework of the nearest RHS ++ will be devoted to project, product and team management.
Many activities appear that were not previously required (or we could not afford them). For example, more and more noticeable actions of the regulator in the industry. Therefore, now we are thinking about building a dialogue with Roskomnadzor within the framework of the festival. True, not sure that we can hold back feelings.
About two years ago we made the decision that while maintaining professional content, we should work on the emotional component of the event. In other words, we want RHS ++ to be not only useful, but also pleasant, high. In particular, we recall that IT people have families and other interests besides work. Last year, for example, we had a charge in the open air.
This year we are planning a congress of “activists”: the organizers and ideological inspirers of local IT communities from all over the country will come to Moscow for free to communicate and exchange experience - as a kind of gratitude for what they do for the ecosystem. They will be able to get to know each other, communicate and take away new knowledge to their native lands.
There have been a lot of good industry events in recent years. And the competition pushes even further. The program is no longer “hooking” on anyone: rigidity in relation to the choice of reports that we introduced several years ago has become the de facto standard - these are the new requirements of the industry. The consumer is growing: he wants not just information for consideration, but quality performance.
But our main speaker is a techie who finds it difficult to speak. Therefore, not so long ago we opened a school of speakers. We “run” all the speakers through several types of coaching, thereby helping them with the content and presentation of the material. About a quarter of the RIT ++ budget is working with speakers. Frankly, getting into our lecturers today is not as difficult as it is to endure.
We must pay tribute to the Russian industry of events: it is comparable and in many cases even surpasses the western one. For example, in the West, a frankly selling report (“buy our best servers”) is normally perceived at a technology event. But this is no longer possible with us - they can ban a speaker for such a speaker and never invite him again. Yes, and the program committee simply will not miss. Perhaps the Russian events are a little behind in terms of appearance and scale. For us, a kind of guiding star - this is the O'Reilly Velocity conference - an excellent event dedicated to the development and support of complex projects, which gathers about 4–5 thousand people. Organizationally, we took quite a few ideas from them.
Many years have passed, many RHSs, and I have a feeling that we are creating a tool that people use to solve their problems, that we are doing a really useful event. And it is nice.
In this article I will talk about what RIT ++ was like before and what it has become now: what made you move from the bar to the event site, which bumps were the most painful than Moscow is worse than St. Petersburg, how we almost went bankrupt, and why it is easier now to pass the selection of the speakers of the conference than to stay them before the speech.
RHS ++ and Gartner curve
12 years ago, RIT ++ began with quite prosaic evening programmer gatherings. At that time I was still working at the Rambler, and in the evenings we with colleagues from Yandex and other companies for a glass of beer exchanged approaches to solving various tasks. We all worked in large, not the simplest projects, but at the same time invented bicycles, because no one knew how to approach the solution of certain tasks. It is now established approaches, architectural patterns, frameworks and other things. Then they were not there, and we were very interested in how the same tasks are solved for others.
')
At that time, of the technological events in Russia, there were only a few narrow-profile events, most of which no one will remember. There was also RIF - Russian Internet Forum, to a large extent dedicated to management and marketing. But there were no platforms where Internet users could meet each other and just talk about technology. Joker, CodeFest, Dump, Strike and other serious events arose later, in five to seven years. Literature did not help either: the first book on the field in which I then specialized (the development of large complex projects) appeared a few years later. Therefore, the bar was actually the only source of knowledge about the experience of others.
At some point, the bar was not enough. So we, programmers, inspired by the world's largest World Wide Web Conference at the time (then still 2006 - by our standards, a huge event with ten parallel tracks), set about organizing a conference for ourselves. True, none of us had any experience in preparing events. Frankly, few people are well versed in management. But, despite repeated postponement, in 2007 we collected the first RIT ++.
Later we analyzed what prompted not only us, but many other teams to create platforms for the exchange of experience exactly then, at the end of the first decade of the new century. And they came to the conclusion that this is due to the Gartner technology development curve. After the so-called peak of high expectations, a decline in the popularity of technology begins, while the demand for professionalism is growing: the websites have simply not been launched and the money has not been collected. It was necessary to search and apply some professional approaches, to change the logic of work. At this point, and there is a need for professional get-togethers.
The development of technology always follows the same pattern. New items are tested in large companies that are faced with heavy loads and traffic volumes. They have the resources to experiment, so large companies try and implement, and then talk about their experiences. As the community sees that the technology is not so complicated, and all the bumps that could be collected during the implementation are already known and packed, the tested ideas go down to ordinary projects and SMB.
From conference to festival
The first few conferences were held in the info-hall Infospace in Moscow. With this site we are still friends. RHS ++ has already outgrown it, but on it we are holding our new narrowly themed activities.
RIT 2007
In 2007, the first year of RIT ++ was visited by about 450 people, and then collecting so many IT people in one place was an achievement. We, representatives of different specialties, for the first time on such scales met each other and talked. Since it was still a product of the environment, we were made by virtually everyone who knew and was heard: Igor Sysoev (the developer of the Ngnix web server, which employs about 30–40% of Russian and 20–30% of world websites ), Alexey Rybak (developer of mass social services), Ilya Segalovich (co-founder of Yandex), Vladimir Gabrielyan (now Vice President and CTO Mail.Ru Group) and others.
Of course, we gathered the first conferences spontaneously, one might say, but merrily and even with a certain touch of romance.
RIT 2007
Over the years of RIT ++ organization, we have made all the mistakes that could be made. For the first RIT ++, we even built our own printing house. We bought inkjet printers with continuous ink supply and tried to print all the prepared materials. Of course, it ended up that two hours before the opening of the conference we were still typing, cutting and stitching in several pairs of hands.
We have repeatedly faced with the problems of placement - with the wrong choice or overloading the site. Strangely enough, in Moscow it is difficult with places to organize professional events (where you need sound, silence, chairs, large halls of different formats, projectors). Probably, even in St. Petersburg or in Novosibirsk, things are better than here. It is difficult to say whether this hindered the growth of the conference, but we always had to somehow spin, to actively look for new opportunities. Once we almost went bankrupt because of the site. Signed a contract, began to build, sold more than 70% of tickets. And here the management of the site requires to move or cancel the event, since their main thing is their birthday. Happiness that we were able to agree: the organizers of the holiday on the other side and the site managers went to meet us, as a result, we held our conference in half of the territory, and in the second half the organizers of the holiday were already built. If we didn’t miss each other then, by and large there wouldn’t be RIT ++, Highload, or other events, since for us this would mean returning most of the tickets, and the money invested would not be possible to return.
All this experience has led us to a more systematic, quiet work: now we follow the guidelines, we act according to internal standards, we use Jira with a huge list of tasks. Although the share of romance in this work still remained.
Critics love to count our money - how much we earn at conferences. But any organizer knows that earnings start in the last two days before the event. Before that, everything goes to renting the site, food, printing, etc.
By and large, you don’t know until the last moment whether you’ll stay in the black or in the red. This is a hassle. But almost before your eyes, your thoughts and desires turn into something material: people are running, a playground is being built up. You really create with your team, every time you think about how it will be, you can change the appearance of the event, its concept and program. So you create space, and then people come and fill it with content. And great pleasure to see that people like it.
RIT 2017
Such an attitude, of course, cannot be called professional. We must move away from romance, replacing it with systematic work. But we, on our part, try not to lose in the conferences of “tube heat”. Yes, this is no longer the backstage closed event “for one’s own”, but also not “stream production”. This is a place of communication and meeting with friends.
RIT 2017
Evolving and themes. At the initial stage, the speakers talked about everything. But gradually we tightened the requirements for the reports. We have become more serious.
Despite the status of a commercial company, we try to remain a kind of community operator - the executor of his will. I was lucky that a rather serious circle of professionals gathered around the conference. We have a very strong program committee that selects reports - real pros are sitting there. And we always keep track of everything that happens in the industry - the newest technology, interesting cases.
For example, at one time we had a whole section about Sochi 2014. There were a lot of reports that looked at this large-scale and quite strong Russian project from all sides: architecture, layout, programming, CDN, management, etc. The speakers talked about how to handle so many threads, how to manage such projects. We even had representatives of the organizing committee and performer. We are very deep in the subject.
At the same time, we have always tried (and we are trying) to act as a kind of brake for an extra hyip. Over the years, we have seen the ups and downs of clouds, MongoDB and the overall concept of NoSQL, and many other technologies - all, again, according to the Gartner curve.
First, everything is out of place and out of place trying to talk about the new product, and then gradually calm down. The specificity of our conferences, and, probably, many technological ones, is that the first question we ask the speaker is, and what problem did you solve? And the solution proposed by him is in some sense checked for adequacy, so as not to miss HYIP and trash on the stage. During the peak of interest, the same MongoDB filed five to ten reports per conference, but we understood that there were few practical solutions, people just want to talk on a fashionable topic. And they cut the reports, which slightly harmonized the technological Universe.
Every year we try to reassess the situation. Our final questionnaire includes more than 400 questions. Based on the analysis of the answers, each time we adjust not only the program, but also the concept.
So, about five years ago, we discovered that different parts of the community gathering for RIT ++ stopped understanding each other. By this time, separate directions of server and client development were formed, and it became very difficult to assemble them within one space. It was then that RIT ++ turned from a conference into a festival, within which several parallel events are held on different topics - on frontend, server programming, DevOps, management, etc. This year there are six such separate events, and in the past there were eight.
The selection of narrow-profile events within RIT ++ has had a good impact on the audience: we used to gather about 800 people, and RIT ++ in the festival format attracted 1,200 visitors in the second year. This year we focus on two thousand. And Skolkovo has become an almost ideal base for this, where there are not only large conference rooms, but also zones for micro-meetings that are the hallmark of RHS ++.
Initially we focused on the reports. But reports, though useful, are not always interesting. As the number of technologies and specializations grows, we all have more and more “pinpoint” problems, and the report does not always fall into them. Therefore, we have an increasing number of threads, and everyone can choose a more suitable one for themselves. In addition, we have two more mechanisms for maximizing the benefits of communication within the community. The first is questions to the speaker, for which separate small rooms are provided, and the second, so-called user meetings, small meetings of 10–20 people on a very narrow topic, for example, “using Lua in Tarantool”. What are we talking about here, knows from strength a couple of dozen people all over the country, and they have no place to talk about this topic at all, except at the meeting.
140 reports and 40 similar meetings are scheduled for the nearest RHS ++. And this means that we need not only large halls, but also many micro-zones where such meetings can be held. From this point of view, in my opinion, there is no alternative to Skolkovo: there are 15 large halls and 30 halls for meetings, and we will use everything. If somewhere else and it is possible to find such a combination (for example, in the World Trade Center), then zones for mitaps turn out to be somewhere out of place, you have to go there specifically. But so they do not work; participants must see them, they must be in the center of the movement - this has to be taken into account.
Beyond Technology
At the first events, we mostly talked about what, how and for whom it works. Now there are almost no reports in the style of “we have such an architecture”: we have matured and we understand that architecture is just a consequence of the original task. Therefore, we are going deep - every year more and more.
At the same time, we are tightening the demands on ourselves. For example, we do not repeat - if the topic was disclosed, even if two or three years ago, we try not to take it. Therefore, each time the program branches into narrower topics, the number of streams is growing, and now there are also independent events that are meaningless to merge beyond networking or evening communication. Completely independent tracks are being formed: for example, last year the topic of microservices was relevant, and we made a separate track for them (microconference).
We grow with the industry and the people who make it. Those guys who programmed five or ten years ago now lead programmers, their tastes, interests and needs for knowledge are shifting. Now we understand that it is important not only to program, but also to speak correctly with people: set tasks, receive feedback. Therefore, two of the six conferences within the framework of the nearest RHS ++ will be devoted to project, product and team management.
Many activities appear that were not previously required (or we could not afford them). For example, more and more noticeable actions of the regulator in the industry. Therefore, now we are thinking about building a dialogue with Roskomnadzor within the framework of the festival. True, not sure that we can hold back feelings.
About two years ago we made the decision that while maintaining professional content, we should work on the emotional component of the event. In other words, we want RHS ++ to be not only useful, but also pleasant, high. In particular, we recall that IT people have families and other interests besides work. Last year, for example, we had a charge in the open air.
This year we are planning a congress of “activists”: the organizers and ideological inspirers of local IT communities from all over the country will come to Moscow for free to communicate and exchange experience - as a kind of gratitude for what they do for the ecosystem. They will be able to get to know each other, communicate and take away new knowledge to their native lands.
School of speakers
There have been a lot of good industry events in recent years. And the competition pushes even further. The program is no longer “hooking” on anyone: rigidity in relation to the choice of reports that we introduced several years ago has become the de facto standard - these are the new requirements of the industry. The consumer is growing: he wants not just information for consideration, but quality performance.
But our main speaker is a techie who finds it difficult to speak. Therefore, not so long ago we opened a school of speakers. We “run” all the speakers through several types of coaching, thereby helping them with the content and presentation of the material. About a quarter of the RIT ++ budget is working with speakers. Frankly, getting into our lecturers today is not as difficult as it is to endure.
We must pay tribute to the Russian industry of events: it is comparable and in many cases even surpasses the western one. For example, in the West, a frankly selling report (“buy our best servers”) is normally perceived at a technology event. But this is no longer possible with us - they can ban a speaker for such a speaker and never invite him again. Yes, and the program committee simply will not miss. Perhaps the Russian events are a little behind in terms of appearance and scale. For us, a kind of guiding star - this is the O'Reilly Velocity conference - an excellent event dedicated to the development and support of complex projects, which gathers about 4–5 thousand people. Organizationally, we took quite a few ideas from them.
Many years have passed, many RHSs, and I have a feeling that we are creating a tool that people use to solve their problems, that we are doing a really useful event. And it is nice.
Source: https://habr.com/ru/post/358568/
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