The best files of our conferences (Joker, JPoint, DotNext, Mobius, TechTrain and so on)
The very first epic fail in scale is when we suddenly found a typo on the 3 by 10 meter banner at night before the conference. One you can't stick. And this banner hung above the reception desk, so I would hit all the photos.
It was all. The speaker from the USA confused the city, the key speaker fell on the foot of the TV, and now he is lying with a break and so on. But still the best in terms of IT detective is like a girl coordinating one of the streams, the USB video capture card was constantly disconnected.
So, imagine, you are a support engineer at a conference, the tracker calls you and informs you that her broadcast image of the presentation from the speaker’s laptop is constantly falling off. You come to the gym - everything is in order, everything works. Go away - she complains again. A classic case of user presence. You stay with her and see how she works. After about 20 minutes, she tells the videographer on the headset from the walkie-talkie with a familiar movement that the speaker should be taken larger, and then the transfer of the image from the speaker’s laptop again falls off.
')
The engineer looks at the tracker radio - the radio is on the table on a pile of papers. Scrapping paper - and under them the video capture card. So, when someone in the channel wakes up in a walkie-talkie, it makes a tip to the board, and it goes crazy. Everything, you just need to clean the radio away from the board and other equipment. Ticket is closed.
So, on the night before the conference, we found a typo on the registration banner:
“Registtration” instead of “Registration”. It is impossible to reprint it just like that, because it is really huge, 3 by 10 meters. They invented to make a sticker there, but it almost did not stick to the stretched banner. Then they decided that they should leave it this way, but they remembered that our foreign colleagues would be photographed around her and take the Russians as idiots. Therefore, as a result, in the morning we urgently printed it with a 4x multiplier from the normal price. I think that at a small conference for 200-300 people somewhere far from Moscow everyone would understand everything, but definitely not at the JPoint . This is our flagship spring conference. The phrase “And their descendants would tell about these funny Russians” became the reason for the justification of unexpected expenses.
Slightly less than a week before the autumn DotNext conference in Moscow. Three cool speakers for which people will go. One has already arrived, everything is fine with him, he goes on excursions in Moscow. The other either could not apply for a visa, or did not want to do everything correctly and did not contact him. Two weeks before the conference we canceled it ourselves. And one more - Pavel Yosifovich - also confirmed everything, and we were looking forward to it. Pavel, by the way, is very cool in .NET, because he knows everything about Windows from the inside by API. Here is one of his reports:
He was carrying a TV at home, not a liquid one, but a kinescopic one. And large, about one and a half meters wide. And dropped it on his leg.
Calls, says:
- Hello, Russian friends! I dropped the TV on the leg and I can not move, I do not get out of bed. I really want to go to you, but the doctor forbids it.
We were very upset, but almost before the conference, he contacted again and said that the doctor retrained his fracture for a crack (we have no such diagnosis, but they have gradations), and now you can walk, but not very quickly, not very far and not very intense. If there was a complete fracture - it would not have gone. At the airport, in general, it seems, they were rolling on an armchair, this is a cheap and practical way to enter the salon without a queue. According to the conference already limped. In general, he could definitely refuse, he had everything for this, but he is an ideological guy, and therefore he arrived. For which he thanks a lot.
We give Joker members the following ducks:
We order them in China. Once the Chinese decided to surprise us and sent 6 thousand ducks, of which 3 thousand lips were painted with red paint like characters with low social responsibility, like this:
As a result, we went through a huge box with them, trying to isolate those with normal lips, and those that are not soiled with “lipstick” from neighbors. And the paint was very stamped. So, in our office, one and a half thousand extra ducks were formed. While we do not know what to do with them.
Josh Long (Joker 2018, “Reactive Spring”) was supposed to perform in Novosibirsk. Josh was going to fly from Los Angeles to Novosibirsk, the ticket was bought to Novosibirsk with a transfer in China. On the way to the airport, Josh got stuck in traffic while standing in traffic, for some reason it did not work out to check in online for the flight. When Josh finally got to the airport, it turned out that the reception was already closed, he would no longer work, and he was already late for his flight. Josh called his travel agent, explained the situation, and the agent at the other end cheered him that she found a flight for him that takes off a little later, costs less, and also flies to Russia earlier than his original flight. Of course, Josh immediately booked his place. And after a couple of hours of waiting, he finally went to the necessary check-in desk, only to find that the flight was to Moscow, and not to Novosibirsk. I thought, well, for sure there is some kind of flight from Moscow to Novosibirsk, is it obviously not far to fly there? It turned out that far. As if you flew to Los Angeles, and you have a meeting in New York (do not forget about different time zones). In general, the flight is wrong, and it is already too late to look for some other options. Josh is very sorry that it happened, wrote about this story on his blog and Twitter. And last fall, he did fly to us and gave a talk on Joker 2018 .
In general, people are late very often. One speaker was late for a connecting flight, was supposed to fly to the conference. The first replacement flight was delayed, the second one he missed ... In general, we decided that it makes no sense to go to him at all, because after the conference neither the report nor the training are needed.
Once again the plane was delayed, we managed to make a difficult route to the flyby, and the speaker managed. Expensive, but the speaker is more important.
In Russia, no one has remained. But there were a couple of cases when we took the usual Atlantic "economy", and the speaker in the rider was strictly business. We had to reorder, because they did not even want to board. But these are our mistakes.
When moving between Moscow and St. Petersburg, each time one of us is late for the train. Usually we go with a team of 30-40 people (these are program coordinators, all IT specialists, all marketing and all organizers, plus designers, because there is a lot to do quickly in place). And exactly one person always misses the train. We have a rule: if there are no objective reasons, the first time you can, the second time you’re already going as you wish. The objective reason is, for example, one "red-eyed" one was confidently recognized by red eyes and was taken away right on the way by the police. They were taken to the monkey to search for drugs. Arrived on the evening train.
During the online broadcast, we first gave a splash screen between the reports. We were told "fi", they say, it's boring. Then we began to take speakers and do interviews with them so that everyone would be fun and interesting. This same interview is broadcast on plasma at a conference. A studio is made right at the site, there are cameras, the speaker comes there.
The attendants of the expoforum were carrying something heavy. And they broke the cable to this very studio. The studio has fallen off from the main broadcast, and quickly it can not be fixed. In one break, in a sense. Began to think how to secure. And they decided to record these interviews in advance. Now it works in such a way that we write in advance, turn on the recording by time. And often you can see how the interview with the speaker is broadcast on the plasma, and right below it is the same speaker and tells something else.
Minibuses are often called "shuttles". This is fundamentally wrong, until you have an orbital station, which can only be unloaded by Gazelle. In the Congress Park of the Hotel Ukraine, the situation is this: the whole complex is underground. There are several floors down. There is underground parking. Entering it through a common spiral. To enter this spiral, you need to have a height of no more than 2.5 meters. Trucks of some of our sponsors were unexpectedly higher.
We ask if there is an option to call in from the other side. The administration makes something like this:
If it were a screen, we would definitely see the subtitles "Three hundred and thirty-five." But we are politely explained that:
a) You cannot drag them with your feet, because there is parking and everyone goes there. There is no sidewalk on the spiral.
b) It is impossible to bring a large-size building through the main entrance, because from the first to the underground floor (where the conference site is located) you can only bring it down by escalators, and they often break because of this.
c) You can find a small car and try to ship with it.
We found a parking nearby, unloaded on it, and further from this “orbital station” “Gazelle” we drove all night to underground levels. It was lucky that the weather was good, nothing was lost on the way and it didn't break. But still the work was still the same.
This autumn in Moscow on Mobius they sold a lot of tickets, ran out of ribbons for participants' badges. It is like soda or vegetable oil, it cannot end.
We learned about it, as usual, the night before the conference. Buy them can not, as it turned out. Just can not be all. There is nowhere. We asked the hotel and the chop, which provided security.
The hotel brought a bunch of branded tapes from the last conference, they became ours (for the team). And VOHR stockpiled just a wild amount of these tapes since the World Cup. Why is it incomprehensible, but their prapor was probably very happy that someone appreciated his reflexes. Therefore, part of the participants was with our ribbons, part with football ones.
The most powerful fail - canceled two conferences. SmartData was on Big Data and machine learning. We began to announce and advertise her at the same time as the Devops Conference, which is next to each other, and if there were 200 people, then there were only 30 datasentists. We estimated the filling budget and decided to have an abortion. In general, Big Date is not needed.
The second was JBreak in Novosibirsk. They did not do it, because it was expensive for the organization, and for 3-4 years it collected 400 people, did not grow. The feeling that we have chosen the entire market (pool of IT people who attend conferences). There is a CodeFest, it is local, not ours, it is still in order.
Another problem is that due to the hardcore nature of our conferences, the prices are appropriate. And specifically in Novosibirsk there is a problem that for them the price tag is very heavy. Even taking into account the fact that Jaybreyk is two times cheaper than Moscow and St. Petersburg - sales are still there with a scratch.
And the organization is expensive there, because the necessary iron in the city is not available. Last time faced with the fact that there is no projector that would suit us. And you need a lot of things, not just a projector. Prior to this, several hockey bags with their pieces of iron were being dragged. They thought to send the truck much in advance, but it was worthless. Another option is air delivery, but this is generally for the price as with a transfer to the ISS, because we carry very large racks. The result - did not do the following. But, maybe, we will return to the region later, when it will be better with the equipment for rent or the market.
In the hotel Slavyanskaya periodically cut down the projector. Moreover, they noticed a regularity - this happens only when the speaker’s laptop is used, not ours. Next, a support hypothesis was born to the support engineer. And he began to walk in circles around the room and nearby, to slow down on the carpet with a running start with such characteristic slippage, and so on.
And then he went to the laptop (without the power cable) and touched the case with a sound: “Oh.”
The spark was long.
The MacBook power supply has two connection options. Through this hose:
Or through such a small cable with a plug:
There is no grounding pin in the small cable. In the hose there. The whole hotel is carpeted. We only connect through this hose. Now all the speakers do the same, there are these connectors on the speaker stands in the hall. If you do not do this, the static from the case goes to the projector connector and then disconnects it. Then they did not burn anything, but it was nice to find this bug.
It was all. The speaker from the USA confused the city, the key speaker fell on the foot of the TV, and now he is lying with a break and so on. But still the best in terms of IT detective is like a girl coordinating one of the streams, the USB video capture card was constantly disconnected.
So, imagine, you are a support engineer at a conference, the tracker calls you and informs you that her broadcast image of the presentation from the speaker’s laptop is constantly falling off. You come to the gym - everything is in order, everything works. Go away - she complains again. A classic case of user presence. You stay with her and see how she works. After about 20 minutes, she tells the videographer on the headset from the walkie-talkie with a familiar movement that the speaker should be taken larger, and then the transfer of the image from the speaker’s laptop again falls off.
')
The engineer looks at the tracker radio - the radio is on the table on a pile of papers. Scrapping paper - and under them the video capture card. So, when someone in the channel wakes up in a walkie-talkie, it makes a tip to the board, and it goes crazy. Everything, you just need to clean the radio away from the board and other equipment. Ticket is closed.
Typo
So, on the night before the conference, we found a typo on the registration banner:
“Registtration” instead of “Registration”. It is impossible to reprint it just like that, because it is really huge, 3 by 10 meters. They invented to make a sticker there, but it almost did not stick to the stretched banner. Then they decided that they should leave it this way, but they remembered that our foreign colleagues would be photographed around her and take the Russians as idiots. Therefore, as a result, in the morning we urgently printed it with a 4x multiplier from the normal price. I think that at a small conference for 200-300 people somewhere far from Moscow everyone would understand everything, but definitely not at the JPoint . This is our flagship spring conference. The phrase “And their descendants would tell about these funny Russians” became the reason for the justification of unexpected expenses.
Gypsum
Slightly less than a week before the autumn DotNext conference in Moscow. Three cool speakers for which people will go. One has already arrived, everything is fine with him, he goes on excursions in Moscow. The other either could not apply for a visa, or did not want to do everything correctly and did not contact him. Two weeks before the conference we canceled it ourselves. And one more - Pavel Yosifovich - also confirmed everything, and we were looking forward to it. Pavel, by the way, is very cool in .NET, because he knows everything about Windows from the inside by API. Here is one of his reports:
He was carrying a TV at home, not a liquid one, but a kinescopic one. And large, about one and a half meters wide. And dropped it on his leg.
Calls, says:
- Hello, Russian friends! I dropped the TV on the leg and I can not move, I do not get out of bed. I really want to go to you, but the doctor forbids it.
We were very upset, but almost before the conference, he contacted again and said that the doctor retrained his fracture for a crack (we have no such diagnosis, but they have gradations), and now you can walk, but not very quickly, not very far and not very intense. If there was a complete fracture - it would not have gone. At the airport, in general, it seems, they were rolling on an armchair, this is a cheap and practical way to enter the salon without a queue. According to the conference already limped. In general, he could definitely refuse, he had everything for this, but he is an ideological guy, and therefore he arrived. For which he thanks a lot.
Ducks
We give Joker members the following ducks:
We order them in China. Once the Chinese decided to surprise us and sent 6 thousand ducks, of which 3 thousand lips were painted with red paint like characters with low social responsibility, like this:
As a result, we went through a huge box with them, trying to isolate those with normal lips, and those that are not soiled with “lipstick” from neighbors. And the paint was very stamped. So, in our office, one and a half thousand extra ducks were formed. While we do not know what to do with them.
Latecomers
Josh Long (Joker 2018, “Reactive Spring”) was supposed to perform in Novosibirsk. Josh was going to fly from Los Angeles to Novosibirsk, the ticket was bought to Novosibirsk with a transfer in China. On the way to the airport, Josh got stuck in traffic while standing in traffic, for some reason it did not work out to check in online for the flight. When Josh finally got to the airport, it turned out that the reception was already closed, he would no longer work, and he was already late for his flight. Josh called his travel agent, explained the situation, and the agent at the other end cheered him that she found a flight for him that takes off a little later, costs less, and also flies to Russia earlier than his original flight. Of course, Josh immediately booked his place. And after a couple of hours of waiting, he finally went to the necessary check-in desk, only to find that the flight was to Moscow, and not to Novosibirsk. I thought, well, for sure there is some kind of flight from Moscow to Novosibirsk, is it obviously not far to fly there? It turned out that far. As if you flew to Los Angeles, and you have a meeting in New York (do not forget about different time zones). In general, the flight is wrong, and it is already too late to look for some other options. Josh is very sorry that it happened, wrote about this story on his blog and Twitter. And last fall, he did fly to us and gave a talk on Joker 2018 .
In general, people are late very often. One speaker was late for a connecting flight, was supposed to fly to the conference. The first replacement flight was delayed, the second one he missed ... In general, we decided that it makes no sense to go to him at all, because after the conference neither the report nor the training are needed.
Once again the plane was delayed, we managed to make a difficult route to the flyby, and the speaker managed. Expensive, but the speaker is more important.
In Russia, no one has remained. But there were a couple of cases when we took the usual Atlantic "economy", and the speaker in the rider was strictly business. We had to reorder, because they did not even want to board. But these are our mistakes.
When moving between Moscow and St. Petersburg, each time one of us is late for the train. Usually we go with a team of 30-40 people (these are program coordinators, all IT specialists, all marketing and all organizers, plus designers, because there is a lot to do quickly in place). And exactly one person always misses the train. We have a rule: if there are no objective reasons, the first time you can, the second time you’re already going as you wish. The objective reason is, for example, one "red-eyed" one was confidently recognized by red eyes and was taken away right on the way by the police. They were taken to the monkey to search for drugs. Arrived on the evening train.
Offline interview
During the online broadcast, we first gave a splash screen between the reports. We were told "fi", they say, it's boring. Then we began to take speakers and do interviews with them so that everyone would be fun and interesting. This same interview is broadcast on plasma at a conference. A studio is made right at the site, there are cameras, the speaker comes there.
The attendants of the expoforum were carrying something heavy. And they broke the cable to this very studio. The studio has fallen off from the main broadcast, and quickly it can not be fixed. In one break, in a sense. Began to think how to secure. And they decided to record these interviews in advance. Now it works in such a way that we write in advance, turn on the recording by time. And often you can see how the interview with the speaker is broadcast on the plasma, and right below it is the same speaker and tells something else.
Shuttles
Minibuses are often called "shuttles". This is fundamentally wrong, until you have an orbital station, which can only be unloaded by Gazelle. In the Congress Park of the Hotel Ukraine, the situation is this: the whole complex is underground. There are several floors down. There is underground parking. Entering it through a common spiral. To enter this spiral, you need to have a height of no more than 2.5 meters. Trucks of some of our sponsors were unexpectedly higher.
We ask if there is an option to call in from the other side. The administration makes something like this:
If it were a screen, we would definitely see the subtitles "Three hundred and thirty-five." But we are politely explained that:
a) You cannot drag them with your feet, because there is parking and everyone goes there. There is no sidewalk on the spiral.
b) It is impossible to bring a large-size building through the main entrance, because from the first to the underground floor (where the conference site is located) you can only bring it down by escalators, and they often break because of this.
c) You can find a small car and try to ship with it.
We found a parking nearby, unloaded on it, and further from this “orbital station” “Gazelle” we drove all night to underground levels. It was lucky that the weather was good, nothing was lost on the way and it didn't break. But still the work was still the same.
Badges
This autumn in Moscow on Mobius they sold a lot of tickets, ran out of ribbons for participants' badges. It is like soda or vegetable oil, it cannot end.
We learned about it, as usual, the night before the conference. Buy them can not, as it turned out. Just can not be all. There is nowhere. We asked the hotel and the chop, which provided security.
The hotel brought a bunch of branded tapes from the last conference, they became ours (for the team). And VOHR stockpiled just a wild amount of these tapes since the World Cup. Why is it incomprehensible, but their prapor was probably very happy that someone appreciated his reflexes. Therefore, part of the participants was with our ribbons, part with football ones.
“Cross out these two conferences”
The most powerful fail - canceled two conferences. SmartData was on Big Data and machine learning. We began to announce and advertise her at the same time as the Devops Conference, which is next to each other, and if there were 200 people, then there were only 30 datasentists. We estimated the filling budget and decided to have an abortion. In general, Big Date is not needed.
The second was JBreak in Novosibirsk. They did not do it, because it was expensive for the organization, and for 3-4 years it collected 400 people, did not grow. The feeling that we have chosen the entire market (pool of IT people who attend conferences). There is a CodeFest, it is local, not ours, it is still in order.
Another problem is that due to the hardcore nature of our conferences, the prices are appropriate. And specifically in Novosibirsk there is a problem that for them the price tag is very heavy. Even taking into account the fact that Jaybreyk is two times cheaper than Moscow and St. Petersburg - sales are still there with a scratch.
And the organization is expensive there, because the necessary iron in the city is not available. Last time faced with the fact that there is no projector that would suit us. And you need a lot of things, not just a projector. Prior to this, several hockey bags with their pieces of iron were being dragged. They thought to send the truck much in advance, but it was worthless. Another option is air delivery, but this is generally for the price as with a transfer to the ISS, because we carry very large racks. The result - did not do the following. But, maybe, we will return to the region later, when it will be better with the equipment for rent or the market.
Projector
In the hotel Slavyanskaya periodically cut down the projector. Moreover, they noticed a regularity - this happens only when the speaker’s laptop is used, not ours. Next, a support hypothesis was born to the support engineer. And he began to walk in circles around the room and nearby, to slow down on the carpet with a running start with such characteristic slippage, and so on.
And then he went to the laptop (without the power cable) and touched the case with a sound: “Oh.”
The spark was long.
The MacBook power supply has two connection options. Through this hose:
Or through such a small cable with a plug:
There is no grounding pin in the small cable. In the hose there. The whole hotel is carpeted. We only connect through this hose. Now all the speakers do the same, there are these connectors on the speaker stands in the hall. If you do not do this, the static from the case goes to the projector connector and then disconnects it. Then they did not burn anything, but it was nice to find this bug.
Source: https://habr.com/ru/post/444444/
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