GDevCon#1 My Personal Postmortem of the event

[swatts]

Hello My Darlings,

I've finally found some spare energy to have a think about GDevCon#1 and these are my feelings and not any official position.

Feelings

First I feel quite proud that we pulled it off, we've had great feedback, some of which even brought a tear to my eye.

The overwhelming feeling I got from the event was camaraderie and that was exactly what we were aiming for. I don't think of engineering as a competitive venture I think it becomes something special when it's collaborative.

The next feeling was relief, we all took a risk on this bad-boy and I appreciate everyone that took a risk with us. So a special mention for the organising committee, all of whom paid their entrance ticket like the punters. The amount of work we all did was stunning I think we stood at about 14k slack messages in the end and I feel privileged to have worked with them. The sponsors risked their money, the presenters believed we could give them an audience and finally our delegates who risked their money and more importantly time. Kudos to all!

GDevCon Team

Joerg Hampel, Jenny Bragg, Chris Woodhams, Me, James McNally, Darren Mather, Sarah Fisher

Richard Thomas, Kabul Maharjan, Sam Sharp, David Catto

The next feeling I had was tired, so so tired. On day 1 we started at 7am and finished at 11:30pm, day 2 started at 7:30am and I got home at 9:30pm. Bear that in mind when you suggest a 3 day event!

Democratic Management Review

I personally think the experiment in democratic management worked really well and loved the 1 member 1 vote rule. We were a slick operation at the end, the team stood up and took charge and we were great. This experience has made us quite a strong group, so don't expect us to be easily influenced going forward, we'll do what we think is right and not apologise for it. Oh, I have the same voting rights as anyone who works for us, so be nice to everyone if you want something 

Finances

We've now paid off everything apart from the videographer and have enough left in the bank to seed the next 2 events.

What's happening next?

Videos will start appearing in the next couple of weeks, photos should be sooner. I'm very excited about the quality of the videos, mainly because I saw very few of the presentations but also because this is our gift to the presenters.

Planning is already underway for GDevCon#2 and we'll be making announcements soon, so join our mailing list at www.gdevcon.com.

If you have an interesting proposition, come talk to us. We now have infrastructure, are financially secure and may be able to help.

Lots of Love

Steve