Re: How to get the message out

On Tue, Nov 9, 2010 at 4:35 PM, Hyrum K. Wright
<hyrum_wright_at_mail.utexas.edu> wrote:
> On Mon, Nov 8, 2010 at 9:39 AM, Bolstridge, Andrew
> <andy.bolstridge_at_intergraph.com> wrote:
>>
>>> -----Original Message-----
>>> From: hyrum_at_hyrumwright.org [mailto:hyrum_at_hyrumwright.org] On Behalf
>> Of Hyrum K. Wright
>>> Sent: 07 November 2010 02:34
>>> To: Subversion Development
>>> Subject: How to get the message out (or: why there were only 6 people
>> at the ApacheCon meetup)
>>
>> [snip]
>>
>>> My question: do we need to do this?  Is there a niche that isn't being
>> filled by the various corporate sponsors, which we
>>> (as a Subversion development community) are better served to do?  Do
>> people already know "enough" about
>>> Subversion, such that we don't need to evangelize anymore?
>>
>> I'm sure evangelical missions are still important - mainly to counter
>> the "SVN is crap at merging, Mercurial/Git/a.n.otherDVCS is the ultimate
>> SCM that fixes all your problems" type arguments that seems to be
>> increasingly popular. Even our Serena dimensions admin (terrible
>> 'enterprisey' ALM SCM) knows about git but doesn't know what SVN'd give
>> him.
>>
>> So, I'd say there are still loads of poor souls needing the word
>> bringing to them, and the FUD dispelling.
>
> Then aside from cold-calling all potential proselytes, what venues are
> the best places at which to talk to folks?  Are there ALM or SCM or
> other types of conferences with which an evening Subversion event
> would work well?
>
> (Or is this type of thing better left to marketing departments instead
> of us technical peeps?)

This old thread snapped back into my mind when I received an
invitation for Devoxx 2011 [1], which runs from November 14th til
18th. Devoxx (formerly named "Javapolis") is the "biggest
vendor-independent Java conference in the world" [2], and takes place
in Antwerp, Belgium (my back-yard basically :-)).

This may not be a great place for recruiting new core SVN developers
(being a Java conference), but it's certainly a place where a lot of
(potential) SVN users are, mostly the tech savvy kind (around 3000 of
them). Most of these work in corporate environments. If evangelical
missions are still considered important, I think this would be good
opportunity.

Most of the talks are about Java stuff (frameworks, new technologies,
cloud babble, ...), but there are usually also some talks about tools
(over the past few years I've seen some talks there by Perforce and
ClearCase, both in the "tools" and in the "methodology" (how do I
organize branches, etc.) category). Sometimes, those fall in the
"quickies" category (small demo's/talks of 15 minutes).

Last year, there was a quickie about Git: "Using Git to just replace
SVN is like using a Ferrari to haul dirt" [3], with the abstract
saying things like "In a quick 15 minutes, I'll open eyes to the
team-behavior improvements, bug finding, and performance that only Git
offers today." I don't really mind about that (I didn't see the talk
-- others were ravingly enthusiastic of course). But it would be nice
to see on such a conference that SVN is also still alive and kicking,
and has some particular advantages itself, ... And with 1.7 just being
released etc ...

Just to be clear: I'm not volunteering or anything (I'm not a very
good public speaker). Just putting it out there ...

The "Call for papers" for Devoxx 2011 is now open. Proposals need to
be submitted before end of June [4].

-- 
Johan
[1] http://www.devoxx.com
[2] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Devoxx
[3] http://www.devoxx.com/display/Devoxx2K10/Using+Git+to+just+replace+SVN+is+like+using+a+Ferrari+to+haul+dirt
[4] http://cfp.devoxx.com/