Garden City Ruby 2014 - How Garden City Ruby came to be by Prakash Murthy

PRAKASH MURTHY: Good evening, everyone!

AUDIENCE: [mumbling, speaking] Good evening!

P.M.: I see the energy has sapped totally.
We

are at the end of the conference and there's...

At least that's how I am feeling. Am...

AUDIENCE: [indecipherable]

P.M.: OK. Good evening everyone!

AUDIENCE: Good evening!

P.M.: Yay! All right, do you- so, are you

ready for the last session of the Garden City

Ruby Conference 2014?

AUDIENCE: Yeah!

P.M.: Yes! So let me start by this thing.

This happened the day before the conference,

and I haven't processed all the

things that have happened in the last two
days,

but I feel like this is the best thing

for, from my perspective in the last, in this

conference. First off, we have already fixed
this problem.

There are, there are no longer one Ruby conferences

in India. There are - how many?

AUDIENCE: Two!

P.M.: Two Ruby conferences in India now. But
I,

I was really kind of shocked when Chad said

that. Yeah, in the US it was like that,

in fact in the whole world it was like

that. In fact, there was no Ruby conferences
ever,

and then somebody said let's make one happen.
So

Chad and a few others joined together and
did

the first RubyConf in the US. And I was

surprised learn that it was, it had only thirty-one

participants. 2001. In Tampa. And now, this
year's RubyConf

in Miami had around 500 participants. So it's
grown

all like that over the last twelve years.
I

find it heartening because we are at that
stage,

where they were back in 2001 and 2002. We

can learn from them and get, butt ahead in

the next couple of years. So, so
this is

what I have planned for this talk. I was

not supposed to be here. My plan for this

conference was to be spending all the time
with

my beautiful daughter and leave the team,
team to

take care of everything. And everything was
going fine.

In fact, two m- last two months I haven't

been on the mailing list as well. I let

the team take care of everything and I was

just, once in awhile, say what's up, what's
happening.

But today, we lost one of our keynote speakers,

and so that was a major crisis. I didn't

want to leave it on the team. So I

came here, and I'm here, and I'm on stage

giving this talk. With not much preparation,
I thought

it's maybe a good idea to just share about

how we came to be here. How this whole

Garden City Ruby thing happened. You guys
interested in

learning more about Garden City Ruby?

AUDIENCE: Yes. Yeah.

P.M.: OK. Let's begin at, from the very beginning.

In the beginning there was nothing. Let's
see, let's

see... yes. In the beginning there was nothing,
then

on June 29th, 2013, I sent email to the

Bangalore Ruby user group, saying hey, let's
do a

conference. This was a week after last, this
year's

RubyConf India in Pune, where I gave a talk

about taking Indian Ruby community to the
next level.

There I talked about essentially what Satir??
[00:04:43] talked

about in his community lightning talk. We
need more

meet ups, we need more conferences. Afterwards,
I got

a lot of good feedback. A lot of people

came up to me and said, hey, you inspired

us, we are going to do a meetup in

Mumbai. We are going to do a meetup in

Kochi or whatever. Nobody really talked about
doing a

conference. So I said, OK, you know what,
let

me show it by example how it is done,

and I started this project. This mail got
an

amazing response. Around fifteen, twenty people
responded on the

Bangalore Ruby usergroup saying hey, we are
interested. We

want to help you. So, thanks to the Bangalore

Ruby user group for that kind of amazing response.

Next. So that's when it started. And
the very

first thing I focused on was to get the

keynote speakers. As somebody was pointing
out to me

earlier, if we have the key, one or two

keynote speakers, well-known keynote speakers
in the line-up, it

becomes very easy to sell the conference to
others.

And the first person I approached to was Chad,

and Chad enthusiastically said, yes, I'm coming
to Bangalore.

I want to be in Bangalore. And, yeah, I

was telling Chad yesterday, I attribute 80%
of the

success of this conference to him. Because
of him

being here, a lot of people decided to come

here. We got a lot of sponsors to pay

up. He says I'm, you know, I'm wrong, but

I believe, at least, if not 80, 79%. Yeah.

We got the keynote speakers lined up. Now
that

one, one other point I want to make here.

We can't keep having Chad come here every
time

we want to have a conference. So we need

more Indian Chad Fowlers. So we need more
of

the people sitting here to be up here a

lot of times, and make a name for themselves,

so that when you go to another place, or

some city to give a talk, people pay to

come and see you. So we'll get there in

a couple of years. Who wants to take up

that challenge? Nice. Nice to see a few hands

go up. The next thing I want to talk

about is the first, the organization behind
this conference.

So when I first started talking about this
conference,

my original idea was that we'll go with ITT.

ITT is the entity which puts up RubyConf India.

They have done a phenomenally good job of
organizing

four annual Ruby conferences in India. And
you already

heard from Ajay in the morning about the background

of those conferences. Very soon in the process
I

realized that may not work out for me, or

at least, what I was trying to accomplish.
If

we had gone with ITT, it would mostly have

been, again, Ajey, Gautam and a few others
doing

most of the work, or taking most of the

key decisions. And there's no - it would just

be another RubyConf India. I wanted a totally
new

team to come up, learn from scratch how to

do all this. How to do, get sponsors, how

to put up a program, how to organi- do

all the logistics stuff required for setting
up a

good conference. So I decided in the very
beginning,

OK, not, we are not going to go with

ITT. We are going to start a- we'll have

a new, non-profit entity created. And so maybe,
it

took us awhile to get there, but two months

later I think we had our trust. So these

are the six trust members. So among the organizing

team, it's me and Tejas who are not on

the trust, for different reasons. Everyone
else is on

the trust, and yeah. The one hour of time,

Satish at this point, because he did all the

ground work for finding out what's required
to do,

set up a trust. And he is also followed

up on the financial part of it. So big

hand to Satish. Satish over here. So, yeah,
that's

probably about the organization part. Then
about the talk

selection and, talk proposals and selections.
I want to

share this interesting breakdown of all the
talk proposals

we got. Total we got seventy-two talk proposals.
That's

a good number, given that we had only around

a month's time for call, when the call for

proposal was open. What do you make of this?

Everybody wants to submit a talk at the last

minute. This, actually we- Where's Leena?
Come on up

here. Carry the mic for her. Oh, you, yeah.

So Leena had the idea that we should actually

train some of these people who give us a

proposal and then maybe, yeah, we could interact
with

them, and then we'll lead much better proposals
and

much better talks in this conference. If this
happens,

if everybody submits at the last minute, we
can't

do much about that. So next time a conference

is announced, please make sure you submit
a talk

right at the beginning. We, we, well, I want

this to be reversed. I want more talk proposals

coming at the beginning than at the end. Just,

I have a few questions for you. So I'll

just show a couple of other things. We got

sixty-seven proposals from men and five proposals
from women,

and of the five proposals from women, three
were

from the same person, and one was a, was

paired with a perso- guy.

LEENA S N: And the-

P.M.: And the last one was, we made, we invited

those two to submit a talk. That was Sakshi

and Pallavi. We told them we need you here

talking, so you need to propose. So really
this

was almost non-existant for the number of
proposals by

women.

L.S.N.: And that too the three proposals was

not from India- I mean-

P.M.: Again, yeah, that three proposals-

L.S.N.: It was from Emily, Emily from Mongol??
[00:12:26]

P.M.: So the womenfolk in the room here.

Any thoughts of submitting proposals for the
next

conference? OK. Let's, let's change this.
We got a

lot of proposals from different countries
as well. But

ultimately it ended up that none of them could

come. We selected two of the speakers from
this,

for, from non, who are not from India, and

both could not come for different reasons,
so we

ended up with only Indian speaker line-up,
other than

the invited keynote speakers. I was very happy
with,

to see this. The breakup from different cities.
This

shows that there is room for having meetups
and

conferences at each of these cities as well.
You

just need to start something there. OK, this
is

fine. So Leena. How did we go about talk

selection. What, what happened?

L.S.N.: So, like I'm, like

Prakash mentioned, we wanted to have a lot
of

conversation with the submitters, but that
didn't happen because

of lots, so many proposals came in. So we

relied on the busyconf rating system, so all,
all,

everyone in the, in the organizing committee,
they rated

the talks, and we went with the - most

of the time we went with the rating, given

by the, the auto rating given by busyconf
as

rated by all the organizers. And we had given

some exceptions. Like the Rails Girls, we
thought, OK,

we want them to be talking about how we

ran. Because it's experience important that,
that should encourage

others to join these kind of things. So, so

we made some exceptions like that, but mainly
it

was the rating given by, given by the organization.

P.M.: So it's these ratings here. Each of
the

team members gave a rating and we rated all

the talks. So started ?? from the ?? [00:14:38].

There were a few exceptions, right.

L.N.S.: Yeah, we had, only Rails Girls was
the exception.

P.M.: Rails Girls was exception, and I think

Emily also we had to remove one of her talks.

L.N.S.: Yeah, and we also, so Emily's - we,
I think

we have, we can pull out the blog post

that we have written. So we also, apart from

the rating, we also decided that we would
not

have more than two speakers outside of India,
and

we'll have only one speaker from the organizing
company-

P.M.: Organizing team, yes.

L.N.S.: Even if it gets

higher rating. And we also decided that we'll
not

have two talks from the same person, so that

negated many of them in the top, because Emily's

almost, all talks from Emily got a higher
rating.

But we negated those because same speaker,
and outside

India. And then we relied on the rating-

P.M.: Yeah.

L.N.S.: And exception was, and apart from
those

exceptions, we gave the exceptions to Rails
Girls-

P.M.: Rails Girls, yeah.

L.N.S.: Because we, because of the

Rails reason, and I think that was a very

good talk and I think we learned quite a

few things from them, so.

P.M.: And Hermant had

a very good talk proposal and which rated
very

high.

L.N.S.: So there was a lot of-

P.M.: And we had to remove him.

L.N.S.: Yeah, there

was a lot of debate on, we had to,

we, among us organizers, we had to, we had

a lot of debates. And that, that talk went

for a couple of calls, and then finally we

decided we'll have only one talk, and Hermant
had

two. But Hermant had a very good Panel Discussion-

P.M.: Panel Discussion, yeah.

L.N.S.: And, that I think

was a huge success, so.

P.M.: OK. So. I

want to thank Leena for doing a phenomenal
job

with the talk selection and leading everything.
Thank you.

You can give it to her. I want to

thank Emil over here for managing the website
and

everything related to that. He, he didn't
do all

the work, but he got the right people involved

at the right time, and he gave us what

we wanted. The blog featured in the website,
it

was amazing. He made it superb. How many of

you know about the opportunities scholarship
that we gave

in this conference? Nice. So, Swanand, what's
this opportunities

scholarship that we are talking about?

SWANAND PAGNIS: So the opportunities scholarship

is an opportunity for those students

and other underrepresented groups to attend
a conference. For

example students, who are studying ?? [00:17:26],
who really

want to be a part of the community, talk

to other people, but cannot really afford
to travel

all the way to Bangalore, or even for the

conference tickets. Usually conference tickets
in India are like

two, three thousand, in that range. For a
student

it's a decently steep price. So the idea was

also implemented in RubyConf India. I was
one of

the mentors of one of the students, and I

really had fun interacting with them all along,
like,

about the month leading to the conference,
and on

the conference days itself. So Prakash and
I decided

that if the budget allows it we are going

to do the opportunities scholarship here at
GCRC, too.

And, well I'll a-

P.M.: This is the list.

S.P.: So this is the list of all the

selected students, and-

P.M.: So where are the scholarship winners?

S.P.: Can all of them please stand up.

P.M.: Can you stand up.

S.P.: All the students.

P.M.: Students! And most of them don't even
know

Ruby, they are seeing the Ruby for the first

time, a couple of them are seeing Ruby for

the first time.

S.P.: Tushar here is coming from,

all the way from Jaiper.

P.M.: OK. Thank you.

And, OK. Oh yeah. I missed out some- an

important point here, which we did a lot of

work in figuring out the way to hold this

conference, and making all arrangements: food,
logistics, the internet,

everything - all this. Lanyards, t-shirts,
all that. Tejas

and Dheeraj- Dheeraj is here? OK, so big hand

to Tejas and Dheeraj, please. So this is what

happened with our registrations. We made that
much money

from it, and we had a total of 187

participants register. That included both
people who paid for

their tickets and who got complimentary admission.
Our aim

was to make it a two hundred people partici-

conference. Keep it very limited - not, RubyConf
India,

yeah, has four hundred people. Yeah. I was
there

for two days, and I didn't meet a couple

of people I wanted to meet, even though I

was there for two days. It was such big

crowd there. Here I wanted it, to keep it

smaller, two hundred, so that everybody can
meet everybody

else. Has that mostly been accomplished? Yeah,
174. OK.

And again, of that, I think that around twelve

or fifteen people didn't show up. So it's
about

160 people who have been here for the last

two days.

V.O.: 174

P.M.: 174? Oh great. Oh

that's, you already submitted, removed the
number. Great. And,

one other thing I want to show is the,

before I come here. It's in some- one of

these tabs. Yes. This was maybe a day, couple

of days ago that we went through our finances.

We got a total income of around one grand

for forty- oh, forty grand, forty to a thousand.

We started with the idea that we'll have this

fifteen grand event, but, and even with a
fifteen

grand budget. We met that target, almost came
very,

we came very close to meeting that target,
with

the sponsors and ticket sales. And expenses,
we, yeah,

it looks like we are just a little bit

below our income, or maybe a little bit over.

We'll know in a couple of days. We had

a couple of last minute expenses come through,
so,

but yeah. In this context, I want to thank

all the sponsors. These folks made it really
easy

for us to put up an awesome event, and

it was also amazing how easy it was for

us to get the sponsorship. At one point, there

was some doubt that maybe we won't be able

to do it. We won't have enough money, we

won't be able to do - we may have

to cut off a few things. We probably won't

have the opportunities scholarship or maybe
not, if not

lunch, at least cut something in the lunch
or

whatever. So. All that didn't happen. We could
get

all the, the budgeted, the intended amount
of money.

So thank you Flipkart, thank you Josh, thank
you

Nilenso, thank you GitHub, thank you Qwinix,
thank you

ParamiSoft, thank you Bang the Table, thank
you MavenHive,

thank you GoodWorkLabs, thank you CodeBrahma,
thank you CodeMancers,

thank you Multunus, thank you Mahaswami, thank
you SupportBee,

thank you Icicle, thank you Cognitive Clouds,
thank you

Big Binary and thank you MaSymbol. Maybe I
should

have said yes there, right, to update. MartMe
and

StartUp Village in Kochi?? [00:23:33] - they
were the

t-shirt sponsors, so thank you MartMe and
StartUp Village.

So wow. I covered all ten of the items

I had there. So now. My hope from this

conference is that it will inspire some of
you

to go back to your towns and start something

similar there. In that context, what questions
do you

have for me and the team here? So I

want all the team members to come up here.

So, questions, questions. OK. Yeah?

QUESTION: So what difference

does having a conference like this have over
all

the regular meetups and workshops, and- P.M.:
Yeah, who

in the audience can answer him? Yeah. Let's
-

let Gautam handle it.

GAUTAM REGE: So the short

answer - the more, the merrier. Right. And
the

longer answer to that is that in a larger

conference, you get to meet a lot of other

people, see how they work. See how- which
all

companies are interested. See what the other
people, what

experience they have. And that's why conferences,
people take

time out to come for conferences. Sometimes
it happens

in meet ups that, you know, it's an beyond

my job thing.

P.M.: Yeah.

G.R.: So if I

go there, it's OK, if I don't go, then

it's fine. But a conference, you attend. Meet
ups

- I'm not sure I'm paid meetups.

P.M.: So-

G.R.: Do we have paid meetups?

P.M.: ?? [00:25:23]

Has Chad Fowler ever covered your meet up?
Conference,

we need conference for that. K, next?

QUESTION: I would like to answer his - I would
like

to answer his question in one line. It, the

difference between ?? [00:25:43]. People go
to ?? [00:25:44],

people don't go to ?? [00:25:47]. So there's
the

answer I would give.

P.M.: OK.

QUESTION: Hello. What should be the mindset
of a person who is

attending a conference, or what should one
expect from

a conference-

P.M.: From a conference.

QUESTION: Or what should one do for a

conference, or, for that matter, a meet up?

P.M.: As a participant or

as an organizer?

QUESTION: As a participant.

P.M.: OK, as a participant, I would say, to
make more,

new friends. And to learn new things.

TEJAS DINKAR: All right, does anyone else
on the team want

to answer that question as well? Swanand,
or ??

[00:26:29]

S.P.: One important thing you need to consider

when you're attending any conference is basically
meeting new

people. So the talks and everything is one
part

of, obviously they're important. And probably
talks, you're gonna

go back home and watch it again on ConFreaks.

It's all being recorded. So the most important
thing

is you know meet new people and make new

friends. That is the reason, one of the reasons

why we have reduced the talk period from forty

minutes to thirty minutes, and have increased
the lunch

time and the, you know, coffee breaks. So
that

people get to talk to each other more. So

that's the reason behind that.

??: Meet new people

or keep meeting your friends at conferences.
There are

many people who I only meet at meet ups

or only at RubyConf India or RubyConf.

P.M.: And I meet Coby at every conference
I go to.

OK, next question here.

QUESTION: First of all, you

guys did an excellent job of getting this
conference

together. I basically have two questions.
First is, how

do you raise money from sponsors for a conference

like this? I'm sure it's very difficult. And
second

is, how do you get international speakers,
like, you

know, Chad, Coby?

V.O.: So I think Swanand wants

to answer this one.

S.P.: You don't raise money

for sponsors. You just ask them, hey we are

putting on a conference, and they just say
OK,

we are gonna sponsor, here's the money.

T.D.: Like,

a bit more practically, like this is something
I

had a big conversation even with Ajey Gore
about

that developed this?? [00:28:03]. You have
to understand that

no matter who is there on this board, every

company that sponsors is interested in something
else. It

kind of ties into what ?? [00:28:13] was speaking

about in the morning. So I'm just gonna take

my own example, is that we had at Nilenso

are hoping to meet interesting people and
eventually bring

on like, hire someone new, and that's why,
say,

Nilenso is, that's definitely one of the reasons
we

are sponsoring a conference like this. So
it's just

to try to get into the mindset of the

person you're speaking to and see what benefits
can

you provide them, because like, these, the
different levels

of sponsorships - you also have to, we also

have different things that they are allowed
to do.

For example, a gold sponsor like Flipkart
is allowed

to bring in that large banner back there and

have a booth, and allowed to speak-

P.M.: And they get two minutes.

T.D.: Yeah - and are

allowed to speak to people. A silver sponsor
has

their own set of benefits, like giving out
something

in the pamphlets, so. It's about going and
speaking

to these different organizations, trying to
understand what they

are looking for, and seeing how your conference
can

help them and vice versa.

??: What Dejas said

just now was exactly what Ajey was saying
in

the morning about keeping the stakeholders
in the loop.

P.M.: So the other part of your question was

about keynote speakers. I would say it's all
about

personal relationships. I knew Chad from before,
so I

reached out to him and he said, yes, I

am ready to come. And it helped that he

was in Bangalore before and he wanted to come

back.

??: Actually Coby has a very nice answer

to this question. I was talking to him in

the afternoon. He said, why do we need it?

P.M.: Why do you need it?

??: Why do you always need foreign spekers
to come here?

P.M.: Yeah, so. Till we have Indian Chad Fowlers,
we

need the real Chad Fowler.

??: So, there you go.

Your goal is set for the next two

years.

QUESTION: I just wanted to ask you [indecipherable

- 00:30:04] at what state do you think the

local meet ups can actually arrange a conference,
because

there needs to be a certain mileage or momentum

that needs to be accumulated by the local
meet

ups to then, you know, result in a conference.

You just cannot have a big conference right
away,

right. So where do you think is the equation

of breakdown should happen?

P.M.: Yeah, so. You want

to answer that? How, how-

??: So what do you mean by big conference,
I mean?

QUESTION: [indecipherable - 00:30:35]

T.D.: So how big do you think

that the first RubyConf India was? I don't
know.

Actually I don't remember myself, but it was
somewhere

around 300 or 350 people.

V.O.: 250 people.

T.D.: 250, is it? We were really, really scared
if

we were gonna get about 40 people in that,

in that hall. Because we had, it was completely

untested waters. Like I personally, I think
I'm a

bit romantic about this, but I strongly believe
in

what, in Ajey said in the morning. It was

really one person's vision. One person wanted
to run

a Ruby conference, and everyone else was just
kind

of following along with that vision and doing
it.

So in reality, the answer to your question
was,

well, money aside, it was about 4 to 6

people, that was all that was needed to organize

the first one. And people came. I think, I

think Bangalore definitely India is such a
place that,

you put out something, you know, some new
technology

like, like we have some obscure, like Go language

conf, next month, just because it's interesting,
people will

show up. ??: This may not be the only

way to organize a conference, you know. Everybody's
welcome

to figure out their own way. People from ??

[00:31:46] can travel together, and they talk
about Ruby

and come back the next day. You know, you

can do your own plans, really.

COBY RANDQUIST: So as far as, do you have
to have meet

ups to build up a momentum to hold a

conference. I actually disagree. Because in
Bend, it's a

town of about 85,000 people. We had literally
twelve

Ruby developers in town, and we started Ruby
on

Ales to get, to put Bend on the map

in the Ruby community. So we knew we didn't

have a mass of people there. Now what that

did mean, is we had to go about it

a little bit differently, because we had to
do,

you know, more external marketing, and to
Prakash's point,

one of the, one of the big advantages of

large conferences, or actually I wouldn't
even call this

a large conference, but of conferences in
this size,

is that you do get to meet more people.

And you get to create relationships with people,
you

know, honestly the reason I'm here is because
Prakash

and I talked several years ago at RubyConf
in

Loiussiana, and that's really how it came
about. You

know, Chad and I's relationship over the years,
I

think we've never met anywhere but conferences.
I've got

a whole group of, you know, literally hundreds
of

friends at this point, that the only time
I

ever see each other face to face is at

conferences. Yes. And now I've added another
country. So

when you're trying to put together an event,
part

of it is make sure you know what you're

trying to accomplish. That's the key part,
because if

you know what you're trying to do, then you

can set your limits. And the other key piece

to the budgeting aspect is, always remember
you don't

want to dig yourself a hole. You know. So

limit things. With our OpenStack on Ales that
I

mentioned yesterday, we basically said, we
know what it

costs to rent the place, and if we only

have ten people show up plus our speakers,
we're

OK. We know what, we know what our out

of pocket expense is gonna be. But we're not

gonna provide coffee - you know, there's water
because

there's water fountains. But we were able
to control

those factors. So yeah, you don't, you don't
need

a lot of momentum locally. You do need an

interest, or you need to scale your cost model

so that if you only have three people show

up you're OK with it. But, yeah.

T.D.: Also, one more thing I want to say.
I would

like everyone to look at the back of the

hall near the Flipkart stall, that's Karen
over there.

Everyone wave hi.

P.M.: Hey Karen!

T.D.: So, Karen,

or Jase, as he's known, and is partners of

about I think it's a team of five, have

been running, I think, like a dozen successful
tech

events every single year under the banner
of HasGeek.

And so if anyone wants to know how to

run a conference successfully and on a different
range

of budgets, from like, really big to really
small,

please talk to Jase.

P.M.: OK, so. We are almost out of time.

I want to thank all

the, my co-organizers here, and the one last
thing

I want to say before closing is, it's not

just the few of us up here who did

this conference. There are a lot of people
out,

who helped us from outside. We may not have

time now for everyone, but I want to thank

everyone who helped us put this conference
up, and

made it an amazing journey so far. Thank you

everyone.

V.O.: We will see you at RubyConf India in
March.