I'm wondering if we have enough interest in Australia to put on our own NodeConf?

Given that international travel costs are relatively high, it may be an expensive exercise if we want to help quality overseas speakers get here.

Is there a large enough Node community in Australia? Would they be willing to pay good money for a fun community conference? Would we be able to find enough quality speakers, locally and abroad (and willing to come)? Would we be able to find enough worthwhile sponsorship?

Can't reply right now. Up to my neck in asynchronous issues! (But, seriously, great thinking). I'll get back to you in a bit.

I think there's a lot of people in Australia who are interested in using node, even if they're not currently doing so. It's a bit of a chicken-and-egg scenario but with enough exposure it could definitely work.

what would be "enough" people?

i would start small, try to attract people in Australia and maybe some people from nearby like New Zealand. shoot for a hundred people and do it some time in the spring.

call it NodeAus or something like that. for local conferences it's better not to name them after destinations conferences, IMO. NodeDublin is a good example. Putting more emphasis on the local community helps keep the momentum from the conference in future later local events.

Mikeal, good point. Building a strong central community with the right culture (and sharing code libraries and practices) would be a great first step. Also representing that to employers, because companies need to see that Node has a presence.

It's uncanny because this morning my CTO has been asking me how we can find out how much developer depth Node has in Australia. And for potential Node dev.s it's the reverse - how many employment opportunities are there?

Maybe i should clarify my meaning. You can put community conferences in two buckets: destination conferences and local conferences.

JSConf, NodeConf, those are destination conferences. No matter where they are, most people attending aren't local. They tend to draw an intermediate to advanced crowd. You can assume the attendees are current or potentially future community leaders. Tailoring the content and goals to that crowd is tricky but they aren't good "learning" conferences. If you want to inject some momentum in to your local community a destination conference isn't going to do it.

Local conferences are a little different. Some of them draw a huge number of traveling attendees, like TXJS. But the conference is more rooted in the local community and serves to create and maintain momentum.

They are also great learning conferences. More content is tailored to beginners and it can turn local people dabbling with node in to hardcore node developers.

A good 'learning' conference assumes good teachers are available, I wonder how many we could muster up down here.

Perhaps something more along the lines of a Node Camp?

@rvagg local conferences usually fly in a few speakers. you bring a few "names" in but you fill the rest of the program with the best local people. if you put on a few meetups or put out a call for speakers you'll find enough good local people to fill a single track one day conference :)

Right, so we need @substack to come and do some hand waving for us and we'll be good to go!

haha! by next spring you're gonna have a dozen people that can show off their node powered robots! #robotjs

@mikeal, in your opinion, what is the likelyhood of getting some amount of sponsorship out of SF(ish) Node companies for an event on the other side of the world? Thinking Joyent, Voxer, Yammer, Nodejitsu? Do you think they'd see much up-side from sponsorship?

depends on what time of year. there are a LOT of conferences this year, sponsorship is drying up for the fiscal year. next year it should be a little easier. but you have lots of options. you can keep it simple and cheap and cover the costs in ticket sales alone, then just add parties for each sponsor you pick up, that way if you can't get sponsors you just end up skipping the party.

I help organise MelbJS, and we also have a Node.js meetup in Melbourne. We have plenty of people who are actively involved in the local JS/Node community who would definitely be interested in speaking at and/or attending a Node conference.

What do you imagine the price of a ticket would be? If it's cheap enough for an enthusiast to pay for their own ticket, the requirements of the conference are very different from one that would involve employers paying for tickets. How many employers in Australia would pay for a Node-only conference? I hope there's plenty, but I'm not sure that's the case.

Personally I would want it to be as cheap as possible for people to attend, certainly not something so expensive you'd have to get your employer to pay for. More of a fun community event; with the added bonus that people on the periphery of the Node community could more easily justify going just to learn more.
As for actual price, I have no idea at this stage!

The opportunity for connecting with awesome developers is much better at cheaper conferences, but the more pricey conferences can afford speakers of much higher calibre/fame. Web directions has Crockford this year. That's a great achievement for an AU conference. Importing speakers to AU is insanely expensive, but I feel quality, brand-name speakers is the very thing we lack the most.

It's my aim to provide an alternative, inexpensive fun event to network with AU JS developers at campjs, and we also have sydney and melbourne beerjs. That cheap and fun avenue is well covered. I'd love to see this conference contrast this by being an "upmarket", pricey event that's well worth it because it's shipping in the most badass JS speakers.

Well said Tim. I think the first thing would be to build some local communities by attending beerja & campjs, etc.. This conversation can keep moving forward.

Really great that rvagg started this up and that we're getting a community snowballing effect for Node.

I understand your argument about aiming for a *premium* event @secoif but given that we have a relatively small Node community in AU I suspect a higher priced event would stop all but the privileged few who are currently working in Node-related jobs who's employers would be willing to pay for attendance. I'd probably end up being fairly small.
We're a small community and at least to get started I think it'd be best to aim for as inclusive an event as possible, even within reach of young devs who aren't even in the workforce yet.

Given all these concerns and uncertainty perhaps we should be aiming for a NodeConfBeta of some kind? A pre-conference conference; very casual with mainly (perhaps only) local speakers, not too much overhead and aimed more at preparing for a larger, more significant event.

Good approach. After running the conference at least once it should be easier to get the sponsors required for offshore imports.

I completely agree. We need to test the water first as I don't think there are enough employers (yet) who would see benefit in paying for a Node-focused conference.

If we encouraged attendees to inform those they work with that they attended, what they got out of it, how it could benefit their employer, we might find that support for larger events would snowball.

Maybe even help people by having at least one talk along the lines of "Using Node.js in a Non-Node Work Environment" (covering JS build tools, WebSocket servers etc) so they basically have a speech prepared to give their manager.

I've been wondering what we could learn from jsconf.au, since a few of us attended.

My rough thoughts are:

* Concentrate more on networking opportunities
* Longer? Just a single day seemed too little, at least have another event the next morning to make it worthwhile!
* Make it more 'open', I'd much prefer to have many, shorter, talks by locals, than few big talks by big names.

On that last note, I'd love to have something that really opens up speaker opportunities. Perhaps set aside a portion of time to anyone who wants to do a talk, have a cut-off date and then divide up the time by the number of people who submit talks!
I know the whole secretive thing is part of the JSConf tradition but I'd prefer a lot more openness in the planning. Event planning via GitHub anyone? github.com

In regards to turnout, we've now got a node.js monthly meetup going - meetup.com - that was able to attract 30 or so people in November, and looking at 30+ for January. We also attracted about 20 people to a Node.js General Assembly training back in October.

For the conference, I'd really like it if people collaborated on the talks they would like to hear, and then once they've become clear on the content, then choose the speaker for it. An issue with other conference I've found is that a bunch of people will be competing for the same talk, rather than working together, which is quite unfortunate.

In regards to Rod's feedback, I'd definitely like to see a greater ability at being able to have everyone engage with each other. It wasn't until at the very end of JSConf that we really got to know who everyone is, and even then missed out on a lot of people. Even if it were just a introduce yourself or whatever at the beginning that would be nice.

For getting more local talks, we do have the node meetup now so I think that holds less weight than a while ago. A Q&A discussion where everyone can provide feedback on it for an hour or two would work well and give everyone a chance to sign and get answers to what they want. Perhaps as an open room discussion with speakers behind a panel would work really well.

My feedback:

I've been to a stack of conferences this year and one thing I've observed is that you get much more audience attention when they don't have the the option to open up their laptop. Get rid of those social-silo making tables. I really hate them. A traditional theatre–style venue would be better.

Also:

* +1 for more shorter talks.
* +1 for panels or even… debates!
* Single stream always better.
* Parties/Conference Days ratio should always be 2/1
* 'intranet' > 'internet'. Keep people focussed on the conference.

Hrm, ok. In response to Tim ...

* I like being able to code when people present. Being asked to set in a theatre like setting would just mean I use a laptop on my knee.
* I like double streams running sometimes, especially if the conference is going for two days (RubyConf India did that really well). Keynote speeches should be single stream.

I thought jsconfau ran very well. A single day would be fine with me but a two conference wouldn't bother me much. The main thing is that I can keep coding if I want to and have some choice over what activities/presentations I want to become involved with.

Here's some advice. Good conferences are not run by committee.

Someone needs to decide to do something and take responsibility for the event and make all these decisions. Good conferences have some of the personality of the organizer embedded in them, there will be parts you like and dislike, and it's the attendees decision to go the next year or not.

Bad and, even worse, mediocre conferences are the ones that try to make everyone happy and are exactly what people expect. There's nothing innovative about doing all the things people are asking for that they've seen at other conferences.

Put yourself out there, take risks, and everyone should get behind whoever is putting all the work in to really make this happen, cause it's a lot of work