- Denis, this season you and your colleagues participated in the VeeamON 2020 online conference - in the new Veeamathon event. Please tell us in more detail what it was?
- Our support engineers were given a limited amount of time to demonstrate some knowledge or ability to do something outside the box for solving problems (troubleshooting) or configuration tasks. That is, there was such a blitz for a support to show what else can be done with Veeam products, in addition to the well-known tasks, and how cool our guys are.
Initially [the idea of Veeamathon] looked a little more rosy, because there were no closed borders due to the virus, and we all hoped to go and put on such an interesting show on the spot. But in the end it moved to the online format, and quite well.
- And how did you do it? Were they talks, online demos or recorded demos?
- As I said, engineers were involved in this project. In principle, the support has no problems communicating with clients, our guys are very technically savvy and speak well [in foreign languages], but some do not feel comfortable enough to present themselves in front of a large number of people - and there were thousands of people who us watched (and then it is still recorded and re-shown).
Accordingly, someone prepared a live recording, corrected it and, when he was satisfied with the result, just posted it. That is, it was like a stream, but in fact it was a recording. But at the same time, the author of the report was in the stream itself, and when people asked him in the chat, he answered.
And there was a format where people presented [their performances] live. For example, my case: firstly, I did not have enough time to prepare and edit the video, and secondly, I am confident enough in my speaking abilities, so I spoke directly.
One head it's good, but two better
- Let's take the example of Teams ( Denis already mentioned it - editor's note ) - it was my colleague from St. Petersburg Igor Arkhangelsky (we worked together on preparing reports). He also performed live.
And in the end, the two of us helped each other: in my part it was solving problems with VMware and ESXi - he was my wingman, so to speak, he answered questions, and I led the live part. And then vice versa: we changed, that is, he talked about Teams recovery and what can be backed up, and at that moment in the chat I answered questions from customers and those people who watched the recording.
- It turns out that you had such a tandem.
- Yes. We had only 20 minutes for each speech, and most of our speeches included at least 2 people - because we didn't want to distract the main speaker from the story, but at the same time we wanted to answer the questions as fully as possible. Therefore, we synchronized in advance on topics, learned the details, thought about what questions might be, and during the stream, during the presentation, the second person was ready to answer no worse than the first.
№1: “ ” — . . “ ” ( ), — , -, , … -, -. , , . — , — .
- You mentioned that you already have a lot of experience in performing. What about the other engineers? Do they often perform for a wide audience?
- About experience - it's interesting that many have it. Because we are already used to preparing training presentations for each other inside the support. Our entire training procedure is based on the fact that the support itself finds key specialists who understand something and does trainings.
NB: You can find out how our support built its training system in the article on Habré .
It was the same during the preparation of Vimaton - a lot of people responded [to the call for participation], and in a large mass of people there is always someone with interesting ideas. That is, if we take only one person who is responsible for everything, and he prepares topics, then one person may be limited by his horizons. And when we include a lot of people at once, then such brainstorming occurs, many interesting ideas come.
We do our trainings in the same format: we also have the practice of preparing video recordings of speeches, and we give lectures to colleagues just in the course of daily work.
And although neither I nor my colleague had the practice of speaking in front of a large number of people, but when you speak with a screen (you do not see the people sitting in front of you), you just imagine that you are telling for a class or for a group. And it helped not to get lost, not to get nervous.
Life hack: If you have a good imagination, then you can imagine an audience. Someone will be helped by a photo with a crowd of colleagues or just a very famous image of many people:
"Attention, question!"
- Were there any tricky questions that you could not answer right away?
- There were no tricky questions as such on the topic, because we knew our topics well enough and could answer any questions. But for some reason, questions arose that were completely irrelevant to the topic. (That is, it was necessary to work out a few seconds in my head, but why does a person ask you about this here at all?) We told such people either to wait and ask for an answer after the session, or we said that there is another topic that is presented by Imyarek, and for your questions you can go there and ask a specialist who understands this better. They gave some kind of links to general resources, to documentation and so on.
For example, for some reason at my training on how to deal with the speed of VMware disks, they asked about Wim's licenses. I answer: guys, here is a link to the document, and you can go to the presentation on licenses, they will also tell you there.
Useful advice # 2: And for the speakers (as well as for the listeners), you need a memo-program of the event, with the topics of all reports and the schedule.
- Did you encounter any difficulties in the preparation or conduct? What was the hardest part?
- The most difficult thing is to answer this question :) We were told about participation in this event back in February. Accordingly, we had a lot of time to prepare: all slides, tests, labs, test notes were made in a few months. In fact, we just couldn't wait to do all this, so that we could already see our result. That is, there were no difficulties in how it was organized, how much time was given to us. In the end, we were just waiting for VeeamON to finally happen. Already 10 times we have perfected everything, tried it, and there were no longer any problems.
About "dropout"
- The main thing was "not to burn out"?
- As I understand it, it was difficult for those who were deciding whether or not to go [to participate] after it became clear that we were not going to Las Vegas. As soon as it became clear who was left, everyone else was already interested in this [online event].
- That is, there were people who wanted to go to the offline event?
- It seems to me that there is always such a thing, because this is a new experience, communication with people, live networking ... It's more interesting than sitting at a computer like this and telling on the screen. But, as I recall, not many people fell off. All the speakers with whom I personally communicate - they all stayed. And I can explain why there are so many people left. Because, firstly, it was a shame that you had already prepared [the material] - and I would like to show it. And secondly, I still wanted Vimaton to be successful, to be repeated next year. It was all in our interests.
- As I understand it, your preparations began in the winter, that is, there were call-for-papers at the beginning of the year?
- Yes, I just looked at the dates - it was a long time ago, we had a lot of time. During this time, I broke my lab three times, in which I conducted the test. That is, I had time to fully check everything. (I even found a lot for myself that I did not include in the presentation, it was interesting.)
- Were there any special requirements, restrictions, any nuances regarding the reports?
- Yes, I can say that the reports were selected by the method of exclusion, as there were many applicants.
We have a Veeam Vanguards group, they are pretty advanced. Plus product managers and other comrades who know the direction of the company well. And so they checked our themes and theses for compliance with the VeeamON theme.
For example, here is my speech: I had two different topics instead of one. They were completely unrelated. But they didn’t cover any of them, nobody told me: “Focus only on one, don’t do the others!”. And there, and there I got minimal corrections.
In fact, it all came down to some kind of time management and time limit, because for 20 minutes of this [content] there is too much - I first came with a huge number of ideas, I wanted to tell everything, but it's impossible! Still, everyone should be given time to speak up.
Therefore, my review was slightly reduced, I ended up focusing on clearer things, and this is probably better. Because people then gave feedback: “This is what I was looking for! This is something I would be interested to know! " And if I talked about more things, I would not be able to tell about it.
Accordingly, they gave us some recommendations, helped us to correct something, but at the same time we had quite wide freedom in preparation.
Helpful Hint # 3: Timing is everything. Rule of thumb: if there are 20 slides in a presentation for 30 minutes, there is a high risk of delaying the presentation and getting into someone else's time. Focus on the most important things. Editing group, then rehearsals. The result, as you can see, pleases the audience and the speaker himself.
About pictures
- We even made the slides ourselves, we were given the opportunity to make our own design (the only thing was that we were given a certain background and so on, that is, we were given a format, pictures, beatmaps there so that we could draw). Nobody limited us in what we do there. So I don't like, for example, when I make some cool themed powerpoint slide, and then the design team takes it and removes it in such a way that in the end nothing is clear even to me. That is, it may look prettier, of course - but it is incomprehensible to an engineer. Well, there were no problems in this regard, everything was very good.
- That is, everything related to the design, you did it yourself?
“Sami, but we still checked with Karinne [Bisset], who was the lead lead of the whole project. She gave us good recommendations, because she already has experience in this area, she participated in VeeamON more than once, so she helped us to correct.
Helpful Hint # 4: Templates certainly make life a lot easier. But if you are doing, for example, an internal conference, then it is quite possible to give the speakers a certain creative freedom. Otherwise, imagine 5 reports in a row with absolutely identical template, albeit beautiful slides. Visually, most likely, none will "catch".
- Karinne, as I know, acted as an ideologist and inspirer.
- She was essentially the organizer, yes. That is, she initially interested people, attracted, made lists, assembled a system. We wouldn't have done it without her. Karinne helped us a lot.
- And as a result, you prepared as many as 2 performances.
- Yes, I told two completely different topics, and they were at different times. I presented one during the [session for the] US region and then for the [Asia-Pacific] region APG (that is, Asia and Europe played it later), the other I told during APG, and for the US it was played. Accordingly, I had two presentations in the morning and in the evening. I even slept between them.
About the audience
- And on your colleagues, on juniors, have you already tested these presentations, these topics?
- No. It was such an idea: I didn't show anything to anyone on purpose, and then I said: "Guys, support me!" I wanted more people to come and look at VeeamON, and they thanked me in the end, they were interested.
You know how it happens sometimes: it would seem that it is some kind of interesting event - but you are busy, you have no time [to come]. (This, by the way, is again a question of time management.) And then those who interested me later said thank you to me, because they were a little distracted from such a routine and did something else, interesting.
- So you brought the target audience with you?
- Well, partially yes, several managers, my colleagues and engineers - they looked. Not everyone looked online, some looked in the recording. And they also confirmed that the re-scrolling is in good quality, the video is visible, and everything is fine. They were able to enjoy my presentation at other times when they were not so busy.
Life hack for those who plan to attend an online event in real time:
Here you can and should do almost everything as in offline meetings: plan time for participation, prepare and ask questions, take notes, screenshots, discuss, share your experience ... The more you are involved, the better your concentration and, consequently, the benefits of participation. And there are also prizes for the best question :)
- Were there many Russian participants, besides your colleagues from St. Petersburg? Were there any Russian-speaking listeners?
- There were visitors, but there were few speakers from Russia, and I would like to fix this next year. As I understand it, some guys this year missed the opportunity to participate in the event. Why? Because in the past years, as I said, this event concerned other departments, and support was not very much. And not everyone saw in such a huge letter about the VeeamON that there will also be a Vimaton for support. And when we began to connect people, unfortunately, some simply did not have time to prepare the material. But now, after the guys have watched this, there are already more interested parties. And I am sure that next year we support (including Russian support) will involve much more actively in this issue.
- Have you received any feedback?
- Yes, each speaker was sent an excel file with answers, with personal feedback (of course, anonymous) from everyone who viewed it. And since there were hundreds of people, there was a huge file for everyone.
As far as I know and asked other guys, all [listeners] were quite adequate in terms of understanding some of the technical problems (when someone's Internet got sag, something else), and everyone was very happy with the content itself.
№5: — , . , . , (- ). , , work-around-. , , , ; , Veeamathon-e, .
- The feedback we remember is that 20 minutes is too short to tell an interesting topic. That is, next year, you will most likely have to either do double sessions - for example, divide into 2 parts - or reduce the amount of material so that it is easier for people to absorb it. Because we are techies, we already know a lot, we speak in a technical sense, and perhaps someone was missing a small introduction or a little more simple material.
In general, there were many good points that prompted the organizers to think about making a hybrid format next year. So colleagues from Veeam can already now prepare for the fact that call for papers will be for many teams, for different regions.
Prepare the sled in the summer and the cart in the winter
- Seeing how some guys did not have time to register for participation, I can tell those involved in Knowledge sharing: it is better to plan in advance for the next year, at which conferences you want to speak, and prepare in advance. And then calmly wait for this conference. It's much less stressful than getting ready for the last week.
I used to have a principle that I was busy with everything, I have a calendar. And when I gave reports, I was already preparing before the events themselves. So this year I got much more pleasure knowing that I was ready in advance, having checked and done everything. How does it say? Just do it. Because the usual problem is how to make the slides and everything else. But we ourselves create this problem. This is also a time management issue. Unfortunately, I myself did not realize this before, although I did a lot of work in this area - and only now I realized it. Maybe this advice will help someone.
Useful advice # 6 from Denis: Someone wants to participate in conferences? A very good idea: on weekends or in your free time, at least half an hour a week to do something for your performance. And you won't notice how quickly the material will be typed. It helps a lot.
- Very good advice and it seems not even difficult to implement, thank you!
- And yet - do not stress. Because, I repeat, if there is time in advance, then you can calmly prepare yourself without sweating and at the same time look much more professional than those who did it at the last moment. Unfortunately, I realized this only now, after Vimaton, when it so happened that I just had a lot of time [to prepare]. And after the fact I realized - what happened, that it was so pleasant and fun for me to do this? And because no one rushed me, I had a lot of time, and I calmly did it. It was really great.
- I can only applaud!
- Yes, the main thing is to squeeze the maximum out of every opportunity, and everything will be fine.