Links

Helvetic Ruby: https://helvetic-ruby.ch

Helvetic Ruby LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/helvetic-ruby

Hana's website: https://hharen.com

Transcript

Travis Dockter: All right, welcome to the, unprofessional, casual conference organizer chat, that I've been doing. …

Travis Dockter: I want to say, welcome, and thank you for taking the time. I'm going to try to say your name, I don't know if I'm gonna pronounce it right, let me know. But it's, Hana Harencarova?

hharen: Yep, that's pretty good.

Travis Dockter: Okay, pretty close. Alrighty, and you are, one of the organizers of Helvetic Ruby.

Travis Dockter: And I would, just to start us off, I think you guys started in 2023, is that correct?

hharen: Exactly, we had a third edition this year.

Travis Dockter: Okay, awesome. Well, I would like to hear, actually, about that first one in 2023, how it came about, how it went, and, yeah, just your, your, memories of that first one.

hharen: Sure.

hharen: I mean, we… there's a, not huge, but, nice community about Ruby and Rails here in Surregan, Switzerland, and it's really…

hharen: It was always pleasurable to meet the same people at the different conferences. Many of them I saw more outside of Switzerland than within of Switzerland when we met at a different Ruby or Rails event.

hharen: And we were just casually talking that it would be nice to have something.

hharen: …

hharen: But you always need people who actually organize it, right? Like, many people like the idea, but when there's work, you need people to back it up. And it was that Yuruko in the year before, I would expect?

hharen: No, actually, it could have been 2023, where, at Yuruko, you have these city pitches, so…

hharen: Euroco is traveling conference, and…

hharen: every year, it's somewhere else, and at the end of the conference, people who are willing to organize the next year, they, like, present the country. And there was also Andy Kroll, who already organizes Brighton Ruby, and he was like, don't vote for Brighton, but make your own.

hharen: That was, like, a short message, and then we were like, yeah, why not? And then it was 3 of us, who decided to organize Helvetic Ruby, so the first year was organized with 3 people.

hharen: And, yeah, we all knew that we don't have that much time, so from the beginning, we were focused on what are the most important things to get the conference up and running.

hharen: And we were like, okay, it's the first, first year, so we want to have a lineup soon, in order for people to know what to expect.

hharen: In order to have a lineup, we need the speakers, and we need a venue, and a date. So, that was the first thing. We, decided in which time we want to organize the conference. That was, like, October and November, so that we would have, like, half a year to prepare it.

hharen: And I'll select it.

hharen: possible venues. We ended up doing it in Bern, which is, … so all three of us were not living in Bern at that time.

hharen: But we wanted something which is, like, more in the middle of Switzerland, or that it's not always, like, Zurich-centered.

hharen: … So we find the location, we confirm the date, open CFV pretty early.

hharen: And after that, we had a lineup, and we were ready to announce the conference. We used Tito for ticketing, which made it really simple.

hharen: And…

hharen: Because we made many of the decisions, with knowing that we want to focus on the most important things, and we wanted to do the, a lot of work up front, it actually…

hharen: was pretty easy. Like, we had, like, split responsibilities, which definitely helped, too.

hharen: And yeah, it just worked really well.

Travis Dockter: Nice. What were your, primary responsibilities in that first year?

hharen: Oh, that's a good question.

hharen: Because that's changed over the years, so…

hharen: Location, like, communication with a venue was definitely one of them.

hharen: And sponsors was another one.

hharen: Yes.

hharen: And then, Dimitek was doing speakers, and Maggio was also working, with sponsors.

hharen: And then, yeah, I also set up the ticketing, and kind of all three of us were working on the website, updating it based on which part needed the updates.

Travis Dockter: Yeah.

hharen: And the budget was also, like, shared responsibility. And because it was the first conference, we started the planning that we would be able to run the conference with

hharen: 80 people?

hharen: But if we would have, like, 100 or 120, that's great, and everything above is, like, amazing. And we ended up having 180 attendees that first year.

Travis Dockter: So, we've.

hharen: It was like, we had a really basic, …

hharen: budget. So, these are the things we want and need to pay, like a venue, and we wanted to pay for speakers, so we always pay travels and accommodation.

hharen: And then we were like, okay, if we have more money, either from ticket sales or from sponsors, then we can also, like, provide more catering, right? We decided not to do lunch, just because it's an organizational hassle.

hharen: And so, we were adjusting our spending as we saw how the ticket sales went, which also took a lot of pressure off, you know, like, having to reach some amount of tickets, or some amount of sponsoring.

Travis Dockter: Yeah. How… how early were those ticket sales? You said you had about 6 months to plan this. Did you open up ticket sales right away after you got your venue, or how did you do that?

hharen: We opened up ticket sales, if I'm right, just after we published, the lineup.

hharen: Okay. Which would you like?

hharen: At least 4 months… And… I could have a look. ….

Travis Dockter: Yeah. But, ….

hharen: I don't have it right now.

Travis Dockter: Nice. And was that 180, was that the max capacity of your venue, or was that just how many tickets you sold and you could have done more?

hharen: Yeah, the capacity was, at that time, 200 for that venue, but actually, it was really good that we had less than 200 people, because it was really nice, it was a special venue with the very high ceilings in, like, an old building, but it was

hharen: It was good.

Travis Dockter: We'll see later.

hharen: In full capacity, yeah.

Travis Dockter: Yeah. How… and, so it was 180 people your first year. How many did you do this year? How many people were there?

hharen: So the next 2 years, we had 150 and 150.

hharen: Okay. Approximately, like, plus-minus, like, 3. And, ….

Travis Dockter: Gotcha.

hharen: So, the first conference was in November 2023, and then we decided that we want to move it, to spring, because November was, like, the conference was nice, but it was also pretty cold outside.

hharen: So we said, like, oh, this went well, let's do another one in half a year. So the second one, for the second one, we actually had just a couple of months to organize it, but because we had everything set up.

hharen: The ticketing system, the form, the website, we already agreed on how we want the conference to work, how we do the CFP. So, that actually also went pretty well.

hharen: The only thing is, because we… each year was in a different city, so each year we need to start the search for the location and for the upper venue from the… from the scratch, pretty much.

hharen: Yeah, that keeps us busy. But that said, it was, like, a shorter time between the first and second edition, and also, spring is pretty full of conferences, like, we really tried to avoid, some clashes, but it's not fully possible.

hharen: Things happening, yeah, in May.

Travis Dockter: Gotcha, yeah. …

Travis Dockter: That's cool. So, you said you were, responsible for sponsors. How did you get sponsors that first year, you know, when…

Travis Dockter: when you're a brand new conference, maybe people don't know you or something. Did you already have people in your network, or were you just reaching out cold? How did you get sponsors?

hharen: Yeah. So, first year, it was two of us, it was me and Mario doing both sponsoring, and our biggest sponsors that year were actually all three local companies, so Swiss companies, which were part of the Ruby and Rails community, and…

hharen: we were surprised, like, that went really well. I think also the last year, there was the highest number of attendees, it was like, this is the first Helvetic Ruby, you know, like, you have the chance to attend the first of these just once, and it's just like….

Travis Dockter: Yeah.

hharen: And people could plan a long time upfront, so that helped. So the first year, it was really like, oh, these companies want to support us. With the second year, it was a bit different, because what we didn't realize was that for many of these companies, it was the same fiscal year.

hharen: So, because it was in a half year, and not always they follow the same

hharen: Like, the calendar year, and they were like, oh, that's nice, but we actually, didn't budget for this, and we were like, oh, okay. So, the first year, we, had…

hharen: 3 big sponsors, and a couple smaller ones, and the next 2 years, it was the other way around. We had

hharen: Many or more smaller sponsors, and we put it together like that.

hharen: But from the beginning, we also wanted to cover main expenses, from the ticket sales, which, like, gave us more safety.

hharen: And, … Yeah. And some sponsors just, … so we did all what you mentioned.

hharen: Like, we had some people in a network, those were primarily the Rails and Ruby companies within Switzerland. Then, we also reached out, like, cold emails to some companies, which we knew they are in Switzerland, and they are using Ruby or Rails.

hharen: We also had AppSignal from the beginning.

hharen: Because I met them at the different conferences, and then… and some people or companies, they just sent us an email and said, hey, this is nice, we want to sponsor you, which was a really, really nice surprise.

Travis Dockter: Yeah, nice.

Travis Dockter: Nice.

Travis Dockter: I was looking on your website, and I saw that you had, like, the different, sponsor levels, and then you have, like, travel sponsors, which I assume are the companies paying for their speakers to come. And then you have, partners, which listed, like, a couple different conferences. What was the Partners? What is that?

hharen: Yes, so partners are usually, other conferences, and we cross-promote, announcements.

hharen: So….

Travis Dockter: Gotcha.

hharen: I look there… yes, we have, like, FriendlyRB, Euro, Baltic, Groups, and Ruby Community Conference, for the last year. So, it's basically about informing the wider Ruby community, or community of that conference, about the other, other event.

hharen: Yeah, sometimes I think, yeah, there may have been, like, offers for…

hharen: discounted tickets, but I, in… at some point in these 3 years, but…

hharen: Oh, I don't know. And then there's the Swiss Dev Jobs that was also more about marketing, so it's a platform

hharen: Which, with job postings in Switzerland, and they… so we, have them as a partner, and they announce and inform about the conference, in their newsletter and calendar and so.

Travis Dockter: Oh, that's cool. I like that. Actually, going off of that, what else, have you done for marketing, and kind of what do you find works, what do you find doesn't work?

hharen: Yes.

hharen: So, marketing is definitely a field in which we could totally improve. So, it's a thing which none of us really is, very motivated to do that much, so we do try.

hharen: And we do try to post at least the most important information, but I can't say that we did a lot of… a lot of marketing, and it was even nicer that it still worked out, so….

Travis Dockter: Right.

hharen: We… we got, the information out, and the people came, so that also lessened our… the pressure on us to do more marketing.

hharen: So, yeah.

Travis Dockter: What also helped the first year, for sure, was that.

hharen: I was at a couple of conferences, like, having my own talks, and then I just mentioned that we are also, like, doing this conference, in Switzerland.

hharen: And… Yeah, and then there were other people, just, like, word of mouth, who were, kind of, like.

hharen: Promoting the conference, even though they were not organizers, but they were attendees, and they were looking forward to it.

Travis Dockter: Yeah. … Did you, … Oh, I lost what I was…

Travis Dockter: I had a question there. … Had to do with… Something you said about marketing.

Travis Dockter: Oh, I was gonna ask what, what portion of your…

Travis Dockter: attendees, if you know, are, like, local to Switzerland versus, you know, from other countries.

hharen: Yes, and I have to say that we don't know.

Travis Dockter: Okay.

hharen: Terribly information we want to… we may want to collect, but we always went…

hharen: The route that we collect as little information as we need, which pretty much was just an email address and a name.

hharen: Gotcha. So, we actually don't have these fancy stats.

Travis Dockter: Gotcha. Okay. … how do you, … I know you said in the first year, …

Travis Dockter: you… it sounded like you said you just did CFP. Do you guys do any, like, invitations to speakers, or do you just do CFP? How do you guys determine speakers?

hharen: Yeah, that was really interesting, because we did plan to invite, like, keynote speakers.

hharen: But we also wanted to already open the CFP so that people have time. And then we got so many great proposals that we realized we actually don't need to another invite more people or specific people, because we were very happy with the selection, which we did.

hharen: True.

hharen: So we ended up… it was a plan to have a keynote speakers, or, like, to invite keynote speakers, and then we found out that we actually don't need it.

hharen: And that was really nice. So we… we kept that, and we always did just the CFP without direct invitations so far. But it could change, like, it's…

hharen: if we ever say, oh, we really want to invite this person, and we feel up to that, then we still can. It's more like.

hharen: we didn't manage to do this before the CFP, and then we didn't need it, yeah.

Travis Dockter: That's really cool. That's a… another, like…

Travis Dockter: simplification that I hadn't thought of, really, where if you're… especially in your first conference, you're just trying to do things as simply as possible to take the pressure and the stress off. Just doing a CFP instead of

Travis Dockter: Trying to do, like, outreach to a bunch of speakers, for… You know, keynote, …

Travis Dockter: actually, yeah, simplifies it a little bit, and might be a good route to go, because the Ruby community has a lot of, you know, interest in speaking, and CFPs are usually very, very successful. So that's cool. And you guys have done that every year?

hharen: Yes, yes, we do that every year.

Travis Dockter: When opening the CFP, it was always important for us to reach, like, different groups of people, so we made sure that we.

hharen: announced the CFP also on the main channels, like the social channels, but also, …

hharen: support or, like, motivate people from underrepresented groups or voices which are not always heard that much, that they also submit talks. We wanted to have a different range, so from, like, seasoned speakers, we also wanted to have

hharen: people who are just starting. So, at the beginning, we, put together a list.

hharen: what criteria our selection. Not, like, every talk, but what the final selection should look like, what we would like to see, and we try to…

hharen: fulfill all of them. It's not like.

hharen: we have to do, like, checkmarks if the selection works well, and even if it doesn't fulfill all of our wishes, then it's fine. I think every year it was like that, but we always had that in mind up front, and it was important for us to

hharen: have a ride CFP, and we never actually run into the problem that we would have to adjust our selection.

hharen: Based on the criteria, because… it was… there was…

hharen: such a surprise, especially the first year, because I was… I was fearing this moment a lot, like, okay, selecting the lineup, it's three of us, we have, like, different opinions, what we will do, and….

Travis Dockter: Right.

hharen: I expected it will be, like, a lengthy process with a lot of discussions.

Travis Dockter: Yeah.

hharen: Ended up working out really well, so we started with, like, everyone did their pre-selection.

Travis Dockter: of the talks.

hharen: It was 3 of us, and then we compared.

hharen: And there were a bunch of dogs which, all of us would like to see, and then there were others which had, like, two people as a want to see, and another person as, like, yeah, this is okay, and then we just…

hharen: Put them together, and then we looked at our criteria, and we were like, oh, like, this is fulfilled, this is fulfilled too, this too, and so we ended up, having a great…

hharen: Line up without a lot of… discussion…

hharen: fulfilling what we wished for, so that was surprisingly easy, and I was…

hharen: Very happy about that. But it was also… it's not always that, that, that simple.

hharen: I think that was also because of, the quality of,

hharen: Of the proposals, and that we discussed up front how we want the lineup to look like, or what are the talks we are looking for.

Travis Dockter: Yeah.

Travis Dockter: And you guys are… are you guys single day?

hharen: Yes, it's a one-day one track, or a one-day single track.

Travis Dockter: Okay, gotcha. So you… and you, have, like, 8 talks, I think, in that single day? Something like that?

hharen: Yes, I think the first year it was… we planned for 7, and then we selected 8, …

hharen: In the last 2 years, it's really just 7.

hharen: Gotcha.

Travis Dockter: Nice.

hharen: Yeah, exactly, so….

Travis Dockter: ….

hharen: 2007, and … first year it was… It was, actually.

hharen: Yeah, it was… it was 8.

Travis Dockter: Gotcha. What are the, … what are the perks of being a speaker at Helvetic Ruby? It's, … you said you pay for travel, so I'm assuming that's plane and hotel. Do you do anything else special for speakers?

hharen: I mean, we do speakers dinner, before… the day before the conference, and we offer speakers that they can rehearse their talk with us, and we provide them feedback, and if they need any other support, then we are usually happy to provide that.

Travis Dockter: Awesome. Awesome.

Travis Dockter: … What would you say is the hardest part about organizing a conference?

hharen: Hmm… that's a good question. ….

Travis Dockter: Or the part where most people would trip up, you know, especially on your first one.

hharen: Okay.

hharen: … I think what's important is just to…

hharen: Think… try to think about everything, and make sure that things work, and be prepared, and …

hharen: You always end up having to improvise one thing or another, but being prepared helps reduce those, and also helps that the attendees often don't realize.

hharen: Like, that happened a bunch of times, that the catering, either they forgot, or they misunderstood, or they wrote something else, or there were no people, but…

hharen: Because we were kind of, like, ready that these things may happen, the attendees, never realized that.

hharen: And….

Travis Dockter: Gotcha. So….

hharen: That's… Really, like, planning helps a lot.

Travis Dockter: Right, right.

Travis Dockter: Yeah, and it's hard to… To know what's gonna go wrong before it goes wrong, but…

Travis Dockter: Trying to have a good overall plan, ….

hharen: Yeah, so we try to just prepare everything up front. We have… we… the organizers were three of us, and later two of us, but on the day of the conference, we always had, like, volunteers, to… to…

hharen: 4, I think, last year, who helped us with, registration, or with, technical, like, putting mics on people and taking them down again, and, …

hharen: Delegating these types of, responsibilities was really essential so that we can, you know, like, put off every fires which would… which would

hharen: So, we had people we can fully trust, and we knew that they will deal with whatever comes.

Travis Dockter: Yeah.

hharen: That makes it also way, way easier.

Travis Dockter: Do you do anything like, having backup speakers or anything like that?

hharen: No.

Travis Dockter: No? Okay.

hharen: No, and we didn't need it yet, but I'm pretty sure that we would find some, if it would have to be.

Travis Dockter: Yeah.

Travis Dockter: Yeah, that's my biggest fear, is, like, last minute, a speaker's like, my, like, something happened, I can't come, and we have to find a backup in the… at the last minute. But, yeah. …

Travis Dockter: What do you think makes a good conference? Is there anything that you try to focus on? Because that's what you think makes a good conference.

hharen: I think, again, it's a mix of things. So first, we really want that people feel welcome and safe, and that

hharen: the talks are for a wide range of audience. Either it can be the topic itself, or it can be a talk which is structured that

hharen: The beginning is excessive, or it makes sense for all levels, like, also juniors and, like, mid-curry levels, and then at the end, there may be, like, more of a deep dive.

hharen: So that people, if they come from any backgrounds, or, with different

hharen: years of experience, that they feel like they learned something, and that it was, worth coming.

hharen: Networking was always important for us, so we actually have breaks after every talk.

hharen: And those breaks are usually at least 20 minutes.

hharen: So this gives opportunity for people to first to ask follow-up questions to the speakers, but also, like, catch up with other attendees, and take a break, and come back refreshed for another talk.

hharen: That, we also wanted to have, like, a balanced lineup, and…

hharen: That the talks are about, again, like, …

hharen: Different topics for different audiences from… from different people.

Travis Dockter: Gotcha, yeah. So it's, like, different, like…

Travis Dockter: They're not all, like, technical talks. You have some, like, you know…

Travis Dockter: Programming philosophy, or, like, career kind of advice, kind of, those kind of different categories.

hharen: Yes, we usually aim for… usually, it, again, always depends on the proposals, but, like, to having, like, two non-technical talks and five technical talks, even though, I think, not this year, but the year before, we somehow ended up with technical talks, almost all of them, if not all of them, and then we were like, oh, how this happened?

hharen: But they were really good, right?

hharen: But we always… we also had, like, a startup talk the first… first year.

hharen: Or about startups, so yeah.

Travis Dockter: Nice.

Travis Dockter: Can you think of anything that you did at any of the conferences in the last 3 years that, at the time when you were planning the conference,

Travis Dockter: It was something small, and you didn't really think anything about it, but later, people were like, oh wow, that was… we loved that little piece, and you didn't expect that response.

hharen: Okay… com… I mean, as I said.

hharen: We did try to think of most, like, all we need to Make it work and happen.

hharen: And but I felt like, yeah, this works well as normally, but it surprised me that people were like, oh, like, everything went as expected, even in your last year, like, it was really professionally organized. I was like, of course, you know, like.

Travis Dockter: What?

hharen: So that was surprising to me that, …

hharen: Apparently, people were also expecting that maybe things won't work out that well, because it's.

Travis Dockter: Right, right, right.

hharen: addition. So, it didn't feel like we needed to put some extra effort, but…

hharen: Yeah, that's, again, I think we were well prepared, and it was important for us that we think of all the things people, speakers and attendees and the talk need… needs, and also that we stay on time. I mean, it's in Switzerland, it's not just a Swiss thing, but…

hharen: But we were able to maintain that, and having those breaks as buffers always gives us, like, a new start.

Travis Dockter: Yeah, yeah.

Travis Dockter: … As an attendee, do you have a favorite conference, or a favorite conference experience outside of Helvetic Ruby?

hharen: …

hharen: That's a tough question, too. But, without a lot of thinking, definitely, my first Ruby conference is a very memorable one, and it was the Yuruko in Helsinki in 2020.

hharen: Oh.

hharen: Was it 2023?

hharen: I think so. I would have to check.

hharen: Helsinki, the Uroquois in Helsinki.

Travis Dockter: Nice.

hharen: my first Ruby conference, and there were, like, 700 people, and I ended up, having a lightning talk, which I didn't plan for at all, so… and, it was my first conference after a long time.

hharen: Before, I wasn't… I wasn't attending programming or Ruby conferences, but… but, psychology conferences.

Travis Dockter: Okay.

hharen: yeah, that really state. But there were many, many others which I like, and I think I would just list all of them, so….

Travis Dockter: Yeah, yeah. So I saw… I thought you had been going to conferences for longer, because I saw that you have done quite a few talks, so you must have been speaking a lot in the last, couple years. Have you… do you have a favorite, speaking experience?

hharen: … Yeah, so let me correct, the Yuruko in Helsinki was in 2022.

Travis Dockter: Okay.

hharen: Yeah, and … so, my favorite speaking experience, so… That's another tough one.

hharen: Oh… Yo.

Travis Dockter: Or maybe just a most memorable one, like…

Travis Dockter: Conference that you spoke at that… you're like, oh wow, they… they put extra care into speakers, or they did something unique.

Travis Dockter: Around the speaking experience.

hharen: I mean, definitely, it was a lightning talk, which we had at Brighton Ruby, and it was one of my first talks, too, at a Ruby conference.

hharen: I felt very well, taken care of, you know, in terms of information and a speaker's dinner, and, like, I didn't have to, search for my accommodation, because that was also taken care of by the conference, …

hharen: Yeah, that was… that was nice. And actually, Brighton Ruby served as an example for us in many aspects, like how we want to treat, …

hharen: Speakers and attendees, and the general idea of a shared experience during one day.

hharen: Yeah.

Travis Dockter: Yeah, yeah.

Travis Dockter: Andy, Andy Kroll and Brighton Ruby are…

Travis Dockter: Really, really up there in, quality of, of conference, for sure.

Travis Dockter: And a good, good example to take.

Travis Dockter: …

Travis Dockter: What is, … is there anything that you're especially proud of, or something that you think is really cool about Helvetic Ruby that maybe other conferences don't have?

hharen: Well, we, as I mentioned, we really try to bring together different groups of programmers and people, and I think we are pretty successful, and we see it first in the lineup, but also in the attendees.

hharen: And also this year, we had a bunch of parents who came to the conference.

hharen: With their, like, little kids, and I was very happy to see that, because often, being a parent myself, I know how hard it is to continue, taking part in some of the adult activities when you have a baby, and… Yeah.

hharen: It means even more for those people that they can.

hharen: And I was really, …

hharen: super happy to see that they felt welcomed and comfortable to do that. It's not that it's always easy for the parents to do this, but it's better to attend with a kid than not attend at all.

Travis Dockter: Did you guys have, childcare, or it was just a….

hharen: Nope.

Travis Dockter: environment that they felt like they could… they could bring their kids and make it work. That's cool, because childcare is… is… I kind of looked into this a little bit, and it's hard to… to get that set up, and then you don't know if people are going to even use it or not, but just…

Travis Dockter: saying, like, hey, you can… you can bring your kids, there's nothing wrong with that, …

Travis Dockter: I feel like that's a cool… that's a cool, …

Travis Dockter: maybe, like, norm to promote, that, hey, it's an environment that, you can, you can bring your kids, if you need to, and, …

Travis Dockter: Maybe they'll get bored. But, you know, if the talks are only 30, 40 minutes, and you have breaks in between, maybe that's, maybe that's an environment that you could… could bring your kids to, and maybe they… maybe they might learn something, maybe they, might get into programming.

hharen: Like, usually all… those were rather small, you know, like, under one year, so they either sleep, or they're happy, or especially when they're both parents there, then they sometimes just take turns, and if the baby or the kid needs something, they take it out of the hall, and…

hharen: And the other parent can continue watching, and then they swap. It's not like… it's not expected that the kids would sit there silently.

Travis Dockter: Right, right, yeah, yeah, yeah.

hharen: But, finding ways how that can work is always nice.

Travis Dockter: That's cool, though. That's cool. I… I… yeah, I hadn't heard, much about that, but I like that. …

Travis Dockter: Okay, …

Travis Dockter: Is there anything that you wish you could do better? Anything that you guys are trying to improve, or just something that you, that you wish you could do better at, Helvetic Ruby?

hharen: Again, without having a really thought-through answer, I think, …

hharen: Every year, we did provide some community tickets, so, heavily discounted tickets for people early in career, or people who wouldn't, …

hharen: be able to attend otherwise. And…

hharen: we always had some of them, but we had to kind of also, like, reach to different communities, so I think one part in which we could still improve would be to, …

hharen: Communicate this to people.

hharen: Who would benefit from it, like, more or better to the wider community.

hharen: But the thing is, often, as we know when traveling to conferences, that the conference ticket is usually still the cheapest part. Like, it does help.

Travis Dockter: Yeah, yeah. Especially if people travel to Switzerland, then the travel, and especially the accommodation, is what's, like, the most costly, or then also, like, food and just being there. Yeah.

hharen: So, it helps a lot, but it can't…

hharen: Always, like, take away the financial burden from the people.

Travis Dockter: Right. That's a… yeah. There's all these different kinds of marketing

Travis Dockter: that you have to do, almost. There's, like, marketing to just average engineers that you want to buy regular tickets and come to the conference. Then there's the marketing of the CFP, so marketing to people that you want to speak, and then there's marketing of, like, the different

Travis Dockter: types of tickets, like your community tickets, there's marketing to the sponsors, there's, like, all these different ways that… or different people, groups of people that you want to reach.

Travis Dockter: …

Travis Dockter: Yeah. Do you do any… you're in a different city every year, and this is something that I'm thinking about, like…

Travis Dockter: I'm trying to make this conference, as accessible as possible, and, …

Travis Dockter: I would love to… to… for local people to come, because that's, like.

Travis Dockter: the cheapest and also kind of the best experience when you don't have to… I mean, it's fun to travel if you have the time and the money, but to get the conference experience in your town is also really nice, because just meeting people is a huge part of conferences for me. So, did you guys do any

Travis Dockter: like…

Travis Dockter: outreach in the cities where you have the conference? Like, do you reach out to, like, any schools or anything like that? That's kind of something that I'm thinking about.

hharen: Yeah, so we didn't do schools, we did… because… so Switzerland is, not that huge, and … so we kind of, like, treat Switzerland as one… one place, and we did reach out to the Swiss community what is that Switzerland has, different speaking parts?

hharen: So there's, like, German-speaking part, and then we also reached out to the French-speaking part, especially. So the first year was in Bern, which is German-speaking, but closer. Second was in Zurich, which is also German-speaking, and the third one was in Geneva, which is French-speaking.

hharen: And the nice thing is, even that between Zurig and Geneva, it's, like, 3 hours train ride, it's still… some people do it, like, a day conference, you know, so they travel from different…

hharen: different places of Switzerland, and because it's so small, and the train, the public transportation, especially the trains are so good, you can just go in the morning, and if you want to go in the evening, you can, or just stay a night.

Travis Dockter: Yeah.

hharen: But, to answer your original question, we did reach out to the communities, we didn't reach out to schools.

hharen: I think one of the reasons we were really focused on people who already work with Ruby, because the talks are very Ruby-oriented, not that we wouldn't welcome other people, but we thought that's really our target group, or the people who are interested most.

hharen: And here in Switzerland, I don't know how it's else, but they… usually, they don't teach Ruby.

hharen: And I think, generally, at universities, they…

hharen: they don't teach Ruby that much, so people don't know about it.

hharen: But what we did do, for a couple of years, we had Levagon Bootcamp, which does teach Ruby and Rails, and so we also reached to that community and we offered them community tickets, so that was kind of like… it wasn't a school, but it was…

hharen: Place where we could reach people who just started programming.

Travis Dockter: Yeah. And, you have… you have some experience teaching in, boot camps, right?

hharen: Yes, I was teaching for Levagon.

Travis Dockter: Gotcha. Do you have a… Are there any, … like, Switzerland, Ruby meetups?

hharen: Yes, they are.

hharen: They happen two to four times per year, usually, and they also happen at a different… so, there's… there's one which is happening periodically in a German-speaking part. This is the one which happens every couple months.

hharen: And then there's one in French-speaking part, and I think they were doing, like, every month, or every second month, like, they did more, more events.

hharen: So, yeah.

hharen: And that… those were our main, …

hharen: contact points at the beginning, and there's also, like, a Slack for, Rails community, or Ruby Rails community, so that's another way how

hharen: How we reached the people.

Travis Dockter: Gotcha, gotcha. Cool. …

Travis Dockter: Okay, I think I, I asked most of my questions here. I guess, my final question would be, do you think I missed anything? Is there anything, any advice that you would give to people organizing, a conference? Anything that we didn't go over here?

hharen: Yeah, I think it's more reiterating on what we discussed, and what really worked well for us was

hharen: Focus on the most important things and keep it simple.

hharen: And that… It wasn't such a big deal to organize a conference, and it was a really nice experience.

hharen: Awesome. People say, you know, like, of course it's a lot of work, and why don't you have more organizers? You know, like, there are surely people who would say it. I'm like, no, that's not how it works, because.

Travis Dockter: Yeah.

hharen: We use their… the help of other people on the day of the conference, that's where we really need it. But keeping the decision-maker team small.

Travis Dockter: Reduces complexity.

hharen: A lot, and also the… the burden of communicating and delegating and making sure that, like, the information and the things are… are done in a way how you think they should be done.

hharen: So that was something which worked well for us, to have, like, small core team, and then a bit extended team during the conference.

Travis Dockter: Gotcha, yeah. Awesome. Well, have you, have you started planning, for Helvetic Ruby 2026 yet?

hharen: Yes, and actually, we didn't announce it, but I think it would be time, so if you give me a minute, I'll.

Travis Dockter: Yeah, yeah.

hharen: Find the date.

hharen: And… Which, again, will help us to finally announce it.

hharen: So… Ta-da.

hharen: Okay.

hharen: So… Helmetic Ruby 2026 will take place on Friday, on 20th of November, in Zurich.

Travis Dockter: Okay, nice.

Travis Dockter: Awesome, awesome. And you have a… do you have a venue yet?

hharen: Yes. I mean, without a venue, that's the thing. We first always, confirmation from the venue.

Travis Dockter: Okay. Because….

hharen: That's, like, crucial to have data.

Travis Dockter: Yeah, yeah, yeah, true, very true. Awesome. Alrighty, well, good luck, with, organizing your next year, and thank you for your time and sharing your knowledge.

Travis Dockter: And, yeah, I hope to… I hope to one day make it, to some European conferences, hopefully to Helvetic Ruby. It's hard to, like…

Travis Dockter: talk with all these different conference organizers and learn about their conference, and now I want to go to all of them. But, yeah, it's been… it's been good.

hharen: Thank you, thank you for having me, thank you for organizing this podcast series.

hharen: It's really, really great to hear about, other people's experiences with conferences.

hharen: And obviously, you're always welcome, and so many conferences happening, we discussed that recently, which is really nice, but also maybe you want to spend a year in Europe, and then you can, like.

Travis Dockter: Right?

hharen: I was hoping.

Travis Dockter: Yeah.

hharen: They don't call that easy, right?

Travis Dockter: Yeah. Alrighty, hopefully, maybe, maybe. Alright, thank you so much, and yeah, I hope we talk again.

hharen: Yep, thank you, and see you around!

Travis Dockter: See ya.