Hyperledger Foundation Hyperledger Global Forum 2021, 11 Jun 2021

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From YouTube: Welcome To The New Normal-John Carpenter; David Boswell; Jyoti Ponnapalli; Alfonso Govela; Jim Mason

Description

Panel: Welcome To The New Normal: The Lessons Learned From Hosting Virtual Hyperledger Meetups - John Carpenter, Global Blockchain Summit and Pinnacle Cart; David Boswell, Hyperledger; Jyoti Ponnapalli, DTCC; Alfonso Govela, Blockchain Merida; Jim Mason

As the COVID-19 crisis in 2020 caused the normal in-person Hyperledger Meetups to shift to Virtual Meetups, Meetup organizers from around the world adapted to this change quickly. This virtual transformation allowed Meetup organizers to reach new audiences that would not have been connected with previously, as well as engage with new speakers that would have been generally unavailable in a local live presentation Meetup setting. Additionally, there were lessons learned about collaboration between Meetup organizers as well as preserving the networking that is a critical part of any Hyperledger Meetup. Join our panel of Meetup organizers that embraced this digital transformation, and discover how we can use these lessons to improve the decentralized and distributed Hyperledger community interaction going forward.

Sessions Details & Slides (if available)- https://sched.co/j3b6
Access All Sessions: https://events.linuxfoundation.org/hyperledger-global-forum/program/schedule/

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A

So I think we'll just kick it off here now. um We've got a number of people in the session and we have a half an hour here. So uh let me go ahead and just kick it off by introducing everyone that we have for this great panel discussion today and so I'd like to introduce you to david boswell and david joined us from hyperledger he's the director of the ecosystem.

A

uh We have jody ponapalli and she is with dtcc and she's working on the distributed ledgers technology. There we have alfonso govella from hyperledger, latino america and we have jim mason from the brock who's, the blockchain practice leader from paramount and the sky web team.

A

So thanks everyone for joining today and we're going to have an exciting discussion today about really, you know, welcome to the new normal we've all seen what happened.

A

I think that you know that was a discussion by brian at the very beginning of the global forum about you know how things have changed over the last 15 months, since we last gathered in person in phoenix for the hyperledger global forum- and I know that was the last in-person conference for me and I'm sure it was for a lot of you, but uh I think that this team on here has really done a great job of embracing the digital transformation that we've been kind of forced into here, and what I want to do today is just kind of talk about some of the wins that we've had from the cut over to the new normal, and you know how that transition has affected both us and the hyperledger community in general.

A

So at this point, maybe I'll kick it off with david and david. You know. You've really been the champion for leading the hyperledger meetup community and really been the tip of the spear, and we appreciate all your wonderful help. So maybe can you let us know what you think uh you've seen as far as the transition during this last 15 months. Here.

B

Well, I mean I'll have to thank everybody, you know. So we are a community and you know the what happens in the community is what people choose to do. So you know this was you know, I think everybody who is an organizer who opted in to try to figure out what a virtual meetup strategy looks like, because that's certainly not what we all signed up for when we started meetup groups.

B

So you know it's been a year almost a year and a half of experimenting and seeing what works and what hasn't and then you know, I think my role is to have that holistic view and if something worked well for one meetup group, you know try to share it out with others. So you know anything that I'm going to share is all based on just seeing what kaiser has done and then me trying to you know amplify that. So thank you to everybody. Who's.

B

You know tried things out in your own meetup group uh and then you know helped roll that out to others, but you know, I think this has really been the silver lining of the whole experience for the last year and a half you know, moving to virtual meetups has had some really unexpected pluses a couple of challenges and and things that have been difficult, but you know it has really been great in a lot of ways. I think it's fostered a lot of a regional collaboration that wasn't possible in the past.

B

You know, for example, I had tried to encourage you know different meetup groups to work, but when you have a physical, you know gym before we started talked about, you know, even within a city commuting can be a challenge if you're in a big city like boston or los angeles, it's even hard to get across, but you know and be an event in person.

B

But if you're talking regionally, if you're in bogota and somebody else is in mexico city, how do you collaborate on an in-person event, but the virtual event you know gets around that, and so you know I I've just been really encouraged to see the regional collaboration happening. You know before the pandemic. We only had one regional chapter. Now we have six, you know, that's something! That's really come out of this experience and then you know, we've run virtual meetups in 13 different languages. I was adding it up just recently.

B

You know, since the pandemic started, so that's 13 different. You know, you know language groups that have come together and chosen to work together. You know and that's not based on location. It's based on language with so it just allows a whole different set of collaboration opportunities. So I've been really excited about that. So.

A

Okay, perfect uh jim I'm just kind of going across in order. I see on the screen here. What have you seen as some of the biggest challenges from the transition from your in-person meetups in boston? To now, the virtual meetups that you've been very successful with.

C

So the challenges I think it sounds crazy are smaller for me with the virtual meetups for a variety of reasons, and I think, as I said earlier, I think the challenge may be that boston might be unique. I understand lots of cities have what I call commuting issues and challenges, but we literally had no good location. So you know somebody who wanted to attend my meetup that was physically, maybe 20 miles away, would be stuck with a three-hour commute in boston. To get there.

C

No matter where I picked a lot of the attendees would be looking at an hour and a half. You know there and that kind of thing as a drive and when we went to the virtual meetup model that helped everything and I'd actually tried virtual meetups.

C

You know on my own sort of and found that half the attendees were showing up at my physical location and half were coming in virtually and we tried to. uh I didn't have the same technology. We do today with zoom. So when I was doing a virtual meet, you know, it was more of just a broadcast kind of a thing in the meeting. You couldn't actively participate. If you were remote like you could, if you were on site, but the model and the technology we're using now is so much better.

C

um I don't see those handicaps and it'll be interesting to see if we can go back in boston to physical meetings because of the fact that we don't have a single location, a sense that sponsored us, so we used to have to go around from one in a sense sponsor to another.

C

For me, the big tragedy of you know the meetup thing ending physically was when we had the shutdown of the pandemic was the fact I had a big one scheduled at harvard and they literally had to pull the plug at the last minute with the shutdown. So um you know glad that's open over now and everything's open up here, but um it looks like the virtual meetup will probably be for us a big thing and back to david's point.

C

I think the concept, although I can see improvements needed, I think the concept of what I call the regional model is tremendous. I think that brings a lot more content to meet up members, in my case, in boston when they can get content from your your group, in denver, jody's group in dallas and so on. When we bring those groups together and say, oh look we're having all these sessions, then, in a sense all the members in my group benefit from that greatly. So that's a huge win from this thing.

A

Perfect and then jody from your perspective, how has dallas changed? I know we had talked some about speaker. Recruitment was a challenge for you in dallas, but maybe give me your thoughts around how things look different now from where they look before and what's going to happen, going forward.

D

So I second a lot of what jim has mentioned, although procuring a physical location in dallas was never a challenge for us. Even texas, has you know no space issues, but most of the projects you know more than three years ago were happening in the labs and the companies it was. It was not that hyperledger wasn't being implemented a whole lot, but all the projects that were happening in the labs. They were not very comfortable coming out and sharing their lab initiatives.

D

So securing speakers and securing prop you know the presentation of the projects was a bit of a challenge and I may add another challenge. Personally. What I have seen has been a win is a female participation because we used to have the in-person meet-ups after the business hours um during the in-person meetups I've seen very barely three to five percent, um sometimes even one percent. You know I've been the only female in the room many times, uh but now I'm beginning to see the last one year more female participation.

D

So to me, that's a huge win. I think we are broadening our horizon. We had the outreach uh with respect to regional participation, has gained more adoption and in fact we are also getting requested from austin and houston, the other texas uh cities to to continue hosting this even post uh pandemic in a high flex fashion. So as to not lose that connection between dallas meetups and you know the other cities meetups.

A

Yeah, that's perfect and I do know you know if you listen to brian's discussion or even david's treats from accenture's discussion, you know making sure that we have that diversity and inclusion and hyperledger is really a core. You know precept of it and I'm glad to hear that you know this engagement has improved for you and I think whatever we can do to foster. That going forward is really what we should focus on for sure.

D

A

And uh alfonso great to have you join us today and the latino american chapter is really taken off and you know your help and support for the community is greatly appreciated.

A

So why don't you tell us a little bit about you know some of the challenges you faced and some of the wins you've you've gotten from this transition.

E

Well, uh thank you. Thank you, john for the invitation and the rest of you for for uh allowing me to be here in this this conversation. um I agree with what all all of you um dave, jim and jordy, have have said uh for latin america, it, I would say it gave us strength.

E

Okay, our our meetup groups were small and it took a lot of effort not only to find the locations, which was the case and maybe that, where I started, but also even in mexico city, but also in the fact of finding out themes, speakers, so the fact that we could do it virtually as yorti said it really broadened our horizons, but horizons were broadened in different levels uh geographically, because now we could have two meetups together: okay, um thematically, because what we couldn't find a speaker in one area, there might be that theme in another area after working this way, uh we brought in also networking which is very important for for latin america, because we share a culture, but we are fragmented over a huge region.

E

Okay, so the fact that we can share interest and be together in a simple- um I know not as nice as being one to one together, but it increased networking a lot. So we've had not only new friends but we've had new teams for new projects being formed. Okay and something very interesting, is it it brought.

E

um Spain, you know it was not included, because that was called latin america and not ibero america, okay, but.

C

E

Share the language we have the language because of them: okay, so we now we go from something in argentina to chile, to colombia, to to madrid in spain to mexico city. So.

B

E

It's really broadening horizons and geography and themes and a human network.

A

Perfect, uh the thing I want to go back to with david is just talking about how the community has evolved from his perspective- and I know david we've talked some about. You know some of the chapters that were really active when uh there were in-person meetups have kind of gone dormant and I'm wondering if any new chapters have really sprung up. I think you know the latin american chapters really come to life and it's been a great collaborator.

A

But what is your perspective on kind of you know? Are there communities that are more vibrant now, because of the virtual meetups and how's that kind of changed.

B

Yeah with without question, it's things certainly have shifted, and here I'm going to drop a link in the chat to we're referencing these regional chapters. So I just want people to be able to find them if they're not already familiar with them. We have a page on the hyperledger wiki that lists the different chapters. uh You know there are currently six with the most recent having just created been created in japan, so yeah things definitely shifted. You know there were groups that were very active.

B

You know I'm based in the bay area, for example, and we had a very active in-person, uh meet-up culture. We were meeting almost every other month and that really ground to a halt with the pandemic, so you know it and it has not been one of the more active virtual. I think we've only run one virtual event through san francisco meetup itself. So it definitely you know, things that were active are not and things that you know hadn't been active, have really jumped into the virtual mix.

B

So it's definitely changed things around, but you know I think. Overall, you know the the meetup community as a whole is just as active as ever. If I remember the details correctly, I was doing some analysis so the year before the pandemic, we ran almost a meet up a day, so it was very active community, but ever since then, we've run.

B

You know every week, there's almost never a week where we don't have at least one, if not several virtual meetups, so the community as a whole, you know, has really embraced the whole idea of virtual and and dovan, although any one individual meetup group may have been, you know more or less active during that transition.

A

Okay, the one thing I'll say uh that I also want to get everyone's opinion on is the networking side of meetups. So you know, as we've transitioned from in person to virtual you know, that's definitely been a culture change for me because, usually at our meetups in denver, we've been very much about the networking side. In addition to the speakers- and so you know, I've tried a few things with david, like air meet. We tried one time to try and foster.

A

Networking and zoom has actually improved their networking functionality to drive that, but maybe I'll start with jim and let me know your thoughts around how the networking piece of meetups has changed since the transition.

C

So you're right, that's a big difference for me uh with the virtual, and it is a challenge. There's no question of that. um I belong to multiple other groups, not just the hyperledger meetup group, so I wouldn't compare the hyperledger physical meetups. We had were not what I call the ultimate model for networking. I belong to a different group called nemo, which probably was a phenomenal model for networking, so strong. In fact, uh people would religiously show up from meetings um just for the networking more than the speaker.

C

In most cases, uh they occasionally, you know, occasionally find a speaker that drew an audience, but for the most part it was really more of a networking kind of a thing: they'd have a meal. They'd have uh you know upload networking before the speaker then you'd have a speaker.

C

Then they'd have networking after the speaker kind of thing, and so it was a very rich kind of a network model, and it is true that that's a bit of a challenge and I certainly haven't solved it in the boston meetup at this point or in the public sector, wiki uh meetups- that we do as well for hyperledger.

C

But I have thought about it and I thought of opening up uh jim's bar and zoom uh and inviting everybody into it something along those lines but to have a casual. You know whatever 15 minutes before you get organized and kick off your meeting. We really haven't done that, but it is worth trying out. I will say that um in boston, a couple of the meetups did well that way and some of the other boston had done an excellent job of building up the networking part as a major major focus, not just the speakers.

C

So there's some major conferences, much like hyperledger. When we have the physical conference, we have tremendous networking opportunities there. um You know different than how I've organized the meetups, but I certainly look for other people to give me better ideas on that as well.

A

Yeah so let's uh have jody, let us know her thoughts around how the networking piece has really changed in.

D

D

I have honestly the transition to uh the post covered. um You know the virtual meetups um has more connected. More people brought more people together because texas, um you know the the the scale at which you know the startups were burning is equally distributed: x-rays, austin, houston and dallas.

D

So when we were doing dallas in-person meet-ups, we were only uh getting an opportunity to collaborate amongst the dallas business community um specifically focused on uh dlt projects, or you know um in some form, or the other you know is dlt is incorporated into their day job but having the virtual uh meetup the the networking expanded over into the other cities, which uh you know in in my.

D

If you ask me personally, I think it has only has an added advantage to us, so I I may be personally skewed in this, but I would say that we are benefiting more over virtual and in fact, um over the past a few months. In fact, during the last year when we once we switched to virtual I've, also been requested by multiple folks to continue postcovid, even when dallas resumes in person to see.

D

Would you please continue this in some form of a high flex model and not go completely in person, because we don't want to lose that connection with the dallas community? So, to my point, I think we have just expanded our connections.

D

It hasn't limited us by any chance, but again, like I said you know it's it's personally to me from what I have heard from my community or from my neighboring communities is, is my point. It may be different for different cities right.

A

Yeah- and I think that's perfect jody and I agree with you- 100. I think that prior to covid, I think that denver was a little bit more siloed as far as you know, hosting our events and being focused on our own community. But now I feel like when we've had this.

A

You know change, there's, definitely a lot more cross-collaboration regionally between all the different meetup groups, and I think that that's really helped the community, and I think that what I want to do is make sure that we continue to foster that cross-community collaboration going forward, even as we transition back into more of a in person- and I know david mentioned in the chat here- hybrid model.

A

uh But let's get alfonso's, take on the networking side here, real quick to make sure that we see how that's affected the lats in the american chapter.

E

Well, uh claudius, who is from the uh argentina co-founder of hyperledger latin america, just wrote in in the chat, and he says it helped us to get the chapter up and running for sure. So without this condition, okay, it would have been a big big effort with probably little little result.

E

um We have not explored yet okay, the potential of networking around this this technology. What.

A

D

E

Is that um showing the list of of participants helps getting direct contacts in the chat? Okay, so that is that that has been used. um We follow a strategy. Some some of the other uh co-founders have have uh defined for for linkedin, okay and that has really um exploded, for instance, my network okay, but that has happened for persons.

E

Then we went to have something for the chapter, so we we got the chapter and linked it. Okay, and so we.

B

E

Beginning to to explore how to network through this um new tools and and social media, I think there's plenty of work to to be done there, but.

C

B

I coincide with.

E

All of you, it has to do with broadening the network effect.

B

Perfect, I just want to add real, quick, build on alfonso and he's talking about new tools, and I totally agree that that I think you know it will be. What's happened, you know. We've we've certainly struggled with recreating the in-person networking so far, but I I remain optimistic. I would encourage everybody here to try gather town, for example. I think that's a much more interesting networking experience that we've played around with for global forum and it is available now you know it's.

B

It seems like that. Could you know we'll need to test it, but I think it could. You know really recreate the networking in-person experience virtually in a way that people actually enjoy. You know we've tried the zoom breakout rooms. We've tried air me. None of those really did you know a great job, but I think there'll be some really interesting innovations that will, I think you know, be worth trying so just to give a plug. Try out gather town this week.

B

If you haven't had a chance and see what you think and share share your thoughts.

A

Perfect yeah david, you know I'm always about being the tip of the spear, so we.

B

A

Tool for us to try, I'm always glad to jump in there first and gather.

B

The town is fun.

A

Yeah, okay, good, so the thing I want to talk about now is just you know, looking forward here we're getting into the reopening now and I want to know just how each one of you feel about looking at doing maybe some portion of your meetups in person and some portion virtually or what is your perspective around time, trying to tie the two communities together for a specific meetup, and I guess I'll start with jim, on your thoughts on how this looks going forward as we reopen now well.

C

My challenge again comes back to the meetups. We never. Even if I had a sponsor that stood up and said, hey you can use my facility. Fidelity has a downtown facility as an example. If they gave it to us, it would help, but I could never get big attendance. um You know. The only model I think can work going forward for us because of the commute problems is that we would honestly need to do um mixed virtual with an actual physical meetup.

C

That's the best we could do um if we had a sponsored location which we don't so I'll. Take another look and see again. We'll have sponsors offer like microsoft is in cambridge. Ibm is in cambridge fidelity's downtown boston, but none of those are locations that are gonna, really draw anybody uh to make those kind of commutes. um So even if we get them, we probably won't use them.

C

I certainly am gonna follow up on ideas that all of you have had around trying to build a stronger networking component to it, and I will go back to that. Other group that I had mentioned that I belong to.

C

That is very good on networking and what they did is they actually planned uh networking specific events not like we're going to have 20 minutes and whatever they actually had activities, organized kind of a thing and that tended to work out pretty well and I'm interested in seeing if I can do that, so they would have little breakout groups and we, I think we might be able to do that and zoom with the breakout meeting rooms, and you know kind of that. There's a way to try to organize that.

C

So I'm looking forward to seeing if something like that might work a little bit better. So in a sense members can meet members share ideas easier. That way than just hear a presentation.

A

Okay, perfect uh jody: what are your thoughts around how you're going to look at this going forward? As you know, re opening and you know being able to do some in person or what is your plan going forward here?.

D

Well, it will definitely be in um collaboration with the community. um I think it's a good time to start, throwing out some surveys and to see what the community feels like, because you know we are more regionally connected um for the for now and we have grown our community, um as I said, and- uh and we have only benefited from the virtual meetups more um so I'm going to reach out to my community and see what my community proposes, but at the same time you know as humans.

D

We um we enjoy meeting people in prison. You know that that's that's the human tendency right, so I think going forward. It may be some sort of a hybrid model, but at the same time I would um you know, do my best not to lose that connection with my extended community that we have built relations over the past few years, so we'll figure it out. Just like we figured coming into the pandemic. You know how do we transform? I think it will be an evolution process.

A

Perfect nope, I get it and I like that, extended community philosophy jody and I think that's exactly what we've encountered here and we need to continue to foster that so alfonso. uh Let us know your.

D

A

Around the transition back to the you know in person again and how that will affect your community well,.

E

I think that you know the hybrid can we go, can go um having persons meeting um virtual meetings, but also something that that we've explored is why don't we present when the presentations go through soon or through um a computer? So in that way whomever can be reached would be, or it would be recorded, okay in a simple way. So we have people meeting and networking.

E

We could even show them in the room. Okay, but the presentation itself always is recorded and broadcasted. So the presentation is always virtual level yep. We call that the ranchero, the ranchero style. Okay, it's very simple- it's just you know, use your computer and make a ranchero.

E

A

Yeah, that's perfect delphon, so I know you brought up the ranchero philosophy before and it's something we should definitely continue to promote. So uh at this point I think we're getting close to the very end david. You know we're all about growing the meetup community for hyperledger.

A

If there's anything that you'd like to share to really you know anyone attending this session get involved. I think that would be helpful.

B

Yeah thanks for that uh um I mean, as we've been saying, this is an evolution and we welcome any input, thoughts, ideas, questions comments. You know uh from anybody here on the call. I just dropped a link to the meetup organizer mailing list. It's an open list that even if you're, not a meetup organizer you can still post to so I think, if you're interested in this conversation and want to continue the discussion, why don't you please join us there and uh if you want to get involved with meetups, you know.

B

That's a great place to you know subscribe, introduce yourself, ask questions, raise your hand, and you know we'll all be there and can you know talk with you more there.

A

Okay, well, thanks to all of our wonderful panelists and everyone for joining us today, and I hope you have a great rest of the global forum take care. Thank you.

E