The Registration lead role is charged with handling all aspects of attendee registration workflow; including before the event and potentially day-of. This includes:
- Creating the registration system or coordinating with the CNCF Events manager to make one.
- Staffing day-of registration needs (if required).
- Steering attendees to the right session track (Active/Current Contributor vs New Contributor).
- Being the point person for registration questions.
- Giving regular reports and information to other Event Coordinators.
A successful Registration lead should have the following qualities:
Strong written and verbal communication skills.
- You may be the first person an attendee interacts with. Be empathetic, and remember that there may be language differences in play.
Detail oriented.
- Registration mistakes happen. Did the person register for the event but not select any sessions? Did they misspell their github handle? Catching these before the event improves everyone's experience.
Comfortable working with spreadsheets and reports.
- Registration requests and reports are all done in spreadsheets. Being comfortable with queries and syntax is incredibly helpful, both for for the registration approval process and later report generation.
This role can include one or more shadows. The Registration Lead can delegate/assign the tasks to the shadows. The expectation from a shadow is to lead one of the events-team roles in an upcoming summit. The shadows to the Registration Lead are responsible for handling all Registration lead related activities in the absence of the Lead.
Well before the event, collect the information needed for the registration form, and determine the registration workflow. In general this boils down to are they an "Active/Current Contributor" vs a "New Contributor". With a few independent questions for each registration path.
For the "New Contributor" path there may be additional paths or questions such as a "101" or "201" track along with other questions that will aid the workshop organizers.
In addition to any path specific questions, all attendees should be asked the following:
| Question | Type | Required | Notes |
|---|---|---|---|
| Name | Free Text | Yes | |
| Free Text | Yes | ||
| GitHub Handle | Free Text | Yes | |
| Signed the CLA | Dropdown | Yes | Provide link to CLA. Options: Yes, No - but will do before workshop, No - cannot sign due to work resrictions. |
| Food Restrictions | Dropdown | Yes | Options: none, Gluten Free, Vegetarian, Vegan, Other |
| Swag Related Question | Dropdown | Yes | Swag question is generally shirt size. |
| Social Event | Dropdown | Yes | Required if there is an independent social event. |
| Emergency Contact | Free Text | No | Name and Phone Number. Phone number to be verified. |
| How can we make this a valuable event for you? | Free Text | No | |
| If you had a speaking slot, what would you like to talk about? | Free Text | No | |
| Where did you hear about the Contributor Summit? | Checkbox | No | Options: Twitter, mailing list, GitHub, community meeting, SIG/WG Meeting, Slack, Other |
Following are some of the path specific questions that have been asked in the past:
New Contributor
| Question | Type | Required | Notes |
|---|---|---|---|
| Laptop availability for workshop | Dropdown | Yes | Should be mentioned that workshop can still be attended if laptop is not available and pair with other participants. Options: Yes, No - do not have a laptop, No - have one but cannot install software on it without IT approval |
| Have you joined the kubernetes slack? If so, what is your handle? | Free Text | No | |
| Are there any areas of Kubernetes you're already interested in contributing to? | Checkbox | No | Options: API, CLI, testing, docs, community, release, etc |
| Are there any SIG's you are interested in joining? | Free Text | No | |
| What are you hoping to get out of the contributor summit? | Free Text | No | |
| Experience with Go | Dropdown | No | Rate from 1 to 5, with 1 being no experience |
| Experience with kubernetes as a user | Dropdown | No | Rate from 1 to 5, with 1 being no experience |
| Experience of developing application that integrate with kubernetes | Dropdown | No | Rate from 1 to 5, with 1 being no experience |
Active Contributor
| Question | Type | Required | Notes |
|---|---|---|---|
| Are you member of a Kubernetes Github Org? | Dropdown | Yes | |
| What SIG's or WG's are you most active in? | Checkbox | Yes | Options: List of the SIG's and WG's |
| What session(s) would like to see at the summit? what would make this event valuable to you? We've changed content based on contributor feedback to this question in the past. | Free Text | No |
Additionally, a separate form can be created for registering the summit staff.
The registration system selected should support the questions and paths that were determined for the event. Other potential things to consider when selecting a system include:
- Is the reg system available in the region the event is being hosted. For example, Google Forms is not available in certain regions. If it is used an alternative registration path should be considered.
- Can you independently generate invite links or invite people by email for sending invites to leads or guests.
- Does it support an approval based workflow? If some registration paths have restrictions, an approval based workflow should be considered.
- Does it support Single Sign On (SSO) or GitHub integration? This can save time both for attendees and as Registration lead if an approval based workflow is being used.
- Can an attendee login and update their own information?
- How easy is it to get data out of the Registration System? The easier it is to get data out, the easier it will be to generate reports or use the information in an approval workflow.
- Can it integrate with sched? If it can automatically add an attendee, it will make for a less error prone invite process.
In past events, registration systems that have been used were Google Forms, SurveyMonkey, and cvent. All have their pluses and minuses.
Google Forms is flexible and easy to get data in and out of, as it is essentially just a form on top of a spreadsheet. However, it lacks useful other functionality and is blocked in certain regions.
SurveyMonkey is flexible, but as of April 2019 should not be considered as emails from its invite system are frequently blocked or ignored.
cvent is the current system used by the Linux Foundation (LF) and supports SSO, along with multiple workflows. However, no direct access can be given to a non LF employee and it can be difficult to troubleshoot workflows as all changes require going through through the LF.
Other options exist and should be evaluated when making your decision for the registration system.
TODO - update doc with new process - query to get org members below:
yq '.admins + .members' \
config/kubernetes/org.yaml \
config/kubernetes-client/org.yaml \
config/kubernetes-csi/org.yaml \
config/kubernetes-sigs/org.yaml \
| jq -s 'add | .[] | ascii_downcase' | jq -s 'sort | unique | .[]' \
| sed -e 's/"//g' > members.txt
An approval process for registration is commonly used for multiple reasons, but really boils down to ensuring the right people are in the right track or room. The goal is for all contributors to get the best experience out of the event and that may mean asking them to switch tracks.
A few scenarios that have occurred:
A person has signed up for the New Contributor Workshop, but in their comments have mentioned they are unfamiliar with Kubernetes.
They may have interpreted the event as an "Introduction to Kubernetes" from an end-user perspective. In this case it is best to reach out to them and provide more context for the event. They will likely apologize and ask to be removed.
A person who looks to be an Active Contributor has signed up for the New Contributor Track.
This could be accidental, or in some scenarios a non-code contributor is looking for a better introduction to the code base branch into code-based contributions.
A person registered for the Active or Current Contributor track, but has not participated with the project.
They may have accidentally selected the wrong track, or believe they should go for other reasons. It is best to reach out let them know about the intended audience and that they may get more out of the other track. Use your best judgement. If you are unsure, reach out to other Event organizers or other members of SIG-Contributor Experience for their opinion on the matter.
In the attendee spreadsheet, knowing several facts about the attendee make it much easier to process. These facts can be gleamed from external sources such as devstats, the sig-list, voters, the lists of Kubernetes Org Members and if they happen to be in any owners files.
With that information combined with comments and other information in a single sheet, most attendees can be processed quickly and any errors found.
For attendees that might be questionable, other useful sources of information can be gleamed from Slack, the Mailing Lists, and Discuss.
Once registration has opened, you should give the rest of the Event Coordinators at least a weekly update regarding registration numbers and statistics. This information is useful to keep track on the general "health" of the event leading up to it.
As an example, if the event is close to capacity or over capacity, you should communicate that fact and let the Marketing Lead know to start getting the word out. Another example, if the New Contributor Workshop (NCW) session is lacking attendees, this information should be given to the NCW lead, Marketing lead, and the Accessibility, Inclusiveness, and Diversity lead so that they may take appropriate action.
Example Report:
| Registration | Total | Approved | Social | Summit | Leads | Voters | Owners |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Active | 151 | 143 | 134 | 124 | 30 | 87 | 101 |
| New | 78 | 74 | 60 | 74 | 0 | 0 | 0 |
| Total | 229 | 217 | 194 | 198 | 30 | 87 | 101 |
| % Approved/Type | 20.98% | 60.84% | 70.63% | ||||
| % Going to Summit | 24.19% | 70.16% | 81.45% |
| NCW | 101 Session | 201 Session |
|---|---|---|
| Registrations | 30 | 46 |
After the event, the same information is useful for the Event Retrospective and combined with the post-event survey data, can provide insights in the event itself.