Some aggregate results from an attendee survey I sent out that 40 people responded to: http://imgur.com/gallery/fxKbm
- I'm happy with our speaker selection, we had a good mix of locals and folks from out of town, Rust team members and people just starting to get active in the Rust community, experienced speakers and new speakers.
- People had fun, learned things, and met each other!
- Sponsors were amazing, especially Chef. One of my favorite moments was watching hoverbear send a PR to Habitat after hanging out in the hallway with them :)
- I am so glad I invited the students from Pittsburgh's code bootcamp, Academy.
- My fellow organizers were a huge help!
- Sending people out for lunch continued to be a choice that I feel good about making.
Things that did not go so well
- The biggest mistake I made was assuming I could get 250 attendees (we had about 150 people total, including speakers, sponsors, organizers, students, scholarships). I've gotten that many (and more) for a regional Ruby conference before, and even though it's much earlier in Rust's history, I figured being the only Rust conference east of the Rockies would help.
- As a result of the low attendance, some of the workshops had very few attendees, and I feel horrible about what that speaking experience was like.
- We would have at least come closer to breaking even if we had gotten 100 more ticket sales.
- Related, I could have done more work trying to get more sponsorship.
- I could have done more work recruiting more diverse speakers and attendees. I planned the Rust Bridge too late to really get that to be a feeder into the conference, but I hope to hold more of those more often to support and encourage people from underrepresented people in tech learning Rust.
- I got a question during the conference about the availability of gender neutral restrooms, which the hotel indeed had, but I had not investigated this beforehand. This is definitely going on my venue checklist for next year.
- I need to get better at advertising/outreach, and/or recruit more volunteers who are better than I am at that :)
- I do want to move this around to different Rust Belt cities, in hopes of getting different attendees and perhaps less work for me personally on logistics if I can find local folks to help out. I'm going to start reaching out to people on that front soon for 2017.
- It's hard to tell since I can't survey people who couldn't make it easily, but I'm going to try to have the conference on at least one weekend day (Fri+Sat) next year, to hopefully make it easier for folks to come.