MautiCon 2020 - Ekke Guembel - Opening Keynote
Nov 27, 2020 11:51 · 1939 words · 10 minute read
Ekke Guembel: Touchdown. Yay. Good morning. My name is Ekke and in the Mautic Community, I am leading the team that is in charge of events among other things. Therefore, it is my great honor and also pleasure to welcome you today to our first global Mautic conference. To our MautiCon. Now, this is not the main keynote that one will be given by our Project Lead, by Ruth, later today when other parts of the world are awake too. However, I would like to give you an overview of the event and a bit of a spaceship manual too. This event is obviously not happening in Boston, as we originally intended. You are watching this online.
01:33 - So luckily you all did notice the change of venue, and I’m glad you made it. In spite of the circumstances that forced this change, it turns out to be actually a huge gain to the event because it tears down a lot of barriers, which we didn’t even know exist and enables hundreds of Mautic people, literally around the world, to join us today. I would like to welcome you all to this first, truly global MautiCon. And in order to do that, let me forward to you a couple of messages from some of those places around the world. Oluwatobi Owolabi: Ẹyin Àrà, ẹ ka’bọ si MautiCon láti orilẹ ede Nigeria (Hello and welcome to MautiCon from Nigeria) Norman Pracht: Bonjour et bienvenue à MautiCon depuis la France (Hello and welcome to MautiCon from France!) József Keller: Üdvözöllek a Mauticon-on Magyarországról (Welcome to Mauticon from Hungary) Thierry Pilet: Hello Mautic fans.
I am from Switzerland 02:28 - and I want that you can see how is beautiful. Leo Borlot: Hello
03:35 - She surely has some crazy weeks and specifically days behind her, and I really wish that it is going to be calmer hopefully for her going forward, but also to all the other helpers like Avi and Katz-san, like Megan, Nick and Nico, Rol, Vishal, and about Ekke Guembel: 15 others all deserve a lot of credit. Also a shout out to all our sponsors who, by supporting this event, also support the entire Mautic community. That’s our generous Gold Sponsors, Acquia, Facet Interactive, and Leuchtfeuer Digital Marketing as well as our Silver Sponsors Dropsolid, Higher Education Marketing and acolono. And also a good number of Community Sponsors too. Thank you all very much. And a special thumbs up goes out to Open Source Training, who organized yesterday’s MautiCon Training Day, which is a fantastic offering by itself.
04:31 - But I have to say I appreciate their work in general anyway, so thank you so much for supporting Mautic, Open Source Training. And of course, I want to say thank you to the over 50 speakers that make MautiCon what it is with a really attractive mix of topics. Moveover, I’m really proud that we have pretty good share of speakers coming from communities other than the mainstream ones. And also the many talks in non English languages, such as Japanese, German, or Portuguese. Also if I counted, right, we have eight female speakers today, not a bad start, but in the future we want to do even better.
05:16 - The Mautic Community is actively inviting women and all other underrepresented groups to step up, to get more visible and to be more active and to help us learn how we can overcome any barriers that might keep you from doing that today. After all, we not only want to be a good home for the most relevant people today, but also for all the bright minds and coming Mautic enthusiasts out there in the future. And of course, for everybody else as well, no matter what background they are coming from. And in general, I can only invite everybody to become a part of the Mautic family today. I promise you it’s a very friendly and welcoming bunch of human beings.
06:03 - The best way of getting started is by finding a spot that you’re most comfortable with or most interested in, be it part of the product like emails or user interface or tracking or whatever, or be it a certain set of skills that we have, like coding or documentation or testing or design or contributing ideas or agile coaching or marketing, et cetera, et cetera. Or of course, by helping with events like this, by the way. My friends and fellow team leads are all happy to personally help you get started. So don’t be shy to contact them directly. That’s Norman with the Product Team. It’s Leon with the Education Team. It’s Radu with the Marketing Team, for Law and Finance it’s Ruth, and then there’s the Community Team. That’s me, Ekke. By the way, you can find it all on contribute.mautic.org.
07:00 - Plus we have a virtual room right here at MautiCon called contribution room, and I recommend you do check it out today. And maybe this is also a good moment to give a little bit of background once again, for those who are not perfectly familiar with the Mautic structures, as you probably know that Mautic brand and other rights are owned by Acquia. However to me, Mautic is a really community-driven Open Source project where we, the community are in control and also in charge of the present, and future of Mautic. Acquia is not interfering with that at all, given that we don’t change the general nature of the product, but is merely supporting us with some money when needed, but more importantly with developers. And of course by paying Ruth as a dedicated resource, or rather as a skillful and incredibly committed human being that we all love just in case we wonder everything else here, including myself is community contribution.
08:09 - None of us is receiving any money from Acquia. Some may even be considered competition. So thank you very much to Acquia for giving the freedom and support to Mautic. And while we’re at it, here’s a little tip at 7:00PM. London time, Acquia mastermind, Dries Buytaert, will talk about his journey in Open Source in Track 6, again, that’s 7:00 PM UK time also currently known as UTC, which we decided to make our reference time zone for this global event. Now, getting back to being a part of that Mautic community at this MautiCon, we are inviting you to additional new ways of making a difference in Mautic, which we think are very easy and low effort, but also very direct and rewarding to learn more about this, but also for any other topics, questions or thoughts from you, I am inviting you to our Community Council panel discussion live at 4:00 PM, London time zone UTC.
09:13 - And of course, to the main keynote directly thereafter. Another important part of the Mautic family are the local communities in many countries and regions around the world, which help people connect in their own language, in their own culture and in their own time zone. Those have been around for quite a while, and have proven to have a lot of value. And also a lot of potential left. Now that MautiCon preparations are over, it is my priority to finally implement all the new ideas that we have about giving even more support, visibility, more structure and connection to those local communities. So to all of you who are already active in that area, please be patient just a little bit longer and it’s going to be another leap forward that’s worth your while.
10:03 - And speaking of MautiCon preparations being over, I think it is now time to get rolling with all the sessions that lay ahead of us. Here’s some practical advice for your day. First of all, please make sure to check the agenda for any late changes. That’s the agenda on mauticon.mautic.org/agenda or in the app that you can get at mauticon-2020.sessionize.com. You will see that we have six tracks in parallel. You can switch among those at any time. Of course. In Track six.
10:40 - we start with a fun little format called lightning talks of five minutes each. So if you feel like starting with lightweight snacks, that might be a tip for you. At 5:00 PM. UTC, London time, so directly after the panel discussion, we will have the main keynote by Ruth Cheesley. So don’t miss that one. Once again, all other sessions are scheduled for 45 minutes, including time for your questions. Each session has a Q&A slide. They will be shown to the track when the session is running there, isn’t a chat in the session, but that’s a global chat in the event.
11:19 - There’s also a networking area where people can join a table and have a video call. I’m encouraging all speakers to go there after the session is over and be available for a chat, if you like, or you can, of course join the sponsor booth, if it’s a sponsored talk. You will find that at the same time, that can be multiple offerings which are interesting for you. Don’t worry. We will publish recordings of everything. It might take some weeks, but things will be on YouTube eventually. We also encourage you to discuss among each other in the event-wide global chat or in the networking area.
11:59 - And of course, if you have any spare time and do check out our event sponsors in their offerings, they have virtual booth, which you can find under the tracks and sponsors section. They may even have some unique MautiCon only specials for you, which reminds me of our virtual gift bag. Did you already get your free MautiCon t-shirt here? Where is it Cool eh? A virtual conference, real t-shirt. If you did not get it, you can find the voucher in an email called “Get your MautiCon 2020 Limited Edition Swag [Action Required]“. Go to email inbox, find it, and you can still use the voucher after the event. But wait, don’t do that now.
12:48 - Instead, switch off your emails, switch off your cell phones. I’m not kidding. Really do it. And you will have much more out of this conference. Instead, get yourself a lot of coffee like this. Get a nice spot, lean back, relax and enjoy your first MautiCon. Or as we like to say, that’s boldly go where no other marketing automation has gone before. See you soon, somewhere in the Mautic universe. .