What to Expect in ERPNext Conference 2018

Looking forward to four exciting days (from October 24–27) learning from the ERPNext community on how we can collaborate better. Details.

At this year’s big annual ERPNext Conference, we have decided to mix up things a bit. The format of the last four conferences has been one of talks given by users, Frappe team and few community members. While this format worked, it was getting a bit repetitive. The last conference ended up being memorable because of one person disrupting the proceedings in an immature manner, for reasons we don’t want to go into right now. (The person being the author of this write-up, and is looking to make up for past mistakes 🙈).

Other than that, the feedback we got from the attendees was:

1. Keep separate developer and user sessions.
2. Talks were poorly prepared.
3. Keep the conference at a high end location (Maybe a 4–5 star hotel).

As per the main feedback, we are now splitting the event into two parts:

1. Contribution Sprint
2. Unconference.

(Unfortunately due to lack of bandwidth and budget we did not get to the point #3, but will try and fix it in the next edition for sure!)

Day 1–2: Contribution Sprint

Thanks to the amazing folks at K J Somaiya College of Engineering, we are hosting a contributor sprint on 24th and 25th of October, where the focus will be on contributions. We are expecting around 60–70 people will show up for this sprint and make real contributions to the product. Here is what is planned for developers and non-developers

Developers

1. Bug quashing sprint: Try and fix all issues tagged as “bug” on GitHub Issues.
2. Build a feature: Scratch your own itch by contributing a feature you really want in the product.
3. Test Coverage Sprint: Add test coverage, refactor tests where missing.
4. Documentation Sprint: Add missing developer documentation.

Non Developers

1. Issue Cleanup Sprint: Review and respond to un-replied issues. Review all old issues and either tag them or close them if they are not relevant.
2. Documentation Sprint: Writing missing documentation for ERPNext modules or features
3. Article Writing Sprint: Write general purpose articles on ERP systems, benefits, challenges, implementation strategies that can be published on ERPNext.org

There will be a team lead for each of these activities and participants will be asked to sign up for any of these activities. Each team will then present at the end of the 2 days what they ended up doing at the sprint event!

Day 3–4: Unconference!

Since the other feedback was that the talks were badly prepared, specially the developer talks, we have decided not have have talks altogether. Well, not planned talks. A lot of volunteers have signed up to talk at the event, but we will keep the event more as a general discussion where people can come and talk at multiple times, like an unconference.

The event will be held at Mysore Association Auditorium, Matunga, Mumbai

Breakfast will start at 8.30am at the venue and each day will be broken into 4 sessions. All the sessions will be live-streamed!

• 8.30–9.30am: Breakfast
• 9.30–11am: Session 1
• 11.30–1pm: Session 2
• 1–2pm: Lunch
• 2–3.30pm: Session 3
• 3.45–5pm: Session 4
• 6.30pm-8.30pm: Dinner

During each session, anyone who wants to speak for a maximum of 7 minutes can share a presentation before hand related to the topic of the session. The moderator will call out each speaker in order and every talk will be followed by a short Q&A.

Day 3: Sessions on 26th October

1. Upcoming Contributions

What are the list of planned contributions? Sneak preview / demo of features being developed by various teams in the community. What are best practices while preparing and planning for a contribution?

2. Implementation Stories, Challenges and Best Practices

How did ERPNext benefit the organization? What are some nice hacks that worked well for a company? What are the challenges in implementing ERPNext? How to manage organization change? How to handle migration? How to handle integrations?

3. Service Provider Stories, Challenges and Best Practices

How to make money from ERPNext? How do we balance the needs of service providers against end users? How did successful service providers make money? What are plans of service providers? How does competition affect the service providers? What are challenges faced by service providers?

Day 4: Sessions on 27th October

1. Contribution and Volunteering

What are the things people can contribute with? What are the challenges faced by contributors? Who are the best contributors? How do contributors benefit? How can people volunteer for non technical activities? How do we improve the co-ordination between the volunteers? What has been the story so far?

2. Vision of ERPNext

What should be the long term vision of ERPNext? Should it focus on being the best product for the end user, or the service provider? What should or should not be a part of ERPNext? What are the next big things users will want, AI? How roles do all of us have to play in this vision?

3. Role of the ERPNext Foundation

What are the goals of the foundation? What should be the role of the foundation? Should foundation do more events, services, features? Should the foundation hire more developers? How should the foundation be governed?

—

It seems we have lots to discuss, and if the last conference was an indicator, the discussions won’t even finish over dinner!

The goal of this event is to bring the community together and create a better understanding of the aspirations and bottlenecks faced by each stakeholder.

If you are a part of the ERPNext community, don’t miss being a part of the conference! Learn more at https://erpnext.org/conf/2018