Free tools that help you run online events in an effective way
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Picolini, Francisco
Nowadays everyone can run an event (meetup, hackathon, etc), but sometimes we struggle in selecting the right tool to organize it in an effective way. What tools are out there that can help us run any type of event and have impact?. We will do an overview about options, limitations and resources you will need to make a great event. If you are lost trying to choose the right tool for your first online event, this talk is for you. And if you think you know everything about tools and ways to engage with your audience, you will be welcomed as well, since we will discuss about these things and more.
 Hello, and welcome to this talk. First of all, I would like to thanks the conference organizers for running another FOSDEM in an online mode, which is very, very complicated, as you probably imagine, and also to the Debrune coordinators to allow me to deliver this talk. This is my first time delivering a talk at FOSDEM, although it's not my first time in FOSDEM. Well, you know what I mean about being in FOSDEM. Even though we have these online situations, I always enjoy being part of FOSDEM, and I have a long story as a volunteer. So without further ado, let's start the talk. I'm going to talk about how to use free tools that help you run an event. I am Francisco Piccolini. Mozilla volunteer since the early days, way back in 2003, sort of the way. I've been volunteering in the Spanish community. I'm based in Madrid, and I've been helping to run local events, meetups, and stuff, marketing activities mainly. I've been also an events coordinator and community manager at Mozilla, so I was helping to run events for local communities, and I have the lucky to be part of helping improve the impact that communities have at local level. I was creating some guidelines and helped to craft some ideas for running volunteer events. And nowadays I work as a head of content in a conference company based in Italy. I still live in Madrid, but these companies from Italy have presence in Spain, and you can see which one it is on my Twitter account, which is there as well. So basically I have a volunteer background, run a lot of events in the past, mainly meetups, but nowadays I'm running a conference and dealing with the situation of the online format. So what it looks like, let's say an event organizer or a person who wants to run an event. Well it looks similar to this. On the outside it looks very calm, relaxed, doesn't have any stress on the face, but internally it's in a status of, let's say, completely despair, completely desperation, and stress, very stress. The good piece of this is that you don't have to show your emotions very easy because the problem is that if you show how you really are, people will get a little bit nervous or get concerned about why this event is going in this way. So try to avoid the externalize this type of feelings and be calm and relaxed and you will see how the event will go in a good direction. So basically this talk doesn't pretend to be exhaustive, doesn't pretend to be kind of a give you a detailed list of things because it will take a lot of time, it will take kind of a running a webinar or kind of a class on each tool that you need to use. So let's say that this is more like an overview of what are the main tools that we need to run an event and then basically what I don't include on this talk will be how to select the topic because I'm thinking that probably if you're in a community you don't need to, say, tell you or no one needs to tell you which topic should be the event or which speakers do you need to recruit or scout to find the best speaker because sometimes it can be that you can be the speaker or you have a friend or you have anything meaning that you can reach people more easily rather than creating these type of things. So the idea is that this talk is going to be about the logistic and the operational piece rather than the content insights. Also I'm going to leave aside the promotion because it depends a lot on the community and the resources that it has. So I don't know if you have Twitter, if you have Facebook, whatever, this is not going to be about the promotion so no marketing, no content, only operations and logistics. So basically the list that I think you should be aware of is the documentation which is the coordination of the logistics, the timeline, crafting the agenda, all that, the registration, how the people will join the event, through which tools and which ways they will join the event, not the discover, the joining of the event, the streaming because we are talking about having an online event so that means that you need a tool to stream, then you need to identify if it will be live or recorded, that's another discussion. And the interaction, the interaction that you have with the attendees, how they will be asking questions, if there will be a time for a Q&A, if there will be some sort of live interaction like live pools, a raffle, those type of things. And also the collection as a last piece which I think it's very important, not many people think about it, the collection of feedback. Why I think it's important because you need to know how the event went. I mean, this is something that back in my days we usually didn't pay too much attention, basically we was kind of asking the colleagues, okay, what do you think about the event, what do you think about this, how does that look like for you in the end? I think that we need to be a little bit more, let's say, honest with ourselves and understand if the event specifically went in a good way, in a good manner, or if it was completely a failure and we need stuff to improve. Usually what I'm saying is that if nothing happens in an event, it's because you are missing something that is failing, something that is not going in the way that you expect. There's a lot of hiccups, there's a lot of, let's say, things that could go wrong, that it probably go wrong or not, depends on how you will prepare your, but it can be something that for me or my suggestion is that you have to think that something is going to fail. So you have to be very prepared, very aware and very, let's say with eyes open on any single detail. I'm not saying that you need to go in a micromanagement mode, but you need to be prepared to embrace the chaos or the failure if you want to say it in that way. So that's the things or the tools that I think that it's necessary from an operational point of view. And we will discuss this on the next couple of minutes. So the first point is the documentation and this is something that for me it's super, super important because it means the preparation. It means a lot of things that when you try to publish the website or the published event, you will find more easy to explain what the event is about. The documentation has to be collaborative, that's for sure, has to be clear and concise. I mean, I don't want or I prefer to avoid redundancies, having documentation that it duplicates or needs to be searched on different places to understand how this should be working or where the timeline and the agenda and all that needs to be, everything needs to be at least or ideally in one specific place. I'm thinking that probably the best tools available that we have right now, it's the classic Etherpad, which is the basic, basic, and I think that I am being using Etherpad since, I don't know, 2010, 2000, something like that because I think it's, I don't know if it was before, I don't know if it exists before 2010. I remember using Etherpad in 2011 with the community to coordinate logistics to decide and vote between colleagues if we are going in one place or if we are going in this other venue. The other option could be LibreOffice, which it has a collaborative tool in the cloud, it's a little bit, perhaps it's a little bit more complicated to interact than Etherpad, but it's also an alternative. And the one that I think many people should use at this point is GitHub. GitHub has a lot of powerful features that helps you to coordinate and collaborate, collaborate between many people. And I think that the issues and all that are super helpful, especially because we are, let's say, all in the dev environment and I think that it needs to be, let's say, used by many people and this is something that it's free to use and you can create a repo and start all the documentation there. Etherpad, it's also very helpful. It's simple, basically I don't need to make a lot of introduction about that, but basically what you need is a place where you can put all the information that it needs to be informed and shared between all the people involved in the event. Also what I usually think in creating an event is the spreadsheets. So LibreOffice has spreadsheets for that and where you can put all the information about the agenda, if you have an agenda, the resources that you need, you create a budget. So I'm not going to share any template because I mean, this is not the purpose of this talk, but basically to give you a quick overview of what tools are available. I mean, if you're watching this, you probably know all of this and you probably are aware of how to create a GAMP or how to create an agenda from zero, from scratch, so it depends on each event. So basically the next step should be how you bring people, how you try to control how people to join the event, and that's a little bit more complicated. There are not so many tools available, let's say open source, and actually there are only two that I tried in the past and one doesn't look like it's a little bit up to date. Open Conference System, the last, let's say the last version, it's from 2014, less than eight years ago, but I mean, it still works. And the other option is Atendize, which has a paid option, but in the end, you can have several, several options if you want to be, let's say, more fundamental and you can create your own website that's up to you. I wouldn't suggest if you are only a couple of people, but Atendize helps you a lot on creating the registration and all that. And then the other options, which are the, let's say, the obvious and helps you also with the promotion, it's Meetup and Everybody. I know that I shouldn't be saying this because we are in an open source event, we are talking about open source tools, but at some point you need to be, let's say, very clever on how to control the registration. So if you can control and have, let's say, full access to the registrations, go for Atendize. And if you want to, let's say, relax a little bit and be, let's say, more, not standard, but I will say more open to have more people involved have a Meetup or Eventbrite, which in the end, obviously they have a paid tier, but if you go for the free options, there are free options, so you can use them without any issue. My suggestion is that choose whatever you feel most confident and most comfortable with. Ideally, since we are in an open source event, the suggestion would be to use Atendize because the other options that I was searching when I was creating this talk or when I was making this talk doesn't have the full open source feel. Probably I'm missing something, but the ones that I found in most of the cases were paid with some GitHub repo and stuff like that, but they are not fully open source. So then after the registration, you want to have people to watch the event. Basically we are, again, they're not talking about the promotion. We are not talking about how, when it's the best time to set up the event. I'm thinking on from the registration to Atend the event, so how you will be watching or how you will be seeing it by the people. Distribute services, for me, there are two options at this point, and this is a personal point of view because I think that there are other options that means probably more effort than there are other options that are not connected to the open source thing. So the first option, which is the obvious, is OBS or StreamLab if you want to use the let's say the easiest solution on Windows. Sorry, I say Windows, but yes, OBS is the best tool that you have. There's a lot of feature personalization, a lot of things that you can do. The only problem that I will say is that it's not for beginners. It's not for a person that starts in making events or trying to stream for the first time an online event. Obviously because you have to set up a lot of things, the scenario, the audio, if you need to share slides, all those things needs to take a lot of time in terms of let's say preparation. So if you have time or if you are, let's say, confident with your technical skills, go for it. OBS, the good part is that allows you to stream directly on several platforms, which I'm going to talk later as well, but on several platforms. So the thing is that again, whatever you make, you feel comfortable with, but you need to think where your audience will watch you. So OBS, you need to stream through a service that could be Twitch, that could be YouTube, that could be whatever, but you need to use another service. And the other option that it can be simpler if you don't have a lot of people watching you, it's Gitsimet, which is also kind of, I will say that similar to Google Meet, actually very similar. So if you are, let's say, more, have preference for something more simpler that you don't need to take care about how people join, if they will be joining with a camera on, if they, all those type of things, you can use Gitsi. Basically, it's super simple to use, no need, let's say, much instructions. The same way that you go and join Google Meet, it's the same way that you go to Gitsi, you go to a URL, you join the meeting, give access to the microphone and the camera, and that's it, and basically you can attend this event. So that's basically the two, let's say, options. Then you can use other tools, if you want, which are a little bit more, let's say, personal, where you have to set up your own server, where you have to go to set up an Apache instance or stuff like that, that's up to you, but I will suggest that if you want to go to the, let's say, to the user suspects, OBS and Gitsi Meet are the best options. This is what I'm saying before about OBS. You have to select the scene, you have to select the source where the scene come, you have to configure the audio, if you want to see transition, there's a lot of options that you have that makes you a super impactful event in terms of the production of the stream. I can totally say that the quality that you can find on OBS, it's way much better than any other tool in terms of the liberty that it gives you, so it's something that I will strongly suggest that you take the time to learn how to use OBS. The good part is that there's a lot of documentation on the platform, there's a lot of information support from the community. A lot of people that are using it, I can tell you that many, many Twitch, well, not many, I mean, a lot of Twitch streamers are using OBS to stream, to give a professional look. And honestly, it's something that it worked the effort to learn from the beginning. Then the interaction that you can have, this is, I will say that it will also depend on where you will be streaming. So if you can have the opportunity to have your own Discord instance, I will suggest to go to use Discord because it has a powerful interface and it's a powerful tool. Also, if you have the time to install your own matrix instance, like we have here in FOSDEM, this is something that I will also, these are the two best options that we have in the market right now in terms of open tools available. And then the last one for the old people and the old guard, IRC, which I think doesn't exist anymore, no, I'm joking. But if you ask me, I think that matrix or element and Discord are the best options available. Other interactions could be asynchronous, which I wouldn't suggest except if the event is recorded, it means that people can watch the event or the stream or whatever afterwards. But the good piece of the interaction should be through Discord or matrix or element because you need, let's say, live interaction. The other piece that some people will probably don't think about is that if you stream through YouTube, you have the option to chat through the YouTube channel. My suggestion is that be clear on where the interaction will take place. Unfortunately, if you will be streaming through YouTube or Facebook or if you have the chance through LinkedIn for giving you a couple of examples when we talk about live events from the communities, because some communities are streaming through Twitch, but other communities are streaming through YouTube. Some communities are streaming through Facebook, use the chat tool that you have in the platform where you stream it. Because if not, it's going to lose a lot of, let's say, attention. People will need to use another tool to interact with you. So for me, the idea is that you should use the tool that makes life easier for the attendees. So that's, I know it's not very political correct in this type of thing, but you need to take into consideration what works for your community. Then what I say about the feedback collection at the beginning, and I'm going to end in this talk because I don't want to extend too much. The feedback collection or the collect of the feedback, it's super important because it will give you the sense, the temperature of how the events went. If you don't know how the event went, you probably will make the same mistakes over and over again. I'm thinking on, okay, the speaker, it's a friend of mine, but he delivers and talks a lot of topics, a lot of different things, and saves me to look for another speaker. Probably for you, it's your friend, you have a subjective opinion about him or about her, and you don't want to hurt its feelings. But a good way to ask if the event went well is that if the speaker delivers and talks, actually, I think that you can also rate my talk as well. I hope that it doesn't go too bad. But I mean, you need to understand, it improves the next event, it will improve the next event for sure, it will improve the way you organize the event, it will improve the way that you select the speakers because probably you are in a community that has, it's about cloud or it's about JavaScript or it's about Apache. It could be anything. But in the end, the idea is that you deliver quality content to the people, and if you deliver quality content, the people are more likely to repeat and attend again or attend in the future. So what you need is to understand what works and what didn't work. And I think that what didn't work gives you very information about the event rather than what actually was successful. Because in the end, what actually was successful, you kind of know what it works pretty well and what does and how you get to that point of success. But sometimes we miss the piece of understanding how to improve or where to improve. And sometimes a third person or a now third perspective gives you the idea of where you should be focusing for the next time. The better way to collect feedback is through forms. Again, and this is something that you can use several online tools. Obviously the open source option would be open office or Libre office. There could be, what, sorry, open office. There could be an option to use EarthTable, which has a free option where you can use EarthTable, which is similar to Google Docs if you don't want to use Google Docs. And you can collect the information there. Or you can also use EtherPAD to collect the form, the collect the feedback, which is also a good way to get information and understand where you fail. So EtherPAD or Libre office could work pretty well. But how I made my event successful and impactful, that's the question that we always make as an event organizer or an event coordinator. The best way to be impactful is to go in a way that you deliver a quality event or a quality talk with a quality way to organize the event. There's no magic bullet on this. You will fail a lot of times and you will be successful a lot of times. In times of COVID and times of the online format, it's super complicated to understand how to improve the impact that an online event has. There's a lack of networking feeling that we all want to be in person and be super, let's say, interactive for a certain way. So my suggestion is try to work a lot with the community, try to deliver good quality in terms of content, ask the community what they want to see, what type of content they want to see, try to find the best people as possible to deliver that type of content if you are not a speaker. Try to be open and transparent because as I learned in the past, you need to be very open and very, let's say, clear on the message so you can get to more people in a more effective way. So that's it. Apologies if it took a little bit longer than expected. Actually it took a little bit longer than expected. And I didn't want to give you a full detail of each tool because it will take a lot of more time. So if you have any questions, feel free to ask in the chat. Thanks.
 Hello, and welcome to this talk.  First of all, I would like to thanks the conference organizers for running another FOSDEM in an  online mode, which is very, very complicated, as you probably imagine, and also to the Debrune  coordinators to allow me to deliver this talk.  This is my first time delivering a talk at FOSDEM, although it's not my first time in  FOSDEM.  Well, you know what I mean about being in FOSDEM.  Even though we have these online situations, I always enjoy being part of FOSDEM, and I  have a long story as a volunteer.  So without further ado, let's start the talk.  I'm going to talk about how to use free tools that help you run an event.  I am Francisco Piccolini.  Mozilla volunteer since the early days, way back in 2003, sort of the way.  I've been volunteering in the Spanish community.  I'm based in Madrid, and I've been helping to run local events, meetups, and stuff, marketing  activities mainly.  I've been also an events coordinator and community manager at Mozilla, so I was helping  to run events for local communities, and I have the lucky to be part of helping improve  the impact that communities have at local level.  I was creating some guidelines and helped to craft some ideas for running volunteer events.  And nowadays I work as a head of content in a conference company based in Italy.  I still live in Madrid, but these companies from Italy have presence in Spain, and you  can see which one it is on my Twitter account, which is there as well.  So basically I have a volunteer background, run a lot of events in the past, mainly meetups,  but nowadays I'm running a conference and dealing with the situation of the online format.  So what it looks like, let's say an event organizer or a person who wants to run an event.  Well it looks similar to this.  On the outside it looks very calm, relaxed, doesn't have any stress on the face, but internally  it's in a status of, let's say, completely despair, completely desperation, and stress,  very stress.  The good piece of this is that you don't have to show your emotions very easy because the  problem is that if you show how you really are, people will get a little bit nervous  or get concerned about why this event is going in this way.  So try to avoid the externalize this type of feelings and be calm and relaxed and you  will see how the event will go in a good direction.  So basically this talk doesn't pretend to be exhaustive, doesn't pretend to be kind  of a give you a detailed list of things because it will take a lot of time, it will take kind  of a running a webinar or kind of a class on each tool that you need to use.  So let's say that this is more like an overview of what are the main tools that we need to  run an event and then basically what I don't include on this talk will be how to select  the topic because I'm thinking that probably if you're in a community you don't need to,  say, tell you or no one needs to tell you which topic should be the event or which speakers  do you need to recruit or scout to find the best speaker because sometimes it can be that  you can be the speaker or you have a friend or you have anything meaning that you can  reach people more easily rather than creating these type of things.  So the idea is that this talk is going to be about the logistic and the operational piece  rather than the content insights.  Also I'm going to leave aside the promotion because it depends a lot on the community  and the resources that it has.  So I don't know if you have Twitter, if you have Facebook, whatever, this is not going  to be about the promotion so no marketing, no content, only operations and logistics.  So basically the list that I think you should be aware of is the documentation which is  the coordination of the logistics, the timeline, crafting the agenda, all that, the registration,  how the people will join the event, through which tools and which ways they will join  the event, not the discover, the joining of the event, the streaming because we are talking  about having an online event so that means that you need a tool to stream, then you  need to identify if it will be live or recorded, that's another discussion.  And the interaction, the interaction that you have with the attendees, how they will  be asking questions, if there will be a time for a Q&A, if there will be some sort of live  interaction like live pools, a raffle, those type of things.  And also the collection as a last piece which I think it's very important, not many people  think about it, the collection of feedback.  Why I think it's important because you need to know how the event went.  I mean, this is something that back in my days we usually didn't pay too much attention,  basically we was kind of asking the colleagues, okay, what do you think about the event, what  do you think about this, how does that look like for you in the end?  I think that we need to be a little bit more, let's say, honest with ourselves and understand  if the event specifically went in a good way, in a good manner, or if it was completely  a failure and we need stuff to improve.  Usually what I'm saying is that if nothing happens in an event, it's because you are  missing something that is failing, something that is not going in the way that you expect.  There's a lot of hiccups, there's a lot of, let's say, things that could go wrong, that  it probably go wrong or not, depends on how you will prepare your, but it can be something  that for me or my suggestion is that you have to think that something is going to fail.  So you have to be very prepared, very aware and very, let's say with eyes open on any  single detail.  I'm not saying that you need to go in a micromanagement mode, but you need to be prepared to embrace  the chaos or the failure if you want to say it in that way.  So that's the things or the tools that I think that it's necessary from an operational point  of view.  And we will discuss this on the next couple of minutes.  So the first point is the documentation and this is something that for me it's super,  super important because it means the preparation.  It means a lot of things that when you try to publish the website or the published event,  you will find more easy to explain what the event is about.  The documentation has to be collaborative, that's for sure, has to be clear and concise.  I mean, I don't want or I prefer to avoid redundancies, having documentation that it  duplicates or needs to be searched on different places to understand how this should be working  or where the timeline and the agenda and all that needs to be, everything needs to be at  least or ideally in one specific place.  I'm thinking that probably the best tools available that we have right now, it's the  classic Etherpad, which is the basic, basic, and I think that I am being using Etherpad  since, I don't know, 2010, 2000, something like that because I think it's, I don't know  if it was before, I don't know if it exists before 2010.  I remember using Etherpad in 2011 with the community to coordinate logistics to decide  and vote between colleagues if we are going in one place or if we are going in this other  venue.  The other option could be LibreOffice, which it has a collaborative tool in the cloud, it's  a little bit, perhaps it's a little bit more complicated to interact than Etherpad, but  it's also an alternative.  And the one that I think many people should use at this point is GitHub.  GitHub has a lot of powerful features that helps you to coordinate and collaborate, collaborate  between many people.  And I think that the issues and all that are super helpful, especially because we are,  let's say, all in the dev environment and I think that it needs to be, let's say, used  by many people and this is something that it's free to use and you can create a repo  and start all the documentation there.  Etherpad, it's also very helpful.  It's simple, basically I don't need to make a lot of introduction about that, but basically  what you need is a place where you can put all the information that it needs to be informed  and shared between all the people involved in the event.  Also what I usually think in creating an event is the spreadsheets.  So LibreOffice has spreadsheets for that and where you can put all the information about  the agenda, if you have an agenda, the resources that you need, you create a budget.  So I'm not going to share any template because I mean, this is not the purpose of this talk,  but basically to give you a quick overview of what tools are available.  I mean, if you're watching this, you probably know all of this and you probably are aware  of how to create a GAMP or how to create an agenda from zero, from scratch, so it depends  on each event.  So basically the next step should be how you bring people, how you try to control how people  to join the event, and that's a little bit more complicated.  There are not so many tools available, let's say open source, and actually there are only  two that I tried in the past and one doesn't look like it's a little bit up to date.  Open Conference System, the last, let's say the last version, it's from 2014, less than  eight years ago, but I mean, it still works.  And the other option is Atendize, which has a paid option, but in the end, you can have  several, several options if you want to be, let's say, more fundamental and you can create  your own website that's up to you.  I wouldn't suggest if you are only a couple of people, but Atendize helps you a lot on  creating the registration and all that.  And then the other options, which are the, let's say, the obvious and helps you also  with the promotion, it's Meetup and Everybody.  I know that I shouldn't be saying this because we are in an open source event, we are talking  about open source tools, but at some point you need to be, let's say, very clever on  how to control the registration.  So if you can control and have, let's say, full access to the registrations, go for  Atendize.  And if you want to, let's say, relax a little bit and be, let's say, more, not standard,  but I will say more open to have more people involved have a Meetup or Eventbrite, which  in the end, obviously they have a paid tier, but if you go for the free options, there  are free options, so you can use them without any issue.  My suggestion is that choose whatever you feel most confident and most comfortable with.  Ideally, since we are in an open source event, the suggestion would be to use Atendize because  the other options that I was searching when I was creating this talk or when I was making  this talk doesn't have the full open source feel.  Probably I'm missing something, but the ones that I found in most of the cases were paid  with some GitHub repo and stuff like that, but they are not fully open source.  So then after the registration, you want to have people to watch the event.  Basically we are, again, they're not talking about the promotion.  We are not talking about how, when it's the best time to set up the event.  I'm thinking on from the registration to Atend the event, so how you will be watching or  how you will be seeing it by the people.  Distribute services, for me, there are two options at this point, and this is a personal  point of view because I think that there are other options that means probably more effort  than there are other options that are not connected to the open source thing.  So the first option, which is the obvious, is OBS or StreamLab if you want to use the  let's say the easiest solution on Windows.  Sorry, I say Windows, but yes, OBS is the best tool that you have.  There's a lot of feature personalization, a lot of things that you can do.  The only problem that I will say is that it's not for beginners.  It's not for a person that starts in making events or trying to stream for the first time  an online event.  Obviously because you have to set up a lot of things, the scenario, the audio, if you  need to share slides, all those things needs to take a lot of time in terms of let's say  preparation.  So if you have time or if you are, let's say, confident with your technical skills, go for  it.  OBS, the good part is that allows you to stream directly on several platforms, which I'm going  to talk later as well, but on several platforms.  So the thing is that again, whatever you make, you feel comfortable with, but you need to  think where your audience will watch you.  So OBS, you need to stream through a service that could be Twitch, that could be YouTube,  that could be whatever, but you need to use another service.  And the other option that it can be simpler if you don't have a lot of people watching  you, it's Gitsimet, which is also kind of, I will say that similar to Google Meet, actually  very similar.  So if you are, let's say, more, have preference for something more simpler that you don't need  to take care about how people join, if they will be joining with a camera on, if they,  all those type of things, you can use Gitsi.  Basically, it's super simple to use, no need, let's say, much instructions.  The same way that you go and join Google Meet, it's the same way that you go to Gitsi, you  go to a URL, you join the meeting, give access to the microphone and the camera, and that's  it, and basically you can attend this event.  So that's basically the two, let's say, options.  Then you can use other tools, if you want, which are a little bit more, let's say, personal,  where you have to set up your own server, where you have to go to set up an Apache instance  or stuff like that, that's up to you, but I will suggest that if you want to go to the,  let's say, to the user suspects, OBS and Gitsi Meet are the best options.  This is what I'm saying before about OBS.  You have to select the scene, you have to select the source where the scene come, you  have to configure the audio, if you want to see transition, there's a lot of options  that you have that makes you a super impactful event in terms of the production of the stream.  I can totally say that the quality that you can find on OBS, it's way much better than  any other tool in terms of the liberty that it gives you, so it's something that I will  strongly suggest that you take the time to learn how to use OBS.  The good part is that there's a lot of documentation on the platform, there's a lot of information  support from the community.  A lot of people that are using it, I can tell you that many, many Twitch, well, not many,  I mean, a lot of Twitch streamers are using OBS to stream, to give a professional look.  And honestly, it's something that it worked the effort to learn from the beginning.  Then the interaction that you can have, this is, I will say that it will also depend on  where you will be streaming.  So if you can have the opportunity to have your own Discord instance, I will suggest  to go to use Discord because it has a powerful interface and it's a powerful tool.  Also, if you have the time to install your own matrix instance, like we have here in  FOSDEM, this is something that I will also, these are the two best options that we have  in the market right now in terms of open tools available.  And then the last one for the old people and the old guard, IRC, which I think doesn't  exist anymore, no, I'm joking.  But if you ask me, I think that matrix or element and Discord are the best options available.  Other interactions could be asynchronous, which I wouldn't suggest except if the event  is recorded, it means that people can watch the event or the stream or whatever afterwards.  But the good piece of the interaction should be through Discord or matrix or element because  you need, let's say, live interaction.  The other piece that some people will probably don't think about is that if you stream through  YouTube, you have the option to chat through the YouTube channel.  My suggestion is that be clear on where the interaction will take place.  Unfortunately, if you will be streaming through YouTube or Facebook or if you have the chance  through LinkedIn for giving you a couple of examples when we talk about live events from  the communities, because some communities are streaming through Twitch, but other communities  are streaming through YouTube.  Some communities are streaming through Facebook, use the chat tool that you have in the platform  where you stream it.  Because if not, it's going to lose a lot of, let's say, attention.  People will need to use another tool to interact with you.  So for me, the idea is that you should use the tool that makes life easier for the attendees.  So that's, I know it's not very political correct in this type of thing, but you need  to take into consideration what works for your community.  Then what I say about the feedback collection at the beginning, and I'm going to end in  this talk because I don't want to extend too much.  The feedback collection or the collect of the feedback, it's super important because  it will give you the sense, the temperature of how the events went.  If you don't know how the event went, you probably will make the same mistakes over  and over again.  I'm thinking on, okay, the speaker, it's a friend of mine, but he delivers and talks  a lot of topics, a lot of different things, and saves me to look for another speaker.  Probably for you, it's your friend, you have a subjective opinion about him or about her,  and you don't want to hurt its feelings.  But a good way to ask if the event went well is that if the speaker delivers and talks,  actually, I think that you can also rate my talk as well.  I hope that it doesn't go too bad.  But I mean, you need to understand, it improves the next event, it will improve the next event  for sure, it will improve the way you organize the event, it will improve the way that you  select the speakers because probably you are in a community that has, it's about cloud  or it's about JavaScript or it's about Apache.  It could be anything.  But in the end, the idea is that you deliver quality content to the people, and if you  deliver quality content, the people are more likely to repeat and attend again or attend  in the future.  So what you need is to understand what works and what didn't work.  And I think that what didn't work gives you very information about the event rather than  what actually was successful.  Because in the end, what actually was successful, you kind of know what it works pretty well  and what does and how you get to that point of success.  But sometimes we miss the piece of understanding how to improve or where to improve.  And sometimes a third person or a now third perspective gives you the idea of where you  should be focusing for the next time.  The better way to collect feedback is through forms.  Again, and this is something that you can use several online tools.  Obviously the open source option would be open office or Libre office.  There could be, what, sorry, open office.  There could be an option to use EarthTable, which has a free option where you can use  EarthTable, which is similar to Google Docs if you don't want to use Google Docs.  And you can collect the information there.  Or you can also use EtherPAD to collect the form, the collect the feedback, which is also  a good way to get information and understand where you fail.  So EtherPAD or Libre office could work pretty well.  But how I made my event successful and impactful, that's the question that we always make as  an event organizer or an event coordinator.  The best way to be impactful is to go in a way that you deliver a quality event or a  quality talk with a quality way to organize the event.  There's no magic bullet on this.  You will fail a lot of times and you will be successful a lot of times.  In times of COVID and times of the online format, it's super complicated to understand  how to improve the impact that an online event has.  There's a lack of networking feeling that we all want to be in person and be super, let's  say, interactive for a certain way.  So my suggestion is try to work a lot with the community, try to deliver good quality  in terms of content, ask the community what they want to see, what type of content they  want to see, try to find the best people as possible to deliver that type of content if  you are not a speaker.  Try to be open and transparent because as I learned in the past, you need to be very  open and very, let's say, clear on the message so you can get to more people in a more effective  way.  So that's it.  Apologies if it took a little bit longer than expected.  Actually it took a little bit longer than expected.  And I didn't want to give you a full detail of each tool because it will take a lot of  more time.  So if you have any questions, feel free to ask in the chat.  Thanks.
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