Confluent Community Meetups Rules of engagement

It’s hard to provide a closed-form definition of what a “sales pitch” is, but here are some guidelines for avoiding them:

• It’s okay to mention commercial products, but only as a companion to something people can use or try for free. The core message of the talk should be achievable with the free version
• Be willing to discuss shortcomings in your solution and other options besides the one you present. Engineering always involves trade-offs, so being realistic about them helps establish you as a credible advisor.
• You are always trying to persuade the audience that a particular solution is a good one, so don’t be afraid to persuade—just do it as an educator, not as a partner in a commercial trading relationship.

We are here to learn about Data in Motion and its ecosystem. Some parts of that ecosystem have commercial vendors behind them, and that is a good thing. However, you are there to equip developers with the tools they need to succeed, not advance the commercial interests of your employer. Don’t turn your talk into a vendor pitch.

If this is an Apache Kafka® or an Apache Flink®️ meetup which will be attended by people who are interested in learning about Kafka or Flink and engaging with the Kafka or Flink communities. Make sure your talk is about Kafka or Flink or intimately related companion technology.

Same goes if you're presenting at an Apache Flink® meetup group, or, lets say, a group about Snow Leopards.

You may talk about other technologies, but only if they closely relate to and are interdependent with the technology your audience is there to hear about!

From Confluent’s side, this will include parts of our ecosystem intertwined with Kafka, like Confluent Cloud. The content surrounding them will be 100% technical, such that a developer in attendance may learn how to build something with Kafka itself.

This summarizes every point made above and below. We want you to be technical! This is one of the only offline platforms where people can go to hear about Data Streaming Technology as a technology, and not just a business tool.

Speakers with a microphone at our Meetups are required to have a highly technical background.

Of course, we’re all here for a reason, but ultimately, we maximise our benefits from meetups by respecting the format and the community. People will like your stuff if you demonstrate it and if it’s good, rather than you just telling them it’s good.

If you run over time, you’re basically saying your time is more important than the next speaker or the organizer’s time. It is not. :)

As a speaker/participant, you can of course promote your own presence at a Meetup, but you should not promote (by name, logo, or any other way) other speakers/participants/organizations at the Meetup without prior agreement with them.

As a host, you may have a quick opening line to introduce the event and speakers. This must be no more than a minute or two. Feel free to say ‘welcome to [company/venue]’, introduce the talks and speakers and give any essential information to your attendees, such as telling them to throw stuff in bins, or where the fire exits are, etc.

You must not collect any personal information from attendees unless:

• This information is for security reasons and that you have stated this and you have asked your group owner prior to this.
• The specific person has implicitly given you their information, and are fully aware if you intend to contact them with this information and you have asked your group owner prior to this.

If you do have their contact details for any of the reasons listed above, please make sure each person has agreed for you to contact them beforehand.

Hosts are often hosts in order to attract Data Streaming users to their offices/facilities. This is not a problem and we hope that you can gain a healthy benefit from hosting one of our events.

Please, however, bear in mind, that all recruitment practice must be done to people who want to be hired. The strategy you follow will be an out-to-in strategy: lay some hiring brochures near the swag, place a banner listing your job openings, put identifiable t-shirts on your recruiting staff, but please don’t try to ‘ambush’ community members, it won’t reflect on you very well.

Also, please bear in mind, if you do want to communicate job vacancies (which are specifically related to the event's content), feel free to post them on our meetup groups’ discussion boards (scroll down the main page of the meetup you want to contact and you’ll find it!).

Never do it, unless you have direct expressed permission from that specific person.