PGConf.EU 2014 - feedback is in

It's that time of the year again - we've wrapped PGConf.EU 2014, and I've just closed the feedback system, so it's time to take a look at what's been said.

We're keeping fairly consistent numbers with previous years, which is something we are definitely happy with. We did have a slight drop in "overall view", since this year we had 8% ranking us as 3, a worse score than we saw last year, and we had a couple of fewer people voting 5. And a slight shift from 5 to 4 on the programme. The numbers are still good of course, but since we had a tiny drop last year as well, we need to step our game back up for next year!

This year we had a slightly bigger spread of how users identify themselves, seeing most categories chip away a little on DBAs and Developers, but they are still definitely the dominating categories. We also have a lot of returning developers - it's cool to see so many people who have been to every one of our events so far, combined with a full 25% being first-time attendees!

Most of the event was definitely appreciated, but we had an unusual wide spread when it came to what attendees thought about the food. This is definitely something we'll need to consider in more detail for next year. A few of the textual comments we received about things that were not good:

• "Would be good to somehow foster more communication/getting to knowing new people for example via some fun group hacking tasks or similar" - a few people expressed this or something similar. It's definitely something worth thinking about.
• "... the Renacimiento room is the most uncomfortable room ever stay in my life... ;)" - yes, it's clear this was not a very well set up room. The chairs were uncomfortable and the room was too long. We were not aware ahead of time that the hotel would not have enough "comfortable chairs" to fill all the rooms, but it's definitely something we're going to look for in the future.
• "Do not book social event venues with a single beer tap/single line for the beer tap. PostgreSQL users are powered by beer." - the social venues (other than that hosted by PostgreSQL Europe) is not booked by the conference organizers, but it's definitely something we're going to suggest to the sponsor(s) of next years event to make sure :)
• Several comments about issues with beamers

Of course, we also had some good comments, that make next years work easier :), under what people thought was the best about the conference:

• "looking forward to Vienna!" - in a number of different phrasings
• "The talks, the food, the social events."
• "Open mindness of constructive people"
• "best thing about pgconf.eu is that it exists and is annual"
• "Learn, learn and learn"

We also had a lot of people who were very happy with the weather. We can unfortunately not take credit for that, and it's almost guaranteed that we will not have as nice weather in Vienna next year. But as every little bit counts, we are very happy it turned out that way, and that we were able to use the outdoors coffee break area to the maximum.

Finally, as we've almost become accustomed to, most of our speakers received great scores as well. And since it has become a tradition, here are our "top sessions" and "top speakers" (including only speakers with more than 10 votes to get better averages).

Top 10 sessions by content quality

Top 10 sessions by speaker knowledge

Top 10 speakers by quality

For our speakers

If you are one of our speakers, you can now go to your speaker profile page and view the detailed feedback for your own sessions - just click on any approved session, and you will see the complete feedback.

Next up!

Next years event is in Vienna, Austria, as announced during the closing session.

Also, don't forget our regional events that are already announced as well - FOSDEM PGDay in Brussels, Belgium, and Nordic PGDay in Copenhagen, Denmark. Both have their call for papers open, and will soon open for registration!

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