Cebit2011-Feedback
CeBIT 2011 Feedback
<<< Your Name >>>
General
- What do you think worked
- What do you think didn't work
- Ideas to improve
Product Firefox (Desktop)
- Positive
- Complaints/Issues
Product Firefox (Mobile)
- Positive
- Complaints/Issues
Others
- Positive
- Complaints/Issues
Greg
GENERAL
- What worked
- Building excitement around upcoming products
The contact with our visitors was very good with high interest on FF4's upcoming features and release date.
- Product demos
they were well received and the German audience seemed happy with the new features to come. Definitely an adequate way to show our products strengths with real-life examples.
- Swag
I believe the stock was appropriate in quantity and nature (stickers, pens, buttons, screen cleaners). The selective distribution was appropriate during the week (rewarding fruitful conversations), so was the mixed approach (after conversations + partial self-service) adequate for a week-end crowd.
- Staff
The number of staff members was appropriate with regards to the booth size. Definitely key to have as many German speakers as possible.
- Engagement rules
I believe we did this just fine. No eating at the stand, no checking personal or chatting with other staff members unless all visitors were taken care of. Apart from rare exceptions due to general fatigue, we behaved very politely and efficiently.
- Hostess and event agency
Really helpful to manage the practical details and stand logistics. Could have done even more with more time
- Adaptability
We did a great job at adapting to unforseeable events (join mozilla) as well as optimizing our performance based on the situation (e.g. turning specialist stations into general stations)
- LinuxNewMedia
Great to have speaking opportunities, well managed by Tomcat.
- What didn't work
- Mobile
It was difficult to properly demo Firefox 4 for mobile with the Galaxy tablets, and without a proper wifi connection. We should probably have secured more android phones.
- Join Mozilla
Due to external circumstances, we were not able to pitch the new Join Mozilla program as we would have liked to
- Ideas to improve
- Planning and booth concepting
I believe more time and attention could have been invested ahead of the event in concepting the booth layout and decoration. Planning more in advance could also have made us less dependent on Open Source Park.
- Specialist stations
Maintaining 3 stations with unique topics (1 desktop, 1 mobile, 1 join mozilla / community) did not work well on a stand this small. People did not see the difference between each station and would as a result come to the nearest one. and there was not enough space to personalize each station and provide it with clear signage and a proper identity. Specialist areas would require a bigger stand with specific clearly recognizable sub-zones.
- Unique demo point
Might be helpful to maintain one single demo point area with a large screen / projector and seats in order to maximise the audience for each demo and minimize the effort. Other stations could be then dedicated to in-depths conversations.
- Business development
Cebit is pre-dominently a BtoB event, so it would be good to have bizdev resources available for the event. Planning meetings in advance is key if we are to have any interesting partnership conversation.
- Happy hour
Although a good idea and a great turnout, it would be great to find a theme / topic for this kind of event to make sure it does not turn into a pointless free beer stunt. A few ideas: opening speach (mentioning agenda, Join Mozilla / community etc.), distributing flyers, showing videos, also finding ways for the staff to be more accessible to the attendance... Finally, having music would be great!!! We might want to consider using another space than the stand to host this (Open Source Park cafeteria?). The event could also be invite only to make sure people there really want to meet us and don't come to get free beer and leave instantly. The invites could be distributed at the stand during the day and to journalists, partners, and via online registration.
- Stand location
I am on the fence on this one. If we are to attend Cebit next year, I wonder if we should still be part of the Open Source Square. On the one hand, we obviously belong here and visitors expect us to. On the other hand, it does not allow for much stand efficiency (standardized look and feel, limited space) and - most importantly - it is not ideal for product/brand evangelization as most visitors here are clearly biased in our favour. I fear this is not a real 'mainstream' feedback but rather one much similar to the feedback we gather at the other open-source events we already attends (e.g. FOSDEM). Basically, I think that depending our objectives/target population, we can imagine two very different Cebit presences next year if we choose to attend again:
1/ Evangelization (mozilla mission, products) on another area such as Webciety.
2/ Community engagement (casual feedback collection, developer engagement) based in Open Source Park.
We need to keep in mind that attending is very expensive so we need to make sure we get what we want out of it.
PRODUCTS
Firefox (Desktop)
- Positive
By order of popularity
1- Speed
2- App tab
3- Sync
4- Panorama
5- Switch to tab
- Complaints/Issues
3.6
- Startup time
- Memory usage
- Crashes
4.0 beta
- Memory usage
Firefox (Mobile)
- Positive
- Sync
- Undo delete tab
- Complaints/Issues
- Speed
Kadir
Keep
- Ths size of the booth was much better than in the previous year(s).
- The number of staff attending was just right
- Having Antonia from the fair service was great, she knew her way around.
- Covering Thunderbird was much needed
- We had a lot of German speakers at the booth, making it easier to connect with people on Friday/Saturday
- There was lots of Swag to be distributed.
- Ludo as the fox was awesome
- Internet via Lan was stable and fast.
Improve
- We need a better selection of computers to show Firefox on (Windows, Linux, Mac)
- We need to prepare those computers with the right number of tabs, open pages, extensions to show etc.
- We need to have s selection of bookmarked benchmark pages for Firefox, showing the improvements over previous version or other browsers.
- We could hold draws, like asking people to let us know about their most favorite extensions, distributing a (shirt) to 3 randomly chosen participants every day, and then calling out the winning extension on the last day.
- We should have a projector at the booth to show things to a bigger group of people.
- We could have hourly shwows about 5-10 minutes to inform people about a specific topic (new release, join mozilla, etc.)
- Firefox buttons and stickers are (almost) free advertising for us, we should give them out in even larger numbers.
- Especially on Saturday when families visit, we could have hourly photo shootings with the fox.
- Firefox mobile was basically not present, for the lack of WLAN, 3G and a good device to show it on.
- Next time we should have sync support all set up and ready to show
- The hotel was way too far away, doesn't compensate for the low price, especially after a long day standing at the booth.
Product Firefox (Desktop)
- Positive feedback
- Look of Firefox 4
- Speed of Firefox 4
- Main features, App-tabs, Panorama
- Complaints/Issues
- Graphics issues with Firefox 4 betas
- Slow start of Firefox 3.6
- Memory consumption of Firefox 3.6
Ludo
Keep
- The number of staff attending was just right
- Having Antonia from the fair service was great, she knew her way around.
- We had a lot of German speakers at the booth, making it easier to connect with people on Friday/Saturday
Improve
- Train connections to the hotel - waiting one hour in the station is too much as is running to catch trains in the evening.
- Wifi to demonstrate Firefox mobile - something that works
- Make the fox suit less warm so one can wear it longer.
- Make the fox suite walkable so the fox can walk alone because he sees things.
- Improve the way we distribute swag !
Tomcat
General
- Worked
- Way better swag distribution to people who really cared and talked to us - less mass distribution - more useful distribution :)
- Hotel - not as chaotic as last year - with people left behind - too late etc - idea of the hotel worked excellent - for the train situation maybe a schedule of the trains in the evening for the crew so that they know when a trains goes to plan evening activities would be a idea
- booth size - right size for the project
- Worked
- What do you think didn't work
- at points staff attention to customers/users - as example - seriously there is no way that one german speaker is and other german staff talk to staff - if staff member come to cebit to talk to staff and group in a circle - its not what cebit is for - especially in this situation people dropped of because nobody else cared. We did better than last year but still room for improvements.
- Staff Party - if we do it again we would need a kind of concept
- What do you think didn't work
- Ideas to improve
- maybe more mobile devices (as phones) - since people in germany don't use tablets
Product Firefox (Desktop)
- Positive
- Complaints/Issues
Product Firefox (Mobile)
- Positive
- Complaints/Issues
Others
- Positive
- Complaints/Issues
Irina
General
- What do you think worked
- Use of available space was good - not too crowded and not too wide
- Number of staff was appropriate
- Swag distribution was very good, as we avoided large crowds of people come just for stickers and allowed us to have meaningful conversations with people
- Getting help with logistics allowed Mozilla staff to focus on the strategic elements
- What do you think didn't work
- Hotel too far from venue, causing 2 hours travel back home with 1 hour waiting in the train station after having spent 10-12 hours at the venue
- Ideas to improve
- Have dedicated biz dev staff to take partnership conversations
- Have wide screens to show videos of Firefox's main features. No sound, just images
Product Firefox (Desktop)
- Positive
- Overall a good opinion on the product
- Lots of long-time users of Firefox
- People were excited to try out the Panorama and App Tabs feature, as well as Firefox for mobile
- Complaints/Issues
- If product is still in beta people prefer to wait for the final release
- Firefox uses a lot of memory and becomes unresponsive when multiple tabs are open
Product Firefox (Mobile)
- Positive
- People were excited to know that we are bringing Firefox to Android and were particularly pleased to know we will support add-ons
- Complaints/Issues
<<< Chelsea >>>
General
- What do you think worked
- Booth size was great
- Staffing was good (having Antonia was tremendously helpful)
- Swag was great. Right amount of stuff
- Great opportunity to talk to users
- What do you think didn't work
- Hotel. It was too far away and added a lot of strain
- WiFi at the event - made mobile demos pointless
- Ideas to improve
- Have Join Mozilla launched first. It was a huge missed opportunity.