Defna Interviews - Katherine Michel and Katia Lira

Speaker 1: My name is Katherine Michael. I also go by Katie. I work for a web developing development agency called Eldarion. I'm a release manager for an open source library called Pinx. I'm a DEFNA board member and DjangoCon US website chair or co-chair, depending on the year.

Speaker 2: Hi, my name is Katia Rida. I'm from Mexico City. I'm a full stack developer with Python at a Canadian company called LocalLogic. I'm also a board member and vice president of DEFNA. I work on the commun communications team at DjangoCon US. And that's it.

Speaker 3: So uh let's start with like if you have any recommendations on how to manage like presence, social presence for a conference.

Speaker 1: I think that it kind of helps to understand how DEFNA and DjangoCon US organizers work together. Um since I'm the DjangoCon US website chair, my perspective is from the point of managing the website process. For DEFNA, um, you know, I got involved with the website because it was of interest to me. We managed the high-level contracts for DjangoCon West. So A few years ago I created a CFP where we outlined the requirements for the website and I kind of based that on the websites from the past, but

Speaker 1: That's really important because it made it very clear what we needed from a design agency. So the way that it works is that around the beginning of the year we launch a landing page. And then during the first quarter of the year, Jeff Triplett, who is the president of DEFNA, he and I meet with the design agency and we choose a design. We kind of iterate on that. Fortunately, sometimes other people get involved and give their feedback, which is great. And eventually the landing page becomes the full-fledged site. We have a Slack organization where

Speaker 1: we have a DEFNA channel and a website channel and a communications team that works on blog posts and works on um tweets and Facebook posts and we're active in that Slack organization throughout the year. And I think that makes it run really smoothly because everyone kind of knows what their role is and we kind of know what The specific requirements are and we have a time frame too. And so that helps move things along really well, in my opinion.

Speaker 2: As for um the social presence uh outside of uh websites, I would say that the biggest difference for DEFNA and DjangoCon US is that We have a lot of content for conferences, meaning speakers, uh the call for proposals. Every step of the way can be a blog post or or a tweet, something something is there in for when you're managing a a non profit foundation or organization, you have to think about the content that you're gonna put out. Uh what we're trying to do at Defni is Is translating our knowledge for how to run a conference into content that other conferences or other organizations can

Speaker 2: can have so uh I would say that's that's the biggest difference because you have to work harder to to get the content.

Speaker 3: Do you see is is there any any specific media more um More traffic from or Twitter or Facebook or like uh uh Slack.

Speaker 2: Uh it depends on on the process. For example, when the call for proposals is about to close, there's a lot of interaction on Twitter uh when the actual company the conference is is happening uh that that happens the same. But for Slack what I've seen is that all year round it's active uh a few messages a day or a week. So that that's also a downside of that I would say is that we all we have to be aware of those messages and and keep an eye on that because of code of conduct instances that could happen. Um but yeah the the the Slack is alive all year.

Speaker 3: What do you what do you think are like the the the the first steps always for a conference to kind of start or or uh launch the website or of a conference. I mean what are like the first things that we always look at in the beginning of of a new year on all that.

Speaker 1: Well I we're really lucky because um we the the process we have in place, we the people who are involved, we always have enough people with experience that um we already know a lot of the important things. And so For the website in general, it's really important that it be responsive, of course, so that it works on a lot of devices. It's really important that it be acceptable because we want everyone to have a great user experience. And for me personally, it's also really important to have a link available to our code of conduct. all the time so that people know that it's a welcoming, safe space.

Speaker 1: When we launch the landing page It's at kind of the very beginning and so we there's not much there. It's kind of the bare minimum, but the important information is that we want to have the date and the location We want to have some kind of marketing blurb to get people excited about it. And we want to have a link to sponsor information because we're going to want to try to get sponsors involved as quickly as we can And then as the design, the full design kind of comes together and we replace the landing page with the actual design. We're going to be updating it over time

Speaker 1: so that we'll have like a ticket link, hotel, or accommodation information. Then we're going to have like uh call for proposal information and link and opportunity grant information and link, speaker information. A thing that Oh, also of course, sponsor information. A thing that I think is really cool about DjangoCon US is that we care so much about diversity and inclusion. It's a priority to have accessibility information on our site. And then of course like the schedule eventually. And then fun stuff like things around the the city that people might like to do.

Speaker 1: That you don't have to have that, but it's really cool to have that on there.

Speaker 2: Yeah, when one of the Things that Katie mentioned is that we have a lot of people that have knowledge and help us out throughout the year. And Additional to that, we also have a lot of new people coming in every year because it's so easy to contribute with us because we have uh good documentation and great people helping uh newcomers And what that does is that those people those new people al always have like fresh eyes and have more ideas than uh than maybe us that we've been doing this for a few years So it's evolving constantly because of that, that new people keep coming in every every single year.

Speaker 3: Yeah, that's one thing that that's really good. And I think also also that that has to do with how the website itself is hosted. Um And can you talk a little bit about that? Like what what what are the services that we're using and the reason why we chose that?

Speaker 1: Sure. So um right before I became the DjangoCon US website chair, the site was made in Django and someone before me decided to switch to Jekyll And basically the way that it works is that the code is hosted in a GitHub repo in our DjangoCon US website organization. The main code is in the master branch and it's actually staged and served through Nandalify. And this gives us um a major benefit because when somebody submits a pull request

Speaker 1: MiddleFi automatically creates a static site off of the PR and people can see the change to the site Before the PR is merged. In terms of using Jekyll, I know sometimes people think it's kind of weird if you have a conference about a programming language and you don't use it to make the site. But Using Jekyll actually lowered the barrier of entry to get started contributing. So our number of contributors went up drastically because people are able often to go into um you know maybe fork the repo and go into the browser and make a small edit

Speaker 1: to contribute and before it was a bit more complex than that. So from year to year we're we're able to usually reuse the code maybe make some development enhancements but primarily create a new design and um It is working really well right now.

Speaker 2: Uh for the DEFNA website we used to have it hosted with Squarespace. It was a great solution for a while because of how easy it was to have a design, but it became eventually a bit expensive for us. So we switch the same to JetKill, but I think it's hosted on GitHub pages. And uh it's very easy to mm publish uh a blog post because it's mostly done in markdown so you don't really have to do anything with design.

Speaker 3: The contributions that you were talking about, Catherine, can you remember any any examples about like what are the different types of contributions that other like attendees have done or or other people or are we talking about mainly just like the uh the organizers

Speaker 1: Um it can be anyone. Um when the actual design and development are being done, it's the design agency that is pushing. most of the updates, but then we have people who are organizers who help um fetch the talk tutorial information from um whatever site is hosting the CFP so that we can generate Um, the talk and tutorial pages on the site. Um organizers and speakers may realize that they want to update their personal information or change their talk title and they're totally welcome to just come along and update it.

Speaker 1: I a few years ago created some um contributing guidance and it was really important to me to make it uh very straightforward to contribute. So We can direct people to the contributing guidance, we can mentor them, and they're welcome to come along and make an update

Speaker 3: Yeah, so so what about the uh the the design from like uh I mean I I think it it's it's a good idea to kind of compare the uh everything that happens on on the design on on DjangoCon 's uh website and for instance DevNet's website and especially since we're going through the whole like redesign And I think it's it's very interesting mainly like the timeline on how all of this happens, like whenever there's like propositions and then or I mean proposals and then one of those is chosen and all that. Do you all think like it's taking more time to do the redesign in death now than the work that needs to do to be done every year for Django Curse?

Speaker 1: Well, it it's actually kind of like I think built into our contract that there's a specific timeline. Um, and we basically just adhere to it plus People working on it have mostly been involved for several years now. So they kind of like know they they kind of just have an idea of how it goes. Um and so it goes really smoothly because it's something that's done from year to year.

Speaker 2: Uh yeah, for definitely rebranding, I think it's taking uh a bit more time because it's the first time that we do it. And uh you have to take in consideration seven uh points of view. Uh and with DjangoCon US it's a process that's very well defined and it's also only Katie, Jeff and myself in that process so I think it it's easier to move along that way

Speaker 1: Yeah, it definitely when I first was the website chair, uh, it was much lower and they actually tried some other board members I think tried to recruit more people to join our meetings the next time to try to move along the decision making. And then this year it was like much, much faster and easier. Maybe For one thing, when you first do something, you want it to be like really, really good and you're just maybe agonizing over every detail. And then you sort of relax and go, okay, now I now we I have a sense of what we're doing and it, you know you can um sit back a bit more and and worry less because you've already gone gone through it and

Speaker 1: Um proven maybe proven something to yourself, I guess.

Speaker 2: And also Johnny, uh I think she knows the conference in us well enough that she can uh have great ideas from the very very beginning.

Speaker 1: We worked with them several times.

Speaker 3: So that's also a good uh like um a key point there to to get somebody that that that already or at least that's already worked with the other conference. This is why

Speaker 1: you might not have to have everyone the same, but yeah it I know it does help to have some of the same people

Speaker 3: Yeah, so and and what about the the content itself? Like there is there's a bunch of things I think like for instance on a on a conference website uh that uh or a a lot of the content just kinda starts building itself, right? Like for instance, all the details for the sponsors, so that's like m things a little bit more like legal specific and uh and I don't know like the list of of people that are gonna speak and the topics and all that. So that's kind of like it creates by itself, right? But but there is a bunch of other content that you have to figure out if you want to put it there or not. Like for instance, one, I think it's like videos and and pictures from the actual conference and another one it's uh like maybe the things that that that you were talking about like uh

Speaker 3: uh interesting things to do at the city that the conference is gonna happen, right? So can you can you talk a little bit more about like this type of content that it's good to have but is not your like legal usual structure of a conference.

Speaker 1: Um so we kind of been a little bit um spoiled the last couple years because we had the the conference in the same location. Because we reused the site we were able to reuse a lot of the content. But what happens usually is that among the organ organizers there are people who our chairs or co-chairs or kind of have taken leadership of a certain area. And I have been maybe when the site is ready to launch, I go back to one of the the past sites and I look through the GitHub to see what we did or didn't have there when we launched

Speaker 1: And I go in and I sort of update the new site based on that to make sure that we have what we should or shouldn't have in there. But the people who kind of own a certain subject area, um, they will come in and contribute the content related to their area and I will just keep like checklists and go through and make sure that it's completed. So like the people who are in charge of like CFP stuff or sponsorship, things like this, they will make the decision about it. And that seems to work really well.

Speaker 2: Going back to being spoiled, I think we have a great team that's uh Unfortunately gonna be changing because for sponsors we have Heather Luna that she was taking care of all that and she's stepping down for the next year and That just I think that just speaks about how we're I think at this point we're a very well oiled machine that can practically get the conference done by itself with a lot of help from from the community but but I think we all pitch in a little and and it can be done s very well