DEFNA Interviews: Nic James and Kenneth Love (DjangoCon US 2018 Co-Chairs) Interview

Speaker 1: Hi, I'm Nick James. I uh started getting involved with Django Con In 2016, when I first spoke at a conference. It's my first like full-time talk. and really liked the organizers, so I asked how I could help. And then the next year I became co-chair of Sprints And I enjoyed that, so I continued on to help with 2018. 2018 they mentioned wanting a co-chair and I had a lot of time on my hands, so I volunteered And that 's how I became co-chair of DjangoCon.

Speaker 2: Hi, I'm Kenneth Love. Um I got started with DjangoCon in 2011 or so. It's the first tech conference I ever attended. Uh much like Nick, I then spoke. I spoke the next year in 2012. And then uh once it became a community event, I promised to help in any way I could. So I ended up doing um tutorial selection one year. I was on the top committee. Um I guess last year, 2017, and then this year they needed a chair because the two previous chairs were uh burned out from it, or not burned out, but tired. Um and so I I stepped in to be a chair and very quickly realized I wanted a co-chair. And Nick was amazing enough to step up and help with that.

Speaker 2: So that's how you ended up with the two of us running 2018. When I first got in into DjangoCon, it was back when it was being run by a a company, not by the community. So there wasn't as much like volunteer opportunity or maybe there was and it just wasn't advertised as much? Um once it became a community thing though I made it a point of I want to help out because it's a really good event. Uh and it was basically just emailing a list, I think, and being like, hey, I want to help. What can I do? And they send you, you know, an invite to Slack and mailing lists

Speaker 2: and kind of go, well, here's what we need help with. Come pick one. Uh and you kind of just pick the thing that you're interested in doing so long as they need help uh doing that. So the getting involved part was was pretty easy. Um and then depending on what you're doing, it may it may be more or less work to do. Um but the actual getting involved was was pretty easy in my opinion.

Speaker 1: I would say that the getting on all the lists was easy. The once I was doing or like assigned to something for lack of a better way to put it, um, or the things I volunteered to, getting people to answer the how-tos was a little difficult. So originally I started helping with sponsorship and that didn't go so well because there wasn't much in the way of how-tos. And whenever asked questions, there were not so many. That's changed dramatically, but when I started, that was the case. Uh

Speaker 1: I enjoyed it a lot. Um something that I really enjoyed doing is what I call people shuffling, um which is basically organizing things and setting things up so that people can go and do what needs to be done. And so like while it took me two or three meetings to actually figure out how Like DjangoCon does their meetings. Uh getting the meetings all set up, that was a lot of fun for me. Chasing people down for the agenda. uh that that kind of thing. But like and the actual event was a lot of fun. I would not

Speaker 1: like I would volunteer to do it again.

Speaker 2: Yeah. It's uh it's different being conference chair from my previous examples of being on talks committee or or program committee or tutorial picking just because it's You have a lot less um super well-defined work like program committee You send out the CFP, you encourage people to submit talks, you rate talks, you figure out which talks were the highest rated, and you put them into a schedule, and you're kind of done. I mean, you have to deal with contacting people or um you know shuffling schedules but you don't have to there's no other major events

Speaker 2: uh as program committee. But as conference chair, it's a whole lot of like little stuff throughout the planning. And then the event gets there and you're kind of in the middle of everything. So it's just a very different balance of where the work is. Um it was fun to do though. It's it's very Uh if if you want to know like all the nuts and bolts of running a conference, chairing a conference is a pretty good way to figure out all of those and learn all of them. Uh outside of finances, because uh without The split is between DEFNA and Django Con. The DjangoCon chairs don't really deal with money. Um But other than that, you're involved in, you know, talks and keynotes

Speaker 2: and schedule and running things from room to room and just whatever else needs to get done. Uh as for doing it again, I yeah, I would I would do it again. It's a bit stressful, but or at least it it was for me. Um so that that weighs on my judgment of whether or not I'd do it again, but it was it was a really positive experience.

Speaker 1: For me, it was easier doing that as the chair because for me it's easier to interact with people when I have a set goal. And so by being the chair, it's kind of, for lack of a better way to put it, and I kind of heard it phrased this way a few times, was the chairs are kind of the face of the conference. Um and so I had a responsibility to be out there and be talking to people and moving around and solving problems. And for me, that's the best way to get me to talk to people. So I didn't really feel any pressure or like this

Speaker 1: is the first conference I've gone to where I haven't felt problematic with the crowds.

Speaker 2: I mean you're kind of expected to go and talk to people. Like that's that's a big part of the role is to be out there and be friendly and welcoming. So I think that can help if if you have maybe some social anxiety, I think having that expectation and that power because you're in charge. So It's okay for you to be out there and be talking to people. I think that can help a lot. I don't know. I I have very sporadic uh social anxiety on that. Um kind of stuff, so it's not too big of a deal for me. Like I I rarely go hide in the corner of the room, but there were times where I was kind of like, eh, I'm gonna sit over here, but then it's like, no wait, I'm chair, I gotta go talk to

Speaker 2: sponsors or find a speaker or something. So it kind of just had to happen anyway. So So we start planning Django Khan uh what six to nine months out. Um so DjangoCon this year 2018 was in uh October. We probably excuse me, we probably started doing the first like serious let's get organizers together meeting in

Speaker 1: uh

Speaker 2: what, Nick February, March maybe?

Speaker 1: February was the first meeting. I volunteered to be chair around end of March, beginning of April.

Speaker 2: Okay. So yeah, so Six, seven, eight months out is when we start like really planning this thing. Um before that, there's some work done by DEFNA with you know money, venues, dates, things like that, but that's not the the organizers and the volunteers. Um So the good thing is that for most of that the work is is very spread out. We'll we'll meet and have conversations and and decisions being made in email, Slack, or you know, hangouts. Um For a couple of months before anything gets done visually, which usually that is uh we put out a call for papers, the CFP, and we put out a call for financial aid applications. So if you if you need money to attend, you know, please let us know.

Speaker 2: Uh and if you want to submit a talk, here's how you can do that. That runs for a couple of months. Um and at that point, again, everybody else is still somewhat It's it's low amounts of stuff to do. You know, the the communications team is of course writing blog posts and tweets and all of that stuff. Um but it's uh

Speaker 1: the other one?

Speaker 2: I'm sorry, what was that?

Speaker 1: Sponsors team would probably be the other one that's kind of constantly going.

Speaker 2: Yeah. Sponsor sponsorship starts from the day Django Khan ends and keeps going. But again, a lot of that in the beginning is just going to be emailing leads. It's not necessarily um coordinating any specific thing. When we're six months out, that starts to get more serious on sponsorship and everything, usually by then, um Well, I'd say within like four months out, CFP is over, financial aid's over. So program and financial aid and visas have to start doing all of their work because they have to deal with you know, getting letters written for visas or they have to um you know tweak the schedule because oh the speaker has to leave on the second day of the event so we have to make sure they speak on the first day.

Speaker 2: And and you know, so on and so on. Um and then you get down to a month or two out, and that's when we start doing like, okay, we have to order all the swag, and we have to start scheduling with um the the sponsors to get their shipments to the venue on time and we have to talk to the venue with like hey can you store these things somewhere that we can find them Um and so all of that kind of stuff picks up a month or two out. And Yeah, and that and that's kind of when I felt like Nick and I started getting more and more stuff we had to do was about a couple of months out because it got to be the We've got to have all of our communication with the keynotes, and we've got to step in to fill in all these, you know, little gaps that um

Speaker 2: Just have to get solved at that point.

Speaker 1: Basically whenever there wasn't another volunteer to do something, it would be Kenneth Rai who would do it.

Speaker 2: At least for the chairs, yeah. It's it's a couple months out when our work really starts.

Speaker 1: Yeah. And

Speaker 2: most of the actual work as a chair is during the week of the conference because you're you're there to make sure like, you know, nothing goes wrong if it's at all humanly possible to keep it going. So you're you're helping to make sure there's you know session chairs and you're helping to make sure that like vendor tables are set up and events happen when and where they're supposed to and all that kind of stuff.

Speaker 1: I think the biggest thing that I can remember being a problem, and it wasn't super big problem, is one of our speakers got food poisoning the night before they spoke. And so they wanted a chair. Um the

Speaker 2: thing.

Speaker 1: And that that was a bit of finagling 'cause we had to call the venue and then the venue had to call us and was like, well what size chair do you want? And then And then it we told them they're like, okay, high chair. And then they delivered a low chair and realized it was wrong, so they removed the chair and put a different chair. It was But like I feel like that's something that would happen in a comedy sketch. So I

Speaker 2: and I guess I guess again the labeling of food. We had a couple of meals where um we needed more food labels put out. But I mean again, that's just it's It's not a big thing, right? As far as it's a it's an easily solved problem. You you you talk to the venue, they bring out signs that say, you know, gluten or dairy or or whatever.

Speaker 1: Yeah.

Speaker 2: And Problem is solved.

Speaker 1: I guess the other one was the first morning of the main conference or the talk days, we ran out of breakfast. But that was because on the sprints day they had peanuts in it and I'm very allergic to peanuts. So they had like the venue removed it because like I can't have them in the room and so they fixed it for days after that and now they know not to do that again, but That was also an interesting hurdle. But we also had people who took care of a lot of this stuff for us. We would be like, hey, it's a problem, can and then someone would be like, oh I got that.

Speaker 2: Yeah, and out the door and it's solved.

Speaker 1: Jeff and Lacey kind of pulled us aside and did that.

Speaker 2: Yeah, we had a couple of meetings with Jeff and Lacey where it was just kind of like going over what the day-to-day of running the event was like and kind of like you know, oh well here's what we do if there's a code of conduct violation, or here's what we do if a speaker doesn't show, or here's what we do if you know, some other random thing goes wrong that that's not outside of the realm of reasonable possibility. I mean, you could have crazy things like, oh, the venue burns down, but okay, we can't do anything about that. That's not our Um we're we're we can't solve that problem. But a speaker doesn't show up, okay. How do we how do we handle that? You know, we we find someone else and or we try to shuffle because maybe the speaker can be here tomorrow or you know However, however that worked out.

Speaker 2: It's again, it's it's amazingly handy having the previous organizers there to answer questions and bring up things that could go wrong.

Speaker 1: Yeah, so like because they were there and we could like ask them basically on the drop of a dime, like I didn't feel like I needed to know more beforehand. However, like at the same time, I feel like I was finally getting a handle on things and it ended. So it's like I kind of want to do it again just to see if I could do it better next year because I finally understand how things work. But like that's that's not something that like you I mean that's something you kind of know beforehand going in. It's like I guess it's kind of like a musical performance. You go out there and you play it and then you want to play it again because the next time you can play it better.

Speaker 1: Don't stop poking at people until they give you something to do.

Speaker 2: Yeah, if you want to help out with events, um Lots of times there are a lot of of really good um intentions, but sometimes it may be a little hard to actually get something to do. So yeah, if you can be persistent in asking for like a thing to do. Hey, I really want to help with this. You know, who do I talk to about that?

Speaker 1: Or if there's a meeting, show up and then there's often things where people are like, hey, I need X and volunteer to do it.

Speaker 2: Yeah. Uh yeah, I mean a lot of these events it we have very specific roles for people, but most people don't stay in just their role. Like it's it's very rare that we'd have someone who was you know, on the program committee or uh involved in sponsorship or whatever, and they would refuse to do anything else. Like that would be really weird for us to have. You know, the our our program committee was there and they were helping with AV and they were helping with um speaker gifts and they were helping with running sessions and they were helping with you know, all these different bits and pieces that weren't part of their responsibility. They could have just attended and watched the conference. And that would have been fine. Um But they're all really willing to to jump in and do stuff.

Speaker 2: And the more willing you are to just volunteer and help with stuff, the more you'll get to do at a conference.

Speaker 1: I like the smaller conferences because as I said I have a bit of a problem with crowds So the smaller conferences are more comfortable for me, but the larger conferences have more people there for me to network with. I really like building out my network and it's really It's really really starting to help with my job search as I start hopping out more and more. And so like the big conferences are good because my network gets giant, but the smaller conferences are good because I'm able to have smaller conversations with people that I wouldn't really get to have the one-on-ones

Speaker 1: with. at the larger conferences. And so like at Pi Tennessee last year, I was talking with someone about starting a women's group in their area where there isn't like a Pi ladies group yet And so it was like, okay, how can we get that started? And I would not have talked to or I did not talk about that at all at like PyCon. So it's just kind of like regional, you hear more about the regional problems and how they're trying to fix it and you can kind of help them along their way versus like big conferences, the community is kind of a bit you don't quite hear as much about the like smaller things

Speaker 2: I I I would agree with basically all of that. Um the big conferences are are really, really great for just I want to be drowned in a sea of people for a few days and just get to talk to everybody. Um And the smaller conferences I find myself actually like attending talks, which is a weird thing for me. If if you know me, I went to PyCon for like five years in a row before I ever attended a talk at PyCon. So um actually I probably have that backwards. I think I went to a talk my first year and then I stopped going to talks after that. But um But at the small conferences, like the talks are really interesting because they're very not that the big ones aren't, but they're very um tied

Speaker 2: into the the that local community. Um like if you go to Pygotham, yeah it's a Python conference and there's talks about random bits of Python. But because it's in New York City and there's a whole lot of data science and financial science in that city, the talks tend to skew towards this more scientific side, which is really interesting. being in Portland where the talks are like about Django or social things or you know other aspects of the Python world. So the the small conferences are really neat for getting a sense of that community's um focuses.

Speaker 2: Yeah, I mean it's it's one of those things that I think sounds really scary being a a conference organizer. Um You know, it it sounds like you're gonna be responsible for some major thing and if you screw up then people are gonna have a horrible time at this conference or you know, there won't be talks on day three or whatever. Um and and none of that's true. Like any any established conference There are so many people involved that are there to make sure that everything gets done, everything goes off without a hitch. Um, they always need more help, but you're not going to be alone on any of those pieces. Especially at DjangoCon, we always have so many people who know how to do odds and ends, weird little jobs,

Speaker 2: that if you have a question, somebody there can answer that question for you. And So you'll you'll get the help you need. So if you want to come and help with, you know, running sprints or I don't know being a conference chair. Um that's fine. We have we have people that will help you and and you'll be able to get it done and you'll do an amazing job at it. And it will be uniquely yours because You did it, which is what makes it really cool. I I I feel like not that I I don't think the 2018 Django Con was way better or way worse than any of the other Django cons, but I think it was different because Nick and I organized it versus Lacey or Jeff organizing it, or someone else that's, you know, not been a chair yet organizing it It's always going to be a little different for every single chair

Speaker 2: or every single program committee or every single sponsorship chair. Like it's always going to be different. So come and help us and and make it neat in a new way. And and we'll help you if you need help.

Speaker 1: Uh don't worry about not knowing something because there's someone who will is Really good advice. If you volunteer for something and you're having trouble getting a hold of someone, that that's when you start contacting the chairs and the chairs start poking people. But Like don't ever give up because someone didn't get back to you the first three or four times. keep going. Everyone who's organizing at least for community events, they have a job, they have family, they have other things that they're doing as well. So if they don't get back to you Keep pushing until

Speaker 1: you get there because you will, and by the time or when you do get there, you'll enjoy it that much more because you've put so much effort into it.