Day 1 Welcome session

Do you think it's a good thing?

Speaker 1: Hello everyone. My name is Becky Smith. I'm co-chair of this year's conference. And I'm going to introduce you to my co my my co-chair, Mark Smith, who's going to welcome you to DjangoCon Europe 2023.

Speaker 2: Thank you, everybody. Um So before we really get started, it has to be said there are a lot of people involved with organizing a conference of this size. And obviously it's a community conference, so we're all volunteers. Um but nobody has done anywhere near as much work as as Becky here. So if we could give her a huge round of applause, that'd be fantastic. Thank you. Waiting for my clicker to wake up. Technology always gets worse over time. Well hello everybody. Thank you for making it to Edinburgh. Um I know some of you have come a very long way, and I know many people have had difficulties with travel for various reasons. Um but we're so glad

Speaker 2: that you made it here. Um we have put a lot of work into this conference and we have an amazing programme for you. I would just like to start off with a joke. So anybody who knows me will will have expected that. It's not a tractor joke. I'm gonna go first. I'm gonna have the lion. And Wales thinks about it and comes back with, well, lions, how are we gonna top that? Dragon! I'm gonna have a dragon. And England's like, wait! And Scotland, before they could before it can be cut off, goes, Unicorns. And so the National Animal of Scotland is a unicorn, and so the stickers that we have this year,

Speaker 2: the Django Pony, may look a little bit different to you all. But until you pick some of these up on the sticker table in the sponsors hall. We do have the traditional Django Pony if if that's your bag. So I kind of I started talking, I started writing this talk about DjangoCon and I thought there's going to be a lot of new people here, and they're going to start off with with a not a great joke and they're gonna think to themselves like what exactly have I gotten myself into? Um what is this this DjangoCon thing that I've I've come to? So I thought I'd pose the question, what is DjangoCon? And to answer the question initially, you will need Wi-Fi. I don't know if you notice, but there are QR codes around the venue. Um we've had uh the

Speaker 2: Wi-Fi has been the one thing that we've had problems with in the last couple of days. Um it seems to all be sorted now, but the solution is that each of the rooms has their own different Wi-Fi and it doesn't stretch very far. So potentially if you may need to scan the barcode in every room to get your phone to kind of connect to the There is an assembly room's Wi-Fi. Don't use it. They've blocked Discord, which is the chat software that we're using to organize the conference. But there we go. So once you've got Wi-Fi, you can scan the barcode on your badge. Everybody's barcode is the same. There's no personal information on those. If you scan it, it will take you to your attendee portal, which is a s short web page. That will point you at the schedule, the catering menus, and a whole load of information that you need to make the most of the conference that you're at.

Speaker 2: But basically you will discover by going through those pages that there are three three days of talks and I think that's probably the primary reason we all came to the conference. Um that the most of the talks are 30 minutes long. Some of the speakers will leave time at the end of their slot to answer questions from the audience. We have some microphones set up, so when it comes to the Q<unk>A section It is you can stand in line at the microphone to ask a question. If you're in the middle and you can't get out, there'll be somebody with a handheld microphone that can get past down the road to you. Um so let's ask another question and I stole this from from Daniele I think. What is a question Now a question is not a comment. It's not even more of a comment than a question.

Speaker 2: It's not an opportunity to ask if the author has heard of a competing library that they haven't mentioned, that only you know about. It's not an opportunity for you to show how clever you are, although undoubtedly you are very clever. A question is an opportunity to clarify something that you didn't understand. It's a chance to get more detail on something that the speaker mentioned And it's a chance to make the speaker look even more brilliant than they already have. If you want to have an in-depth conversation or a debate or just a chance to meet a speaker We're all here at the same conference and you can uh most people will be happy to meet you um outside in the in the hallway track There are also workshops. Workshops are held in a side room. If you go out into the sponsors hall and turn right, it's called the

Speaker 2: East drawing room. There are limited numbers in there. It's first come, first served. So if you think it's going to be a popular workshop, maybe get there a few minutes early. Those are for slightly longer talks uh running at about an hour, um some are shorter, some are longer. In general, they're quite hands-on, so do take a laptop with you. Um at the opposite end of the spectrum in talks, there are lightning talks every day. Um I haven't got the buckets. Could somebody get me some buckets from registration? And I'll come back to this slide. Yeah. So we have a Discord and if you're on the right Wi-Fi network, you might be able to access it. Uh there is a bunch of stuff in there. Um it's it's for you as conference attendees to talk to each other and to feed things back to us. But we have a few quite useful channels in there.

Speaker 2: One is the live talk channel, which will point you at the correct each talk that is being given will have a Discord channel to discuss uh the talk or maybe put in additional questions um that the the speakers can then come back to you later on um during the conference. Uh it's just generally a hub for anybody who attended that talk who wants to continue the conversation So you find links in live talk in the in the Discord. There is also the social channel which has been quite active recently. Thank you very much. I had one thing to remember and it was to bring buckets onto the stage. So social, please feel free to use it to organize events around the city. There's a lot going on. Somebody tried to use it a couple of days to organize axe throwing, but I think everybody was busy. uh or maybe just had a sense of their own safety.

Speaker 2: But uh yeah, that's how to organize a group of people meeting for dinner or drinks if you just want some people to to spend time with or to find out what's happening. So, and I'll just go back to the lightning talks now. So, the lightning talk uh session is around an hour long. Um, it's an opportunity to give short five-minute talks. We have a slightly different system to the one we've had in the past. And some of the Australians, I think, in our presence might recognize it. We have two buckets that will be on the registration desk. One is marked new speakers, that's the yellow bucket, and the other one is marked uh everyone else. I think that usually says experienced speakers. If you there will be some index cards, and if you want to give a lightning talk,

Speaker 2: you write a title, a description, and your name on the card so we can track you down. And put it into the appropriate bucket for you. It's up to you to choose which bucket most matches your experience. So if you've maybe given a lightning talk before but don't consider yourself an experienced speaker, please feel free to use the new speaker bucket. Do that in the morning and then at lunchtime we will take away the buckets and curate a program for the Lightning Talk session and mix up a good um a good set of new and more experienced speakers. This is really an opportunity for numerous speakers to get on the stage and find out what it's like to share something with the audience. They can be highly Django specific, they can be Django related, or they can not be about Django at all.

Speaker 2: Um and it's it's really nice to have a good mix of sort of technical and less technical talks. So we really want to know about you in these talks. Five minutes it goes surprisingly quickly, so they don't take that long to put together and you have a chance to kind of go through it a few times. beforehand because they don't take very long to rehearse. So we encourage everybody to submit a lightning talk if you have anything that you think the audience might be interested in. Yes, uh after lunch we will post the cards on the flip chart next to the registration desk. So do check to see whether your talk's been selected and what order it's in in the afternoon. That may sound a little bit complicated, but in practice it works pretty smoothly. Uh after the three days of talks, we have two days of sprints. Sprints are an opportunity to help out the open source projects that you love.

Speaker 2: It's when we all get together to write code for Django or other related projects, and it's a chance to learn and teach and work with developers you haven't worked with before. And it's a great way to meet new people. There's a whole bunch of people in this hall that I originally met in sprints at previous Django cons, and it's just wonderful to see you back here. We'll have some more information on Wednesday for people who are staying around for the sprints. But if you've heard of them and they seem a little bit intimidating, please Don't be afraid. We'll have people there to help uh pair developers up with projects and to make sure that everybody gets the most out of the day. We also have a social event. So the social event is very kindly sponsored by Platforms H. Please go and talk to them in the ballroom. They are directly ahead as you walk into the sponsors hall.

Speaker 2: They uh they are our social sponsor as well as our platinum sponsor. Uh they are also um buying a drink for everybody who is attending the social event, but you will need a token which you can only get by talking to them. They will be at the social event. You can either get it there, but I suspect there will be a line, or you can go up to the booth and talk to them during the conference. If you have a ticket for the social event, it's at 7. 30pm tonight at the Caves, which is this amazing venue, about 15 minutes walk from here, in Edinburgh's Old Town. There is a map that you should have in your attendee pack. uh do just check the street that you're going to because if you ask Google for where the caves is it takes you to the back of of the venue that has no way to get round to the front. If you don't have a ticket and want one, I think there are still a small handful available.

Speaker 2: You can find a link if you scan the barcode on your batch. Uh so yes I said that's 730 in the case. Uh also another thing that makes up a Django Con is coffee and snacks and food. Those are also served in the center of the conference hall the the sponsors hall Um to the today that it's at 1. 30 for lunch and at 1 p. m. on Tuesday and Wednesday. There aren't a huge amount of serving tables and there are a lot of us, so don't run towards uh the food. There is enough for everybody, but it may just take a little while for everybody to get served. If you asked for gluten-free food when you signed up for the conference, you'll have to ask the catering staff for your um your plates. Uh everything else, including vegetarian and vegan food, is catered for just in the general selection of food that we have out on the table.

Speaker 2: And you again you can find menus and ingredients on your batch. We have craft supplies and a desk with a badge maker and some stickers. So if you feel like some time out to just do something creative, that's somewhere to spend some time. I thoroughly recommend that. Uh and now another thing that makes up a DjangoCon is the sponsors. Uh and we have a few. Uh bronze sponsors are Pretex and Zyklum and could be please give them a round of applause. There's a few of these slides. But thank you. We we couldn't run the conference without them. And the reason they do it is because they want to meet you and talk to you and get you excited about the things that they do.

Speaker 2: So please spend some time in the sponsors hall uh and talk to the various sponsors. Our silver sponsors going up a tier are Skyscanner and Bohurst. Can I have another round of applause? And uh gold sponsors are Apptable, Torchbox, Colo, Foxley Talent, and Kraken Tech. We really appreciate their support. And as I mentioned before, our platinum sponsor and social sponsor is platform. Um we have thank you. As well as the commercial sponsors, there are also a few organizations

Speaker 2: that provided significant support this year for running DjangoCon. They are the DSF. Um that is essentially the the organization that as well as prov uh providing some financial support for us, uh essentially gave us permission to run DjangoCon Europe. So we very much appreciate their help. Uh the Python Software Foundation uh were also very helpful. Uh and the EuroPython Society were almost the umbrella organization that we ran this event under. We had a very difficult time at the start of organizing this conference because it's very difficult to set up an organization in the UK now. uh commercial entity or a charity. Um and we needed an organization to handle the finances. Uh the EuroPython Society very kindly stepped in uh to help, but because they're based in Sweden and we're no longer a member of the EU, it was

Speaker 2: everything It's just much more difficult. Um But uh in the end the UK UK Python Association stepped in and we we really couldn't have organized the conference that we have without them. They provided a huge amount of um time and effort uh and money. So if we could give a round of applause to all of our community sponsors, especially the UK Party Association. So I'm going to come back to the to my original question having listed a whole load of things that are Django Con, but in a way aren't Django Con. There were a reason that we gather. But I'd argue without any one of these things we could still have a Django Con. But the thing that really makes Django Con

Speaker 2: is the people. It's you. It's not so much talks and lightning talks and social events. And because people make Django Con, uh there are a couple of things that we need to talk about. Um so firstly it's run by us. Um we are all volunteers. Um and there is a channel on the Discord uh and a link on your badge for volunteering. So please um if you're comfortable introducing a speaker, sign up for one of the session chair slots If you are happy to run around with a microphone, sign up for a runner slot. There are various sort of small jobs that need to be done through the conference that don't necessarily take a huge amount of effort or time, but help us keep everything running smoothly. And again, you'll find a link on the badge for volunteering. We also have a team of organizers.

Speaker 2: You can recognize them in the orange and blue iron brew colored t-shirts. Um please let us know if you need anything during the conference. Could we just have all the organizers stand up, please? Um if you're not standing up already. This is very reluctant. And I'll go into more detail about all of the people we need to thank in the closing session, but right now I'd like to thank everybody who has worked. so hard to make this conference happen. Because we are people and we are messy, we have a code of conduct because it's important that when people get together we agree how we all behave towards each other. Uh you agreed to the code of conduct when you got your tickets. You'll find a copy uh you won't find any copy in your attendee pack.

Speaker 2: That's a mistake of mine. But it is on the website and it's printed on a board near reception. So if uh if you're really not sure what's on there, please go and read it and make sure you're clear. If you see something or experience something that you think may be a violation of the code of conduct, please let us know immediately. You'll find contact information on the website, or you can talk to any organizer in the blue and orange t-shirt, and we will take your claim seriously. The toilets in this venue are labelled for men and women. I don't think that's been fixed yet, has it? No? It's beside the door. Right, okay. So sorry. They they are normally labelled for men and women, but we're aware that this doesn't cover the broad spectrum of gender identity that exists in the real world.

Speaker 2: So the toilets up here I believe have been labeled as gender neutral. There are some toilets with urinals downstairs that are still labeled gents for various complex reasons. Please use the toilet you are most comfortable with. And if you see somebody in the toilet who you feel shouldn't be there, please assume that they know better than you which toilet is more suitable for them. And don't bother them. Harassment of other attendees is against the code of conduct in principle, and again we'll take it very seriously. Let's talk about the lanyards. So blue means that you're happy to have your photo taken. Orange means you don't want to have your photo taken. So if you are taking a photo of this incredible venue

Speaker 2: or some of your friends just make sure that there's nobody with an orange lanyard in the background. Or if you want to take a picture of somebody with an orange lanyard, please ask their permission first. And finally another thing we do because we're all people is we try to include um potentially new people at the conference and other people that we don't know. So this is a great place to meet new people. So I wanted to make sure you're all aware of the Pac-Man rule, which was invented by somebody who was at last year's DjangoCon actually Here's a neat short video by Dylan Beattie that shows how it works. So when we gather in the hallway, we often stand in a circle when we're talking to our friends, and it kind of excludes anybody else who might want to join the conversation. So if we leave a gap, like a Pac-Man. When somebody comes along, they can step into the conversation and introduce themselves.

Speaker 2: And that's a great way to meet new people. And then you step to one side, make a new gap in the conversation so that more people can join. It really works. I highly recommend it. I still naturally stand in a circle with people, but I find that if somebody in the circle shouts Pac-Man, then everybody will step to one side to make room. And I've been in the situation where somebody has just stepped into the gap and introduced themselves and that's been a great way to make new friends. So that is another thing that hopefully we do at DjangoCon, one of the things that makes this such a great place to hang out And so with that set of rules and guidelines, I'd like to welcome you to DjangoCon 2023. I hope you all have a great time. Thank you for listening.