Conference highlights and thanks to the community!

2018-05-24T00:00:00+00:00

Hey everyone,

The Write the Docs team is now emerging from the post-conference recovery period, and we wanted to send out a quick email to thank everyone for helping to make our sixth North American conference such a success. Whether you joined us in Portland or watched from afar, we thought you might like to hear some of the highlights!

Conference recap

At nearly 450 people, this year’s conference was our biggest yet! We had the usual mix of main stage and lightning talks, unconference sessions, writing sprints, and social events. We were also pleased with the success of a couple of new experiments, including livestreaming the talks, running real-time captioning for the main stage, and hosting an in-person job fair. We received a lot of positive feedback on all of these and are excited to carry them forward to future events.

We also had some interesting feedback on some things we might improve for next time. The unconference, for example, has really found its feet in the last year or two. With more and more folks participating, we’re looking at providing more in-depth guidance on how to get the most out of the sessions. We’re also considering bringing back ticketed workshops as a way for attendees to dig a little deeper.

Overall, we were so excited to see another conference come together and see our awesome community gather out in the physical world.

Videos and photos and write-ups

Videos of all the talks are now available in our video archive. Thanks to Backpedal for doing such a great job with these. If you gave a lightning talk, we’re working to get them on our site, but you can see them on YouTube for now. (You can also subscribe to our YouTube channel so you don’t miss any future content!)

We also have photos from the event available on Flickr, thanks to our wonderful photographer Kay! We really love the photos each year, and you’re welcome to use them for non-commercial purposes, as per our Creative Commons License.

And finally, several community members have been writing up their experiences at the conference and sharing them in the wtd-conferences channel on the Write the Docs Slack. If you missed the conference (or are just curious about how your experience compares to others’), pop in and have a read.

Code of Conduct transparency report

As with any Write the Docs event, this conference was covered by our community Code of Conduct. We aim to be as transparent with CoC incidents and enforcement as we can. None of our organizers were approached about any CoC concerns at this event. We know that this is, in part, a reflection of the thoughtful and inclusive community that we’re so lucky to have.

That said, we’re also very conscious of the fact that just because nothing was reported doesn’t mean nothing happened. If there was any personal conduct or other aspect of the conference experience that did not meet the expectations of behavior set out in the CoC, please email us at conduct@writethedocs.org.

Ready for more?

Don’t forget we have our first joint Write the Docs + Open Help conference in Cincinnati this August, our Prague conference again in September, and our first two-day Australia conference in November. Both the Cincinnati and Prague events have tickets on sale and are actively looking for proposals. (The call for the Australia conference will open soon.)

We’re also looking for more sponsors to make these conferences just as magical as the Portland event was. We have a detailed sponsorship prospectus up for both the Prague and Cincinnati conferences. Get in touch if you have any questions.

Thanks again

We’re so grateful to our sponsors, speakers, volunteers, and attendees for making this conference possible. Whether you were able to come out this time or not, we hope to see you back in Portland next year – or even sooner at one of our other events!

Blog - Posts tagged portland-2018