Conference highlights and thanks to the community!

2019-05-30T00:00:00+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 message to thank everyone for helping to make our 7th 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 over 500 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 our recent additions, including livestreaming the talks, running real-time captioning for the main stage, and hosting an in-person job fair.

Overall, we were excited to our awesome community come together in a lovely venue. Lots of knowledge was shared, and we had a great time.

Videos and photos

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.

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.

To ensure that our CoC was visible and accessible, we took a number of specific steps:

Every participant agreed to the Code of Conduct in advance during registration.
The CoC, or a summary, was included on the conference website, conference booklet, and in posters around the conference venue.
The CoC was repeatedly mentioned in announcements on the stage.
We specifically stressed that the CoC applies to all conference spaces including the social event.
We encouraged all attendees to report any incident, even if they were not sure whether it was a violation.

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 being 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 our Vilnius conference next week, Prague conference again in September, and our Australia conference in November. Tickets are on sale for Prague. The CFP and tickets for the Australia conference will open soon.

Our Slack network has really grown more this last year. Our general Slack channel has been extra busy in the days and weeks leading up to the conference, and we hope that y’all continue the conversations throughout the year. If you haven’t joined, now’s the time! Check out the Write the Docs Slack.

We’re also looking for more sponsors to make our events just as magical as this year’s event. You can see our prospectus for Prague. 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-2019