Anticipating RubyConf Austalia 2013
15 Feb 2013
We are on the home stretch!
Just over a year ago I made a commitment to ensure that the inaugural
Australian Ruby programming conference would become a reality. Next
week, in Melbourne, it will.
RubyConf Australia 2013 will kick off
with a day of workshops on
Wednesday before more than 350 delegates gather at the conference to
hear speakers present a variety
of Ruby-related talks on Thursday and Friday.
With less than a week to go, you may wonder why I have chosen to devote
time to a blog post now. You’d think I would be flat out doing last
minute things in preparation. Of course I am, but I guess I thought it
would be therapeutic to spend a few minutes sharing my reflections about
organising the conference.
I won’t go into exhaustive detail now but I do want to emphasise several
factors which have underpinned the conference organisation. Without
them, I doubt we would have got to where we are today without much more
pain.
- The establishment of Ruby Australia as a
non-profit organisation to support the conference (and Rails Camps)
was a crucial first step. This avoided individuals being liable and
clearly marked the conference as being owned by the Australian Ruby
community.
- The partnership with YOW! has
been invaluable. They have run very successful software development
conferences in Australia for several years and it made sense to
utilise their expertise.
- A small core group of organisers has also worked well. I am indebted
to Mike Koukoullis and Martin Stannard
for their collaborative support. I think we’ve made a very effective
team.
- Having underlined the importance of the core organising group, it
would be remiss of me not to acknowledge a host of others in the
community who have helped, or will be helping, in different ways at
various times. They know who they are.
- Another point worth mentioning was the use of a GitHub
repository
for collecting and managing talk proposals. I liked it’s openness,
it worked well and I would recommend it to other organisers of
technical conferences.
- Finally, we have been able to attract more than 15 overseas
presenters and sell the tickets at a reasonable price only because
of the generosity of our
sponsors, whom we much
appreciate.
That’s it for now. I’m not sure how insightful that was for you. It was
somewhat cathartic for me but not as helpful as the drinks at the
conference closing party will be.
Wish us luck!
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