Conference Reboot Plan Overview

Are you curious how all of this is coming together?

We’re less than a month in since Joel handed off the Carolina Code Conference to me on March 21st and since then things have been coming together steadily. I have gotten several questions about when certain things were going to happen, so I wanted to publish the current plan of how this is all coming together.

First thing to know, this is not a full time job so pacing is critical.

Timeline so far…

• March 21 - Took over the conference and carolina.codes domain.

• March 22 - Met with Joel to get previous assets and discuss.

• March 25 - Setup Substack to manage community communication.

• Lots of information gathering and polling about the format, activities, best dates, and other details happened after this point, as well as some great conversations.

• Scouting for venue options and researching costs.

• April 5 - Secured the venue and conference date! Hired our photographer.

• Worked to expand the social presence and spread the word on the venue and date.

  • I’ve setup dlvr.it to make this a little easier to manage but I’m still working out the details to get it tuned right. The best thing that can be done is for you to like and share wherever and whenever possible.

• April 10 - Started the Code Header Challenge as a polyglot way to address my total lack of design skills.

• April 11 - Opened the Call for Speakers through May 25th.

Ongoing

• Actively spread the word about the Call for Speakers and conference to local meetups and companies. You can help with this by passing information along directly or having me out to talk about the conference at your meetup.

• So far I’ve already been able to visit DEF CON 864 and Upstate Carolina Linux User Group (+ Columbia).

• Involving the local meetups and helping to get them moving again is critical to the tech community and one of the core missions of this conference.

Next Up

• April 17-21 week - Call for Sponsors

  • The goal is to have this setup next week. We’ve had a lot of interest so far and I’m looking forward to the opportunities.

• May 1-5 week - Ticket Policy

  • Initial overview of ticket availability expectations, including early access

  • Tickets are free, but limited so there will be some structure put in place about how they are distributed including carryover to subsequent conference years since we are trying to make this event a staple of the area

• May 25 - Call for Speakers closes

• June 1 - Speakers will be announced

• June through August 18 - Ongoing promotion and preparation

  • Finalizing conference details like video recording, food, wifi, swag, etc

  • Planning after event activities

  • Ongoing conversations with sponsors

  • Actively scouting venues for 2024

• August 19 - Carolina Code Conference 2023!

As of right now, this is the approximate plan for how things are coming together.

At some point in there, the new site will be launched as well but I don’t have a firm date in place for that yet. This is a code conference, so there’s a part of me that very much wants to over-engineer the new site and attempt to incorporate sponsors in the process if possible. Might even make for a good talk. We’ll see.