Speakers, Sponsors, Projects & Tickets Update
Where do things stand right now
There are a lot of things in motion right now, so I just wanted to provide an update as to where things stand across the board as we’re nearing the halfway point of our Call for Speakers, which will close on April 15th.
Call for Speakers Update
We started 2024 with the Call for Speakers on January 1st and the turnout has been excellent so far. As of right now, we’ve had 57 speakers submit 79 sessions for consideration. A single sessions can be submitted for consideration in multiple length formats, so I wanted to provide an overview of what those look like right now.
51 - Full Session / Keynote (45-60 minutes)
55 - Intermediate (20-30 minutes)
18 - Lightning Talk (5-10 minutes)
If you’ll remember the format from last year during a single day event, we had 2 Full Sessions, 5 Intermediate Sessions and 9 Lightning Talks. Over two days, the breakdown of talks will be very similar to that structure, meaning there are more opportunities available for shorter talks.
Right now, that means that Lightning Talks have the best odds for selection based on the current number received and the existing available spots.
Call for Sponsors Update
So far, we’ve picked up 12 sponsors for 2024 and our Call for Sponsors will remain open until about a month prior to the event. We have 1 remaining Platinum Tier sponsorship spot, 3 remaining Gold Tier, 5 remaining Silver Tier and as always our Bronze Tier sponsorships are unlimited (up to venue capacity of course). There are A LOT of perks to sponsorship this year as we’ve taken steps to enhance the packages this year. Check out the Call for Sponsors for full details.
Additionally, for sponsors which offer software services, tooling, infrastructure or just about anything else that can go into a website we have a very unique opportunity this year to feature your tech as part of our Polyglot Site for a Polyglot Conference project that’s just getting underway. This site project will be covered in detail during the conference opening this year. We would like nothing more than to gush about how wonderful your technology is and what it can do.
As always, thank you to our sponsors from prior years who have helped make this event possible in 2023, 2019 and 2018!
In the mean time, thank you to our early sponsors for 2024!
Platinum - Flywheel
Gold - STEM Search Group
Silver - Blue Ridge Consultants, Seek Quality, ThoroughCare, EngineerKit and Simply Binary
Bronze - AgreeableData and Founderville
Community & Media - Tech After Five, HackGreenville and BSides Greenville
Polyglot Site Update
What have we gotten ourselves into with this? Probably a lot of fun. As of right now we are actively seeking sponsors for two core aspects of the site.
We need a sponsor to come through for version control and CI/CD, because this entire thing has to be automated. Version control does not have to be git, just FYI. As with all things in this field, we’re open to trying new things.
We also need a sponsor to come through for hosting. This could be via Docker, Kubernetes, VM or even bare metal. We should be able to make just about anything work, but we need a sponsor to partner with on this.
Lastly, we would love to feature a database sponsor for this project as it will be part of the backbone of the entire system. There are certainly more opportunities for sponsors in a system like this highlighting the entire lifecycle, such as security scanners, production metrics, performance stats and more.
Reach out if you would like to be involved. This project will live much longer than this year and there are opportunities for long term exposure for the involved sponsors.
Lyrical Code T-shirt
It looks like we have a conference t-shirt tradition underway for the foreseeable future, turning epic song lyrics into code in your favorite programming languages. Last year’s Don’t Stop Believing shirt came together beautifully. This year, Bohemian Rhapsody is our winner after 2 rounds of voting.
Have fun, be creative and make sure your favorite languages are represented this year by submitting a Pull Request to our Github repo! The most creative entry will win a free ticket this year, since we have some remaining from the Advent of Code challenge!
Carolina Code Cast Update
The podcast is going great so far! We’ve published 18 episodes interviewing a lot of people doing great work locally, regionally, nationally and even a yet-to-be-released international episode as well. The interviews have been a lot of fun as we get to know more about the great work that so many of your are doing. The feedback has been great so far as well.
Substack has made this process really easy and even recently added video capabilities directly on the platform, with a slick expanding transcript right below that follows the video. Being able to publish everything here in one place has made this process much easier all around. We’re going to continue publishing to YouTube as well.
There are no signs of slowing down our current weekly publication schedule either. Eight more interviews are pending publication over the next couple of months and another eight are already scheduled for recording. Our sponsors will soon begin to be featured during the episodes as well, so be on the lookout for that too.
The podcast is distributed on most podcasting services (Apple, Spotify, etc). We’re still working with iHeartRadio to get through a strange issue. If you’re enjoying the podcast so far, drop us a review on your favorite platform! It helps people discover us.
Thanks to Heard Media for helping us to get this thing off the ground and helping to answer questions as we go!
Social Media Update
As always, we need your help on social media! A core goal of this conference is to act as an amplifier for everyone involved and in order to do that, we need to expand our reach as much as possible. We need your follows, like, shares and comments!
Check us out on LinkedIn, Twitter, Instagram, YouTube, Mastodon and we’re even going to give BlueSky a try!
Due to lack of engagement, we are retiring both Facebook and Threads.
Finally, Tickets
Our tickets for 2024 will follow the structure previously explained with early access and discounted tickets for 2023 attendees, as well as Paid Subscribers to the blog for their support.
I expect to make early access tickets available in April following the conclusion of the Call for Speakers, with the general availability tickets available in May following the 2024 speaker announcements.
Sometime in between once the 2024 ticketing system has been setup, I expect to be able to publish a waitlist link from the provider as well so stay tuned for that.
Just as before, when we approach the ticket sale dates you will received multiple communications to make sure everyone is aware of exactly when tickets will become available so that you don’t miss it. Remember, last year we sold out in 25 minutes!
It’s shaping up to be a great year! Stay tuned!