If you are involved with a tech meetup group in the states of South Carolina, North Carolina, Tennessee or Georgia there’s a good chance you have heard something about the Carolina Code Conference over the last few weeks. If you haven’t yet, you probably will over the next few weeks.
We’ve been making the rounds, either reaching out to meetup organizers to share something out on our behalf, joining online to take a few minutes to talk about the conference or, if it’s within about a 3 hour drive, showing up in person to do the same thing.
You may be wondering…why?
The TLDR Version
We want to bring development/cybersecurity communities together and that’s where you find the communities. We want you to come this year and then keep coming back, so we have special tickets just returning members. We want to amplify speakers involved with their local tech communities.
The Full Explanation
The reason is that we’re trying turn this event into an annual gathering of the tech communities in our region. If you’re a part of a local meetup group, you are more involved in your local tech community than most.
Initially, people will attend these meetup groups to learn and network. Maybe there was a compelling topic that brought you out. Perhaps you are trying to do some networking in the area.
But then you keep coming back. You get to know the regulars. You look forward to seeing your friends at these events, regardless of the topic. Then you start saying things like, “You know what we need around here…?” all because you want to make things better. That’s where communities come from.
The reason we keep coming to your meetup groups to invite you to the Carolina Code Conference is that we want to see what happens when the people who make up those communities start getting together every year.
I personally have lived in the Southeast my entire life. Rather than a few huge urban centers like Silicon Valley, things are more spread out here. It’s not for everyone, but a lot of people love it. Since remote work has picked up, these communities have seen an influx of people who choose it when the option is presented.
The people who make up these numerous smaller communities need an annual gathering place and the Carolina Code Conference is designed to make that happen.
1. Prioritize Returning Annually
First off, we want you to plug in and then keep on coming back. Attendees from prior years will get the option to purchase tickets early and at a discount to encourage that too. This year we called those tickets Early Access Tickets but that was probably a poor language choice. In future years, we will call these Returning Member Ticket or something similar to make it clear.
We do that so that you can show up, have a great time, learn a lot, make some friends from other communities in the area and then look forward to coming back the next year to see your new friends again.
2. Sharing the Experience
There are a lot of different type of conferences out there, but we emphasize single track for both the benefit of the speakers and the audience. As a speaker, you’ll be able to share your work and story with everyone in attendance and ensure the talks are professional recorded for distribution as well.
As an attendee, you’ll have each topic as a point of reference for anyone else who you speak with at the event or during the evening social activities as well. Ever been to a conference with friends or colleagues, split up to head to different rooms with the intention of comparing notes afterwards?
That shared context goes a long way to getting people on the same page, even if it’s something you have no expectation of using. You’ll be surprised at the conversations that are created from topics you might never have entertained otherwise.
Getting people talking with folks they haven’t met before can be tough sometimes. Even a little awkward. Being able to walk up to anybody at the event and start a conversation about something you have both experienced makes that a little easier. Maybe your favorite talk, the awesome t-shirt, how the Capture the Flag contest is going or that great sponsor booth that you just visited. Starting the conversation is the hard part, keeping it going isn’t.
3. Amplify Regional Communities
While our Call for Speakers is open to everyone, there’s a balance in selecting speakers and talks for a single track polyglot and cybersecurity conference.
If we have 30 talks on AI that look incredible, we’re still only going to allow a couple because we have to spread topics around for the audience. This goes for programming languages too. If the entire slate of speakers from Rails World submitted here, we would only be able to accept a couple at most. Even across different languages, we must avoid redundancy in topics because the majority of concepts carry across languages even if the implementation may be slightly different. We’re all working with the same processing constraints.
The last factor that’s included is to try to reserve some of the speaking slots for speakers who are involved with their communities in South Carolina, North Carolina, Georgia and Tennessee. You’ll notice us featuring meetup groups on our speaker profiles and that is one of the reasons (examples: Andrew, Ryan, Jason, Vlad, Bekah, and Steven). We want to feature that.
When we started reviving things last year, meetups were a priority and that has not changed. Initially, we wanted to find a way to take speaker recommendations from different meetup communities but that was a little tougher to materialize. It’s not off the table for the future if we can ever figure out a way to make it work.
As it stands this year, 24 of our 30 speakers this year are from our four state region without even having to factor it in to the decision process. That’s probably a side effect of the current reach of the event more than anything else. For example, lightning talk submissions were almost entirely from speakers in these four states and they make up half of the total speaking spots.
The Carolina Code Cast podcast is another opportunity to share more about these communities too.
4. Don’t Interfere with College Football Season
Look…we’re in the South. You don’t interfere with college football season down here.
It’s a known rule that you don’t schedule weddings on game days if you want people to make it. One genius scheduled his wedding during the Clemson vs South Carolina game so that he could invite everyone but keep costs down. Others will send invitations letting people know the game will be on at the reception. Within a few hours of this area, there are several big time college football programs and the University of South Carolina.
If we’re having a conference that is going to actively pull people together from this region, you better believe we’re not going to violate that rule. You can factor us into your annual plans just ahead of tailgate season every year without having to worry about conflicts.
Connecting Communities
We don’t have Silicon Valley in the South. The talented and innovative people of our industry are spread out everywhere. We need to bring you and your communities together to get you talking, learning and sharing.
Then let’s see what we can build together.
This post will continue to carry as long as this conference exists.