Thu 11 Sep 2008

DjangoCon and Related Happenings

DjangoCon was a great weekend. It was also a very tiring weekend, particularly coming so close to the Django 1.0 release, which was very exhausting. Still, getting a 1.0 out the door and somewhat basking in the reflected glory from everybody's efforts provided enough energy for getting through the conference.

From a conference attendee's point of view, something that was around the 250 person mark felt about the right size. I didn't get bored with seeing the same faces all the time and there were enough people to talk to. I also didn't feel like the size made it impossible to find anybody. Talk topics were interesting and varied. Both the length of the conference and the length of each session felt about right. The extra-conference activities, such as the 1.0 release party, were also enjoyable and not too draining. Which was fortunate, really, as I had no energy left to be drained.

From a conference speaker's perspective, the experience was excellent. People kept mentioning that Google were good at that stuff because they did it all the time. That doesn't particularly matter. More important is the fact that they were good at helping speakers. There were enough chairs. Microphones magically appeared when required. Before each of my talks (I did two, plus one panel), a Google expert helped me hook up to the AV system and wired up the microphone — I much prefer a radio mike on the collar to carrying something or speaking into a stand. Then, at just the right moment, the microphone was turned on. Normal conference experiences involve a little futzing around to get the display working and figure out the sound system at just the moment you're trying to be focused on the talk you're about to give. Not so here and I am incredibly thankful to the professionals involved who made that possible. It might seem like a little thing, but the five minutes before a talk is more or less the only time I get a little nervous about what might happen and having that portion go smoothly was great.

Not incidentally, the attendees were great as well. Questions were always intelligent. There was limited amounts of side conversation going on during talks, so you weren't distracted by the person sitting next to you. People were considerate when moving around after a speaker had started. Yes, that's normal politeness. It's also not a given at a lot of conferences. So thank-you to those in the same audience as me, and thank-you to those in the audience when I was the only thing to watch on stage.

I spent most of the conference just generally paying attention. To what people were saying about Django. To how they were using it. To what they mentioned was problematic. You learn a lot by listening and that was true here. There were 250 people all with a common interest and a willingness to talk about it. Somewhat gratifyingly, I didn't learn about anything really big in Django that was both missing and unknown to me. This is genuinely true: most of the big ticket items that people felt were missing from Django are things that most people who've hung around the django-developers mailing list will realise are known items to do at some point. In fact, they're all high priority. Along with the other 137 high priority items. Most of the time, people seemed aware that "not done yet" isn't the same thing as (and is preferable to) "won't ever be done" or "the developers aren't interested." There isn't a universal understanding of that fact, but it happens to be true.

I intend to resume blogging regularly, including some Django-related stuff, and I'll address some of the specific points raised during the conference from my own twisted perspective in the near future (peek into the future: Cal Henderson's specific points in his talk were equal parts "done", "agreed. We're working on that" and "yes, but it's trickier than you mentioned and you know it". Plus one dash of "get a proper database, but we should document that your database of choice is flawed in that way").

Primarily, though, DjangoCon was a chance to talk to a small cross-section of the user base and find out what they're doing and thinking. Getting a guided tour of Matt Waite's recent GIS work with Django when we ended up seated next to each other at the speakers' dinner; having an early look at what Lisa Dusseault has been blogging about over the past few months; hearing a bit more of a description about Guido van Rossum's and the Google App Engine team's efforts (silently cursing that they didn't talk to me/us earlier. I could have fixed one of their problems with the ORM in about an hour, if I knew it was important). These moments and a bunch more like was where I got the most out of the conference. I like that people are using Django. I love seeing what they're doing.

I cannot say enough good things at the moment about the organisation of Rob Lofthouse, plus the help on the Google side from the team of volunteers (all of whom seemed genuinely hooked on using Django), including the inexhaustible Leslie Hawthorne (rolling up on Sunday morning to the GooglePlex, feeling pretty tired, to the sight of Leslie at the font door literally jumping up and down saying "welcome! we have coffee. You should have some" will stay in my memory for a while). The event went very smoothly and was a lot of fun. Thanks, folks. I had a blast.

Topics: software/django, conferences/DjangoCon2008