DevFest CZ 2017 will rock!

DevFest is a community-organized developer festival. It started as an evolution of Google Developer Days and it has been organized for 6 years now by GUG.cz. This year I became the main organizer from GUG.cz behind this event. I would like to bring some fresh ideas to the conference and make it really worth visiting. So what’s new?

Prague

In the past years, we moved DevFest to other Czech cities with mixed success. This year we are coming back to Prague — the conference can be larger, we can attract more partners and higher quality speakers. We are aiming at 600 attendees.

First day talks, second day workshops

I have attended many conferences myself and I see three common problems:

1. There is never enough time for long workshops if you want to catch interesting talks.
2. There is never a quiet place for workshops, something is always going on.
3. The last day of a conference could be disappointing — fewer people attend, the venue looks empty, not much new is happening.

We can solve it with making the first day talks-only and the second day workshops-only. The first day will be full of action, new content and a kick-ass party. The second day will be calmer — you will have a chance to dive deep into what you learned the first day. There will be no distractions. We are also considering a different venue for the second day. We know that not everybody comes the second day and that’s OK — workshops work better in fewer people.

International event

I have visited many tech conferences across Europe and they are always English-default. Even in countries like Ukraine or Romania. And I’m sad that in the Czech Republic it’s still standard to have Czech-default conferences with an occasional international speaker. Even if attendees are mostly Czechs, it’s a really bad experience for the international speakers. So the next DevFest will be English-default. Our website, organizational information, keynotes etc. will be only in English. We won’t force Czech speakers to speak English, but Czech talks will be clearly marked in the agenda. We can attract more international speakers and hopefully some international attendees as well.

Playfulness

Prague DevFest always tried to be more than “yet another conference”. We tried to turn it into a true “festival” by gamification. There was always a lot going on outside the lecture halls which woke up your inner geek. We had a theme and related theatrical scene during the keynote. In 2012, killer AI Agnes was running the show. In 2013, we had a renaissance theme with the Golem. In 2014, we hired professional LARPers to help us with an RPG game for our attendees. We would like to continue in this tradition and make your DevFest experience unforgettable.

Google I/O spirit

Google I/O is always an awesome show. I’m interested in it from organizer’s point of view. How do they do it? Our team will come to this year’s Google I/O, gather inspiration and try to replicate some of the gadgets and experiences. It’s mostly about the afterparty. This year’s afterparty won’t be the usual “here is a free beer, now talk to strangers”. It will be an experience full of geeky fun.

Paid event

First DevFests were always free. But that caused around 40% of no-shows. And we had the venue and catering prepared for them. We experimented with an entrance fee at the last DevFest and it was successful. We plan to keep the prices low, so the conference is affordable for students and freelancers. We would like to cover variable expenses like food and prints by the entrance fee. Fixed expenses like the venue rent will be covered by our partners. I also think that paid conferences have a higher “prestige” in the minds of people.

Community

This is not new. DevFest has been and always will be community-organized. We are not doing it for profit, but because we enjoy it. We try to create a conference that we would like to attend ourselves. We have some partners who help us with the budget, but we will work with them for everyone’s benefit. There will be no sponsored talks, hiring everywhere or annoying ads. Some of our partners actually have some really cool technologies and gadgets which are worth sharing. We believe that if the partners are not marketing themselves aggressively, it actually improves their chances of attracting new developers.

Organization since January

DevFest is always in November and the organization usually starts in the summer. And in our experience — it’s too late. We tend to focus on must-haves and leave out nice-to-haves, which makes the difference. The last months before the conference are very hectic and stressful. This year we started in January and we believe it will pay off. I already have 9 core organizers from GUG.cz with big responsibilities, 7 more organizers with partial responsibilities and many others will come just for the event to be “support” orgs. Hopefully this year we won’t have to quit our jobs and break up with our girlfriends or boyfriends because of DevFest :)

So… save the date!

November 4th–5th 2017 in Prague