Has it already been a week?
Time sure flies — we had to take a bit of time before writing this to let everything sink in after this year’s events. A week has now gone by since everyone started on their way back to their homes, offices, and regular lives away from the wonderful community that gathered at the St. James Cathedral Centre, in Toronto, for NSNorth.
This tweet meant a lot, and we have to share it with you.
Not the part about the fine work, it was very kind of Charles to say that, but I’m referring more to the “downright magical” part. We felt it too. The vibe this year was fantastic. We were shocked by the number of talks that showed the genuine feelings and vulnerability from the speaker. Every one of our speakers did such an amazing job.
We look forward to sharing a small slice of that with you when we have a chance to edit and share the videos.
Pre-Conference Programs
Everyone at the Community Kickoff seemed to really enjoy the breadth and diversity of the talks. We knew we had something really special after seeing the submissions for the Call for Proposals.
It was wonderful to have a chance to meet people from the numerous tech sectors in Toronto and the surrounding areas.
Daniel Steinberg really knocked it out of the park with his advanced Swift workshop. Daniel is a true professional, and you quickly learn that he loves what he does. Knowing how busy and in-demand Daniel is, we feel very fortunate to have had a chance to bring him up for our first ever technical workshop.
Our Speakers
We cannot thank our speakers enough. You blew everyone away and were the stars of our event. The stories you shared will never be forgotten, and you made an impact on everyone in the room. All of your time and effort are appreciated.
Diversity Support Program
We expanded the scholarship program from last year to include anyone from any underrepresented group in tech. Thanks to everyone who donated something extra, and to the awesome people from Shopify who sponsored an entire ticket. The people who were able to attend through this program were incredibly grateful of the opportunity.
Children’s Program
We are really fortunate to have had a small group of kids in attendance this year taking part in our Saturday Children’s Program. Many thanks to the team at Ladies Learning Code and once again to Daniel Steinberg for running the morning and afternoon sessions.
Offsite Activity at the Hockey Hall of Fame
Following tradition, we kept our special activity a secret until the day of. It was really nice to be able to show our attendees more of our important Canadian culture.
Getting a picture of yourself with the Stanley Cup was pretty cool too.
The Food and Venue
As with previous years, a large percentage of our costs are with catering and the venue itself. When you come to NSNorth, we want to make sure you have nutritious and wholesome options that are truly top notch. Also for this year, we made sure there was no sign of standard bad hotel “coffee” that events try to shove onto their guests. Really good fair-trade coffee was available throughout the weekend.
Share Your Photos
If you have photos you would like to share with us, we would love to see them. You can email us and share through iCloud, or you can upload them to the new NSNorth 2016 group on Flickr.
At the end of the day…
As we have said many, many times before, we simply couldn’t have asked for better speakers, attendees, volunteers and sponsors. Tremendous people like yourselves are what makes all of the effort worthwhile.
From your NSNorth team of Adrienne, Phil, and Dan, THANK YOU.
