codebar Festival 2021 Wrapped
We can’t believe it’s been a month since codebar Festival already! HOW! Time really does fly. codebar Festival was our jam-packed, 100% virtual, 3-day event that happened in March.
Friday
Friday was dedicated to all things coding because we are codebar and we will always run coding workshops. We had workshops on DevOps, APIs, React, Ink, SQL, and talks on Code Reviews, Git, and Accessibility.
Saturday
Saturday was dedicated to all things career. We chose this topic because landing a job isn't just about your coding ability. This day was filled with panels, talks, and a CV Review Hour.
Sunday
Our final day was focused on wellness. Looking after yourself physically and mentally is extremely important. We wanted talks on topics that are not spoken about enough; anxiety, depression, and having therapy. The day started with a yoga session, ended with some guided meditation, and even has a pizza cook along.
We’ve put all the sessions into a playlist on our youtube so you can watch them back, or watch any you missed ➡️ https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLfJjhFVOvESKbUMqNJ59nz15CA2LVvpia.
The response to codebar Festival completely blew us away. We had 1,138 people from 62 countries sign up. When we started thinking about running this event last Summer we estimated a maximum of 500 attendees, so seeing such high demand was amazing! It also made picking sessions from the CFP submissions extremely difficult, as they were all incredible (and the reason each day ended up being 12 hours long).
Another element of codebar Festival we would like to mention is that when we started talking about the event last summer we said if we were to run it we would ensure that every person involved in a session would be paid for their time.
If someone ran a session they were paid £150 (if 2 people were involved in a session they would each receive £150), if someone was on a panel or helped review a CV they would receive £50. Some participants asked for their donation to be paid to a charity, some split their £150 between 3 charities, and some donated the money back to codebar. It is the first time we’ve ever been in a position to do this and we are extremely proud of it, and is something we plan to continue doing in the future. Below is a breakdown of all the payments to date:
- 42 people paid = £5350
- £200 to Mind charity ➡️ https://www.mind.org.uk/
- £50 to Bloody Cancer UK ➡️ https://bloodcancer.org.uk/
- £50 to Black Girls Code ➡️ https://www.blackgirlscode.com/
- £50 to Rise ➡️ https://www.riseuk.org.uk/
- £50 to Trans Pride Brighton Hove ➡️ https://transpridebrighton.org/
- £900 to codebar
These payments would not have been possible without our wonderful sponsors. A huge thank you to Elastic, Avast, Funding Circle, New Relic, and ThoughtWorks. Without their support, we would not have been able to run the Festival or make these contributions to other wonderful charities so we’re sending you the biggest thank you.
We asked people at the end whether we should do the Festival again, and we got a big yes, so we’ll see you all next March for the next installment of codebar Festival.
