DjangoCon Europe - a thank-you on behalf of the community
DjangoCon Europe 2016 was held in Budapest and organised by a team chaired by Baptiste Mispelon.
Once again, DjangoCon Europe was a credit to its community. Everyone is accustomed by now to DjangoCons in beautiful venues and executed with flair and imagination, but it's worth noting just how well-considered this event was.
There were many technical and non-technical talks of note, but one deserves special mention.
In their talk Healthy Minds in a Healthy Community, Mikey Ariel and Erik Romijn presented a diagnosis of ills in the software industry, and followed it up with a concrete plan to address it, starting in the Django community. With the blessing of the DSF, they will lead a well-being initiative of a kind that has not been seen before in open-source software projects. There will be more on this in due course.
Other talks represented the diversity of interests within Django, and also from outside it, with invited speakers from other sectors of the industry.
13 of the 25 speakers were women - more than half, and unprecedented for any similar event.
The tone of an event is set by its organisers. The tone of this one was deep respect for others, often expressed in small or even subliminal touches, but also made explicit and placed at the forefront of proceedings. The conference was a concrete assertion of the values of the Django community, and a marker for future expectations of Django events.
Another example of the care taken was the way this event handled Code of Conduct issues. In an effort to shift questions about conduct away from being disturbing, dramatic and highly-charged, the organisers followed a policy of transparency and 'normalisation'. This policy sought to make it easier to report, talk about, understand and resolve questions about conduct.
The achievements of DjangoCon Europe were not gained easily, but thanks to a great deal of thought, care, planning and labour. We're very grateful for those efforts, and commend all the organising team for a huge success that all of Django can benefit from.
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