I am a tech conference and tech meetup organiser, Ask Me Anything!

Comments

[Aymen Loukil]

Hi Lost Semicolon,

Thank you for doing this !
What was the biggest conference you organized ? What was the most challenging part ?

Thank you

[Lost Semicolon 💻🖱]

I am organising the yearly : conf.codecraftuk.org/ in Glasgow, Scotland. We have about 80-100 people so it is a small conf but it is unique, in a way that we don't have any speakers!

I think the hardest part is forseeing people's needs - we do our best to facilitate everyone, and we keep learning every year about accessibility. Understanding barriers to accessing an event whether it is from physical, mental or financial background and eliminating those barriers is probably the most challenging. Mainly because my frame of reference is different to someone who experiences challenges I do not.

[Aymen Loukil]

Oh this is great !! I like the "Guided Conversation" concept.
I agree that working on accessibility is challenging but also exciting.

[Ben Overmyer]

What's the most difficult thing you've had to deal with when organizing a conference/meetup?

[Bill Mitchell]

How did you get started as a conference organiser?

[Lost Semicolon 💻🖱]

I joined a group who was already doing it, and took it from there :) Best to learn on the job, they say!

[Ahmet Eren Yatkın]

I want to share my knowledge across the universe, I always share my knowledge. How can I attend these meetups & conferences as speaker ?

[Lost Semicolon 💻🖱]

Hi Ahmet!

If you would like to be a speaker, most conferences have a CFP ( call for proposals/papers) on their website. A great resource is confs.tech/cfp/ which has a list some conferences with an open CFPs.

CFPs are outlines of talks + your bio ( a little story about yourself) you submit that is reviewed and hopefully accepted.

Many conferences also provide travel + accommodation and some will also pay for speakers to attend. This all depends on the type of event and your "exposure" level as a speaker.

When it comes to meetups, they always look for speakers! Meetups are usually free and run by people in their spare time and so people who put themselves forward to speak at an event are a great help. The best way to approach a meetup is to say you would like to do a talk on X and then provide outline or slides.

If you ever need help writing a cfp, most conferences offer help and there is also the globaldiversitycfpday.com/ once a year ^{^}

Hope this helps!

[Ahmet Eren Yatkın]

Great, Thank you for the deep explanation!