Comments on: On d.construct06 http://blog.lylo.co.uk/2006/09/10/on-dconstruct06/ Not very much at all, really Wed, 26 May 2010 15:34:54 +0100 http://wordpress.org/?v=2.8.6 hourly 1 By: Andy Budd http://blog.lylo.co.uk/2006/09/10/on-dconstruct06/comment-page-1/#comment-462 Andy Budd Thu, 05 Oct 2006 18:52:18 +0000 http://www.lylo.co.uk/blog/2006/09/10/on-dconstruct06/#comment-462 Thanks for the write-up. Glad you enjoyed the event. We bill d.Construct as a "grassroots event" for a couple of reasons. Firstly the event is targeted primarily at individual developers rather than big companies. One way we do this is by keeping the costs down, so freelancers and people working for small companies can afford to attend. We also see ourselves as a grassroots event as we're not doing it for the money but for the benefit of the community at large. We're not a dedicated conference company, just a bunch of web developers wanting to do something fun. The first event we did was much more "grassroots" with no sponsorship and only about 100 people attending. However we sold out of tickets in half an hour so wanted to increase the capacity this year so more people could attend. This obviously meant needing to get a bigger venue and a bit of corporate backing, but I don't think sponsorship affected the event at all. Having 400 seats to fill means that you need to get some fairly high profile speakers to ensure the event is a success. I don't think we would have been able to fill the capacity if we had Joe Blogs from the local design shop talking about their new CMS system. However the majority of the speakers attending were locals or personal friends, many from smaller companies. The main exceptions were obviously Simon and Paul from Yahoo! and Jeff from Amazon. Simon and Paul are good friends and have supported our event from the start. They are passionate developers and regular speakers on the grassroots event circuit. Even if they didn't work at Yahoo! they would have been speaking at these type of events which I think is a testament to their passion as developers. I agree that Jeff's talk was just this side of being too corporate. However we thought that Amazon were doing some really interesting things and had some great stuff to show you guys. The event was about APIs after-all so we felt it made sense to invite some of the companies responsible for some of the best APIs. However I would have liked the event to have been a bit more hand on, so that's something we're going to aim for next year. To help keep the community focus of the event we're going to set up a "steering committee" made up of local developers. Only by listening to the attendees and members of the local community will we be able to keep the event focused on your needs. If you have some suggestions for great speakers or ways to keep the event "grassroots" our inbox is always open. Look forward to seeing you next year. Thanks for the write-up. Glad you enjoyed the event. We bill d.Construct as a “grassroots event” for a couple of reasons. Firstly the event is targeted primarily at individual developers rather than big companies. One way we do this is by keeping the costs down, so freelancers and people working for small companies can afford to attend. We also see ourselves as a grassroots event as we’re not doing it for the money but for the benefit of the community at large. We’re not a dedicated conference company, just a bunch of web developers wanting to do something fun.

The first event we did was much more “grassroots” with no sponsorship and only about 100 people attending. However we sold out of tickets in half an hour so wanted to increase the capacity this year so more people could attend. This obviously meant needing to get a bigger venue and a bit of corporate backing, but I don’t think sponsorship affected the event at all.

Having 400 seats to fill means that you need to get some fairly high profile speakers to ensure the event is a success. I don’t think we would have been able to fill the capacity if we had Joe Blogs from the local design shop talking about their new CMS system. However the majority of the speakers attending were locals or personal friends, many from smaller companies. The main exceptions were obviously Simon and Paul from Yahoo! and Jeff from Amazon.

Simon and Paul are good friends and have supported our event from the start. They are passionate developers and regular speakers on the grassroots event circuit. Even if they didn’t work at Yahoo! they would have been speaking at these type of events which I think is a testament to their passion as developers.

I agree that Jeff’s talk was just this side of being too corporate. However we thought that Amazon were doing some really interesting things and had some great stuff to show you guys. The event was about APIs after-all so we felt it made sense to invite some of the companies responsible for some of the best APIs.

However I would have liked the event to have been a bit more hand on, so that’s something we’re going to aim for next year. To help keep the community focus of the event we’re going to set up a “steering committee” made up of local developers. Only by listening to the attendees and members of the local community will we be able to keep the event focused on your needs.

If you have some suggestions for great speakers or ways to keep the event “grassroots” our inbox is always open. Look forward to seeing you next year.

]]> By: Andy Stewart http://blog.lylo.co.uk/2006/09/10/on-dconstruct06/comment-page-1/#comment-316 Andy Stewart Mon, 11 Sep 2006 07:35:23 +0000 http://www.lylo.co.uk/blog/2006/09/10/on-dconstruct06/#comment-316 Loved that small insight into the somewhat inexplicable workings of your mind in the tagging talk! Great write-up of d.construct -- I almost feel like I was there. Cheers. Andy Loved that small insight into the somewhat inexplicable workings of your mind in the tagging talk!

Great write-up of d.construct — I almost feel like I was there.

Cheers.
Andy

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