Conference highlights and thanks to the community!

2024-01-05T00:00:00+00:00

G’day everyone,

The Write the Docs Australia team is now emerging from the post-conference recovery period, and we wanted to send out a quick message to thank everyone for helping to make our 2023 Australia conference such a success. We appreciate everyone who makes the conference possible: speakers, sponsors, organizers, volunteers, and attendees alike! We’re happy to share some of the highlights with you.

Its especially gratifying to see so many folks join us in what has been a really tough couple of years for many, and in our first in-person conference in 4 years!

Conference recap

With 70 attendees this conference was another smashing success! We had the usual mix of talks on the main stage along with Q&A, lightning talks, unconference sessions, discussion panel and the social event. We thought everything went pretty smoothly this year. Lots of knowledge was shared, and we had a great time.

Overall, we were excited with how our awesome community came back together at our onsite event, and also provided great feedback after the event. We hear you and will do our best to improve your experience with this conference next year.

Videos

Videos of the talks and lightning talks are now available on our Write the Docs Australia YouTube playlist. We also included the Q&A recordings for the main talks.

Thanks again to Peter and Junko Fundeis for doing such a great job with these. You can also subscribe to the broader Write the Docs YouTube channel or our very own Write the Docs Australia YouTube channel so you don’t miss any future content!

Sketchnotes

We’re excited to share the full resolution sketchnotes from the conference on Flickr. You are welcome to use them for non-commercial purposes, like including in your write up from the conference :)

Thanks to Angharad Neal-Williams for doing them this year!

Code of Conduct transparency report

As with any Write the Docs event, this conference was covered by our community Code of Conduct. We aim to be as transparent with CoC incidents and enforcement as we can.

To ensure that our CoC was visible and accessible, we took a number of specific steps:

Every participant agreed to the Code of Conduct in advance during registration.
The CoC, or a summary, was included on the conference website and Hopin Reception
The CoC was repeatedly mentioned in our conference introduction and announcements.
We specifically stressed that the CoC applies to all conference spaces including the social event.
We encouraged all attendees to report any incident, even if they were not sure whether it was a violation.

None of our organizers were approached about any CoC concerns at this event. We know that this is, in part, a reflection of the thoughtful and inclusive community that we’re so lucky to have.

That being said, we’re also very conscious of the fact that just because nothing was reported doesn’t mean nothing happened. If there was any personal conduct or other aspect of the conference experience that did not meet the expectations of behaviour set out in the CoC, please email us at conduct@writethedocs.org.

Ready for more?

We are already in 2024 folks! Our Portland conference is scheduled to happen 14-16 May and the call for proposals is now open. You can submit a talk for the Portland conference until midnight Pacific time 15 January 2024. This conference will take place in-person in Portland.

If you cannot make the Portland conference, we will also announce dates for the online Atlantic conference soon.

We will announce dates and more details for the next Australian conference in the middle of 2024.

Support our community by sponsoring

Every year we are fortunate to have the support of like-minded organizations and communities, who believe in the collaborative and welcoming community spirit and help us make our events great.

Thanks so much to the following companies for supporting the conference this year:

KnowledgeOwl

We’re also looking for more sponsors to make our other events just as magical as this year’s Australia event. You can see all our sponsorship options for our Portland conference on our website.

Join our Slack network

Our Slack network has really grown over the past few years. It has been extra busy in the days and weeks leading up to the conference, and we hope that y’all continue the conversations throughout the year.

If you haven’t joined, now is the time! Check out the Write the Docs Slack.

Attend a meetup event

We hope you continue to build the meetup community in Australia and keep in touch with other documentarians near your hometown. We have a number of meetups in cities across the country, and if you don’t see your city listed consider starting a meetup!

Thanks again

We’re so grateful to our sponsor, speakers, volunteers, and attendees for making this conference possible. Whether you were able to come out this time or not, we hope to see you again next year – or even sooner at one of our other events!

The Write the Docs Australia team

Blog - Posts tagged australia-2023