About DDDEM
Contents
What Was DDD East Midlands?
A Conference That Celebrated the East Midlands
The East Midlands tech scene was incredibly diverse - it was the perfect blend of professional corporates, innovative independents, and well-funded start ups. This unique and perfect mix of traditional and contemporary was reflected in the DDD East Midlands Conference. We were part of the multi-national DDD conference community, but with a focus on promoting the talent, companies and the amazing tech community that the East Midlands had to offer.
- We wanted to promote inclusivity, support and camaraderie.
- We wanted to encourage members of the local tech community to do a talk
- Hosted in a beautiful, modern building, which was one of the largest educational buildings in Nottingham City Centre.
- Talks were submitted anonymously and voted on by attendees.
- A keynote and a range of talks split into 3 tracks.
What did the DDD stand for?
DDD stood for (in this case) Developer! Developer! Developer!
Developer! Developer! Developer! was an umbrella, open-source conference format. By naming ourselves DDD, and associating ourselves with similar events, we abided by certain principles. Other than that, this conference was by the East Midlands community for the East Midlands community and was unique in its own right. There was more information about Developer! Developer! Developer! further down this page for those interested.
DDD was first formed as a conference in 2005, the first event happening in Reading, UK. Since then it has generated many spin-off events across the world.
The aims of the original DDD were to provide free technical education. During its more than 10-year history, it nurtured nurtured talented speakers, who went on to become Microsoft Most Valuable Professionals, Microsoft FTEs and to present at National and International Conferences.
Though the original DDD conference was focused on .NET, DDD East Midlands was open to a range of talks within the field of technology. It was language and technology agnostic.
The Conference Principles
The event followed these DDD Principles:
- The event was hosted on a Saturday so that attendees did not have to take time from work.
- Tickets to attend the event were free.
As well as our own principles:
- All talk submissions were anonymous.
- There was a democratic selection process for talks involving attendees voting for what they wanted to see.
- The event was arranged with the community in mind.
The Organisation Committee
The very first DDD East Midlands was organised by Moreton and Jessica. Since then we grew to have an organisation committee. Rachel joined us to help organise the 2021 event, and we had a full roster of organisers for 2023 including Steven, James and Mia.
Give them a follow on Twitter, say hi at the local events, offer them a coffee or some chocolate if they looked in need. They ran around on the day of the event making sure your experience of it was the best they could possibly make it.
The Event Crew
We could not run the event without the support of our fantastic event crew. They helped with set-up, with looking after attendees and speakers during the day and cleaning up after the event.
Promoting Inclusivity
As an embodiment of the East Midlands tech community, we wanted to promote inclusivity, support and camaraderie. Here were just a few of the ways we aimed to do this:
Accessibility Page
In order to remain transparent, we tried to answer as many accessibility related questions as we could on our Accessibility Page.
Submission And Selection Process
The submission process was anonymous and the selection process democratic. This was a conference for the community, by the community. All talks that were submitted were anonymous. When the attendees voted on which talks they wanted to see, and when the organisers were sorting out the agenda, identifiable information about those who had submitted couldn't be seen. This was to keep the process as fair as possible and ensure talks were picked on their advertised content, not by who was presenting.
As mentioned, attendees got to vote on the talks they wished to see. Talks were selected by popular vote, but with some discretion by the organisers of the conference. The discretion was to ensure variety at the conference. If two or more talks were nearly exactly the same, the most popular continued through and the next most popular, different talk replaced the one with identical content.
We also asked that all talk submissions abide to the Code of Conduct. We wanted all attendees to feel comfortable at the event, so asked that no submissions or talks contain content of a graphic, violent or sexual nature or contain any language that may be considered marginalising or hateful. If you wouldn't want to say it to someone you respect, please don't include it in your submission. Organisers held the right to remove anything that may be thought to cause distress.
Making speaking accessible
We wanted to encourage more people to speak and to encourage a diverse range of backgrounds, experiences and tech related roles to come and share their learnings at our event. There were a number of ways in which we tried to make speaking more accessible:
- Offering mentors for speakers that were selected and requested extra help.
Speaking in front of a crowd of people wasn't easy and we knew it. There was the option to highlight that you would like extra support, as a first-time speaker, or even just as someone who felt that they would benefit from it.
The East Midlands was lucky to host some amazing (and incredibly generous) international and experienced speakers. Some of these fine people donated their time to any speakers that indicated they wanted extra support. This support covered ways to address nerves, timing a talk, structuring the content of a talk, making sure your talk aligned to its description and more.
- Arranging an optional workshop for all speakers to help them construct their talk.
All selected speakers were invited to an optional workshop before the event. This contained advice on subjects such as talk structure, presentation styles, designing your slides. This was made possible by our very kind Workshop Sponsor. More details were described here closer to the event.