The beginning of DDD East Midlands
Introduction
Coming to Nottingham, October 2019 — a tech conference with the aim to celebrate, reflect and promote the booming tech scene in the East Midlands.
The East Midlands has a lot to boast about in terms of the tech companies, talent, and community it contains. The DDD East Midlands team thinks that the East Midlands demonstrates the perfect blend of the professional corporate businesses and the innovative independents and this bleeds right through to the tech scene. This unique and perfect mix of the traditional and contemporary is reflected in the event we are planning. It is part of the multi-national Developer! Developer! Developer! conference community, but with a focus on promoting the talent, companies, and the amazing tech community the East Midlands has to offer.
What has DDD got to do with it?
DDD, in this case, does not stand for ‘Domain Drive Design’ but ‘Developer! Developer! Developer’ (confusing, we know). The DDD umbrella 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 was to provide free technical education. During its more than 10-year history, it has nurtured talented speakers, who have gone on to become Microsoft “Most Valuable Professionals”, Microsoft FTEs and to present at national and international conferences.
Though the original DDD conference is focused on .NET, DDD East Midlands is going to be open to a range of talks within the field of technology. It is language and technology agnostic. Nonetheless, we will be following the four rules created by the original DDD:
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Free tickets to keep it accessible for all attendees.
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Held on a Saturday so attendees don’t have to take time off from work.
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Open submission policy for speakers. All submissions will be anonymous and anyone can submit.
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Agenda is democratically chosen by attendees and organizers. Attendees vote on the talks they would like to see at the event.
Enough of that! Tell me about DDD East Midlands!
Hosted in the beautiful, modern building of The Nottingham Conference Centre, which is one of the largest educational buildings in Nottingham City Center, the conference will consist of a keynote and 15 one-hour talks split into 3 tracks. The talks will be submitted anonymously and be voted on by attendees, with the most popular being chosen.
Making it open to all.
As an embodiment of the East Midlands tech community, we want to promote inclusivity, support, and camaraderie. The event is going to support first-time speakers and encourage speakers from a variety of backgrounds in a number of ways:
- Tickets are free!
- The organisers will be doing talks at East Midlands tech meetups on how to submit a strong talk description and ways to construct a talk if you are accepted.
- The event is providing a mentorship scheme for successful applicants before the event. Speakers will have the option to be mentored by experienced, local, professional speakers.
- Successful speakers will be invited to attend a workshop to help them with the construction and delivery of their talk.
- The venue is accessible by disabled people.
- There is a sponsorship tier available to provide live captioning of talks. If a company chooses to support this, they will be making the conference experience much better for those with hearing difficulties.
The aims are to promote a variety of local speakers to submit, from the very experienced to the inexperienced, while guaranteeing high-quality talks and making the event enjoyable to as many people as we can.
Supporting and endorsing the local tech community
A key focus of DDD East Midlands is giving back to, celebrating and promoting the outstanding tech community that has grown in the East Midlands. There is a booming tech community in the East Midlands (just look at the number of events on https://nottingham.digital/). From slack groups to hackathons, there are a lot of opportunities for collaboration and friendship. The organizers are passionate about producing a high quality, well organised, professional event that echoes the qualities of the East Midlands: collaboration, innovation, inclusivity, and camaraderie.
We are thinking beyond the event. We don’t want to just encourage people to join our excellent community for just one day (yes — we CAN be heroes, just for one day), but we want the effects to last beyond the conference.
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Providing training for submitting to conferences and building engaging talks will hopefully lead to more local speakers spreading the word of how great the tech scene is in the East Midlands at events nationally, if not globally. We want people to talk about the amazing companies they are working for, the cool tech they are working with, the successful (and sometimes less successful) times they have collaborated on something great.
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Videography from ShutterSocks has a couple of advantages. First, these talks will be available to share after the conference. This extends our audience and the opportunity for free education. It keeps the conversation flowing. Further to this, by having videos of them speaking at a conference — our speakers will have a greater chance and opportunity to practice their talents at other conferences.
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Logo’s logo’s everywhere. Not to give anything away but our swag is really quite marvellous.
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Connections, friendships, meet-cutes. It would be fantastic if our event expanded and added to the already amazing local tech community. We love the east midlands and the tech industry in it. You’ve been great to us, and we want to give something back.
…But not just the tech community…
DDD East Midlands is trying to use local businesses as much as possible because our local independents are great. From videography from ShutterSocks to a coffee cart from Cartwheel (sponsorship still available for this) we want to celebrate the greatness of the East Midlands in as many ways as we can.
Feeling inspired and want to help?
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SPONSOR — all this excellence does come with a price tag. There are sponsorship opportunities costing between £150 — £6000. See! Even our sponsorship is inclusive! We want your company to be involved if you are big or small. Please email sponsor@dddeastmidlands.com to receive one of our beautiful packs designed by Tom Jepson.
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Invite us to your meetup. We will be touring our talk on how to submit a conference and write a talk early next year and want to help as many people as possible locally.
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Consider volunteering. A request for volunteers will go out next year. Help your community have an awesome event by helping us.
