CodeConf LA: Recap & Special Thanks

Last week, 300 open source enthusiasts gathered in Los Angeles for CodeConf LA, and more than 500 people tuned in from around the world via live stream. The event opened with a full day of workshops, followed by two packed days of single-track content, featuring more than 20 speakers. The conference brought together open source developers, software engineers, security professionals, and operations engineers to network, learn, and share the technical components as well as the cultural aspects of open source systems.

We will be sharing speaker slides, complete session videos and more in the next few weeks. In the meantime, check out the awesome community conversations that took place on social media (some speaker slides are there too).

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Featured Content

A dynamic range of speakers took the stage to share insights, offer tips and showcase projects on open source systems. Here are some of our favorite quotes from the day:

“If you can’t be kind, helpful, and welcoming you should step away from the computer and go do something happy until you can.” – Mitchell Hashimoto, Hashicorp / The Hashicorp Formula to Open Source

“If we find ourselves always having the answers, then we’re asking really boring questions.” – Kerri Miller, GitHub / Crescent Wrenches, Socket Sets, and Other Tools for Debugging

“Languages succeed not because they are perfectly designed, but because of the tools, people behind them.” – Michael Bernstein, Code Climate / The Perfect Programming Language

“Diversity is inviting people to the party, inclusion is making sure they’re comfortable.” – Anjuan Simmons, Assemble Systems / Lending Privilege

Workshops

Attendees were invited to join us a day early for three in-depth workshops. Together, we spelunked into Git’s plumbing (Dissecting Git’s Guts, led by Emily Xie from Recurse Center), reflected on the cultural implications of being an open source change-agent (Transitioning to InnerSource, led by Cedric Williams from PayPal), and scraped data from the web using two real-world examples (Web Dev & Data in a Graph Database, led by Nick Doiron from The Asia Foundation).

“To make organizations work like open source projects, we have to address the culture first.” – Cedric Williams, PayPal / Transitioning to Innersource

Diversity & Inclusion

We know that diversity breeds innovation and that bringing people together from disparate backgrounds will not only enrich the conference experience but also the experience of contributing to open source projects. For these reasons and more, we aimed to make the space as welcome and inclusive as possible, including providing gender neutral restrooms, nursing rooms, and a quiet space for Ramadan.

In addition, we allocated nearly 20% of conference tickets for distribution through some amazing local organizations, and provided complimentary tickets to local user groups and students to encourage attendance by a wide range of individuals and experience levels.

After Party

What happens when a few hundred open source enthusiasts descend on a swanky bar for a pub quiz-style trivia night? The gloves come off in a ruthless competition to answer the most esoteric open source themed questions. At CodeConf LA’s After party, prizes were won, a dance party coalesced, and forever friendships were forged.

Covetable Artifacts

This year we had a ton of fun with the event visuals and swag. Attendees marveled at the substantial badges, rocked the conference t-shirt en masse, and left adorable stickers in their wake. The 180-degree animated screens got some love too. Check out these awesome videos made by attendees in our custom stop-motion video booth:

Thank You

Many thanks to our Sponsors and Community Partners for helping to make this event possible, and for their support for the open source community.

Written by

Alaine Newland

@AlaineN