In Their Words, Part One
Rebecca Waters
Chairperson
DDD Perth is proud to put our speaker community front and centre. We are very proud of their achievements, from seasoned speakers right through to our first-time speakers in their first year out of university.
Last year, we asked a bunch of speakers from the 2017 and 2018 conferences what they liked about DDD Perth. Here’s what they said. We blushed.
Ming Johanson
Ming Johanson》Mother of 🦄 (@MingJohanson) | Twitter (opens in a new tab)
Ming Johanson’s experience at DDD Perth 2018
There’s a little more to Ming’s quote:
Speaking at DDDPerth last year and having my talk voted for out of 200+ submissions has opened up opportunities for me in my professional setting, allowing me to travel around Australia to address issues in unconscious bias and culture in the tech space that I’m deeply passionate about. This coupled with a crowd of people who wanted to hear my talk gave me overwhelming confidence to submit to other conferences.
Since Ming presented her talk at DDD Perth, she’s taken it to organisations and offices throughout Australia. It’s plain to see how passionate she is about this topic. Thank you for sharing it with us.
(If you missed this amazing presentation in 2018….why not check out the YouTube video (opens in a new tab)?)
Ben Lowry
Ben Lowry (@benjaminlowry) | Twitter (opens in a new tab)
Ben Lowry’s experience at DDD Perth 2018
Speaking at DDD Perth gave me the chance to meet and share my passion with awesome people. I loved having the chance to feel like a part of the wider tech community in Perth.
Ben spoke on Typescript (opens in a new tab) and how to make it work for you. What I loved about Ben’s talk is how he distilled a technical talk into something appropriate for everyone.
Phil Delalande
Phil Delalande (@phildelalande) | Twitter (opens in a new tab)
Phil’s experience at DDD Perth 2018
At the time of writing, Phil’s twitter profile image was the same as the poster. I take that as a loud endorsement of DDD Perth! (Perhaps it’s an endorsement of Kristy’s (opens in a new tab) artwork but I’m going to claim it for the conference).
DDD Perth was just impressive. I expected a small, local, developer-centric conference. I was blown away by the quality of the organisation and the attention to details. It was on par with the best events I’ve seen. I was not sure how a UX talk would be received, but the room was so packed they had to refuse people at the door.
I’m really proud of how we blew away all expectations Phil had for the conference in 2018. It was a huge year for the committee (every year we say that, and every year it’s true) and our hard work paid off. More than that though, what is really fantastic is the appetite of the Perth community to hear about all aspects of creating software, including UX & Design. You can watch Phil’s talk on YouTube (opens in a new tab).
If you’re still on the fence about submitting to DDD Perth, I hope these friendly faces have gone some way towards convincing you that’s it’s worth it!
There are many more people who have spoken at DDD conferences; you can find a lot of the speakers’ Twitter handles on our previous agenda pages (opens in a new tab). The previous abstracts are all shown, and can give you an idea of the types of topics that have been presented before.
We want to encourage people that wouldn’t normally speak at conferences to give it a go! We have a few initiatives to help with that:
- We have an enforced code of conduct (opens in a new tab) to create a friendly, welcoming atmosphere.
- We do anonymous session voting; we will only show the title, abstract and tags of a talk to voters to remove unconscious bias.
- We accept long (45 mins) and short (20 mins) talk options.
- We accept a broad range of technical and non-technical topics related to the software industry; if voters think your talk is interesting, it’s in! You don’t have to be a developer to submit a talk (or attend); we welcome everyone in the software industry.
- We encourage submissions from multiple presenters as well as solo presenters.
- We have a free mentoring service; we have a bunch of experienced speakers who are happy to have a confidential chat with you to run through any ideas you have or give safe and constructive feedback.
- There will also be free speaker training and support for all speakers, so first-timers, juniors, and everyone else is encouraged to submit and will have support!
- Speakers can opt-out of question & answer time at the end of their presentation if they don’t feel comfortable doing it.
Still not sure? That’s okay! There’s always next year.
Convinced? Fantastic! We’ll publish our CFP through our mailing list (opens in a new tab) and on social media when it’s time. If you want to start early, we’ll be using Sessionize (opens in a new tab) again, so set up your account and get writing!