Starting out as primarily Italian conferences for an Italian audience, QtDay, GoLab, and RustLab have grown over time, acquiring international experts among their speakers and attracting participants from all over the world.
What happened in 2020
Unfortunately, everything changed last year. While the organizational machine of the new editions of QtDay, GoLab, and RustLab was already in motion, the pandemic stopped everything.
We didn’t lose heart, though; we went ahead and organized our conferences entirely remotely, trying as best as we could to recreate the events that we were used to having.
So we planned 5 full days of talks and workshops for each conference with a dedicated chat with the speakers for the Q&A.
What we’ve learned
How did it go? It wasn’t easy, we have to confess. There were many participants and we received encouraging feedback, but we know that everything is different in person: it’s difficult for an online chat to recreate the chatter of a coffee break or to be able to have the same interaction between the speaker and the participants at the end of a workshop.
Furthermore, although we had planned the events in time slots that could be a good compromise for many users with different time zones, some speakers found themselves doing talks very early in the morning or late at night.
And last but not least, it’s one thing to take days off where you physically participate in a conference, even for 10 hours; it’s another thing to stay in front of the PC for 5-6 consecutive hours from home. Attention falls; it’s physiological.
What we’ll do this year
While we’re waiting to be back in person next year, we’ve decided that for 2021 we’ll adopt a new format that’s more agile and easier to manage by users.
The conferences will take place throughout the year, the events will be of various types (webinars, workshops, courses, live coding, AMAs) and we’ll have about one a month for each conference so that it will be easier to organize, participate, and maintain focus.
Many of the events will be free, while those which involve a longer duration and greater interaction with a small number of people, such as courses and workshops, can be purchased separately.
Most of the content will be original and presented during conferences for the first time, just like last year: quality and training will be the main theme, and users will still receive a certificate of participation.
To try to encourage interaction, we’ll have a dedicated Discord server where you can exchange opinions and discuss event topics. To encourage constant dialogue, the server will always remain open and available to users even after individual events are over.
What we expect
It’s not easy to predict the future and we don’t know what will happen a few months from now.
Our aim is definitely to keep the wonderful communities active over time that have spontaneously formed around our conferences.
We would like to create continuity in events, encourage the adoption of the most modern and cutting-edge technologies, and encourage discussions and feedback from time to time with communities while promoting transversal knowledge and mutual respect between them.
