Sprints Introduction

Um I I'm quite sure that some of you are Sick of seeing me up. Yeah, they're leaving already. Look at that. I don't I don't blame you, George. Um who has been to a sprint at her conference like this before and knows what I'm talking about. And who hasn't? Okay there. Um The first time I went to EdjangoCon was in 2011 when it was in Amsterdam and I had no idea what a sprint might be, so I just booked tickets for the my my accommodation so on for the three days of talks But on the uh first day of the sprints, my train was not leaving until midday, so I wandered into the venue where the sprints were taking place just to see what this thing was.

And I can't remember now what I thought it was going to be like, but there were all these people, some of them that I knew already, and most of whom I just met for the first time, gathered round tables, round laptops and huddling in corners And I sat down at the Django CMS table, which is what I was interested in, and um I didn't even I was so naive about what I should be expecting at a conference. I didn't even have a computer with me at the conference. So um you know, I didn't know what I was supposed to be doing. And I sat down there and said, Oh what w what's happening? I said, Well we're working on Django CMS and somebody gave me a computer and I only had an hour or so, but it turned out that they were working on Django CMS there and other people working on Django and other people working on other projects

and I said is it okay for me to be here? And they said, yeah. And they gave me a computer and I actually managed to make a little contribution to Django CMS just in that time that I was there. And I felt that I'd wandered into the party at the end of all the hard work and It really was people saying, well, this is the best part of the conference. And I I felt So sad that I was leaving that behind because I just got a glimpse of it and I really wanted to be in it. So the next year I made sure that I was there for the um the code sprints. Now

What's going to happen is that there will be people, ordinary human beings like you and me, and we'll be sitting around in front of computers, working on something, exchanging ideas with each other, uh looking for help on things. And at the end of the two days, work will be done in different places. Some of the work will mostly go on inside people's heads. And some of the work will go into git comments and code repositories as well. But it doesn't matter where it happens. And I I'd like to invite you just a Please come, even if it's just to see what a sprint looks like. If you've got half an hour or so to spend tomorrow morning and you're leaving Call in on us.

We'd love to see you. I'm not sure what I'm going to be doing, but I know that at the end of it, I will have done something useful. And you might be unsure about your software skills or your Git skills or and those things don't matter because it's it's collaboration. I I bit more or less learnt Git because somebody took the time to explain it to me at that sprint that I went to the subsequent year. So it's also a very good learning experience. If um Uh there's anything that you think you can contribute, like a spelling correction or an image, or um an idea

or you want to ask about something that might be that's on your mind. That's where you'll find collaborators. So Come and have a look and see what you find. If you were f if you're going to be around anyway and you're wondering whether it's for you jump in and um I'm sure you'll want to come back again next year too. So thank you. So off we go.