Opening Remarks with Peter Grandstaff

So this is uh the traditional and ancestral homeland of the Eno, the Shikori, the Sissipaha, the Okinichee, and other peoples of Siouan descent. And welcome to day three of Django Con US twenty twenty three. Sounds like everybody's having as much fun as I am. I'm Peter Granstaff. I run two rock software. I'm the conference chair this year. This is also my first DjangoCon. For many years I felt like this conference was just something that other people did far away that resulted in a really good YouTube channel.

Maybe I'll go someday. Uh that view started changing in 2020 when I met Dawn Wages. Dawn told me how amazing this community is and told me to pay more attention to this event. And she was really right. It was also Dawn who pinged me on Twitter last year suggesting we should get together a proposal to bring Django Khan to Durham. I dove right in, I've been working on this conference ever since, and it's been an amazing, life-changing experience. So thank you, Dawn. Uh I wanted to share all that with you

because everybody here and everybody online especially uh because you might relate to it some of what I'm gonna say and I want you to know that you can help make DjangoCon better too And there's some really great reasons to get involved. I'm the kind of person who would come to a conference like this normally and just sort of be a fly on the wall. Sit in the back, watch all the talks, meet a few people, uh, but not form any huge networks of amazing connections like I feel like I have this week. For the last two years I just attended online. I didn't participate in any of the discussions.

And that felt safe to me. And if that feels like you, I want to ask you to reach out to hello at DjangoConUS and say, I want to help organize. Why would you want to do that? Because when you have a job to do here, you get to put on that hat. You get to be a different person here. You feel empowered. It becomes easier to just go up to random people and talk to them. It gets you more connected with the community. Not only that, but through the organizer Slack and the meetings that we do there, you're gonna end up knowing a bunch of people. And when you show up here to a bunch of familiar faces, it feels a lot easier.

And these are these are awesome people. Working with intention to make an event and a space that empowers people and creates ripples of good in the world And you can be a part of that. You don't have to be conference chair. I don't recommend it. You just have to show up and do what you'll say you do. Take the tasks you want to take on. There's lots of things to manage and more hearts and more hands help. So send that email and I will see you in the organizer Slack. On to logistics. So today is deep dive day. We're going to have all the talks here in this room.

You won't have to make any tough decisions If you haven't already gotten your t-shirt or swag bag, please do so at the registration desk. And we are selling the extra t-shirts for $10 each, which is a bargain, while they last. Social media. I have been having a lot of fun every night when I get home from this looking through Twitter at the hashtag DjangoCon. I do want to remind folks we have a great conference Slack that you can participate in live during the events, and that also helps connect you with the online folks. Uh we reuse that server every year. So once you're in there, unless you leave, you'll stay connected with all the other attendees from past years.

There's over a thousand people in there. It's wonderful. I'd especially love to see some more photos posted in there. I could use one of me kind of from the back that shows the crowd that I can send to my mom. Um another thing going on there tonight at seven PM is the trivia contest. You can form a team of up to five people and uh your the winners will be immortalized on the trivia contest website. Big thank you to our sponsors, six feet up. Platform SH, we could not make this event happen at this ticket price anyway

without these great sponsors. The platinum sponsors are Revsys, Apptable, and Cactus. Our gold sponsors, Lincoln Loop, Two Rock Software, JBS Solutions. Foxley Talent, the Wharton School, Rollbar Sentry, Coherence, Ansible, Scout APM, JetBrains, and Wagtail CMS. Special thanks to Django Software Foundation, Python Software Foundation for funding the Opportunity Grants program that makes this more accessible to people who might not otherwise be able to attend. Do want to remind everybody again of the code of conduct. I think uh we have not had any issues that I'm aware of, and I think one of the reasons we're a community where we don't have to struggle too much with that is because we do have

the code of conduct and we make it clear that we take this seriously. We know to use the phrase, hey, we don't do that here, if we need to. And we know to report any incidents to conduct at DjangoCon. us. We still have lightning talks to come today. 1230, it's your last chance. If you've got a fun idea or a weird idea or a crazy idea, please sign up. They're a lot of fun. Sprints will start tomorrow. Make sure you get a ticket on the conference website so we have a headcount. The cactus office, you just show up there at 9 a.

m. tomorrow morning. It's right around the corner over there, Morris Street. We will have some light pastries and coffee in the morning, thanks to Discover Durham, which has been an incredible partner for this event. For lunch, we'll have access to a lot of great restaurants in the area. Thank you so much for being here.