The importance of community

Speaker 1: Jane Cam US

Speaker 2: Welcome to DjangoCon US 2023. We are in Durham, North Carolina.

Speaker 3: We've sought to create a welcoming, diverse space full of all kinds of different people from all over the globe and all kinds of backgrounds to come together and build a strong community that can take back lots of good into the world, continue the evolution of Django.

Speaker 4: Well, it's better than I expected because I'm getting to meet a lot more people, I'm getting to learn a lot more than I did. And it's exciting just being here and learning with everybody else and getting to meet amazing speakers as well. So yeah, I'm pretty stoked up. It's still not done, but I'm really like excited. I am overwhelmed with feelings of joy and learning and it's just perfect. It's my first time as well. So uh It's my first time speaking and attending and I come from Nairobi, Kenya, so that's exciting to be here still. So yeah.

Speaker 5: Uh it's been really great so far. Um definitely learning a lot about the community around Django, which you know I use Django on the day to day. Um but it's been really um inspiring to just see all the different ways that people use Django and all the different parts of the Django community. Yeah.

Speaker 6: Junkon's going great. I think especially the community is so great. It's not just uh the talks that people are interacting with, but also in the hallways, the open space sessions. Interestingly, I also got mail. It was an open session. It's so interactive. I think it's going on really great. This

Speaker 7: is my first single. and I'm super excited and I'm getting to meet uh a lot of people and the the community is amazing and and I feel very welcome and and and and very comfortable here.

Speaker 8: The community is great, it's it's welcoming I would say. Um And I think this should be a blueprint for any other conference that happens in this part of the world. Tacking

Speaker 3: Community is the most important part of uh of the software.

Speaker 6: Um for one thing it's so that you have shared humanity. You have users of the software and you want to represent those users. So having a community of people, especially a diverse one that can see things. through the eyes of the users makes it so you produce a better product, but it also empowers people because uh like Danielle talked about, we are changing the world. Not just through the software, but culturally. We're making safe spaces for people and welcoming people into our industry through our conference.

Speaker 7: Well to me I think the purpose of building community is like it it it gives access for folks into the industry who might not otherwise have that by just having an open space where they can come and like learn how stuff works. Like I'm a self-taught coder. I taught myself to learn how to code largely By being able to look at code and being able to contribute to it and get feedback and stuff like that. And it's just, you know, it's great to be able to meet the people who work on this stuff and like see how they think about problems and how they approach stuff.

Speaker 4: Gosh. It's kept me employed. I think it's kept a lot of people employed. It's provided a lot of value and self-worth to a lot of people. It is not just a puzzle that people work on, but like it also provides a purpose. I did an alliteration and I didn't mean to, but it's um it 's been so fantastic to see the community continue to thrive. It existed before I got here, but I can definitely see my mark as I've been involved and um I'm I'm thankful. Th

Speaker 3: I mean there's so there's so many things, but I think one of the one of the things is just the sense of feeling that you belong and that you're with your kind of people and no matter how you identify or what it what particular thing will will uh make you feel like you belong. Um there is diversity here and so there's a place for many different people to feel like they belong. And with that kind of uh support your uh you you're able to learn and challenge yourself and grow and um do all of the things that will help you become um the kind of person in the community who can then help the next person along And I think I think that's really important because that's how you get uh longevity of the community, that's how you get growth in the community, and bring more people into the fold.

Speaker 7: The purpose is to not only build the best quality of software, but also to build software that serves the needs of as many people who are using it as possible They're watching five nine.