Get Ready for the Conference!

Get Ready for the Conference!

Hey everyone!

We’re just a week away from the start of the conference, and we’re getting excited to see you soon! We’re excited to gather for 3 days of content, collaboration, and conversation.

We have a few reminders before we welcome you all this Sunday:

  • Ticket sales close in a few days, buy now!
  • We have a great Welcome Wagon, which has a guide, as well as introductory tours of our online platform
  • We’ve had a couple schedule changes, including an exciting new sponsored workshop on writing for accessibility.
  • There are lots of ways to get involved at the conference on the day-of, which we list out below so you can prep a bit for them.

Ticket sales close on May 18

To help us manage capacity and make sure that our conference environment is cozy and friendly, we are going to close ticket sales on May 18 at 11:59PM Pacific Time. If you haven’t purchased your ticket yet we invite you to get your tickets soon.

For those of you who already purchased your tickets, you will get an email with our online conference platform (Hopin) registration link on May 17. We will also send a reminder on May 19, in case you missed the first email. This will give you the opportunity to set up your Hopin account and troubleshoot any access issues that you might have.

If you have a ticket and don’t get an email from us by May 20, please email us and we’ll help you out!

Welcome Wagon guide and platform tour

Each year we create a guide to help our attendees get the most out of the conference. Following the success of last year’s conferences and based on your feedback, we expanded our Welcome Wagon guide to help you get the most out of our event this year.

Another valuable thing that we’re doing this year is the Welcome Wagon team will hold a live orientation session and platform tour for our virtual platform, Hopin. There will be 2 sessions on Sunday, and 1 on Monday morning. This will give you a chance to walk through the virtual event and ask all your questions ahead of the conference.

Check out the Schedule page for exact time and locations.

Schedule changes

We have had a couple of schedule changes that are notable from the previously announced schedule.

  • We have added a sponsored workshop from Google titled Technical Writing for Accessibility. This will happen on Tuesday afternoon after the main conference is over, but still on the conference platform.
  • We have had one speaker cancel their talk. We’re sad they won’t be able to share their knowledge with us.
  • We have added a small session on how our meetup community is organized, and how you can get involved, in the previous speaking slot.

The Schedule page on the website is always the most up-to-date place to check for schedule information.

All our events and activities

There are a large number of events at the conference beyond the main track of speakers. We hope that you’ll get involved with some of our other events, and get to know more folks that are hanging out at the conference!

  • Lightning Talks. We’ll have lightning talks each day after lunch. Registration is handled on the day of the conference. These are 5-minute presentations and a lot of fun. They can be about anything you want, this is your chance to share something you are passionate about with the audience. Slides are not required.
  • Unconference. We’ll be running the Unconference all day Monday and on Tuesday afternoon. These are also planned day-of, and allow attendees to schedule a session to talk about any topic they wish. It’s a great way to find others who share your specific interests.
  • Job Fair. On Tuesday morning we’ll have a job fair where you can find your next documentarian-friendly job. Many of our sponsors will have a table, where you can learn more about working with them.
  • Social event. On Monday night we’ll be moving to a spatial chat platform for our social event. This will be a more familiar social space where you can move around and join groups of people having conversations. We’ve used similar platforms at other events, and found that they really help people get to know each other in a more natural way.
  • Conference Help Desk. If you have any questions about navigating the virtual event, we’ll be running the Write the Docs Helpdesk booth, where you can chat with one of the organizers and the Welcome Wagon team.

The Schedule page has the latest and most complete information about all our events. This is where we will also update any changes/cancellations if they should occur.

Thanks so much to all our sponsors

We are so grateful to have our sponsors help in bringing these events to life every year. You’ll be able to chat with most of our sponsors at the Job Fair, and a few will have booths for conversations the entire conference.

Thanks so much to the following companies for supporting the Portland conference this year:

We’re excited to see all of you soon, and can’t wait to share a wonderful few days with you in our online space.

The Write the Docs team