Event Recap: Developers Developers Developers Developers aka d8event is a Hit!

This weekend hundreds of students descended upon Microsoft NERD to learn about the latest web technologies for both development and design as well as what makes startups a great place to work. The first floor conference area was standing room only as students from 57 different New England schools eagerly listened and learned from great web experts like Dharmesh Shah, Angus Davis, John Resig, and Annie Wang.  It was a lot of fun to put on the event and I picked up a few things watching the talks. I'd like to share some highlights and lessons learned from the event.

D8event (as we called it for short...) could not have happened without the awesome help of many people, so I'd like to thank those I was fortunate enough to work on this event with:

1) thoughtbot & Dan Croak

Without Dan and thoughtbot, this event would have never happened.  Dan's passion for the event and the great network thoughtbot has helped ensure exceptional content was delivered by great speakers.  They were awesome partners for the event as we effectively shared responsibilities and our complimentary skill sets created a fun, educational event.  Many thoughbot employees got involved with the event, not only helping run things the day of the event, but also giving great talks, designing our gorgeous site and helping coordinate speakers. thoughbot is a huge asset to Boston with contributions like this and many other community activities.

2) The Amazing Speakers

As mid-afternoon hit and our 12th speaker came on, I briefly spoke with Brian DelVecchio and Paul Crivello of Digital Lumens.  They noticed that despite the rapid pace and limited breaks, students were glued to their seats; there was barely a single student who was outside the main event, which is rare for any event filled with so many talks.  All the credit goes to the speakers.

After the event I talked to quite a few students about who their favorite speakers were:

Angus Davis: Why Work at a Startup

Angus talked about life at Swipely and how they've had to pivot to a new business idea. He didn't pull any punches in talking about what really mattered and what it's like.  This tweet sums it up:

Dharmesh Shah's Day in the...no, "Life of a Hackapreneur"

There are few certainties in life: death, taxes and Dharmesh Shah giving killer presentations.  This time Dharmesh talked about the rewards of having a career in startups as a developer like not having to go into management.  In typical Dharmesh fashion, he was insightful, entertaining and clever.  Dharmesh's talk was best summed up by Microsoft Evangelist Abby Fichtner's tweet:

Pat Nakajima: Ruby On Rails (Live coding)

If you've ever met Pat, you know he's an incredibly entertaining guy to be around in any situation.  He did not disappoint in his presentation as he live-coded for the audience and showed them how to use Ruby on Rails to instantly build a blog.  He drew multiple laughs from the audience as he mocked himself for a lack of preparation and astutely pointed out to the audience, "That's development life!" when he had syntax issues in his code that the audience helped him resolve.

An 18 year old student from Northeastern captured Pat best with this tweet quoting Pat: 

Annie Wang: Typography

Annie gave an awesome presentation showing how typography has a huge effect on messaging.  As you would expect, the talk was filled with great visual examples.  Her opener got everyone's attention when she pointed out: 

Ben Scofield: Ship It

The day wouldn't be complete without a great presentation on the importance of getting your code out in the wild as soon as possible! Students ate up Ben's presentation as many tweeted furiously about the need to get something out there.  This tweet on Ben's session was one of the most RT'd tweets of the day:

3) Awesome Students

Packing Microsoft with this many awesome students is no mistake.  Dan and I worked hard to spread the word of this event and the results paid off. I'd like to particularly recognize some students who helped evangelize our event to their classmates: Chris Gallello, Evan Morikawa, Marc Held, Jason Nochlin and Chris Corcoran.  Many of you in the startup community know these guys because they're active in the ecosystem themselves.  

If you go to the mobile version of the d8event site you can see information on school breakdowns, which will show that the schools those guys attend were some of the most well represented at the event. The Olin students had awesome enthusiasm and Evan pointed out this amazing fact about him and his classmates:

Lessons Learned:

I'd like to also share a couple of lessons learned from the event that I hope those of you thinking about planning events will consider:

1) Plan early:

Dan and I started talking about this event in September! We started seriously planning then in October.  This 5 month lead time made it easy to reserve space, go after tough speakers and even work to get folks to travel in for the event (Tom Preston-Warner flew in from the Valley, for instance).  Also, since Dan and I have day jobs, this allowed us to move at a more reasonable pace and not kill ourselves.

2) Solve a problem / Fill a void:

Dan and I killed 2 birds with 1 stone with this event: we helped address the developer shortage in Boston and the student - startup community disconnect.  This proved very powerful as students and companies alike were incredibly excited for this event and left very pleased.  

3) Be Passionate:

Dan and I are both passionate people and we had strong opinions on what this event should be.  We both sent lengthy emails at times debating the merits of different aspects of the event.  It was this conflict that was incredibly healthy and built this event to be as strong as it was. Just like in a startup, you want conflict. Building a great event means settling the occasional disagreement which leads to better results than when the discussion started.

4) A student's endorsement is worth 10x a school email blast:

As I mentioned in "awesome students" above...it's a big deal to have great evangelists on campus.  Our signups always surged when students told other students about the events. The open rate just isn't that great in department email blasts, but students will always open emails from their friends and classmates.

5) Let students sleep in:

We didn't start things off until shortly after 11:30am and that was a key piece of success; letting students sleep in a bit made them sharper for the day and made it much easier for people to travel in (students drove in from all over New England).  The room was filled with students by shortly after 12pm, which meant they barely missed any talks by starting their Saturday on "college time."

6) There will be a d8event part deux.

It's not a matter of IF, but WHEN. Dan, Pardees, the thoughtbot team and myself are all a little tired from this event, but we'll regroup and talk about when we'll do the next one.  It was too much fun not to.

What was YOUR favorite part of d8event?