One trick I did in a company I worked for was start a spreadsheet where people would input not only the presentations they could give, but the ones they would love to see being given. The result was that people who never submitted talks found out they could and, even though we had a couple slots because of our sponsorship of the event, we got about twice as many from the grassroots effort.
Is DjangocCon US still worth it in 2022? I've been to some PyCon US in the past and it was really a great way to meet the community. I wonder if it's still playing the same role in 2022, or if the community is harder to approach?
Yes. If anything DjangoCon is more worth it than PyCon in my opinion having attended both multiple times. PyCon normally has thousands of participants; DjangoCon US is several hundred. You can/do meet literally everyone if you want to.
The talks are excellent. The hallway chats even better for staying apprised of current best practices. And since Django is so volunteer dominated much of the changes/improvements to the framework happen during in-person discussions.
So a big thumbs up here for attending if you are able.
If anything the fact that DjangoCon is smaller than PyCon makes it more approachable in general. It’s feasible to actually meet everyone at DjangoCon if you really try which definitely isn’t the case with something as large as PyCon
It's definitely effective. DjangoCon is one of the best conferences I've ever been to in terms of diversity of both the audience and the speakers. And that takes a lot of work, it's not something that just happens.
