Last week we held our first face-to-face event since September 2019. It’s hard to believe that three and a half years have passed since /dev/world 2019, but it was a delight to be able to bring everyone together again.
This event was notable for a few firsts:
- it was the first time we’ve held an event in partnership with Seek
- it was the first time we’ve held X World and /dev/world at the same time, as separate tracks at the one event
- it was the first time we’ve run X World in Melbourne
- it was the first time where health and safety had to be front and centre in the planning and execution of the event
Overall, we’re extremely happy with the results. The two outstanding keynotes and 25 community sessions across the two days of the event were very well received by all attendees.
The facilities at Seek were first class, and our contacts there were a delight to work with. We sincerely hope that we are able to work with Seek again in the future – their support for community events is commendable. Special thanks are due to James Corcoran, Stephanie Symeou, and Matthew Gregory for making us feel welcome, and being so accommodating of our needs.
The Mac Admins Podcast team recorded a live episode immediately following X World, and interviewed a number of people involved in the organisation of the event, and some of the speakers. You can listen here.
Thanks are also due to many people, including:
- Tom Bridge and Tim Oliver for their engaging keynote sessions
- James White and Marcus Ransom for running each track, including introducing speakers, and managing Q&A from the audience
- all of our speakers, some of whom travelled great distances to be with us
- Jon Manning and Matthew Gregory for AV and session recording (session videos will start to appear here and on our Youtube channel soon)
- Our outstanding organising team and blind proposal reviewers, including Mars Buttfield-Addison, Jon Manning, Tim Nugent, Paris Buttfield-Addison, James White, Tony Gray, Josh Deprez, and Ross Bennetts
And last, and most importantly, our sincere thanks are due to all of our attendees. We were thrilled that everyone took our Covid-safe plan seriously. Mask wearing is not popular, but Covid-19 is still with us, and wearing a mask is a way to show other attendees that you’re not only considering your own health – you’re considering the health of everyone else.
We’re looking forward to more face-to-face events in the future. Please check back here from time to time for updates.