Parent Driven Development Episode 029: Organizing Conferences 00:57 Balancing Conferencing with Parenting Andy has organized RedDotRubyConf (https://www.reddotrubyconf.com/), still organizes Brighton Ruby (https://brightonruby.com/), and has spoken the past few years at RubyConf (https://rubyconf.org/). Andy also puts out an email newsletter, with one Ruby/Rails technique delivered with a ‘why?’ and a ‘how?’ every two weeks. It’s deliberately brief, focussed & opinionated, and called One Ruby Thing (https://onerubything.com/). Chris helps to co-organize Ruby For Good (https://rubyforgood.org/). Systems, systems, systems. Staying in the speaker hotel during crunch time. Getting paid helps. Having no co-organizers = no extra communication challenges. Relying on your partner. Staying local helps. Having a venue. 06:52 Conference Sizes: How Big is Big? Andy runs Brighton Ruby as a single track, one-day conference of 300-400. Ruby Central (http://rubycentral.org/) conferences by comparison are up to about 1,000 attendees and multi-track over 3-4 days. Ruby For Good is about 80 people, but has less of a conference feel because it's groups of people hacking on different projects over a few days. 09:46 Classifying These Gatherings as "Work-Adjacent Hobbies" Benefits the career. Meeting, networking, and making friends. Feel-good factor. Prioritization. Time frees up as kids have gotten older. 19:30 Family Involvement Kids on stage are cute. Teenagers can help volunteer! Osmosis of exposure. This is what mom/dad does! Showing that work does not necessarily equal drudgery. 22:30 Behind-The-Scenes Tradeoffs The best track at any conference is the speaker track. Coaching, mentoring, and cheering on first-time speakers. Repetition of putting on conferences over the years = it gets easier, more fun, and less stressful. Atomic Habits (https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0735211299/ref=as_li_qf_asin_il_tl?ie=UTF8&tag=therubyrep-20&creative=9325&linkCode=as2&creativeASIN=0735211299&linkId=a6154fb4886e2b76620e69e1d1f699a2) 28:21 Meal Kits and Meal Planning Conversation We all have tried them. We all have opinions. We are definitely open for sponsorship. Email us! 👇🏻 32:36 Getting Involved in Conferences (for those who are brave enough) Speak. Volunteer. Conference Scholar/Guide Programs. i.e. Ruby Central's (http://rubycentral.org/community#scholarship) Community Meetups 37:46 Genius / Fail Moments Andy's kids learning empathy from movies. (#Genius) Chris forgot to pack his son's main lunch entreé and left it in the microwave! (#Fail) Josh's daughter revealing she has a video clip of the two of them from when she was very little and being fond of watching it often. (Genius) KWu's son fell and hit his head 🤕. (#Fail) Follow & Support Please follow us @parentdrivendev (https://twitter.com/parentdrivendev) on Twitter or email us at panel@parentdrivendevelopment.com (mailto:panel@parentdrivendevelopment.com). Our website is at ParentDrivenDevelopment.com (https://parentdrivendevelopment.com). Support us via Patreon (https://www.patreon.com/parentdrivendev) and get access to our our Slack Community. Panel Chris Sexton (https://twitter.com/crsexton) KWu (https://twitter.com/kwugirl) Josh Puetz (https://twitter.com/joshpuetz) Andy Croll (https://twitter.com/andycroll)