Announcing GopherCon 2016

GopherCon 2016 will take place at the Colorado Convention Center in Denver, Colorado on July 11th through July 13th, 2016.

We’ve listened to the feedback you gave us from GopherCon 2015 and want to explain the changes we’re putting in place for GopherCon 2016.

Multiple tracks

The big change for 2016 is the introduction of multiple tracks during the afternoon sessions. On Day 1 and Day 2 we will feature 30-minute plenary talks in the main theatre until lunch time. After lunch, we have secured additional space for two tracks of 50-minute tutorial sessions in the afternoon. The tutorial sessions will run in parallel with other talks and panels in the main theatre. Everything will be recorded and available after the conference, so while it’s impossible to be in three places at once, you won’t miss out.

The final day of the conference remains the same hack day free-for-all, but we’ll have more breakout rooms and will be introducing birds-of-a-feather sessions for sprinting on your favorite Open Source Go project.

Everyone gets a mentor

GopherCon is proud of its continued tradition of featuring new speakers from the Go community, but we know that giving a talk in front of 1500 people isn’t easy. In 2015, we offered speakers an opportunity to be paired with an experienced speaker and were very pleased with the results.

Extending and improving on this tradition of mentorship, every speaker whose talk is accepted at GopherCon 2016 will be paired with a mentor to help them prepare and practice their talk.

The call for proposals for both plenary and tutorial sessions opens on January 1st, 2016. You can find out more details by visiting the call for proposals website, cfp.gophercon.com.

No questions during plenary sessions

Questions at tech conferences have a poor reputation. There’s the pressure of coming up with a coherent question while you’re racing to be the first in line for the mic. There’s the danger of that “well, actually…” moment. And it’s hard to fight the feeling that question time is just a filler while the next presenter is getting their laptop to work with the projector. In fact, many speakers have told us that the most stressful part of giving a presentation at a conference is question time.

We’re going to try something different for GopherCon 2016. Instead of a few minutes of question time at the end of each plenary session, we will be asking everyone to hold questions until after lunch, when we will invite speakers from the day to join an extended panel discussion.

For the afternoon tutorial sessions, we expect the smaller rooms size to be more conducive to questions from the floor and encourage speakers to plan their talks accordingly.

Workshop training

In addition to the conference proper we will be holding a workshop training day on Sunday, July 10th.

The workshop day will feature two parallel tracks of training. Track one will be a one day Hardcore Go workshop. Track two will focus on advanced use of the standard library and debugging Go programs.

Workshop passes will be available for purchase separately.

Diversity

Everyone is welcome at GopherCon. Whether you’re speaking on stage or listening from the audience, whether it’s your first Go conference or your tenth, you are welcome.

We strongly encourage diversity at our events and actively solicit proposals from a variety of potential speakers. The conference reserves the right to invite speakers who have not submitted proposals in order to create a conference that is more enjoyable, more informative, and more inclusive.

Code of Conduct

GopherCon is proud to announce we have adopted the Go Community Code of Conduct.

GopherCon, and its organising body, Gopher Academy, is dedicated to providing a harassment-free conference for everyone, regardless of age, disability, gender, nationality, race, religion, sexuality, or similar personal characteristic.

We do not tolerate harassment of conference participants in any form. Conference participants violating these rules may be sanctioned or expelled from the conference without refund at the discretion of the conference organisers.

Full details will be available on the GopherCon website on January 1st, 2016.

Everything starts on the 1st of January 2016

This announcement is just the tip of the iceberg. We’re going to be taking the wraps off this thing on the first 1st of January 2016. You’ll find full details available at the GopherCon 2016 website

https://gophercon.com/

Early bird tickets for GopherCon 2016 go on sale January 1st, 2016.