The annual Developers Conference in Mauritius seems to be (one of) the most anticipated IT events on the island. Since the very first edition back in 2015 the conference always has had a focus on collaboration between and integration of all user groups. Similar to previous years, we managed to welcome several speakers from abroad thanks to supporting companies and sponsorships.
Following our mission statement, the #DevConMU is a free of charge, community-driven, three-days IT tech conference hosted annually in Mauritius. It’s an event full of business opportunities and professional networking. Attendees can learn about latest software development technologies, methodologies, as well as cloud features and infrastructure.
Free of charge
All of our regular meetings and activities throughout the year are free of charge and we wouldn't change this principle for the pinnacle event of the community. Yes, agreed, it is challenging and not an easy task to organise a large tech conference like the Developers Conference Mauritius solely running on fresh air, good will and a bit of pixie dust...
Given the lack of ticket sales on purpose the developer conference relies completely on the financial support of local and international contributors. In doing so, the conference committee is reaching out to our supporters and sponsors with various benefit packages that bring value and exposure to them. A good argument here is that we're providing a platform to meet and greet a specific type of audience.
And more important to us by skipping any entrance fee is the fact that we are open and inclusive to anyone in the IT world of Mauritius (and abroad). Meaning that everyone from secondary school level to students to professionals and even job-seeking candidates is able to join the our tech show of the year. This opens doors and opportunities we cannot even imagine...
Our youngest attendees were secondary students and about 14 years old. Already passionate about software development and surely the Developers Conference is a solid platform to learn more about it.
Community-driven
Although there is a small core team of three organisers, namely Chervine, Vanessa and Jochen, an event like the Developers Conference definitely relies on more manpower, knowledge and skills from the community. The conference website is open source and all code is accessible on GitHub. There had been various contributions like the Developers Conference 2018 Sessions Feedback App which was built on top of sessions presented during the conference itself.
#DevConMu PWA almost done !
— Sun 🇲🇺 (@__Sun__) May 16, 2018
hoping it runs smoothly during the conf 😅
Thanks to all the developers who contributed to the project on Mauritius Software Craftsmanship Community github!
WARNING: Emoji Overdose ! pic.twitter.com/0nRis29tY9
A shout out to everyone that was involved in the visual design of the website, the conception of the sponsorship brochure, the making of the PR material, and so on... Thank You! You are the community and it is your contribution that makes it a great event.
Three days of IT
Speaking of the conference event itself, like in previous years, we were able to assemble a full schedule over three consecutive days. Apart from the technical talks and presentations at the main venue, there had been additional activities organised by the various user groups over the same time, namely
- Flutter Study Jam by GDG Mauritius
- Linux Installfest by LUGM
- Discovering Vue.js workshop by Front-End Developers
- Hardware exhibition and talks by Mauritius Maker Community
Check out the full conference schedule for all the bells and whistles of Developers Conference 2018.
Impressions from the event
In case you did not attend, well, you missed out a lot!
This year we had a dedicated Social Media Guru, Manishka Kistamah, who helped massively to get the postings out on all major social media platforms. She also did a tirelessly job during the three conference days literally jumping into each single sessions to take either a few clicks or a short live video. Perhaps you might like to visit our video section on Facebook.
Manishka, awesome job well done - Thank you!
More photos of the event are publicly accessible in our Photo Gallery of Developers Conference 2018 and on Facebook.
Happy Hour
After a long day of transfer of knowledge, networking and exchanging among peers we thought about offering something different in 2018. Surely, everyone needs to relax and what better to have an informal get-together a the brewery next door?
The Happy Hour on Friday had a special surprise...
Live on stage: local rock band Skeptical!
Statistics of Developers Conference 2018
Let's talk a bit about the numbers. Overall it can be said that we improved compared to last year.
After reviewing the proposals and choosing the presentations we had a whooping 63 accepted sessions held by 56 presenters (8 female speakers).
A big shout out to all of the 18 companies which helped us to put this conference together. Without your assistance this wouldn't be possible in this format.
Similar to previous years, running an event free of charge has to deal with both sides of a coin. Despite increasing the number of official attendees to 277 plus an additional 50 guest badges to a total of 325-330 attendees in 2018, we had to deal with approximately 25% absence. Although this is clearly an improvement to former conferences it is still to high and we are going to address this in the future.
A special Thank You to all the speakers, especially the ones that came from abroad.
We know travelling is time consuming and tiring. We appreciate your interest, your effort and your commitment to come to Developers Conference 2018, and we hope that you had a great time speaking at the event and hopefully managed to visit the island a little bit, too.
Sessions Feedback App
A novum this year was the session feedback app that allowed attendees to express their opinion about the presentations and speakers of the conference.
Top speakers based on the results
Note: The app developers refrained from their nominations - Thanks!
Top Voters according to the feedback app - Awesome!
- Zehreen
- Leslie
- Bhavesh
Top Tweeters on the interweb - You rock!
- Ish
- Ameerah
- Zehreen
Developer Conference 2019 is coming...
Head over to https://conference.mscc.mu/ to get the latest updates on the 5th anniversary edition of Developers Conference.
See you there!
Image credit: Jordan Bienvenue; enhanced by Sandeep Ramgolam