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10 Jun 2024

DjangoCon Europe 2024 bird’s-eye view 🐦️

We had a great time; and hope you did too. See you next at Wagtail Space in the US and Netherlands?

Thibaud Colas

Thibaud Colas

Wagtail core team

Daniele Procida on stage, with the Vigo bay visible in the distance

¡Qué rápido pasa el tiempo! We had a blast at DjangoCon Europe 2024 in Vigo. High-quality talks, and the Spanish seaside as a backdrop – a recipe for success. Here’s a bird’s-eye view of the conference from the perspective of our Wagtail attendees.

The talks

They were all pretty excellent! A personal highlight was Empowering Django with Background Workers by our core team member Jake Howard. As well as the technical excellency, this talk is a solid example of the Django Enhancement Proposal (DEP) process, and of Wagtail work making its way back to Django (the DEP started as a Wagtail RFC).

Jake on stage, waving, his slide reads "Empowering django with background workers", Jake Howard, DjangoCon Europe 2024

Jake on the main stage, waving. Photo by Paolo Melchiorre.


In the lightning talk corner, we really liked the CV (or is it résumé?) tips by Josh O'Brien. Instantly actionable insights!

Josh O'Brien on stage, with the sea in the background

Josh O'Brien on the main stage, with the audience in the foreground.

The workshops

Our accessibility team member Saptak S gave an excellent set of demos of accessibility considerations for Django developers, all live before-after comparisons. One of those examples is alt text, where Saptak is also supporting a Google Summer of Code internship to provide better defaults in Wagtail.

Saptak presenting, behind the lectern

Saptak presenting in the workshop, showcasing aspects of the Django admin interface.


We also had two of our core team members giving workshops!

The sprints

Over the weekend, we contributed to Django sprints with all sorts of tasks:

Dawn worked on her yet-to-be-revealed Wagtail Space US talk 🤫, and gave a tour of Wagtail to Django Girls Harare organizer Kudzayi Bamhare.

Dawn and Kudzayi sitting side by side in front of a laptop

The atmosphere

A boat trip, a venue rooftop party – it was lovely. My personal highlights here are two efforts to bring some of the conference experience to people who couldn’t be there in person:

  • Paolo Melchiorre’s excellent coverage of the conference with live posts at #DjangoConEurope2024.
  • Organizers providing a livestream hybrid experience with venueless. They even provided free access to everyone who applied for an opportunity grant but didn’t get approved!

Up next: to Wagtail Space and beyond!

We have a packed schedule this month with two more events coming up 🌈 Dawn will be presenting at Wagtail Space US, and Jake at Wagtail Space NL. Join us at those events for more of the same quality of talks, workshops, and sprints.

Core team members Thibaud, Jake, Dawn, with the Django pony

Thibaud, Jake, and Dawn with the Django pony.