Bulls and Birds and Ponies (oh my!) at DjangoCon US 2024
Wagtailers spent a week together enjoying talks, sprints, and other fun in Durham, NC
The Wagtail community had a fantastic time at DjangoCon US this year. With a great mix of inspiring talks, productive sprints, and the incredible food and tech scene of Durham, North Carolina, this was an all-around incredible event. There are honestly too many good things to contain in one blog post, so here are some of our favorite highlights.
Talks
We're a little biased when it comes to some of our favorite talks, since we had quite a few Wagtail community members on the speaker's list at DjangoCon US this year. Scott Cranfill and Meagen Voss kicked off the conference by teaching their Building Accessible Websites with Wagtail workshop on Sunday. On Monday, Meagen followed up with an amusing lightning talk about how the QWERTY keyboard layout came to be (a gun company was resposible, strangely enough). Then Vince Salvino shared all the lessons he's learned from deploying over 1,000 Django and Wagtail websites, and Sage Abdullah gave a passionate talk about how the Django framework changed his life.
Thibaud Colas presented the last Wagtail-related talk of the conference on Tuesday, when he went over the strategies that Django and Wagtail users can use to reduce the impact of our technologies on the planet. He shared reasons for why targeting end user devices is the best approach along with some things that everyone could be doing right now to make their Django and Wagtail websites greener. Some of those things can be found in our Sustainability Considerations guide.
All of the talks our Django friends gave were really great too. Here are some that stood out and that you should definitely watch when the videos are available:
- If We Had $1,000,000 by Jacob Kaplan-Moss: Wonder what Django could do if the foundation had 4x the budget to spend? Jacob walked through what could be achieved and how we could get there.
- The Fellowship of the Pony by Natalia Bidert: We had no idea all the different things that Django fellows did behind the scenes to make pip install Django a smooth experience for everyone during each release. Natalia's talk, which featured plenty of Lord of the Rings humor, was an eye-opening exploration of all the things Fellows do.
- Hidden gems of Django 5.x by Sarah Boyce: Apparently the Django documentation barely scratches the surface of all the amazing things that happen every time a new Django release comes out. Sarah gave us a deep dive into many of the cool things that aren't currently covered by the docs and went over all the nuts and bolts that are pieced together before a new version of Django is unleashed on the world.
- Lessons from E2E Testing Web Applications by Avindra Fernando: A lot of our community members loved this talk because of the practical advice Avindra gave for testing web applications with newer libraries like Cypress and Playwright.
- Django + Alpine.js + htmx Ups & Downs by Karen Tracey: Smaller, lightweight JavaScript frameworks are back in vogue and Karen walked through the good things and the challenges that come from swapping out bigger frontend frameworks like React for Alpine.js and HTMX.
Other fun stuff
There were lots of fun activities happening outside of the official programming. Six Feet Up hosted a Mario Kart competition and also handed out several foldable race cars that popped up all over the convention. Jay Miller of Black Python Devs shared a great folk tale called Anansi and the Python as well as necklaces that were handmade by an African artist. Many people were also clamoring to get their hands on these Django sticker packs created by Sangeeta Jadoonanan and Adam Hill.
Sprints
Wagtail had a strong contingent at sprints this year with several members focused on solving issues or collaborating with Django folks on accessibility. We also hosted a well-attended Wagtail Q&A session where folks asked all their burning questions about Wagtail and shared what they have used Wagtail for.
Tropical storm Helene rolled through Durham on the second day of sprints, but some brave Wagtailers attended anyway despite the strong wind and relentless rain. Fortunately Durham was spared from the worst of the storm, and most conference attendees were able to get home without too many disruptions to their travel plans. Several communities to the west of Durham were not so lucky though, so please consider giving to one of the groups supporting the storm recovery efforts if you can.
Up Next: All Things Open
Our final event for the year will be All Things Open in the United States. There are no official Wagtail gatherings planned but Meagen Voss and Dawn Wages from the core team will be there. Please do come say hello if you're going to attend and tell them about all the great things you're doing with Wagtail.
