Join us for socials and Wagtail Community Day at Wagtail Space
Check out these opportunities to network and hang out with other Wagtailers
We absolutely love all the talks we have lined up for Wagtail Space next week (seriously, look at this wicked awesome schedule), but we also know that folks come to conferences to meet other people who share their interests and to hang out.
So here's the rundown of all the opportunities you'll have to meet folks and get to know each other at Wagtail Space 2025 next week.
Socials after lightning talks
We don't have a physical hallway for people to hang out in after talks or a bar for a happy hour, but we're going to do our best to create a virtual one in Zoom both days after the lightning talks.
Don't know what a lightning talk is? Well, you're in for a treat! Lightning talks are five minute talks that can be about anything that you think other attendees would be interested in. The talk doesn't even have to be about code or Wagtail! You can talk about a hobby or a cause you're passionate about or some random article or book that fascinated you. The only rules are that you need to meet the time limit (five minutes!) and follow the Wagtail Space 2025 Code of Conduct.
Once all our lightning talk speakers have finished, we'll keep the room open for as long as one of our hosts is willing to stick around. We'll open some breakout rooms depending on the group size to help folks keep from talking over each other and give folks a chance to really get to know each other.
We'll be doing this for both lightning talk sessions each day starting at 4:45 PM UTC, so start thinking about those talk topics!
"Early" bird social and networking session
One of the biggest challenges with running a live, international event is time zones. There honestly is no good way to schedule things that doesn't run into the fact that it will be either ridiculously early or ridiculously late for someone, somewhere in the world. To keep our promise to provide at least one live event that folks in Australia and Asia could join, we've added an "Early" bird social to the schedule on Thursday October 9.
We know it's not "early" for everyone! That's why the quotes are there. But it seems like a win-win to us to cover some more time zones and provide another social opportunity for our friends in Europe and Africa who have commitments that make evening events hard to attend.
Depending on the group size, we'll have breakout rooms ready to keep conversation groups small and help you make some quality connections with other Wagtail enthusiasts. Please come join us!
Wagtail Community Day
All of Friday October 10 will be dedicated to a part of Wagtail Space 2025 that we're calling Wagtail Community Day. What we do and how this day will go largely depends on who shows up and what their interests are. If you've never contributed to open source, or if you're curious how open source contribution works, this is a great chance for you to learn!
We'll be using an unconference format for Community Day where we will collect a bunch of discussion or sprint topics from folks who are interested in leading them and then we will create a schedule and assign breakout rooms for people to join based on what they are interested in. We are planning to give folks one hour slots, but we're definitely open to providing more time if people find they are really having a great session.
We'll be seeding the schedule with a few topics we think are important. Topics like:
- New Wagtail contributor orientation
- Wagtail deployment
- Wagtail AI
- Wagtail Test Data
Besides those topics, our schedule will be open to any topics that people who are attending want to cover. If you've been struggling with localization or want to find people who have done an integration you've got on your sprint calendar, then this will be a chance for you to find those people in real time.
The Community Day schedule will be open-ended and will go on for as long as attendees are interested in spending time with each other and a host is available to keep the room open. Come spend the day with us to meet other people who are enthusiastic about open source and learn how your favorite content management system gets made.
Shared reality and other networking options in Zoom
One great thing about using Zoom Events for Wagtail Space 2025 is that it comes with a bunch of built-in options for networking. Whether you have a Zoom account or not, you can create an event profile in Zoom Events that tells other folks a little bit about you and what you're interested in. You can also use the Lobby Chat to connect with other attendees and set up one on one or group chats through Zoom Events. Another neat thing about Zoom Events is you can quickly indicate to others what you're in the mood for. Look at this profile as an example.
Through your profile, you can choose "Feeling social" or "Simply exploring" to indicate whether you're interested in chats or just want to chill. If you're really not interested in chat, you can choose "Hide Me" so you're not visible in the event search or to other attendees.
Zoom gives us a chance to create a shared reality too because of the background options. When you join us during socials, you can use one of the official Wagtail Space 2025 Zoom backgrounds or create a space portal using one of our videos. Don't know how to make a space portal? We have a video for that on our YouTube channel. Give it a try and come show us what you come up with during one of the socials!
Wagtail Space 2025 Slack channel
We definitely want to encourage folks to give the features in Zoom Events a go. If you really prefer something familiar though and you're a member of the Wagtail Slack community, then we also have the #wagtail-space-2025 channel for people to use for connecting with each other during the conference.
We can't wait to see you!
We're so excited to see everyone! We're sprucing up the spaceship right now and are looking forward blasting off with you next week! If you haven't grabbed your ticket yet, don't worry. Seats on this rocket are free and you can snag one right now.