Wagtail in the Windy City
Our recap of the talks and fun times at DjangoCon US 2025
We honestly had one of the most perfect weeks in the great city of Chicago. The weather all week was gloriously cool and sunny. We had several hundred of our favorite Wagtail and Django people to hang out with. And, as usual, we learned so much from all the incredible speakers DjangoConUS brought to their stage.
Also, in a glorious total coincidence, Chicago was in the middle of peak bird migration. According to BirdCast, nearly 5 million birds passed through Chicago during DjangoCon US. So, it’s no surprise our Wagtail flock was drawn to the city too!
Have a look at our favorite highlights and photos from the conference.
The Wagtail talks
There were two scheduled talks on Wagtail this year and both of them we're given by someone named Michael. It honestly just worked out that way. We don't really have a higher percentage of Michaels in our community than any other community does.
On Tuesday, Michael Trythall from Lincoln Loop taught everyone his recommended strategies for building a Wagtail CMS experience that editors will love. Here are some of the principals he shared:
- Prevent errors. Make it real hard to do something bad.
- Avoid deep nesting. Four levels maximum.
- Respect the editor's time. Make it easy to find things.
- Use user-friendly labels. Find out what words your users use and use them.
- Use consistent structure for components. Don't make users think more than they need to. Create a happy path for them.
Michael also went over his recommendations for how much flexibility editors should have and how he approaches balancing their needs with the needs of developers and designers. If you're sad you missed this one, Michael will also be sharing a lot of this hard-won wisdom at Wagtail Space.
On Wednesday, Michael Riley Jr. from Platform.sh gave an introductory talk that showed people how to get started with Wagtail. He walked through a bunch of various content management systems and discussed the pros and cons of each of them. Then he delved a bit deeper and shared some of the things he thought were important as someone who spends a lot of time fine-tuning hosting platform settings. One of the most key things he suggested for new people was to explore and test caching options early so you don't wind up in a situation where a sudden traffic increase causes trouble on your Wagtail site.
We also had some fantastic lightning talks about Wagtail too! One of our favorite quotes of the conference came from Chaim Kirby of Budgie Health, who used Wagtail to build his family's adventure website Kirby World Tour. What he said about Wagtail is, "It's wonderful! It's beautiful! It has dark mode." We honestly couldn't have said it better ourselves!
Another great short case study came from Rizwan Mansuri of GlobalLogic, who did a lightning talk on how the Government of Ireland transitioned from using a legacy content system to Wagtail. Moving 283k of content entries is a big lift and we're impressed that Rizwan showed the audience the key parts of that migration in just five minutes.
The author of this post also took the stage to share a quick lightning talk version of her blog post about What AI tools get right and wrong with Wagtail. She learned at this conference that an Agents.md file might help fine tune things and get LLMs to perform better with Wagtail.
Other talks we loved
Unsurprisingly, large language models (what folks are calling AI these days) were a big topic at the conference. Some of our favorites on the topic included:
- Django for AI: Deploying Machine Learning Models with Django by Will Vincent: Will's talk was very practical and gave the audience a lot of resources for making machine learning and Django work well together hand in hand. He already has a blog up that contains most of his talk notes and code links. Definitely give it a read.
- Hidden Dangers Of AI In Developer Workflows: Navigating Security Risks with Human Insight by Dwayne McDaniel: Dwayne looked at the rise of AI tools from a security perspective. He shared some of the most common mistakes developers are making with these tools and some ways to avoid them.
- A(i) Modest Proposal by Mario Munoz: In an updated take on Johnathan Swift's A Modest Proposal, Mario explored what extreme scenarios could occur if we let big tech dictate our futures without restraint or regulation.
AI wasn't the only thing people were talking about though, so here are some other talks that we got excited about:
- Lateral Thinking with Weathered Technology: How The Nintendo Philosophy Applies to Modern Web Development by Carson Goss: This talk was a fantastic exploration of how and why Django and htmx work so well together as technologies.
- The Source of Change: Bettering Online Open Source Communities Can Begin with You by Kattni: If you need an instruction manual for how to make a community inclusive from day one, Kattni's talk was a great crash course.
- Python for Planet Earth: Climate Modeling and Sustainability in Action by Dhristi Jain: Dhristi dug into the Python tools available for climate modeling as well as other tools for analyzing data to help drive us towards a more sustainable future.
Core team member Tim Allen marks a transformative decade
Even though it wasn't technically a talk on Wagtail, core team member Tim Allen from The Wharton School did share some of his Wagtail adventures in his talk What a decade! Tim closed out the conference by going over how The Wharton School went about choosing Python and Django as their primary technologies. He said that if he could go back, he would put a lot more weight into how active the communities were around specific technologies. Because, Tim said, they had no idea just how much the special communities backing Django and Python would propel those technologies forward. He said, "We got lucky."
Tim also shared how these communities continuously support his own struggles with addiction and alcoholism. He went over how much of a difference it made to have people who had his back the whole time. He also dedicated his talk in an emotional moment to a colleague named Lindsey who passed away the week prior to DjangoCon US. Tim pointed out that even as LLMs change how we approach our work in the tech industry, they can never replace what matters most in tech: community.
Tim get a well-deserved standing ovation at end. We're so proud of you Tim!
The Wagtail booth
Thanks to the generous support of Torchbox and CodeRed, Wagtail had a booth at DjangoConUS this year. Vince Salvino, this blog author (Meagen Voss), and a rotating group of other core team members spent time at the booth introducing people to Wagtail and helping them out with their Wagtail questions. They spread stickers around the conference and promoted our wicked good talk line up for Wagtail Space 2025 to encourage people to come.
The Wagtail meetup and sprints
On Wednesday, we had a meetup for everyone interested in Wagtail during one of our conference breaks. Wagtail product lead Thibaud Colas introduced everyone to the Wagtail Roadmap and gave them an idea how the Wagtail product team members and the Wagtail core team decide on what features will be added next to Wagtail. He went over the upcoming features and got feedback on those choices from everyone who joined us. We also answered questions and went over some other future possibilities for the Wagtail project.
Sprints were a bit more informal for the Wagtail folks who attended this year. Rather than organize a Wagtail-specific table, we embedded ourselves in different groups and answered any Wagtail questions that came up. We appreciate core team member Scott Cranfill putting his hand up and agreeing to be the point person for questions. You rock Scott!
From DjangoCon to Wagtail Space
This was a truly fantastic DjangCon, and we'd be lying if we didn't admit we're experiencing some event drop after being around so many fantastic people. We didn't even get into how much Chicago deep dish pizza we ate or the amazing boat tours we went on. Thank you so much to DEFNA for putting on such a fantastic event in Chicago! We're so grateful to you for making DjangoConUS as amazing as it is!
We're looking forward now to October and Wagtail Space 2025. If you find yourself experiencing some event drop too, grab your free ticket to Wagtail Space so you can reconnect with some of your Wagtail and Django friends virtually and make some some new ones.