Simon Willison’s Weblog

NICAR 2024 Tipsheets & Audio. The NICAR data journalism conference was outstanding this year: ~1100 attendees, and every slot on the schedule had at least 2 sessions that I wanted to attend (and usually a lot more).

If you’re interested in the intersection of data analysis and journalism it really should be a permanent fixture on your calendar, it’s fantastic.

Here’s the official collection of handouts (NICAR calls them tipsheets) and audio recordings from this year’s event. # 11th March 2024, 1:14 am

Breaking Cliques at Events. Eric proposes a new guideline for long-running conferences, which have a tendency to form somewhat insular cliques of the attendees who have been going the longest: “For every year you have attended the event, you should try to meet that many new people each day.” # 3rd December 2017, 1:51 am

The Pac-Man Rule at Conferences. This is such a good idea from Eric Holscher: at the conferences he organizes he tells his attendees “When standing as a group of people, always leave room for 1 person to join your group”—to encourage networking and inclusive converations. # 17th November 2017, 2:34 am

How the CIA Staged Sham Academic Conferences to Thwart Iran’s Nuclear Program. “The importance of a conference may be measured not only by the number of Nobel Prize winners or Oxford dons it attracts, but by the number of spies. U.S. and foreign intelligence officers flock to conferences for the same reason that Army recruiters concentrate on low-income neighborhoods: They make the best hunting grounds. While a university campus may have only one or two professors of interest to an intelligence service, the right conference — on drone technology, perhaps, or ISIS — may have dozens.” # 12th October 2017, 12:20 am

Find conferences to speak at with Lanyrd. We just launched calls for participation on Lanyrd. You can list calls for any conference, browse them by topic, and subscribe to an Atom feed of calls for your area of interest. # 24th November 2010, 2:38 am

Welcome to Lanyrd | The Lanyrd Blog. We’ve started a blog for Lanyrd, our social conference directory project. We’re off to a great start: “Lanyrd is now listing 1,508 conferences and 5,167 individual speaker profiles. 5,637 people have signed in to the site and made 13,293 edits to our data.” # 11th September 2010, 9:32 pm

Lanyrd—the social conference directory. Nat and my new project, launched today and doing pretty well despite some early server hiccups. Sign in with Twitter to see conferences that your friends are speaking at, attending or tracking, then add your own events. We’re particularly keen on helping people build up a detailed profile of their previous talks, so adding older conferences is encouraged. # 31st August 2010, 7:41 pm

Videos from DjangoCon 2009. The videos from September’s DjangoCon are now available, including my “Cowboy development with Django” talk. # 3rd January 2010, 11:02 am

Where was the ’editorial viewpoint’ at the News Innovation unconference? Martin Belam points out that a problem with unconferences when applied to audiences outside the technology world is that techies who know how the system operates will inadvertently take over the event, skewing the conversation towards technical topics. Not an insurmountable problem, but one that organisers should probably take in to account. # 17th July 2009, 10:52 am

EuroDjangoCon. 4th-6th of May 2009, in Prague. Talk submissions are open now, and registration starts on the 6th of February. # 24th January 2009, 6:54 pm

dConstruct 2008 notes. I missed this year’s d.Construct due to DjangoCon, but from Alastair Campbell’s notes it looks like it was the best one yet. # 15th September 2008, 3:23 pm

Comet at the Highland Fling. I thoroughly enjoyed the Highland Fling yesterday. Here are the slides from my talk on Comet. # 4th April 2008, 10:13 am

Open Tech 2008—5th July in London. Awesome—I still have happy memories of the last Open Tech (back in 2005), very excited about this one. Once again, it’s only a fiver to get in. # 18th March 2008, 1:03 am

Django at PyCon. Unfortunately I’ll be missing US PyCon this year (I’ll be at SxSW and Webstock in New Zealand though)—but it’s great to see that there’s a strong line-up of Django related presentations. # 21st January 2008, 9:54 pm

Call for Participation for XTech 2008. XTech 2008 will be in Dublin, Ireland from the 6th to the 9th of May. Lots of really interesting topics in the CfP (OpenID, OAuth, Comet, CouchDB...)—deadline for submissions is the 25th of January. # 5th December 2007, 3:28 pm

Future of Web Apps—Past Events. MP3s of talks at the Future of Web Apps Expo are starting to trickle on to the official site. # 14th October 2007, 12:14 pm

OLPC: Give 1 Get 1. The long rumoured “buy two OLPCs, donate one to the third world” scheme is actually happening. I plan to get one; the robustness, battery life and WiFi range should make for an excellent conference / outdoor machine. # 24th September 2007, 11:07 am

Register for dConstruct 2007 (via) These are likely to sell out within the next couple of hours, so sign up quick! UPDATE: They’ve sold out. # 10th July 2007, 11:28 am

PyCon UK 2007. The weekend of the 8th and 9th of September, currently accepting talk submissions. I’ll be running a Django tutorial session. # 10th July 2007, 9:42 am

Oxford Geek Night 3 (via) The date for your diary is July 25th (moved from the 18th). # 2nd June 2007, 12:38 am

Launching Expectnation. Edd’s conference organisation software. I was a reviewer for XTech and the process was completely painless. # 1st June 2007, 8:55 pm

Announcing FOWA Expo—London October 2007. I’m chairing the development track. # 29th May 2007, 10:08 pm

d.Construct 2007 is go! One of my favourite UK events. This year’s theme is “Designing the User Experience”. # 21st May 2007, 12:15 pm

Google Seattle conference on scalability. Google are hosting a conference on scalability in Seattle on June 23rd. They’ve just put out the CfP. # 10th March 2007, 4:37 pm

XTech 2007 schedule: behind the scenes. Expectnation looks like a smart piece of software for conference organisers. There’s surprisingly little crossover with Event Wax—it looks like the two could complement each other nicely. # 23rd February 2007, 11:25 pm

OSCON 2007 Call for Participation. The submission deadline is February 5th; the conference itself is July 23rd to 27th. # 13th January 2007, 10:47 pm