Scala.IO is done for this year, only a couple of things to wrap up (publishing the talks, a bit of accounting, …) before we move on to the organization of Scala.IO 2023!
This edition was outstanding. We had such a warm support from the community, from our speakers, our sponsors and our attendees. It was a bit overwhelming at some point, and very very friendly.
Personally, I have been in the Scala Community for the major part of my professional life, so seeing people again, growing with them and sharing those moments is highly rewarding.
What went wrong?
Not much, it went well, a couple of things we need to fix for the next edition :
- We had to cancel workshops, we announced them too late, so we were unable to gather enough participants. However, having the Scala Spree was a success.
- Video problems with MacOS. That led to reprogramming the talk by Jules Ivanic (GraphQL/ zio-test / Caliban) + a couple of issues repeatedly during the day. We have a fix and a backup process for next year.
- Catering problems. Water and drinks were not freely available during the afternoon due to a misunderstanding with our caterer. That will be fixed, we will make sure you stay hydrated and caffeinated if needed.
- Women attendance and beginner attendance. We had very few attendees (and speakers) from those two populations. We don’t have a fix on it yet, but we will make sure to make efforts in that direction to gather more new and diverse people for the next edition.
How do you manage?
There have been plenty of friendly questions in that direction. Short answer: we don't!
More seriously, from year to year, the team pretty much follows this structure:
- core organization team (managing sponsors, suppliers, speakers, tickets, communications before the event + leading the pace during the event).
- additional team members (CFP, communications, support before the event + crowd and room management during the event).
- and outside event organizers, especially for Paris (suppliers, stands, venue … and everything that can go wrong during the installation of the event)
We have a very efficient event organizer in Paris (http://321idcom.fr/), Karine manages all the things that could go wrong fast directly, and she comes back to us for the rest which makes everything easy.
We had a lot of core team members from the French Scala community over the years, with Jean Helou being invested a lot in the conference since 2013, Fabrice Sznajderman since 2016 … Valentin Kasas for past editions in Lyon, François Sarradin and I since 2013, on and off depending on the editions…
This year we pushed and helped Fabrice restart the conference as fast as possible, with people from Univalence (Dylan Do Amaral, François Sarradin and I), with additional members ( Valentin Bergeron, Nicolas Couturier, William Machi) to help with the call for papers, tickets, suppliers …
We were joined for the day of the event by Jean Helou himself, and Warris Radji who help a lot with the organization during the day.
With all of that, things fall in motion once set, and we are happy with the outcome.
Why and what’s next?
Scala.IO was created in 2013 to help people use Scala professionally. At the time, the population in the meetups were split between people that would use Scala at work and others that would use it on the weekends. The creation of the conference helped with the implantation of Scala, especially for hobbyists to make a career out of it.
This edition was significant for us, we haven’t really had time to meet and share our passion for Scala, and its ecosystem over the past 3 years. It was lovely to meet again.
Since Scala has gained a lot more traction, in the future we aim to leverage the conference to welcome newcomers and ease the transition to Scala using the friendly vibes and kindness we have around the event.
It was very interesting to be able to connect during the event with the Scala Center and Darja to start to see what can be done for the community with the leverage of common resources, and help go in that direction.
There is a lot of movement in Scala with the adoption of Scala 3, the different IOs, and all the great things that are coming in our ecosystem. We are pleased to be a part of it and follow through.
Next format
We are going back to what we were doing. For the next edition, on the 26th and 27th of October 2023, we are aiming for something closer to our old format:
- 2 days
- 3 tracks, 48 talks
- at least 12 talks for beginner in Scala (dedicated track for 1.5 days)
- Workshops on Wednesday (beginner, effect systems, spark, …)
- a bigger community Party on Thursday
- crêpes (we make sure they come back to the event)
- …
For 300, up to 400 attendees, if we can convince more students and beginners to come.
We will use all the experience gathered for the past 10 years, and we will make a well-rounded event in Paris, and we can’t wait to share that with you again!
Thank you and see you soon
As always, thanks a lot to Martin Odersky, for everything and especially greeting us with a great keynote.
Thanks to all the attendees, speakers, sponsors for making that moment memorable.
See you very soon!