In 2019, David Gardiner and I organized DDD Adelaide, a not-for-profit software conference that sought to bring the Adelaide software community together.

The why behind DDD Adelaide (and many of the other Australian DDD conferences) isn’t having high profile speakers, or a primary focus on content. This is exemplified by the way the agenda is democratically chosen, with talks being voted in by the community - your conference, your way (in fact, if you had a ticket, your vote counted even more!).

DDD Adelaide’s why is to bring together the Adelaide software community. It provides a place for SA software developers to get to know what other awesome people are around in the community, and to discover new opportunities that may exist for them in their own back yard. It also provides a place for local SA businesses to showcase the great things they do with technology, and the opportunities they can provide for our local software talent.

It doesn’t hurt if you can provide that AND amazing content though 😏

I cannot understate how blown away Dave and I were at the response we got for the conference. Over 100 talks were submitted. We ended up running two tracks, with 14 talks in total being voted in. More than 150 people attended. We had a host of great sponsors who really bought into our vision including the University of South Australia, Comunet, Telstra Purple, AWS, Encode Talent, FOUR, and Octopus Deploy. We couldn’t have been more proud with how the day turned out.

You could imagine that Dave and I were pretty keen to plan the next event for 2020. More people, more talks, more SA great-ness!

And then there was COVID-19.

I won’t belabour the detail of the conversations we had, but suffice to say Dave and I were discussing what-ifs on and off between March and August 2020.

When it became apparent that it would not be a responsible or possibly even legal move for us to host a conference of hundreds of people, we made the call to postpone the conference for 2020.

Why not virtual?

This is a reasonable question. Many conferences, such as NDC, have been going virtual. Even some of the DDD conferences in Australia have hosted some smaller virtual events in lieu of their usual annual in-person event.

The reason we chose not to go virtual is because it does not fit the why of DDD Adelaide.

The reason we put on DDD Adelaide is to bring together the Adelaide software community.

DDD Adelaide is about getting together as a community - meeting new people, discovering new things, having a great time, celebrating all of the heaps good things we have in the SA software space.

You just can’t replicate this experience virtually.

When is the next one?

We sincerely hope late 2021, likely the October / November timeframe.

Two years is a while to wait, so we hope to be able to make it worth everyones while!