Having just wrapped up DDD South West 2025, our annual free developer conference held every year on a Saturday in April, I had a number of interesting conversations in the leadup, and on the day around the effort and time required to put on these events. The reality for me is that I've never seen the effort as a high price to pay, but I wanted to explore the process and the reasons for myself, and hopefully explain my thinking around why I participate in community events like DDD South west.
Planning DDD South West
First and foremost this is a group effort - I'm part of a team with 4 others who organise this conference, some longer, and some for less time, but all working together. It's a total team effort!
Normally starting right after the previous year finishes, we start every planning cycle with a retrospective of the previous year - the things that went well and the things that could be made better. We gather feedback from our speakers and attendees every year through the app we wrote for this conference, PocketDDD as well as email surveys and make our notes. There are a few immediate things we can do, but we usually wrap up for the summer and plan our next phase for the Autumn.
When we return, it's a gradual build-up of tasks from venue booking, t-shirts, stickers, food etc being planned, designed and ordered. The great thing about having a team of 5 of us on the organising committee is that if one person misses something, someone else picks it up. The website and app are open source, so any changes we want to make are easily accessible to the team.
Choosing the speaker list is one of the hardest things, and takes a few weeks to finalise a speaker schedule, involves a lot of communication back and forth with our speakers and managing the schedule. We use an open voting system where our attendees are able to choose a score for every talk, so we have an indication of which are the sorts of talks that people want to see before we decide a final agenda. We don't rely on JUST the user scoring, we also take into account the speakers themselves, and the talks they give to make as diverse a speaker line-up as possible, as well as occasionally inviting a speaker specifically. The last thing we want is a homogeneous panel of speakers, because the world isn't made up of exclusively middle aged, white dudes.
Once speakers, venues, meals are sorted it's the little things - stickers, banners, sponsors, t-shirts and hoodies - as well as a bunch of tech to update. Our website is constantly evolving, and we build and maintain our own voting app in PocketDDD for showing session information as well as gathering feedback for the speakers. These will need updating, ensuring build pipelines all work and the hosting is set up correctly, all APIs are configured to pull speaker and session information from Sessionize. The last few weeks are always a little manic, but because we have such an awesome team where everyone trusts everyone else it all just works!
Why we love DDD South West
One of the biggest reasons we keep putting DDD South West on is that it's not like other conferences or meet-ups. I also help to run the .NET South West meet-up, which runs every month during the week, after normal working hours and somewhere centrally in Bristol. We get a great audience at that meet-up, but by it's very nature it excludes people who can't commit to come to events after work for a number of reasons - whether looking after children, or an elderly relative.
DDD South West runs on a Saturday, which means those nor normally able to make it to meet-ups, but who are keen to try and get into the industry, or to learn new things are able to attend. Women are disproportionately prevented from being able to further their careers by attending events during week days because it frequently falls on them to manage childcare, so by keeping the event on a Saturday we try and make it easier so everyone can make it - which is also why it's free!
The DDD events are all about inclusivity - these are events for everyone, and not just the established members of the community. We invite a range of speakers from all groups, and with a range of experience - from speakers like Dylan Beattie , Carly Richmond or Kevlin Henney, whom it would not be unusual to see as a keynote for an international dev conference to less well known speakers like Anita Squires, James Gaisford or George Bell - who have heaps of industry experience but are less experienced at speaking (for now!) All our speakers, both new and experienced did a great job as the feedback we received showed!
Community Events give back to you!
It's often said the hallway track is the most useful track at a conference, and while I love the talks and The conversations sparked at these events ensure everyone leaves having learned something unexpected. It's similar to the open-source mindset—our contributions improve through collaboration, feedback, and sharing ideas openly.
Community events are fantastic for building meaningful connections. I've met mentors, collaborators, and lifelong friends through DDD South West as well as the other meetups and events I'm involved in, and those friendships become more valuable the more time you spend with the community, and I've made some lifelong friends along the way. Friends that have helped expand my professional network, and led to me winning additional work as an independent developer and consultant.
On a side track, but just as relevant - if you take the time to speak at conferences like DDD (or at meet-ups) you get a lot back! I myself started with the community as a speaker many years ago - it was my first exposure to the community and what I really enjoyed was that being a speaker really deepens your knowledge on a subject! The amount of research you need to put into creating a talk, and the repeated experience of giving it makes you a better developer!
It's all about the Experience!
The main reason we keep doing these events? Honestly—it's FUN! There’s something uniquely rewarding about seeing months of planning come together and hundreds of people excited and ready to share. The lively, supportive atmosphere and genuine connections made at DDD South West fuel our motivation each year.
And speaking of experience, this year becuase the of the kind work of our sponsors, we had a fundraiser for The Homeless Meal Service in Bristol which supports the local community with meals and social support. Through the kind effort of our audience more than £600 was raised!
Call to Action - Get out there!
One of the things we did on the day was to record an episode of the Candid Contributions podcast during the lunch hour, where we had a panel of experts and organisers (keep an eye out for that episode dropping). One of the things that came out of that conversation, which was all about community and open source, was that the most important thing you can do is to get out there. At the very least get yourself to meet-ups and conferences like DDD South West. The things you will take away from participating are huge!
Once you're more comfortable with meet-ups and conferences, make an effort to go and speak at these events. Most (including ours) offer a range of types of slots including 15 min lightning topics, to a full hour long talk, so start where you are comfortable but go and share your knowledge or experience. It will massively help you develop yourself and give you hugely valuable skills in your career.
A Big Thank You!
Finally, I want to extend heartfelt thanks to everyone involved: my fellow organisers, our brilliant speakers, dedicated volunteers, generous sponsors, and enthusiastic attendees. DDD South West isn’t just an event - it’s a reflection of our passion and dedication as a tech community, and it's amazing! 
And a special thanks to the Umbraco community, who came out in force to support DDD SouthWest, and this year Umbraco were a sponsor of the event!