This is probably the weirdest thing I’ve ever seen regarding pre-conference organising. On January 1 the organisers of DjangoCon Europe 2015 opened the registration process for the “minority-only audience” (great idea btw.. Let’s see if it works as anticipated).
Then on January 8 the news came that there was a problem with finding accommodation for the conference attendees due to the UK band “One Direction” having scheduled two of their concerts in the UK in Cardiff right in the middle of the conference (June 5 and 6) which resulted in fans flooding the city and its hotels. A couple of days before the news broke I tried to get a room and already back then it was starting to get hard to find a place for the night from June 6 to June 7.
So the organisers had not much of a choice but to try to find a new time window for the conference… which they did within 24 hours. On January 9 a new schedule for the conference that would move the whole event up by a couple of days. It now takes place from the 31st of May until the 5th of June. Big kudos to the orga-team and their partners to be able to reschedule the event that quickly while only changing the dates only so slightly. For what it’s worth, I didn’t have to change my planning for the trip that much :-)
That whole situation was really strange, though, especially when news-outlets like The Register and, of all places, Polygon started to pick up the story. I guess, someone could have had one or two good friends in the news-business :-)
Anyway, I really hope that the schedule is not changed anymore because now I have a room reservation and am really looking forward to the event!
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