Tickets are selling out¶

Every year we are amazed at the growing support of our community, and tickets have been selling out earlier each conference. We are now about 85% sold out, and judging from past events we do expect to be sold out within the next few weeks.

If you’re still on the fence, now is the time to decide and get your tickets.

Shirts on sale¶

As you probably noticed, we are not including shirts with your conference ticket this year. This is due partially to the logistics of sizing, ordering, and managing stock, but also because of the inevitable leftovers that we find ourselves with every year.

Inspired by our friends at DjangoCon US, we decided to shake things up and sell shirts separately, so you can buy exactly the fit and size that you want! You can now visit our Write the Docs Portland 2018 Pop-Up Shop and order this year’s branded shirt. The campaign will run until April 15th to allow for timely delivery of your shirts ahead of the conference.

And don’t worry, you’ll still have a Write the Docs Portland 2018 souvenir from the conference even if you decide not to order a shirt.

Call for volunteers¶

There is plenty to do during the conference and volunteers are essential to the success of the conference. We are looking for folks who are willing to help out during the conference. If you volunteer for two or more shifts (clocking in at an average of three hours each), you will receive free registration for the conference.

We are looking for folks to help out in these roles:

• Ballroom setup - Prepping the main conference hall for the main conference, including laying out cables/power strips, arranging tables/chairs, and other light physical labor
• Writing day - Registering people and general information inquiries, most likely directions to various rooms and schedule questions, assist with other duties as assigned
• Registration/Info - Registering people in the main conference hall and answering any questions
• Speakers - Finding speakers and making sure that they’re where they need to be when it comes time to speak
• Talk Timing - Keeping track of the length of the talks and warning speakers when they’re running out of time
• Floaters - Other duties as assigned ;) Assisting with odds and ends requests from other volunteers and organizers as well as answering questions; overall, being generally helpful
• A/V Troubleshooting - This on-call role will assist presenters at the time of their greatest need while on stage - issues with slides, video, or audio portions of their presentation. Please apply for this role if you have some A/V knowledge, experience troubleshooting different operating systems is a plus!
• Unconference - Camping out in the unconference area downstairs, keeping the place in order, updating unconference room schedule, and so on
• Job Fair setup/take down- Helping vendors set up their tables before the job fair, or helping with setting the room back for the preconferences that follow in the afternoon
• Ballroom take down - What’s more fun than setting things up? Taking them down! Helping with taking down the conference set up and leaving the conference hall better than we found it

If you are interested in volunteering for the conference, please read and fill out the Call for Volunteers form. You will receive additional information in early April regarding shifts, detailed duties, and other updates to the volunteer duties and schedules.

Please email Becky at b.yoose@gmail.com if you have any questions about volunteering for the conference.

Welcome to our newest sponsors¶

We’re glad to welcome another round of sponsors to the conference this year. Thanks sincerely to the following companies for joining our sponsor lineup and supporting the Write the Docs community:

• Netlify
• Braintree
• Twilio
• Cloud Native Computing Foundation

We’re excited about the new Job Fair this year, along with the other normal sponsorship activities that we have had in past years.

If your company is hiring or looking to learn more from our community, you can find for information for Portland and Prague sponsorships.

Prague conference launch¶

In case you can’t make it to this year’s Portland conference, or if you can’t get enough of Write the Docs, we’re happy to announce that ticket sales and call for proposals are now open for our Prague conference, September 9-11.