The That Conference dates you care about…

by Clark Sell Posted on February 9, 2012

I just wanted to take a brief moment and list out a few of the important upcoming dates, that you might care about.

 

April 2nd ( Monday )

  • Call for speakers opens. We will have a signup form on http://thatConference.com where you will be enter the appropriate information.

April 16th ( Monday )

  • Call for speakers closes. Yes that means you have two weeks to get your abstracts in, but there is plenty of prep time.

 

{ feel free to bribe the organizers here. j/k }

 

May 1st ( Tuesday )

  • That Conference will announce the speaker lineup.

May 16th ( Wednesday )

  • Ticket registration opens at 8:13 am cst.

 

We’re all developers, you know what happens when there isn’t a date out there.  If your planning on submitting a session abstract, start getting those bad boys ready.

Be creative and think different.

Posted in thatConference | 2 Comments

Booking your stay for That Conference

by Clark Sell Posted on February 8, 2012

This might sound a bit premature given That Conference is in August, but you can actually book your hotel stay now. At first this may seem a bit backwards but given the conference takes place in August, I want to make sure people have amply time plan their summers and book their rooms.

 

We have a block of rooms at a discounted rate of $169.00, when making a reservation make sure you refer them the block name: “That Conference” or Booking ID: “20532”. You can do that either online or via phone:

 

Resort Address:

Kalahari Resort ( on the map )

1305 Kalahari Drive

Wisconsin Dells, Wisconsin 53965

 

a note from the past for the future –

One of the goals of mine as we are planning That Conference is to provide transparency into the process, a peek behind the curtain if you will. Maybe your trying to plan something too, and hopefully this provided you one ounce of help.

Posted in thatConference | Leave a comment

You have a voice @ That Conference

by Clark Sell Posted on February 7, 2012

While there is a business side of running a conference this is a community conference first and foremost. We want your involvement, we want your feedback, we want your validation, we want your help! We do not, and will not work in a box. For me, one of the best part of a community conferences are all the other activities that happen around the conference itself. For me ( and I think a few others too ) the conference has already started. We’re building stuff now, getting together, planning, and of course like good developers adding scope creep.

So, how do you get involved? Let me break down just a few of the major ways.

Email – As simple as it may sound, one of the best ways to provide feedback or just chat with us is via good ole email. You can reach the board members at contact@thatConference.com and we are pretty good at responding within a day or so. Got an idea, want to make a comment, or better yet compliment us; hit us on email.

Google Groups – If you like email but want to collaborate with your peers, there’s a group for that. While small at the moment some of the conversation has been really helpful, while others is just informational. Unlike email, it’s archived and involves the community around it. I often throw out ideas to help me better understand and shape my own thinking. You will find us here: http://groups.google.com/group/thatconference

Volunteer – You just flat want to help. Great, we need a lot of that too. We have another group setup at thatConferenceStaff.groups.live.com. There is an awesome group of people already signed up but we need more. I coordinate all of the broader planning through that. If your interested in helping, just sign up.

Twitter – Of course we’re on Twitter. Follow us, retweet, reach out, I try to watch the stream pretty closely, but after all it’s twitter and it gets always from you at times.

Facebook – Like us baby!!! I’ll admit it, I’m not the best with Facebook. We have a Facebook Fan Page at http://www.facebook.com/ThatConference.

WebSite Badges – This is currently in development and should be on our site for download in the next couple of weeks. Our awesome designers at Drifting Creatives are doing whatever bad ass designers do to make awesome pixels. This is a great way to easily show your support.

Sponsorship – Not to be understated our sponsors are very important to our overall success. You can find more about our sponsorship and our thoughts around it here: http://csell.net/2012/02/06/that-conference-call-for-sponsors/.

Lastly, help spread the word – Look we only know who we know. This is a community conference for the entire community. Last week on twitter a few guys said, are PHP guys welcome? HELL YES, and everyone else too. Our only stipulation is, we’re wrapping everything around Web, Mobile and Cloud. Pretty hard not to fit something in those buckets.

This is my war cry. Do not hesitate in getting involved. Regardless of the contribution, they’re all IMPORTANT. Please don’t assume, we all have day jobs too.

 

a note from the past for the future –

One of the goals of mine as we are planning That Conference is to provide transparency into the process, a peek behind the curtain if you will. Maybe your trying to plan something too, and hopefully this provided you one ounce of help.

Posted in Events, thatConference | Leave a comment

That Conference, Call For Sponsors

by Clark Sell Posted on February 6, 2012

This past week That Conference hit another major milestone, seeking sponsorship.

Well over a year ago Scott and I we’re sitting in the local pub and dreamed up what we now know as That Conference. There has been a lot of work to date just getting things off the ground. Regardless, I think it’s important to celebrate major milestones and involving sponsors partners is clearly a huge one for us.

That Conference will not be successful without the support of our partners. Every partner I’ve talked to, I have asked them to be creative, "Think Different" ( thanks Apple ), help us help you make it a gigantic win for both. Don’t be afraid to ask, or present us with something different. We don’t want partners who just sit in the corner behind a table. We want partners who want to be engaged and part of the overall conference experience, partners who want to stand out making That Conference the best conference and conference experience in the Midwest.

But, we need your help too. Help us spread the word, make an introduction, suggest someone, feel free to involve us. We cannot do it alone, nor do we want too. So far we’ve meet a lot of great partners and we’ve dug up a few new folks but we’re just getting started.

All of our sponsorship information can be found at: http://thatconference.com/Home/Sponsorship. Help spread the word, and feel free to reach out.

That Conference is a great new opportunity to do something different.

a note from the past for the future –

One of the goals of mine as we are planning That Conference is to provide transparency into the process, a peek behind the curtain if you will. Maybe your trying to plan something too, and hopefully this provided you one ounce of help.

Posted in Events, thatConference | Tagged , | 1 Comment

Will That Conference have a “Call For Speakers?

by Clark Sell Posted on February 3, 2012

Valid question and yes. Of course!

You might think getting speakers is a trivial task but in fact it’s really not. So let’s break things down some and provide a peek behind the curtain.

For us speakers can fit into a few different areas:

  • Keynoters. For me, keynotes drive inspiration, entertainment and are different than just the average session. I don’t think ours will be any different in that regard either. thatConference is currently working with a few folks who fit that bill and we look forward to making that announcement when appropriate.
  • Sessions. This might be one of the harder things to decide on. When you get hundreds of sessions to pick from, that process can be brutal. Of course we’re going to use technology to solve that problem but it still takes people. Yes we have over 100 sessions but when you start to break down all of the different technology areas, .NET, Ruby, Node, Cloud, HTML5, Mobile and on and on, those categories start to get really small. Bring your ‘A’ game and be creative.
  • Sponsored Sessions. Some partners get sessions slots, it’s a fact and one we’re not trying to hide that. Having said that, thatConference has a process in which it will work with our partners making sure the content is not only epic, but representative of the conference, well balanced and attractive.
  • Open Spaces. Open Spaces are a great way to tailor your conference experience beyond what is already in ink. To date we have had so many people reach out excited to speak but unfortunately not everyone will get a spot. Open Spaces help address this not only providing an opportunity to speak but speak in the non-traditional setting AND connect deeper with your peers at the conference.

This is all a delicate balance, one of which we take very seriously.

So when does call for speakers open? Our current sketched plan is to open call for speaker around April 1st. This isn’t locked or some April fools joke but we want to announce our speaker lineup before registration. We also want to allow for enough time for people to plan their summer.

Start getting those creative abstracts ready.

a note from the past for the future –

One of the goals of mine as we are planning thatConference is to provide transparency into the process, a peek behind the curtain if you will. Maybe your trying to plan something too, and hopefully this provided you one ounce of help.

Posted in thatConference | Tagged | Leave a comment