Challenges Accepted and Lessons Learned: A 10-Year Retrospective
summary
Conference starts after a drunken dare and grows into a repeatable operation: first edition draws 150 attendees, organizers adopt Slack, 3D venue schematics and a video wall, and use drone and 360‑camera footage. Event scales through venue moves and an English switch, survives COVID by moving outdoors, and records 5,000+ participants, 60+ hours of videos, 9.1–9.4 average rating. Charity drives fund medical gear and donate backpacks to Ukraine; formalized ownership of roles and volunteer teams prove the key to reliability.
AI-written summary · about
chapters (14)
- 0:00Introduction and welcome
- 1:4710 years of QA Challenge Accepted
- 3:11Origins and first conference
- 8:14Legal structure and charity mission
- 13:44Branding and mascot evolution
- 20:31Switching to English and growth
- 25:55Lessons learned from edition 6
- 30:09Edition 007 and pandemic pivot
- 33:22Dev vs QA war and commercial
- 38:20Organizational improvements
- 41:16Feedback and quality balance
- 44:48Achievements and ratings
- 46:57Charity impact over decade
- 50:14Future plans and closing
related talks
17mLessons learned from 18 months of the endeavour for community growth
33mRe-growing a DevOps Community (in Boston)
16mOpening remarks
44mThe 10 Commandments of Community Organizing
19mOrganising online events and "the new normal"
15mWelcome to just product 2023
15mBuilding Tech Communities: Lessons from a Decade of Experience
54mKEYNOTE: From nothing to too much: growing a tech community in the East of England