#DevoxxFrance #Backstage Monday
If for attendees Devoxx France starts on Wednesday the 17th of April 2024 and lasts for 3 days, for us organisers, it's a different story.? It starts on Monday the 15th and lasts for 6 days.
In this series of posts I'll try to give you some backstage insights of what organising a conference for 4.500 Geeks looks like.
10 am. Monday morning we ship everything to the Palais des Congrès (the venue where Devoxx France takes place ).Throughout the year we store our material in different locations. So Monday is about shipping all our equipment to a single central location: the storage room of the Palais des Congrès so it's ready for us to unpack on Tuesday morning.
1pm. Then, back to the office. There are still some admin tasks to be done and emails to be answered. But not too many. We call this day the "Cyclone eye" day. Last week we hit the Cyclone, tomorrow the Cyclone will come back, but today is a "quiet" day as we are inside the Cyclone eye. Quiet, but still, we need to sort out delivering issues, last minute speakers update, last minute ticket configuration issue, last minute payments, last minute.... And, believe it or not, also working on our last minute opening keynote slides that will take place on Wednesday morning 9am.
5pm. Last meeting call with Nicolas Martignole , Zouheir Cadi and Karine Girard-Vacca to make sure we have everything sorted out. This meeting is also our "Cyclone eye" meeting where we spend most of our time making jokes and having fun because most of the big issues have already been sorted out. It's a nice team moment.
7pm. The day was long, tomorrow it will be worse. I don't feel like cooking for the family tonight, so I'm talking the family to the restaurant.
10pm. Last email check. Last communication with the team. Reaching Inbox Zero is a real achievement, even if I know that I will wake up in a few hours with dozens of emails and will end the conference with a few hundreds.
See you tomorrow for the exhibition hall setup and welcoming the RedCoat team.
Other Devoxx France #Backstage posts:
Merci beaucoup pour cette organisation au top ????
Thanks for making a difference! ????