My second DjangoCon Europe

Well I have been meaning to write this for over 2 weeks now, but better late than never! Towards the end of April 2025 I attended the DjangoCon Europe conference and Sprints and it was brilliant and exhausting all in one go.

Let's begin with the travel there, I decided to join those doing the SailRail for a relaxed train ride and crossing the sea to Dublin. This was great as I managed to make some use of the day (work and a blog post) while travelling as well as having some travel companions in the form of Thibaud, Sage, Tom & Daniele.

The next day kicked off the conference with an excellent keynote from Sarah Boyce, and other talks followed thoughout the next 2 days. Databases was a big theme along with community engagement and HTMX. However for me it was walking into the room and meeting folks from the community in person, that I have interacted with online for the past couple of years. This was also coupled with great conversations with friends new & old (mostly around making Django better). I also plucked up the courage and gave a lighting talk on the last day about my year of 100 words.

The evening socials again were excellent! Django Social on Wednesday and the official party on Friday, with a more chill evening going climbing with a couple of interested attendees. The weekend brought the Sprints which were just perfect. I managed to crack on with an open ticket/PR I have for the messages app in Django and also make some good progress on django-prodserver.

It was sad to leave, but reminds me that I want to go next year (if I am allowed by the family!). I am also excited with the energy I felt across the week reminding me that Django is going strong as ever and the communuity has a bright future. I could write more, but I am aware that I need to crack on with today's work, but I will leave you with the recommendation of getting to a DjangoCon if are use Django in any form, you will not be disappointed.