Jul 28, 2024 7 min read Heart of Clojure

When a Plan Comes Together

Organizing a conference is a giant four-dimensional puzzle. Things are constantly evolving as we figure out the venues, speakers, hotel, lunch, and all the little details. With less than two months to go we're at the point though where the overal picture is starting to take shape. There are still a lot of details to be figured out, but it's time we start telling you all a bit more about what we have planned for you, exactly.

Activities

Maybe you were at the previous Heart of Clojure in 2019, in the converted railway workshop called Hal 5, behind Leuven train station. We had two days of inspiring talks, but also lots of breaks and dedicated time to socialize, and to do activities. This last part is what sets Heart of Clojure apart from other conferences. Often you're expected to just sit in your chair and watch talks all day, but conferences exist to bring people together, hence why many people instead attend the "hallway track", skipping talks in favor of hanging out with people.

One of the best ways to get to know people is by simply doing things together, and so we're making "activities" first class. Some of these are organized by us, the organizers. But anyone can use our conference web app to create their own activity. You just pick a topic, time, place, and decide how many people you can accomodate. Some random examples:

Practice Esperanto / Park in front of Hal 5 / Up to 7 people
Get Belgian Fries for Lunch / Meet at the station tunnel / Up to 6 people
Go to Museum M (City Art Museum) / Meet at the museum / Up to 5 people
Book Swap / Hal 5 Food Court / Open to anyone
Mechanical Keyboard Nerds Meetup / Local Coffeeshop / Up to 10 people
Yoga On the Grass / Park in front of Hal 5 / Up to 15 people
Alt-cljs Round table discussion / HoCafé / Up to 8 people
Run a role playing game / HoCafé / Up to 5 people
Birds of a feather: Community Organizing / HoCafé / Up to 30 people

Last time we used the Rails app developed by Eurucamp, the conference which pioneered this idea. This time we're creating our own (in Clojure of course), Compass! (live demo (alpha) / github). Contributors are more than welcome!

Compass will integrate with Discord, which is the platform we'll use for communicating before and during the conference. Ticket holders will get in invite soon-ish. This will also be a great place to guage interest, and to announe your plans to host an activity, so people can prepare ("bring your roller skates", "bring your magic commander deck", "bring your climbing shoes", "bring your yoga mat", etc).

Scheduled talks and workshops will go into Compass as well, so this will be your one stop shop conference guide!

The Venues (dimensions 1 to 3)

I'm burying the lede a bit here, but the whole activities app is so central to the vision and vibe of Heart of Clojure that I wanted to recap that first, so that we're all on the same page.

The big thing that's changing compared to last time is that we won't have one but two venues. We're adding a second venue, Het Depot, where all the regular talks will be held. Het Depot is one Leuven's main concert venues. We can offer much more space and seating here, and provide better conditions for speakers so their talks can really shine.

From Het Depot it's a short walk to Hal 5, the venue we had last time. You cross the square, take the tunnel underneath the station, and follow the pedestrian only path, until you get to the park and Hal 5.

We'll still be at Hal 5 this time, but it'll be set up a bit differently. Rather than a stage and rows of chairs, we'll have a few separate areas for workshops, and tables and chairs for people to just hang out. We call this the reified hallway track. You can also think of it as the unconference portion of the conference, or the community hall. We'll rely more heavily on volunteers here, from build-up to teardown, and on attendees to fill this space with their own interests and creativity. We'll also host part of the official program here, namely the workshops, and the "office hours", where you have a chance to ask questions or get help from some prominent open source maintainers.

The Schedule (dimension 4)

So, how is this all going to play out? We haven't published a by-the-minute schedule of all the talks and workshops yet, because too much is still subject to change, but we can give you some broad outlines. (You can find our current draft schedule in the Compass demo, but don't take anything you see there as canon.)

Tuesday, September 17 (day 0)

A little past noon the organizer team gets access to Hal 5. Since we have it booked all afternoon and evening we decided to already put it to good use. We'll need some time to get things set up, and to give sponsors a chance to set up their booth, but we expect to be open for early registrations around 17:00.

So, if you're in Leuven early, come on by! If we're not ready yet you can still chill out on Hal 5's own foodcourt and outdoor seating, maybe grab a Neapolitan sourdough pizza from Antico, or falafal and hummus from Habibi. Chances are you'll already find some other Clojure peeps hanging out there. Or roll up your sleeves and come give us a hand setting tables.

Once we're ready we can start checking people in and giving them their lanyards, we do hope many people will make use of this opportunity, to speed things up the next morning, and so folks can already get that initial craving to socialize out of their system, so we can get right into the talks the next morning.

And then the space is yours until around 21:00. This is already space intentionally left blank. Grab some folks for your favorite board game, do a little hacking together, or just grab a drink with folks. (But enjoy the Belgian beer in moderation, we still have two busy days ahead).

Wednesday, September 18 (day 1)

This is when we officially kick off the conference in Het Depot. Doors will open probably around 9:00 or a little earlier. Folks get their lanyards, and can grab a coffee/tea/water while they find their seat. We'll keep Hal 5 closed in the morning, so we can have everyone in one place for a festive introduction, and our opening keynote. We've scheduled some of the more general interest talks this morning until noon, and we'll have a mid-morning break in there as well for more caffeination and socializing.

When the morning talks are finished folks can make their way over to Hal 5, where we'll serve a nutritious lunch buffet. We'll have leasurely long lunch breaks (currently looking at ~2.5 hours for day 1), so folks can stop by at the hotel, and have some time to chill (oh did I mention you can do activities?).

In the afternoon talks continue at Het Depot, while in Hal 5 we'll have workshops and such. So folks will be split across both venues, and you're encouraged to go back and forth and experience a bit of both.

Talks will wrap up around 19:00, we'll run the community space at least until 21:00.

Thursday, September 19 (day 2)

For day two we flip the script: Het Depot and Hal 5 are both open from morning, with workshops and what have you. We'll have lunch again at Hal 5, and an even longer lunch (and siesta) break than on day 1. This is again space intentionally left blank. Enough time for instance to go into town and do something there. We do have a pretty full schedule so we'll see how long we can make this break.

And then in the afternoon, we reconvene at Het Depot for lightning talks, and the closing keynote and closing remarks. We probably will keep Hal 5 open during this time as we suspect some stragglers will already have mentally checked out from the official program, but we expect the vast majority to join us at Het Depot for the official closing. Ending is again expected around 19:00.

And then... it's over, and we can start folding tables in both venues. Obviously we'll grab whoever is left standing around to give us a hand ;). The rest can go into town, we'll probably end up gathering at one or two designated bars/cafes to celebrate another special two and a half days!