From a talk I gave a couple of years ago,

I'm an English major. I could not figure out the proper way to pluralize DjangoCon USs. So we're just gonna go with that and call that good. You can tweet me a correction if you get that.

But given that this is the 10th DjangoCon US, I thought it would be a little bit fun to take a trip down memory lane to prior DjangoCons in the United States. So if we go back to 2008, we can see on the Django Project blog the announcement that there will be a DjangoCon US over the past couple of months. We found volunteers who've taken on the task

of planning a DjangoCon. And again, as an English major, I really appreciate the quotes. We weren't really sure what this was going to be yet. And then unfortunately, the website for the 2008 DjangoCon has not, its CSS has not survived. Its content has survived. But this is all we have. I looked in like web archive, Jeff helped.

We were not able to find a better thing than this. However, there is a project going on right now where we're trying to restore the old websites of prior DjangoCons, prior DjangoCon Europe. So if you would like a sprint project, you can chat about that at the sprints. That's a wonderful thing that you can do.

There's been some wonderful blog posts that I've, again, web archive and Google, and I'm very kind. People on Twitter have led me different places. So Barbara Charette, who I think that many of you know and who's not able to be here this year, wrote about her excitement about being able to attend the very first DjangoCon US. And she said, I was up at 4 frickin' 30 this morning

on the off chance that I might be able to get in on the first round of DjangoCon tickets. I believe that that first year they were free. And from what Barbara says on her blog, that it was a good thing she was up at 4.30 because by 4.45, the website was erroring because so many people were trying to get those tickets. The very first DjangoCon US was hosted

in Mountain View, California at the Google headquarters, and so this is what that venue looked like. And thank you, James, for your links to some photos. I'm using your photos pretty heavily, along with a lot of others. There's, this is a picture of a panel. I think this is the core dev team, and let me see here. So yeah, pictured here is Adrienne Holovaty, James Bennett, Simon Willison, Jacob Kaplan-Moss,

Russell Keith-McGee, and Malcolm Trednick, several of whom are with us here today. And one of the keynotes that year was given by a man named Cal Henderson, and one of the lovely things in that keynote that I learned is that in 2008, the website on the internet with the most traffic was Yahoo. One of the other things that I found

whenever I was looking at the old DjangoCon websites is the number of keynotes and the way that keynotes are described has varied tremendously throughout the years. So for that very first DjangoCon, we had five keynotes. It was a two-day conference. It was supposed to be two-track, but I feel like you can only call it about one-and-a-half track because so much time was spent in keynotes. Those keynotes were given by Robert Lofthouse,

Guido van Rossum, Cal Henderson, Mark Graham, and then Adrian and Jacob Kaplan-Moss did a joint keynote together. So six speakers, five presentations, and then here they are. I just wanted you to know how much of the schedule was taken up by keynote. People were pretty excited about the first DjangoCon US.

Eric Florinzano, who gave a keynote in a later year, said, DjangoCon, great conference or greatest conference ever? I think we know the answer to that. Also, Brian Veloso wrote a blog post where he says that inspired by something in Cal Henderson's first keynote at the DjangoCon in 2008, he said, Django needed a mascot,

one that was awesome and had magical powers, where somewhere in my, well, somewhere in my head, I agreed. And that's how we got the DjangoPony. In 2009, DjangoCon was hosted in Portland, Oregon. We were down to a more respectable keynote count of three. Those keynotes were given by Avi Bryant,

Ian Bicking, and Ted Lung. And I was looking through the schedule today, actually, before I came to see Russell's talk this afternoon, and I noticed that he sort of broke some sort of space-time thing. He apparently was giving two simultaneous talks. Between 255 and 355, Russell gave no bad pony

and also getting the most out of the test client. I would really like to hear how that feat was accomplished. In 2009, Django was also featured in Wired. Wired referred to Django as our favorite web development framework. So, Wired talked about Django and also DjangoCon, which is pretty exciting. And here's another panel. This one features Justin Braun, Joseph Kocherhans,

am I pronouncing that right? James Bennett, Russell Keith-McGee, Simon Willison, and Brian Rosner. And the pony. Oh, and also the pony. And also, cannot forget the pony. Thank you. I also do want to mention that the precursor to DjangoCon Europe, EuroJangoCon, was introduced in 2009.

This is where the Internet Archive failed me. I was unable to find anything but the lanyard website for that. But this is part of the project restoration, so if that one exists in some data, that's something you can work on. 2010 brought us back to Portland. And then we have a keynote mystery.

There were a couple of double-track talks that were not tagged as keynotes. There is a keynote slot on the schedule, and then there is a distinguished guest on the schedule in the blog, and also on the schedule. Those names are never mentioned. I have no idea who they were. Russell was indicating that it is good that this has been wiped from the Internet history,

so yes, mysteries that we won't go into while I'm on stage anyway. Bar later. Daniel Roy-Greenfeld said, the conference was like a family gathering. And that's something that I was really proud to hear several of our attendees say that to me and to our other organizers, so I feel very proud that we've been able

to keep that spirit of family alive since at least 2010. Scott Hacker also said that this DjangoCon brought several surprises, from a pony in the swag bag to the discovery that you could get full to the point of bursting at a vegan restaurant. I live in Portland, so I'm proud to see that vegan Portland food is treating people right and was in 2010.

And here's a photo of Russell with a, I believe that that's a DjangoCon hat, that was the swag that year, and then also a large python and the pony. I do wonder, is this the pony that appeared in all of the swag bags? No, oh no, yeah, that would be damned impressive. I will say that. 2011 continues the tradition of DjangoCon being in Portland.

We were really excited about Portland there for a few years. We were back to five keynotes. David Eves, Russell Keith-McGee, Brad Fitzpatrick, Idun Gazit, and Glith Lefkowitz were our keynote speakers that year. And DjangoCon used to have this tradition where we gave a couple, or I guess they at the time, I wasn't involved, gave a couple of keynote slots

to a Django BDFL or to the DSF to give a keynote. So that kind of explains the extra keynotes a little bit, but I still think it's funny. But that year we also had a bonus session, a fireside chat. And that was with a BDFL, but that BDFL was unnamed. So again, another DjangoCon history mystery.

That's the year that PyLadies also organized themselves and came to DjangoCon. If you look through the DjangoCon schedules for the first few years, you notice that while there were some amazing talks by some wonderful speakers, those speakers were largely men. And in 2011, the PyLadies decided to organize and they wrote a blog post about how they were encouraging women to speak. They had workshops, they encouraged women to submit talks,

and the result was amazing. The result was that that year there were five women speakers at DjangoCon US. And also, one of those speakers was our keynote speaker from today, Tracy Osborn. The PyLadies also helped out at a tutorial,

and then yes, like I said, they gave five talks. But that year we still had no code of conduct at DjangoCon, when you look back through the early DjangoCon schedules, codes of conduct weren't really a thing yet. So I noticed this, I was wondering when was the year that the code of conduct was introduced? So then we bring to 2012, where we were no longer in Portland, finally we went somewhere else,

somewhere other than the West Coast. We were in Washington DC. And as a personal note, this was my very first DjangoCon. And we had a code of conduct at that DjangoCon, which maybe explains why I had a fantastic and lovely time at that DjangoCon. The code of conduct is here, but that was also the first year that tutorials became part of DjangoCon US.

And I remember taking a couple of those tutorials. I've never known a DjangoCon without tutorials, so I'm very, very happy that explicit learning, that a deep dive for three or three and a half hours is a part of what we do here at DjangoCon. And this was pretty funny, someone wrote in a blog post, this event that year in 2012 had exactly 404 attendees.

I trust I don't need to explain that joke to anyone here. We did have five keynotes again that year. We were just really excited about a lot of keynotes. Eric Sterling, Russell Keith McGee, Selena Deckelman, so our first woman keynote speaker. Adrian Holovaty and Jeff Schmidt were our speakers that year.

2013 brought us to Chicago. Oh, and I had intended to do something, and I got kind of nervous whenever I got up here. So I'm gonna stop now, and I'm gonna back check, and I'm gonna ask, if you were at the DjangoCon in 2008, will you raise your hand? Oh my gosh, not very many. This is actually, this is more exciting than I thought it would be, okay. If you were at the DjangoCon in 2009,

can you raise your hand? And I know from Russ's talk and from Adrian's introduction that there are two hands that are just gonna get tired. So if you were at the DjangoCon in 2010, let us know. Okay, man, all right. 2011, we get a few more hands this time. 2012, that was the DC year.

We had a couple hands dropped, so we all didn't want to go all the way out there. And now 2013, a few more, okay. I really love it, and you can put your hands on now. I'm gonna do the others as we get to them. So you get to rest. You get to rest. I do love that there are actually so few hands raised, because that means that over the past five years,

we have introduced a lot of new people to our community. So that's another thing I'm really proud of for DjangoCon. One thing about 2013 was really interesting. There was only one keynote. It was Russell Kiesnicki. He gave the DSS keynote keynote. But that can't possibly be right, right? That one keynote is not nearly enough for a DjangoCon US. No, we had two plenary sessions that year

that we distinguished between the keynote and the plenary session. I'm not really sure the difference, and I was there, so I'm not sure. Jacob Kaplan-Moss and Aymeric Agustin gave the plenary sessions that year, but not the keynote. I do also want to mention that 2013 was the year that we welcomed DjangoCon Australia to the DjangoCon family.

I know we have a couple of the DjangoCon Australia organizers with us here today. I do want to switch tones for just a moment to a more serious tone. In 2013, we lost a man named Malcolm Trednick. I never got to meet Malcolm, but I've heard wonderful things about him, and so I did want to take a moment to acknowledge him.

He was part of the very early stages of Django. He had a wonderful reputation as a friendly person, as someone who was actively encouraging to new people. And so in 2013, the Django Software Foundation established a memorial prize in his honor. So Russell wrote in the blog post announcing this prize, with Malcolm's memory in mind, the DSF is proud to announce

that with the blessing of his family, we will be establishing an award in Malcolm's name. The prize will be awarded annually to someone who welcomes, supports, and nurtures newcomers, freely gives feedback and assistance to others, and helps to grow the community. And again, I said that I did not know Malcolm personally. I never got the chance to meet him,

but I do sincerely hope that he would be proud of what we do here at DjangoCon US today. 2014 brought us back to Portland. We had a real love affair with Portland. The keynote count was down to two,

Daniele Prossida and Brandon Rhodes. But really it was three. There was a talk that kind of spans both. Andrew Godwin also gave a talk that spanned both of the sessions, but wasn't tagged as a keynote. There was some inconsistency there for several years. In terms of photos, that was the year of the duck.

I was putting these slides together earlier today, and Jeff saw this photo and he said, you know, I really love Cactus. I'm so happy that they're our sponsors year after year. Thank God they've never brought that duck back. It was very wide and kept appearing in different places.

I wasn't there that year, so I don't know. 2015 brought several changes. First of all, it brought DjangoCon down to Texas, to Austin, and that was the year that, as we talked about this morning, DjangoCon was taken over by the Django Events Foundation North America. So that was whenever DjangoCon transitioned

from being run by a corporate entity to being run by a non-profit consisting solely of volunteers. That was also the first year that Django Girls was part of DjangoCon. We held our first Django Girls workshop in 2015 in Austin, Texas. And that was the year that we raffled off the very large cutout of the coffee guy,

who has a name, someone remind me of his name, Hank. Hank, his name is Hank. Oh, and I forgot my hand-raising thing. We did 2013 already, so who was at the, wait, did we do 2013? Who was at the 2013 DjangoCon? Okay, who was at the 2014 DjangoCon? That was back in Portland. And now we're in 2015, who was in Austin?

More hands, oh, that's exciting, that's exciting. That year we had four keynotes, Ricky Ensley, Jackie Cassel, Lynn Root, and Russell Keith-McGee. Russell, I think you might win the prize for most DjangoCons attended, tied with Andrew, but also most keynotes given.

Congratulations, your prize is waiting at registration. 2016 last year brought us to Philadelphia, which was very exciting. If you were in Philly, let me know. There we go, that's awesome. We had three keynotes last year, Saranya Barak, Andrew Godwin, and Janice Levin-Hagan.

And a 2016 sponsor nearly made me cry last year whenever they came up to me and they said, we've been coming here for years, and this is the warmest DjangoCon I can remember. That's something that just really warms an organizer's heart, to hear that the attendees, the sponsors, the volunteers are having a good time. Saran, one of our keynote speakers, said in her blog post, in all these little ways,

they sent a clear and cohesive message that emphasized the importance of making everyone feel welcome. So that feels like I'm bragging on my team a little bit, but we really did, we did a good job. This is our family photo.

Last year we started a, what is this year going to become a tradition, so get ready, I've been taking a good photo at DjangoCon. So now we're here in 2017. Raise your hand if you were here in 2017. There we go. I feel like I saw a couple of hands not up. So I do wanna take some more moments

to brag on DjangoCon a little bit, but also let you know some numbers about what happens at DjangoCon. This year we had 335 attendees. So that's all y'all. We gave away $18,735 in financial aid.

Thank you very much to Sarah Gore, our financial aid chair, for managing that process. We gave that aid to 25 financial aid recipients.

This next number is one that I am particularly proud of. We had a record 245 talk submissions. Serious conversations about whether we could make a third track work this year, and we couldn't make it work this year. I don't know what the future holds for us,

but that number of submissions shows that people wanna speak here, people have wonderful things to say, and you got to hear from our 52 presenters this week, so I hope that you liked what they had to say. I'll put the slide a little bit earlier,

because you're just gonna have to keep clapping for a while, so shake it out now. I've talked a little bit about money, about the financial aid that we've given away, but throwing a conference costs money. Throwing a conference that is affordable for people to attend costs money, and that money comes from our sponsors. We would not be able to do DjangoCon the way that we do DjangoCon without the support

from sponsors such as our diamond sponsor, Lincoln Loop, our platinum sponsor, Heroku, our gold sponsors, RevSis.

Shake it off. And I know that all the organizers do too. We would not be able to have a conference if no one came. There would, you know, this could just be one big Slack channel.

And so I do want to thank all of you who made the trip out here to come to DjangoCon to attend talks, to have conversations in the hallway, to look for jobs, to hang out in the hotel bar, to attend tutorials. We really appreciate your time, and we hope that you've had an excellent experience while you're here at DjangoCon, so organizers, will you join me

in thanking the attendees for being here? Back to that giant Slack channel analogy, without our speakers and our tutorial presenters, there would really not be very much reason for everyone to make the trip out here. It would be really fun to hang out with 300 of your closest friends for the weekend, but your bosses probably wouldn't pay for it.

So thank you very much for our speakers for being here and spending their time and all of the time that it takes to prepare everything that they did. So please join me in giving a round of applause to them.

One of the things we really love that we've been able to do for the past several years is put all of our talks on YouTube afterwards, and we obviously couldn't do that without the excellent AV staff that have been recording all of our talks. Thank you so much to Concrete.

So we're here in the hotel RL, so thank you very much to the hotel staff for everything that you've done for us, for feeding us, for cleaning up after us. Thank you so much. Oh, and just wave to Adam, the photographer.

Thank you very much for being here. No, he's been lovely. He's been trying to get very nice portraits of all of the speakers, which is a nice bonus for our speakers to have, but he's also had a really...

He's just been really quiet and unobtrusive and going around making little clicking sounds. Also, if you have volunteered this DjangoCon, if you've worked the registration desk, if you've been a session chair, a session runner, can you please stand up and let us give you a round of applause? There we go.

Wouldn't happen without people to check everyone in, without people to tell speakers where to go and to introduce speakers, so that volunteer time really is appreciated. And now this is the part where I get to embarrass all the organizers.

Can you all join me on stage? I know, I know, I know. Do it anyway.

So I tend to try to avoid public speaking, so I almost did, but there's a couple other things that need to be said. So Phil Carlton once said, there are two things that... Let's see, excuse me. There are only two hard things in computer science,

cache invalidation and naming things. Well, Phil was wrong. There is a third, and that's organizing a conference. Honestly, chairing a conference is even harder. Running a conference that requires naming lots of things, for one, and if you think cache invalidation is hard, try running an inclusive, diverse, and welcoming conference. So Lacy has left her mark on this conference by literally dotting every I and every T

on all levels, including her fierce red pin. I can say this after chairing for two years, having the honor of co-chairing with Lacy last year, and then watching her chair this year, she's done a wonderful job. So everybody here has received a special badge this year to mark the occasion of being in Spokane. However, that wasn't the only special badge we created.

So I'll be honest with you, I don't quite understand the meaning of this badge, nor do I understand the University of Texas love of the Olive Garden. When you're there, you're family. So, however, we created a special black swan badge

for Lacy, and actually we made 25 of them because they're minimum orders.

So Lacy, on behalf of our community and our attendees, we love you, and we want to thank you from the bottom of our hearts for chairing this year. So please give Lacy another round of applause.