Clark Sell
4 min read

We Want To Hear YOUR Awesome!

THAT Conference 2020

Call For Counselors NOW OPEN

In just over 6 months THAT Campsite will be set, tents lining the halls and THAT Mess Hall ready to rock. But not without the most important part, YOU! What brings the awesome to each event is the amazing community and people ready to share their unique perspective.

Regardless of age, experience, tech stack… you have awesome to share and a community of people who want to hear it. So let’s get to it… THAT 2020 Call for Counselors is NOW OPEN!

Please note: All previous THAT Conference website accounts were removed with the new site. You will need to sign up for a new account if it was created prior to 2020.

OMG, All THAT Excitement, Tell Me More! 🤩

THAT is a multi-day, community-driven, family friendly, polyglot tech conference with session offerings for all ages and experience levels. We take over the Kalahari in Wisconsin Dells for 4 straight days. Kicking off with a full day of hands on workshops, followed with 3 days of 1 hour sessions, open spaces, social events, hands-on activities for our campers, campmates and of course our geeklings of all ages and levels.

Submission Process

THAT is built and organized by the community for the community. This year we have built a NEW submission process to better accommodate our community needs and help us continue to grow.

From now until March 1st we accept session submissions. The submissions are then opened up, anonymously, to the community for voting until March 22. Finally THAT Crew begins the difficult final selection process to get the schedule announced April 13th.

Counselor Benefits

If selected to speak, you will receive a ticket to attend all 4 days of THAT Conference; meals during the event, including the THAT Pig Roast; 2 night stay at the Kalahari per accepted talk (3 nights max per family); opportunity for professional recording of your session (does not apply to geekling/family track sessions); and countless networking opportunities.

Topics

Now the list of potential topics is endless. If we were to break topics down into categories, here’s how we think about things:

  • Technical: How To, Why To
  • Experiential: Sharing Experiences.
  • Mind and Body / Soft Skills: Be a better you.
  • Workshop / Hands-On: Banging on Keyboard
  • Family Focused: Teaching our Youth

If you’d like to see a technical talk, it has an audience…submit it! We embrace the diversity of ideas across our entire community and industry. Want to come out and talk about AI? Feel strongly about improving developer health? Want to talk about testing strategies for client-side web languages? Those are all fantastic ideas! Color outside the lines and be creative, we love that!

Can Geeklings under 13 submit abstracts?

YES! We love having Geeklings present, and many have given epic level sessions. Here is what you do: if a child under age of 13 wishes to submit a talk proposal, a parent will have to submit under their own account. Please note in the session submission form that you are submitting on behalf of a child where it asks for any information important for us to know.

Ready For All THAT Help?

Do you…

  • Need some help formalizing your idea?
  • Would you like someone to review your session and provide feedback?
  • Just curious if it’s a subject people will find valuable?
  • Need a bit of mentoring and support?

Simply put, we’re here to help. Not just the folks at THAT Conference but the entire community who represents THAT. If you need help, jump in the #sessions channel in our Slack and ask away. If you’d rather email us, you can reach us at [email protected]. The worst thing you can do is not ask! Let us help you be your most awesome.

In the meantime check out Your Abstract Sucks by Clark Sell.

Whoa! New Logo, New Site 😍

A new year, a new decade a new THAT! As we launch into 2020 we do so on a new custom open-source platform we built to better support our community and the growth we are excited to bring to you all in the coming years.

To bring all we want to life we need your feedback and help. As you come across any issues on the site, hop over to our THAT Website project (github.com/ThatConference/that-website) and tell us by creating an issue.

Ready to jump in and help? Whoop whoop! Jump over to github.com/thatconference, and join in the conversation in THAT Slack in the #that_contributor channel. It’s the perfect place to work with THAT Staff + THAT Community to get you started, ask questions and share your ideas and thoughts as we work side by side to make THATConference.com a true community collaboration.

We can’t wait to see all of your submissions! Now what are you waiting for, get started sharing your awesome TODAY!

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