40
Minutes per talk
30 minutes of talk and ten of questions, with a host who keeps both to time.
How thetwo dayswork
We plan the program around the breaks. Talks are short, gaps are long, rooms are close together, and the quiet room is never a cupboard.
A day at the Ropeworks
Thursday as an exampleDoors, badges, coffee
The Yard desk prints your badge in about a minute. The creche opens at the same time.
One keynote, everyone together
Rope Hall, 45 minutes, captioned on the big screen.
Two tracks and a workshop
40-minute talks in the Loft and the Boiler Room, a two-hour workshop in the Yard Studio.
Ninety minutes for lunch
Long enough to eat and talk. Trays are labelled; there's no queue for the vegan one.
Show and tell
Five-minute demos from anyone who signed up at the desk before lunch.
Four formats
Talks · workshops · unconference · hallwayTalks give you ideas; workshops give you something that works by the end of the session; the unconference fills the gaps we didn't plan.
Workshops 40 seats
Two hours, a laptop each and a facilitator who has run it before.
- Thu Audit your community app for access
- Thu Build a moderation bot in two hours
- Fri Facilitating hard community meetings
- Fri Write your first incident plan
Unconference
Friday 9:15: pitch a session in 30 seconds. Twelve rooms run at 14:00 and 15:00 in the studios and the Yard.
The hallway track
Twenty minutes between every talk, ninety for lunch, tables in the Yard with a topic card on each. Most people tell us this is where the conference happens.
Looked after
Included in every passNone of these cost extra and none of them need a form beyond the one at checkout.
Live captions
Human captioners on every talk, on screen and on your phone.
Quiet room
Level 2, 24 seats, soft light, no calls, 8:30 to 18:00.
Creche
Licensed care for ages 1 to 10 in the Yard, booked at checkout.
Recordings
Every track talk online with captions within seven days.
Food for everyone
Vegan, halal and gluten-free trays, labelled, in the same queue.
Lanyard colors
Red means no photos. Coral lanyards are organizers you can ask anything.
Pronouns on badges
Printed if you add them; left off if you don't.
A code that's enforced
Three rules, a phone line staffed until 22:00, replies within 15 minutes.
The program in numbers
- Seats in Rope Hall
- 600
- Rooms running at once
- 3
- Scholarship passes 40 from host partners, 80 from supporters
- 120
- Minutes between talks
- 20
We test every room with a wheelchair, a hearing loop receiver and a stroller before we print the map. If one of them doesn't fit, the room changes, not the person.
Two days.$289.
Every talk, a workshop seat, lunch both days and the recordings. Full refund until 1 April.