We did a conference!

Yesterday saw the UK Cross Government Software Engineering Conference happen for the first time in a number of years. It had been in the works for about a year since I foolishly replied to a Cross Gov Software Engineering community newsletter about getting involved. Since then it's been a journey, we did a survey to see if people would come and they said they would, so maybe this thing was a go-er. We got together an organizing committee of others willing to help make it happen which was fantastic. Together with this group and the support of CDDO GDS's Engineering Excellence team we got a date (yesterday) and a venue (GDS's office). We lined up two fantastic keynote speakers: Asim Hussain from the Green Software Foundation and Terence Eden, formerly of NHSX and CDDO. We gave people the opportunity to submit ten minute lightning talks and had 6 insightful and engaging speakers from a variety of departments cover topics from how to organise a hackathon to being a creative technologist in government. Following our afternoon keynote, we had speakers from different service teams such as the Legal Aid Agency, i.AI, GOV.UK One Login and GOV.UK Chat showing us behind the curtain of what makes their services tick. And to wrap us up, David Heath from the Cross Gov Software Engineering community facilitators talking about how to get involved and what was next.

The whole day was a whirlwind (in a fun way) and the facilities staff at GDS and the conference helpers ensured everything ran smoothly. I think on the final count we had attendees from 36 different departments and agencies which personally is incredibly satisfying given how siloized government can often feel. And that connection and community will continue through the Cross Gov Software Engineering Community (if you work in the UK Government as someone who writes code you should join the mailing list). I know that there were plenty of people who weren't able to get a ticket and I'm sorry we couldn't get everyone in this time. But it's great to know the interest is there for these sort of events and after some well-earned rest we'll be sitting down to plot what is next.

Finally, thank you to all the organisers, the support of GDS's Engineering Excellence team, all our brilliant speakers. To UKGovCamp for sponsoring us and GDS for hosting us. To each and every one of you who came along and showed up thank you!

And so if you're sat there with a idea for your community, don't sit on it no matter how crazy it might seem. Find some others who'll go on the journey with you because it might just be bloody brilliant.