September 17th, 2020 by Adam Sandman
As you can probably tell by now, we're excited to meet you at our upcoming InflectraCon 2020 conference in less than two weeks time (can you believe it!). One of the insanely cool things we have in store for you is our new on-demand conferencing platform - InflectraCon Connect. Lovingly crafted by our crack team of designers, programmers and marketing professionals, Connect will offer an unparalleled global conference experience. In this article, we peel back the curtain and explore some of the key aspects of the Connect experience...
Introducing InflectraCon Connect
When we decided to convert InflectraCon from our planned in-person event to a fully virtual experience, we looked at some of the other platforms that were being used... and decided we needed something easier to use, more engaging and fully on-demand. InflectraCon will be using the world-class Vimeo video delivery platform to deliver over 200 hours of interactive programming, and underpinning the immersive aspect of the event, we are using the Discord collaboration environment to allow real-time chat and simulate the adhoc communications that you get at an in-person event.
However, bringing all the different pieces together, Inflectra Connect is the central hub for the event, with all the talks, speakers, and community aspects tightly integrated.
Each of the main tracks (keynotes, workshops, advanced topics, thought leadership and "Inflectra In Real Life (IRL)" has its own dedicated page, with all of the days' videos listed, ready for on-demand access. You can watch the videos in any order, pause, rewind and play at half-speed as you desire. For many of the tracks, we have integrated a Discord sidebar widget, so that attendees can interact with the speakers in real-time, asking questions and posing thought provoking ideas.
Introducing the InflectraCon Expo
InflectraCon would not be possible without the support and assistance of our sponsors, partners and evangelists. The InflectraCon Expo brings together many different world-class companies under the same virtual roof. From Artificial Intelligence, to DevOps and Agile Testing, the InflectraCon Expo lets attendees meet and interact with representatives from each of our sponsors and partners in real time as well as view videos and other downloadable assets.
Each sponsor has a "virtual booth" that lets attendees see information about the sponsor, watch videos, download collateral, whitepapers and brochures, as well as chat in real-time using the integrated Discord widget in each booth.
Should Out to Our Speakers!
What would a conference be without our speakers? The Connect platform lets you see each of the speakers in our program, see their list of talks, and engage in a live chat with them during the available hours. Since all of the presentations are on-demand and don't have fixed timeslots, our speakers have agreed to be available at specific points of the day to discuss ideas with attendees and answer questions on their talks. Similar to many Comic and Movie Conventions, these interactive sessions are like the VIP booths where you can meet you favorite superhero and ask them the questions you've always wanted to ask (no sonic screwdriver required!)
Bringing the Hallway to the Convention
One of the unique aspects of an in-person conference is the networking and spur of the moment conversations with other professionals in your field. Called the "hallway track", we have integrated Discord text and voice chats into the entire event. In the main Discord server for InflectraCon 2020 we have organized the event into different channels for each of our speakers, a hallway track, and other channels for the expo. You can connect with other attendees by voice, chat or both, regardless of your location or timezone.
Wait... One Last Thing.
Finally, we have one last surprise - during the event we have organized three live book readings from three of our most favorite people in the world: Mike Lyles, Sriram Rajagopalan, and Raj Subrameyer:
Hosted live on Discord, you can hear from these three great speakers and get a preview of their recently published books: