Democracy and Program Committee

In one of the previous posts , a few words were said about the principles for selecting reports by the HighLoad ++ Conference Program Committee , among which was such a loud statement as: “Democracy does not work.”

I would like to clarify that, of course, it is not.
How it works is the secret to success in the right preparation.
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The main seasoning is collective meetings that take place several times a year. This is a real brainstorming, the entrance to which is open to anyone, in the sense - in general, any person, regardless of whether he is a participant or a speaker.



The Program Committee and HighLoad ++ activists meet there , and we encourage active participants in such meetings. First of all, because this is exactly how the goals of the conference are set: “I want such a topic or such a speaker, I heard about this new conference - bring its developer here.” Sometimes this is a nontrivial task, which can be solved only collectively.

The purpose of such a meeting is to collect ideas and requests, primarily from the community, which comes to the conference to listen to the reports.

All this translates into concrete proposals for the conference program, here is an example ( summer 2015 ): goo.gl/HFLghj . If anyone has ideas, contacts, advice - write to oleg.bunin@ontico.ru , we will be grateful.

It turns out an interesting situation, as a result of which we are doing a conference for ourselves! Of course, there is an organizing company, but it is subject to the dictates of the community and does not interfere at all in the process of the work of the Program Committee.

I want to believe that this is the reason for the growth in the number of participants in the HighLoad ++ conference. Decent growth, I must say, despite the crisis and all possible difficulties:

• In 2011 we were 754 people and we still fit into the "Infospace";
• In 2012, we had to move to Radisson in Kievskaya and 1049 participants came;
• In 2013, we already had 1266 people;
• In 2014, a breakthrough (and this despite the difficulties with foreign speakers) - 1,606 participants;
• The goal of this year is 2000 people.

Finally, about Western speakers, for whom there is a basic rule: "The same as everyone . " No reverence, know why?

The paradox is that the average level of an English-speaking speaker is lower than the level of a person speaking in Russian. In 2011, it was interesting to hear about how many Facebook servers have, but now, when there are a lot of them all, this alone is of no interest.

And finally : For the users of Habrakhabr, the conference offers a special discount of 15%, all you need to do is use the code " IAmHabr " when booking tickets.