Announcing: Distill 2013

Since joining Engine Yard in 2011, I’ve always wanted us to run a developer conference. One of the primary motivations for my team becoming a part of Engine Yard was its history of meaningful contributions to developer communities.

This resonated deeply with my Orchestra co-founders and me.

I saw a developer event as an opportunity to pull together the various threads of our community endeavours into one neat package. Having created Funconf with my friend Paul Campbell probably had something to do with it too.

My philosophy on conferences, and one that is shared by my teammates at Engine Yard, is that our guests should leave with more than what they arrived with – new experiences, new insights, new lessons, new friends. This philosophy is what we used to shape the Funconf experience, and it’s something my teammates and I are pouring into an event called Distill.

I’m excited to announce that Engine Yard will be presenting our inaugural developer conference on August 8-9. Distill will take place on Treasure Island in San Francisco.

Our vision for Distill is simple: to create an inspiring forum for developers of all types to share their knowledge, experiences and philosophies in unique surroundings. We are also pleased to welcome experts from a variety of fields outside of programming and technology, including game design, academia and artisanal cuisine.

In addition to an awesome lineup of keynote speakers, the conference thrives on participation from a community of forward-thinking developers. This is your conference!

The call for papers (which closes on April 9) is now open, we can’t wait to hear from you! Tickets go on sale in April, so keep an eye on @distill for real-time updates. We’ve also got something very special in the works for the after-party.

A list of suggested proposal topics is below, but we’d love to hear from you on any subject you’re passionate about.

Topics: Identifying & solving problems Learning how to focus on what matters; create vs. integrate Software development methods including DevOps, Agile, etc Frameworks, tools, databases & languages Open source & community Collaboration & remote working Best practices & anti-practices Modular applications leveraging APIs & service

We’re looking forward to receiving all your wonderful ideas for talks, and hanging out with you in beautiful and hopefully sunny surroundings.