Code4lib is a loose association of folks who work in libraries of all types and are involved with or interested in programming and using software to make libraries more effective in delivering resources to their patrons. Some of us are librarians, some are coders, some are both, and some are simply interested in the topic. For the last six years, I have had the good fortune to attend the Code4lib annual conference. This year, 350 of us met in Raleigh, North Carolina.
Code4libCon is different. There is one track covering many topics and presentations are selected by popular vote. This means that attendees are exposed to topics that they would never encounter in a multi-track conference. Code4Lib puts a premium on concision. Keynotes are 45 minutes, presentations are 20 minutes, and lightning talks are 5 minutes, so atttendees are never bored.
This year's conference was focused on diversity, inclusiveness and gender equity. The keynote speakers ? Sumana Harihareswara, Engineering Community Manager at the
Wikimedia Foundation and Valerie Aurora, founder of the Ada Initiative ? not only addressed this, but they were also attendees and engaged in conversations throughout the conference.
For the past few years the conference has been streamed live and available afterwards as a video archive. I had the privilege of working on the video crew this year, and the results are archived at http://youtube.com/code4lib.
I continue to be amazed at the breadth of collective knowledge at this event. We had an impromptu breakout session on AngularJS ? a Javascript framework for presenting single-page web sites ?and 35 people showed up! More amazing was that 32 of them were actually working with Angular, including us.
If you have an opportunity to go to a Code4lib conference, take it!