Making QCon an
experience for everyone

What we believe

QCon’s commitment to serving every software professional is reflected in our "We Care" philosophy.

We designed QCon as a place where everyone feels safe to express themselves, learn, and succeed in adopting new technology and practices that create change and innovation. We create products that are accessible and strive to continuously improve our conference to become more inclusive.

We are always striving to be more inclusive and encourage attendees to reach out and let us know how we can improve, if you have an idea, please let us know.

Share your feedback or ideas

'We Care' experience

Discover how QCon is putting our “We Care” philosophy into practice

Enforced Code of Conduct

All-Gender restroom

Prayer room

Lactation room

Quiet areas

Sessions feedback for constant improvement

Badge optimized for peer-sharing

Accessible event space

Variety of food options (vegetarian, vegan, gluten free, special diet meals)

Detailed food labels

Diversity scholarships

Community events

DEI guidelines for track hosts and speakers

All-day coffee

Flexible online experience

On-demand access for 6 months

Apply now for your chance to receive a free ticket for developers from underrepresented groups in tech

Are you a senior developer from an underrepresented group in tech and want to attend QCon? Or do you know somebody who would benefit from this opportunity? Apply for a free ticket for senior developers from underrepresented groups in tech.

QCon aims to run conferences where our attendees come from as diverse backgrounds as our speakers and track hosts do.

To make our products more accessible, senior developers from underrepresented groups in tech can apply for free tickets to attend the conference.

You can find more details about the requirements and application deadlines in the event FAQ.

Women and Allies in Tech community events

The Women and Allies in Tech events are designed specifically to be a space for women and allies
in tech to connect, build relationships, and facilitate conversation at every QCon.

Working as a community

Content process - curating the agenda

Diversity and inclusion cannot be an afterthought, so QCon is shifting them left.

Everything starts with selecting a diverse Programming Committee. These are senior practitioners from a variety of organizations, genders, and backgrounds.

Diversity is built in that group’s core values:

PC Committee core values

As PC members, we ascribe to and will be guided by the following core values:

Collective Ownership & Engagement & Accountability.
Information robin hoods.
Facilitators, not advocates.
Content you can trust.
Promoting Diversity.

We believe that technology can better serve society if our profession is more representative of society, and also that a diverse conference makes for a more interesting conference. We consider it an important goal to increase the diversity of our conference speakers.

The members of that diverse Programming Committee use their personal and professional networks to invite track hosts. They are looking for senior practitioners and emphasize including hosts from underrepresented groups in tech. The track hosts are onboarded 1:1 by a senior member of the QCon team:

“We strongly recommend inviting a diverse group of Speakers from different backgrounds and representing different companies. We ask that you include at least two Speakers from an underrepresented group in tech.”

Finally, the track hosts themselves invite the speakers.

Everyone mentioned above is a community member passionate about change and innovation, which is volunteering their time.

There is:

No call for papers.
No single authority selecting speakers.
Diversity and inclusion are an integral part of every step of the speaker selection process.

QCon speaker
selection process

For 6-9 months prior to the event, the Programming Committee meets every week to review progress on speaker invitations and make sure that we are supporting our diversity and inclusion vision.

Speaker Support

It would be easy to only invite speakers from large organizations just because their companies were willing to pay for their travel. But that would skew content and affect diversity negatively. Instead, we are leveling the field by offering budget for traveling and accommodation arrangements for all speakers.

And for speakers that are less experienced in public speaking, we are offering speaker training and optional rehearsals with members of the Programming Committee.

Partnerships

While we are working towards creating more attention and awareness around diversity and inclusion, we are happy to see that we are not alone.

Some of the partnerships we have had along the way that are actively engaging with and advancing diversity and inclusion in software development include, but are not restricted to: Women Who Code, Code 2040, Women in Data, Tech Ladies, Write/Speak/Code.

The QCon team

We continue to create a company culture that nourishes diversity, equity, and inclusion.

C4Media is a fully remote company with a team across many countries (Romania, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Greece, Great Britain, Spain, Portugal, Egypt, South Africa, Argentina, Brazil, Canada, United States). Our company culture promotes and encourages a safe environment regardless of gender, sexual orientation, disability, physical appearance, body size, race, or religion. Each team member is encouraged to share their values and improve the way we collaborate and serve our customers. Diversity within our team is a priority whenever we are planning for a new hire.

The QCon Code of Conduct

QCon is dedicated to providing a harassment-free conference experience for everyone, regardless of gender, sexual orientation, disability, physical appearance, body size, race, or religion. We strive to provide a safe and diverse learning space by having and enforcing our strict code of conduct.

In over 10 years we've rarely had to enforce our code of conduct. This is living proof of the fact that both our speakers and our attendees are dedicated to creating a diverse and inclusive conference landscape.

View our code of conduct

Accessibility at the QEII Centre

QCon is working with the QEII Centre in London and are committed to providing accessibility for all visitors, including those with disabilities or impairments. The Centre also offers support for visitors with additional needs, such as assistance dogs and audio-description services.

In addition, the Centre offers online resources and assistance to help visitors plan their visit and make the most of the accessibility features available.

Learn more about accessibility at the QEII Centre

See what our speakers and attendees are saying

Attending QCon was the bridge that connected me with resources, speakers, and recognized people in the industry and best of all it was an inspiration to dream of becoming a speaker. I started to practice my talks using the body language of the speakers I saw at the event and soon the first doors in Colombia opened and my stories with Chaos Engineering started to be accepted in meetups and local conferences. My work became more and more visible. Pierre Vincent, one of the QCon London track hosts, saw my work and invited me last year to speak at QCon in London. This opportunity was undoubtedly the highest point I have reached in my speaking career. I certainly wouldn't have gotten there, without first learning from the best.”

Yury Niño Roa

Cloud Infrastructure Engineer @Google

Small improvements lead to big changes

QCon is unlike any other tech conference I've attended. There are several tracks to choose from but not an overwhelming number of attendees, so it's easy to gain knowledge about a variety of topics, open your mind to new ideas, find inspiration to solve engineering challenges and chat with a lot of smart and thoughtful people. I was impressed by the conscious inclusion of many women and LGBTQ speakers—that meant a lot to me personally and made QCon even better by spotlighting a diverse range of perspectives.

Tyler Collins, Software Developer at the University of Kentucky (QCon New York 2018 attendee)

The amount of women as track hosts is amazing. Thank you so much for helping change the identity of the tech community.

Vinicius Gomes, Software Developer at ThoughtWorks (Speaker at QCon New York 2017)

The quality of most of the talks was high. I liked that the speakers are diverse. It made me feel welcomed and that my questions are welcomed.

Christine Schwerdtfeger, Software Engineer at Enova International (QCon San Francisco 2018 attendee)

I was very surprised to find that I enjoyed QCon, I never enjoy conferences. As a female engineer and introvert, I find them noisy and tiring and not usually that informative. You have really nailed it with QCon. It was informative, the breaks were frequent and of the right length for my brain to digest the information from the talks. You are openly supportive of women in Engineering. You have minorities right up there at the front giving inspiring keynote speeches. It was good, really good. Thanks.

Annette Tisdale, Technical Team Lead and Engineering Manager at BabyCenter LLC (QCon San Francisco 2017 attendee)

I was amazed at the diversity of speakers and the depth of knowledge of speakers and attendees. As a first time attendee, I was certainly overwhelmed by the amount of content. I would love to attend in the future.

Allison Letson, Consulting Software Engineer at HCA Healthcare (QCon San Francisco 2018 attendee)

I'm really intrigued by the wide array of topics available and the focus on architecture and real-world implementations at companies of scale. I also admire the efforts toward diversity of gender and race among presenters.

Kelly Gajewski, Software Engineer II at ZEFR (QCon San Francisco 2018 attendee)

Blog posts about QCon from our speakers and attendees

How to Run a Great Conference

Arguably, QCon is one of the best run conferences I have attended. It isn’t just the smooth administration, although that played an important part. Rooms were ready and prepared; audio-visual worked; sessions started on time and ended on time

Security Transformation and The Three Faces of DevSecOps

One last word: QCon is one of my favorite conferences, and was a great home for such a track since its audience, for the most part, is senior enough to have deep conversations, and pragmatic enough to understand the world isn’t black and white and no solution is perfect.

QCon London 2019

I got the opportunity this year to attend the QCON London conference, ran by InfoQ, and would absolutely recommend it to anyone interested in working in the software engineering industry that’s proficient with technical language and subjects.

Qcon New York - 2018 Table of Contents

This year, I’m speaking and live blogging from QCon New York. 140 speakers and 900 attendees from 38 states plus international. Should be good! As always, I like the hallway track, emphasis on useful badges, etc.

My QCon 2018 Adventure

I think overall that QConSF is a pretty chill conference, compared to the bigger ones. It’s basically the Fanime of developer conferences. Which is a great thing to be compared to! Fanime is basically a fan convention for the fans and by the fans. QConSF was made by developers for developers.

The driving force behind every QCon Conference is our passion to accelerate the software side of human progress. This comes to life at every QCon event, through our efforts as a diverse and inclusive team.

If you have any suggestions on how we can improve our diversity and inclusion activities please send us an email via diversity@qconferences.com.

Learn more about diversity at C4Media

Making QCon an experience for everyone