So as you may know, Django is turning 10 years old this summer and we’re throwing it a birthday party. It’s a one day tech conference and one day of sprints mere feet from where Adrian, Simon, Jacob, and Wilson toiled away on “ the CMS ”, as it was called then. That code became the first of a few amazing refreshes of Lawrence.com and the very first Django website.
We’ve got an amazing line up of speakers of course. And we want to celebrate Django obviously, but secretly we have another small motivation. See we love Lawrence, despite the fact it’s surrounded by Kansas, and we’ve grown tired of answering questions along the lines of “Ummm why are you in Kansas?” So we’re going to expose our Django community friends to as much as this area has to offer to help explain why we choose to live here. And who knows maybe one of them will fall in love, as we have, and build their next startup here.
So what can you expect?
Most everyone agrees the best part of Lawrence is our downtown, so we’re having the event downtown and encouraging everyone to stay in or near the area. This makes everything special in Lawrence within walking distance. There’s great local restaurants, quirky stores, and being a college town lots of interesting places to grab a libation should you so choose.
We’re having the event at Liberty Hall which has acted as a community-meeting house and venue since 1856! If you’re interested you can read more about its history. Lawrence is weird and funky, which is reflected in the wide variety of entertainers that have performed there. Some highlights include: Oscar Wilde, Tina Turner, Wu Tang Clan, Henry Rollins, Tori Amos, The Civil Wars, and for its 100th anniversary party The Flaming Lips which I’m quite sad to have missed. Lawrence has a long and great music history, but much of that happened in the 90s at The Outhouse (which is now sadly a strip club so we won’t be going there) and another venue down the street named the Bottleneck.
Kansas is known for its BBQ, so of course we’re having Kansas City’s best Oklahoma Joe’s cater lunch. In 2009, Anthony Bourdain listed Joe’s in his “Thirteen Places to Eat Before You Die”. Yeah it’s that good.
But it’s a party right?
Oh yes it’s a party all right! We’ve gotten special permission from the City of Lawrence to close down a block of downtown and hold a block party! We’ll have a few live bands, including Adrian, food, beer, a special cocktail tent for our more refined guests, snow cones, and some other fun family friendly things for the kids.
See many in Lawrence don’t know about Django and we want to change that. By having a block party all of Lawrence can come down and help celebrate, instead of having it just be a small gathering of us geeks.
Oh and there will be cake of course… it’s not a birthday party without cake.
Many thanks to our great sponsors for helping us put on a great and fun event!
And our travel sponsors:
