Joining efforts and communities to do bigger things

Joining efforts and communities to do big things: How two small GDGs worked to do DevFest together

The GDGs Finistère and Code d’Armor are two small GDG at the westernmost point of France, in the Brittany region. We are small communities (four organizers, some hundreds regular members, less than one hundred attendees per event) but rather active and experienced.

For years our two communities wanted to do a DevFest, but struggled with the idea of the logistics nightmare of organizing a DevFest in a small city, with a handful of organizers, and an ambitious goal of attendees and speakers, so the ideas never materialized.

Last year we decided to change our approach, and to join the efforts of our two communities to do the DevFest we wanted to do, but doing it together. And the DevFest du Bout du Monde (DevFest at the End of the French World) was born!

In this talk we will tell you how we decided to join efforts, how we structurated our work, how we dealt with the inherent difficulties of balancing local communities interests and making a joint event, and all the lessons that we learnt from this first edition… As we are doing it again in 2020, the DevFest du Bout du Monde will be back.