Six Questions with One Day Out

Neon Moiré sets out to interview festival organizers and tries to find out what motivates them to organize their events and what are they most excited about. We talked to Thomas Kjaergaard, co-organizer at One Day Out. This annual conference for designers, developers, entrepreneurs and everyone in between takes places in Odense, Denmark on April 29th, 2016.

Why are you organizing One Day Out conference?

The conference originates from a Danish digital community called "Devdk" which was created in 2011. Back then we were operating on IRC but have now moved to Slack and have over 400 members.

We noted that Denmark was lacking a conference which addresses design and development and was affordable for everyone, not just corporations with deep pockets. The first edition of the conference was held in 2014 and had about 120 attendees.

The conference is by the community for the community. The main objective is to create a day where the content is focused around the people who are design- and web artisans. We strive to get passionate and inspirational speakers from all around the world, to share their thoughts on a given subject. But we don’t dictate what our speakers should talk about, we just ask them to talk about something they are passionated about, as we wrote in our manifest.

How do you select the speakers? Is the community involved?

It’s pretty simple we look for speakers that do cool stuff, people we follow every day on twitter, dribbble and other networks. We love conferences ourselfs and just sat down and made a big Trello board of people we would love to see at a conference. We try to be pretty open about the fact that we don’t pay our speakers. Some people won’t speak at conferences if they dont get paid, this is something we respect 1000%, but we are all doing it for fun and for free, so we need to limit our budget.

Can you tell us more about your manifesto? Why you wrote it?

Our manifesto is the conference’s reason-to-be. Without it there probably would not be a conference. The first draft was written back in 2012 and was more of a manifest for the Devdk community: a set of guidelines to which direction the community should go. The manifest was then rewritten in 2015 to fit the conference as well. But all the core principles from the original manifest are represented. We always want to stay transparent to our audience, we don't do this to become millionaires, we do it out of love to the community.

What is the biggest challenge for One Day Out?

The biggest challenge for our conference is probably the financial aspect. None of us are born salesmen. We all work as designers, front-end and backend-developers, and that's where our passion lies. The conference is built around the community, and that's why the majority of expenses are paid for by sponsors.

What do you want your audience to take home after a ‘One Day Out’?

We want the audience to, of course, go home with some inspiration to produce good and fun projects. But the major thing that we believe that our conference has, is community. We have a free afterparty at the end of the conference where we all grab a drink, meet new friends and just have a talk about different topics.

What are you most proud of or excited about if you look at the One Day Out program?

Compared to the last couple of years, we're proud to have a full international line up. It's not so much that the speakers work in well known international corporations, it's more that we've got some very talented people coming to Denmark to share what they are passionated about. In our opinion, that always makes the best talks.

What other festival or event/happening inspires you and would you recommend to your peers?

We get a lot of inspiration from our colleagues around the world who are doing some great events.

  • NordicJS: NJS provides a similar vibe to what we strive for. A conference that gives more than just great talks, but also provides precious memories and maybe even good friendships.
  • OFFF: Barcelona is top-shelf conference and is quite affordable, definitely worth a visit.
  • Coldfront: Copenhagen is also a nice event, which is taking place in an old theater, they always have some very exciting speakers.
  • Awwwards: A nomadic conference with it’s latest edition in Amsterdam. Another quality conference, good diversity in speakers and a great vibe.
  • Hybridconf: Also nomad, latest edition in Dublin. Another quality conference, great speakers and really nice people.

One Day Out

April 29, 2016
Odense, Denmark
onedayout.io
Get your tickets here

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