August is here and with August, eurucamp. Our CEO Florian was involved in the organising team as in previous years and the Asquera team will be attending the conference.

eurucamp started in 2011 as a reject conference for EuRuKo. This year eurucamp seems to have reached its maturity, and not only has more attendees than ever but also has a reject conference of its own - Euruject! This weekend, people from all around the world will be at Potsdam, near Berlin, to attend or speak at this conference.

eurucamp is focused on Ruby but it is much more than that - during these three days there will be workshops, talks about non-programming topics and different outdoors activities - such as bike tours, swimming in the lake, playing board games… that have been organised by attendees using an activities app (opensource, find it on GitHub) and that make the conference not only more summer-like but also more attractive to beginner developers and non-technical people.

eurucamp is organised by the Ruby Berlin e.V. association, an inherits from it its vocation of inclusiveness. As they put it, eurucamp is all about community, learning and fun; and i happens in a framework in which everyone is welcomed and respected. They made a point by creating a code of conduct, that has been accepted by all attendees, organisers and speakers. The quick version reads:

“Our conference 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 do not tolerate harassment of conference participants in any form. Sexual language and imagery is not appropriate for any conference venue, including talks, workshops, parties, Twitter and other online media. Conference participants violating these rules may be sanctioned or expelled from the conference without a refund at the discretion of the conference organisers.”

The organisers of the conference, and Ruby Berlin e.V. members in general are committed to the inclusion of all minorities in their events. They started a trend last year by writing their code of conduct and they have made a great job at getting speakers from various genders, nationalities and backgrounds, thanks to an open call for proposals process. To bring just one example, 9 out of the 23 speakers and workshops organisers are women - that means there is almost a 40% women representation on the stage! Definitely a great achievement for a tech conference.

The idea of inclusion is held in the Buby Berlin community and we also stand for inclusion as a company. We want to reach more people - all the people - so we’ll be sponsoring real time captioning at eurucamp this year. Live captioning (think real time produced subtitles) will make it possible for people with hearing impairments to enjoy the conference, and it is also helpful for those who struggle with english, and much more, as you can read in this awesome blogpost.

But inclusion, in a wide sense, is more than about bringing more women to conferences, letting the newbies understand what everything is all about or making it possible for people with hearing or mobility impairments to attend and enjoy the talks.

Some of us are growing old and up, and starting our own families. Leaving home and the kids for three days to attend a conference was not feasible for all parents, so this year eurucamp decided to offer childcare in the venue, as well as a low cost ticket for partners.

All this is possible thanks to other sponsors that, like us, believe in the community and want to give back to it - join us in saying a big thank you to HitFox, Fyber, Travis ci, crealytics, GitHub, planio, ThoughtWorks, codeship, bitcrowd, bulletproof, elasticsearch, scrivito, soundcloud, Bignerdranch, Chef, iwantmyname, G&L, redhat, tape.tv, trifork, 1minus1

We hope to see you at the conference and we’d love to connect. If you are around you can reach us at our twitter @asquera, we’ll be happy to take a break and talk.

If you wont make it to eurucamp but are curious about our work and want to connect at some point, feel free to reach us at info@asquera.de or keep an eye on our website to know who’ll be at which event soon.

Have a sunny weekend!