Not that long ago, before the world went the latest version of crazy, JAFAC was a two day conference Nomad8 ran each year.
It all started when we were looking around at the conferences that were happening in our field at the time, and we realised that nothing really appealed. So we decided to create the conference we’d like to go to ourselves.
We hand-picked 10 speakers - mostly local, a few from Australia (over the years). We set a deliberately low price as making money from this wasn’t our motivation - but we did need to cover costs. We found a venue that would hold 100-150 people, and we opened it up. JAFAC #1 was held in Auckland in 2016.
JAFAC 2016 was a little bit crazy! Spot any familiar faces?
The speaker quality was excellent. We found people who talked about the work they were doing, or the theories they were exploring, or the things they were innovating. Everyone got 20-30 minutes with 10 minutes for questions. The topics were diverse, fascinating and loosely related to Agile.
The format was a day of speakers and a day of OpenSpace - where the attendees set the agenda and created conversations they wanted to have.
Gavin Coughlan setting the scene for OpenSpace in 2024
Feedback was overwhelmingly great - people loved the diverse nature of who was speaking and what they were speaking about. Great connections and conversations were happening all day and into the night. The event was small enough to be right in the midst of it, and significant enough to feel like you really were part of something special.
JAFAC ran in Wellington a couple of times and in Auckland six times.
Pre-COVID tickets sold out within a week or two of becoming available. We had to cancel in 2020 but continued in 2023 and 2024. It started to be harder to sell tickets. It seems to have become a thing now that people buy last minute. But it’s too hard to plan an event for 100+ people when you need to arrange a space, catering, speakers, all the admin that goes with it - not knowing if you’ll have 25 or 125 show up. In 2025 we opted to cancel a month out from the event - there just weren’t enough people buying tickets.
Apparently attending things in person is coming back again! People are recognising the value in being around other like-minded souls, sharing stories and making connections. Who knew?!
So we’re thinking of resurfacing JAFAC in 2027. A very similar approach - we’re creating the conference we’d like to go to - and we’re inviting you to come along. We’ll tap into the local communities to find speakers with stories to tell - and we’ll keep things low key and low cost.
But first some questions for you - would you come to an in person conference? Why or why not?
Who do you know that has great stories to tell - that you think we, and others would be keen to hear?
We’d love to get your responses - email us, or join us on Slack, or comment here :)
The Nomad8 Crew post JAFAC 2024