It started on a drive to work. To be honest, a lot of ideas and solutions to problems I find on my way to work in the morning. I have no idea why this phenomenon exists but it does and I have learnt to live with it. I am not sure what the inspiration behind the idea was, however it was exciting enough for me to give it some serious consideration.

Having been part of SA Developer.Net and SA Architect.Net for a few years now and also being the KZN lead for both communities has taught me a lot of lessons about running events, and I have been trying to find a way to improve the situation for some time. My sabbatical from communities and events seems to have cleared some cobwebs.

To solve the problem the simple solution is to host the event online. This in itself is not a problem, but if you’re living in South Africa, bandwidth is an extremely expensive commodity. Therefore there needs to be more than just an online meeting, and with the right approach it could also provide a bigger audience if the topic list was open and speakers could get involved from outside of South Africa. Based on this argument, and with some discussions with the better half and some of my more enthused colleagues like Ruari Plint and Robert MacLean, the concept of DevRally was born.

DevRally is an open developer event covering numerous topics selected by the community. The event itself will be hosted in one day, in 3 cities. Each city will provide a physical venue along with a central live web stream for the event, with speakers presenting either via a web stream or on stage.

Robert decided to actually registering a domain for the name I invented in an email, creating a website, and registering a twitter account, the event itself has become real. Alex Rozanski was willing enough to design a logo and interface for the website, which means the idea now has a brand. Along with all of this voting has opened on topics, and over the next month we will be looking at which technologies the event will cover.

How?

The event will be held on a Saturday. Delegates can either attend the event live at one of the 3 venues in Johannesburg, Durban and Cape Town, or alternatively watch the event live through the website. The major difference between attending in person or online will be the ability to interact with the speakers, as this will only be available to the delegates at the venues.

What?

Topics will be selected by the community. The event itself will not be specific to a product, and will open the doors to various different companies or technologies to be covered. Some already suggested include Adobe, PHP, .Net, Ruby/Rails, SQL Server, Linux, Drupal and many others. Feel free to vote here for the topics you would like to see a presentation on. A decision on topics will be made by the middle of March if all goes well.

Who?

Both local and international speakers will be presenting topics in 2 tracks over 6-8 sessions. The speakers will either be presenting from one of the 3 venues, or alternatively will present via web stream from their preferred location. This means that some international speakers can be approached to get involved, without the cost of flying them into the country.

When?

The aim is to have the event in either the 3^rd or 4^th quarter of 2010. With the website up and running the next major challenge is deciding on topics and a format, and then to start drafting sponsors, both for venues as well as bandwidth.

We are hoping that the concept and idea behind DevRally will generate enough interest for us to have a very informative and powerful event for developers, covering the topics developers are interest in. If you are interest in learning more about DevRally, please visit the website or follow the event on Twitter.