My name is Natasha aka NatashaTheRobot. I'm an iOS Developer and entrepreneur who is passionate about learning. I started working with Swift since Day 1 and have been very fortunate to be part of the amazing learning and community that grew as Swift became more popular and increased in adoption.
In 2016, I started the try! Swift Conference to bring together people from all over the world to share the latest knowledge about Swift, a quickly developing and changing language. The first conference took place in Japan in March 2016, and it was a huge success. We had 500+ attendees and it grew to 700+ this year, making it the largest Swift conference in the world! Since then, we’ve expanded to New York City and Bangalore (coming up next!).
Here are some things that make try! Swift unique from other conferences:
International: I truly believe that we live in a small world. The conference is about connecting people across cultural and language barriers. Most of our speakers are from abroad and we make sure they get immersed and connected with the local developers. Our conferences also tend to have a large base on international attendees. Many amazing connections have happened as a result, which is personally the most rewarding aspect of the conference to me.
Personal: Again, the goal of the conference is to really bring people together. In addition to 20-minute talks, attendees have the option to attend office hours with any of the speakers. This is very important - since there aren't many conferences out there that provide this much personal access to speakers. While the official office hours are timed for 20 minutes, many times they grow into bigger discussions, ending up being two hours and the most rewarding part of the conference for both the speakers and attendees.
Community-driven: As an international conference, try! Swift really focuses on the needs of the local community. That means that we need the support of the local community to really make it happen - the first try! Swift Tokyo couldn’t have happened without the help of @k_katsumi and many many others. We make sure to tailor the content and the conference to the needs of the local community as well. We added a hackathon in Tokyo, various workshops in NYC, and specific Beginner and Advanced Swift workshops in Bangalore.
We can still feel the energy of every conference as if it just happened yesterday. Even though those conferences are over, conference attendees continue to form study groups, meetups, and friendships in their community and around the world!
We own a big thank you to the amazing organizers and volunteers who helped make this magic happen. Their hard work and dedication to the community is priceless.
Thank you to everyone who has supported try! Swift and helped make it the community and family it is today. We hope to see you at the next try! Swift!
