Community Signal

How many virtual conferences and events have you attended recently? Now compare that to the amount of time you’ve spent playing video games during the past few months. Not giving too much away, Patrick and I would probably agree that we’ve spent more time on the latter. With screen time dominating our lives and in-person gatherings largely on hold, how can we rise to the challenge of bringing communities together in accessible, refreshing, and fun ways?  In this episode of Community Signal, principal developer advocate Austin Parker shares how he used tools like Twitch, OBS, Discord, and yes, Animal Crossing: New Horizons, to throw a deserted island conference like no other. Austin doesn’t expect every conference from here on out to be hosted in the video game, but he does hope that the pandemic and his experience with Deserted Island DevOps encourages all of us to think outside of the box when it comes to creating experiences for our communities. In his words: “You don’t have to be an expert, you don’t have