Italian C++ Conference 2021: Wrap-up post

C++ Day 2018


Last June 19th, we made another fantastic virtual event about C++: the Italian C++ Conference 2021. As pretty much everything in 2020 and 2021, the conference was totally online.

Here is the classical wrap-up post.

Some information:

  • the event was totally free
  • total number of registrants: 401
  • total number of unique virtual check-ins: 152
  • drop rate (percentage of registered people not showing up) ~62% (!)

The conference was organized by Alessandro Vergani, Stefano Saraulli, and me. Also, Riccardo Brugo was part of the staff on the conference day.

I am grateful to the Standard C++ Foundation for hosting us on Remo. This was the last time, since the foundation decided to end the premium plan with Remo.

Last but not least, thanks to all the speakers who gave great talks and to all the attendees who joined us!

Online event contents

The Italian C++ Conference 2021 was a full-day online event – the longest ever organized by the Italian C++ Community (10 hours) – consisting in:

  • 1×90’ live keynote
  • 10×50’ live talks (YouTube and Remo)
  • 2×30’ live short talks (YouTube and Remo)
  • Networking and live interaction on Remo

All the talks are available on YouTube.

Topics presented:

  • WebAssembly
  • Crash handling
  • Refactoring and tools
  • Static analyser concepts
  • Two talks on AI
  • Two talks on the language (templates, concepts, constness)
  • Polymorphic resource allocators
  • The Hook Library
  • An enlightening talk about min, max and operator<

All the talks were in English.

How the virtual event was made

This event was made as the C++ Day 2020, so please refer to this previous article to learn how it was made. Do not hesitate to get directly in touch with us if you want to know more or if you need our support.

Please consider that other organizers are moving to different platforms like Gather, Discord, Hopin, AirMeet, Wonder. I personally have some experience with almost all of them (as organizer, speaker and guest) but I still think that, it being understood that Italian C++ Community has no budget and runs one-day events only, Remo is still the best choice.

Edit: the C++ foundation has ended its contract with Remo, so we have to find other ways to host online events.

Feedback

Online events make harder for organizers to get feelings about what is going on. You cannot just go around and sense other people’s vibes. When online, you have to get some casual feedback by having a word with people during breaks or at the end of the conference. However, this is not always spontaneous.

I think the general feedback was good and I have sensed better feelings than the C++ Day 2020. We had too few people filling up the feedback survey, but in case you are interested here are the results:

What’s next

We have already planned the meetups (online) for the end of 2021. They are all in English. You will find them on the homepage. At this moment we do not have a hosting platform other than YouTube (very likely, we won’t have networking).

We are discussing about the C++ Day 2021. We will take a decision by a few weeks. It cannot be in person, though.

We all need help for all our activities. I know that committing to non-profit activities is not for everyone and that requires people of good will. Are you getting some benefit from our activities? It’s time to give back. Please get in touch directly with us if you want to help.

Stay safe. Hope to see you soon!