Joind.in is a community driven project to give feedback to speakers at conferences and events.

And besides that it is a great ressource for all those that want to participate in the community. Not only as it’s an opensource project that everyone can help to make even better! But to provide feedback it also contains a list of almost every conference and event that is of any significance to the (PHP-)community.

And as the driving force underneath the hood of joind.in is a great API everyone interested can do a lot of cool things with the data no one has ever thought of.

To get the most out of joind.in (and therefore that API) some things should to be considered when creating or editing an event in joind.in. Some of these I’ll list here:

• Add a location to an event! It makes finding the venue easier! And as the API enables everyone to get the location of an event it is fairly easy to create a map of events. But believe me or not, most of these events take place somewhere west of Africa where the meridian of Greenich intersects with the equator. So when displaying the result of the API on a map either your event will be simply not displayed or is one out of the crowd. For an example have a look at the PHP-usergroup map. Chances are great that there is an event taking place at the equator.
• Add tags to your event! Joind.in is used by the PHP-community. But not exclusively. By providing the appropriate tag you can show whats associated with the event. And as one can filter the list of events it makes it easier to find your event when it’s tagged appropriately. Without tags your event might not get found or displayed. Again you can have a look at the PHP-usergroup map. When your event is not displayed, it misses the php-tag.
• When you have a Call for Papers provide a link to get more informations from! It’s cool that you provide a call for Papers so everyone interested can speak at your event. But you will not attract lots of people when it isn’t easy to find information on how to provide an abstract. That makes the whole CfP-Process somewhat futile.
• Promote giving feedback! One thing is the listing on joind.in, a completely other one is bringing people to provide feedback to the speakers or the event. We all can only learn when someone tells us what we can improve. Therefore it is vital for even better speakers for your next event when they get constructive feedback from this event! And again there is an API that might help you there. Have a look at the joind.in raffler
• And last but not least: Push your event by adding it to joind.in! It opens up a whole new audience!

These are my very personal thoughts on that topic. You might disagree with me on certain or all points and that’s totaly OK. And that is not in any way an official statement as I’m not in any position to do anything of that kind! Just to make that very clear!