Seven years of Decoupled Days, the non-profit headless content and commerce conference
March 4, 2024This April marks seven years of Decoupled Days, the little non-profit headless content and commerce conference that could. Our team has always described ourselves as “flinty,” because we’ve been committed since the very beginning to a non-profit, volunteer-run, and community-led event that we could be proud of. And our community has come with us. Since 2017, Decoupled Days has been the marquee headless conference in the open-source software world, with low pricing, always-free content, and a strongly impartial stance.
But that doesn’t mean it’s been easy. The COVID-19 pandemic, paired with continued upheaval in the software industry, has upended the tech conference circuit. We’ve seen events shut down, go bankrupt, pare back offerings, and even go entirely online in attempts to save themselves. Decoupled Days has been no exception, tackling some of the deepest challenges we’ve ever faced in our seven-year story. And it’s been even tougher for us, because as a grassroots gathering and a labor of love with an unyielding commitment to giving back, we’ll never go in a corporate or for-profit direction. Period.
As our flinty little conference survives another year of primary school, I realized that our team and I haven’t ever published a retrospective on Decoupled Days, what we’ve learned spinning up a conference from nothing, and where we’re headed as our event reaches a level of maturity we could never have imagined back in April 2017.
We also need your help. The Decoupled Days team is currently seeking a new dependable venue in New York City—to herald our return to our original home of the Big Apple—and a new fiscal host in light of significant changes at our supporting partner Open Collective. By sharing our successes and struggles, we hope to inspire other events facing the same obstacles and to see our community endure for many more years to come.
How Decoupled Days began
Decoupled Days attendees in deep concentration at the first Contribution Day at our inaugural edition.
Decoupled Days was born, as many great ideas are, during a brainstorming session at DrupalCon Baltimore 2017 led by our co-founder Matt Davis and me. At the time, headless and decoupled architectures, which involve the use of content management systems (CMSs) as data sources for disparate applications that leverage development and display techniques disconnected from the CMS’s own native presentation layer, were just beginning to take CMS communities by storm.
DrupalCon events are famous for their “hallway tracks,” in which experts and practitioners gather in liminal spaces at conference venues to catch up socially and exchange harebrained ideas, and “birds-of-a-feather (BoF) sessions,” where attendees convene in meetups to chat about specific topics. After a few conversations in the hallway track, a few of us decided to host a BoF session about the clear need for a conference solely about the use of CMSs like Drupal in headless and decoupled architectures.
It was probably deeply misguided to attempt to organize an entire conference in less than four months, but that’s exactly what we did. We called it “a different kind of Drupal conference,” a nod to our goal to engage deeply with JavaScript communities well outside our PHP wheelhouse. Thanks to Alex Ross and Scott Rigby at NBCUniversal, we held our first edition of “Decoupled Developer Days” on August 19-20, 2017 at 30 Rockefeller Center in Manhattan, emulating the success of Drupal Developer Days, an engineer-oriented conference for Drupal geeks still going strong today. About 100 enthusiastic architects and developers joined us.
With our original team (Brian Aznar, Mark Casias, Matt Davis, Matt Grill, Bob Kepford, Jeremy Kutner, Alex Ross, Preston So, and Annie Stone), we brought in sponsors from around the world and speakers from the Angular, Ember, and Drupal communities. We also held a Contribution Day to sprint on ideas and issues facing the burgeoning decoupled Drupal scene. And we hosted a legendary conference party (adhering to our code of conduct, of course), an annual tradition that continues to this day!
Decoupled Days goes global
A collection of Decoupled Days’ printed programs from the 2018, 2019, 2022, and 2023 editions.
For our second edition on August 17-19, 2018, we grew considerably, welcoming speakers from Canada, India, the Netherlands, Poland, Romania, and Spain and sponsors from Brazil, Denmark, India, Japan, and Panama. Our attendance ballooned to 250 attendees, and we held the second-ever “Decoupled Drupal Days” at the John Jay College of Criminal Justice in Manhattan, with speakers from the Angular and Gatsby communities. It was also the first year we began to track our diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) efforts, which you can read more about later in this article.
Our third edition on July 17-18, 2019 was held once again at the John Jay College of Criminal Justice and attracted roughly 200 attendees. Speakers came to the now-renamed “Decoupled Days” from five continents, with sponsors coming from four continents. 2019 marked the first year we explicitly decoupled ourselves from any Drupal moniker in order to attract folks not only from JavaScript and Jamstack communities but also from other CMS and commerce communities such as WordPress, Contentful, and others.
On July 22-23, 2020 and July 14-15, 2021, we held our first-ever virtual conferences in light of the COVID-19 pandemic, attracting attendees from around the world, especially from an enthusiastic Australian contingent. Our attendance ballooned once again to roughly 350 registered ticketholders. Hopin presented us with new challenges as we endeavored to maintain a fun atmosphere despite the transition to an online event, encourage hallway-track conversations and networking with sponsors, and honor our code of conduct and anti-harassment policy in a setting where we’d never had to deploy them before.
2020 was also the year we introduced a Presenting sponsorship for the first time, granting our highest-tier supporter naming rights to the conference itself. We also contributed $1,000 from our conference operating budget to Black Girls Code, a non-profit organization working to increase the number of Black women and gender non-conforming youth in STEM fields. In the process, we issued a statement in unequivocal support of Black Lives Matter, denouncing anti-Blackness, police violence, and white supremacy in the United States and globally.
By the time in-person events returned in fits and starts, the global environment for tech conferences had shifted considerably. 2022 and 2023 saw the closures of many established and well-regarded events, and we were fortunate to have strong proceeds from prior editions to sustain us through the twin difficulties of reduced budgets and widening layoffs. (Because we are non-profit and committed to building in public, our finances and accounting have always been entirely transparent throughout our entire history on our supporting partner Open Collective’s platform.)
Our 2022 edition was held on August 17-18, 2022, heralding our return to the John Jay College of Criminal Justice, with roughly 125 attendees. Finally, in 2023, we decided to explore new pastures and new communities by holding Decoupled Days outside of New York City for the very first time. We selected a city beloved by our founding organizer Mark Casias and near and dear to my heart as well: Albuquerque. Roughly 100 attendees gathered in New Mexico for our seventh edition on August 16-17, 2023 at the Hotel Andaluz in downtown Albuquerque, followed by an official conference party held thanks to another longtime organizer, Jeff Tomlinson, and his craft brewery Flock of Moons.
We’ve seen the boom-and-bust cycle in tech conferences over the past few years, as our topics of choice have matured and evolved. But we’re proud to say that we’re in a better position than we’ve ever been before, thanks to graceful financial stewardship, especially by our organizer Gaurav Mishra over many editions, and consistent and generous support from our sponsors.
Diversity, equity, and inclusion
After our first edition in 2017, our organizing team made a clear and unwavering commitment to advancing diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) both within our speaker lineup and our steering committee. Over the years, our efforts have been emulated, lauded, and constructively criticized (feedback we welcome, of course!) to enrich our conference and the experience we offer our attendees. From the very beginning, we’ve written into our programs: “Decoupled Days believes an inclusive event and diverse speaker lineup mean a better conference for everyone.”
So how have we done, and what can we do still to improve?
In 2017, though inclusion was important to us, we made no formal commitment as an organization. Ultimately, 15.4% of all accepted sessions were submitted by speakers from underrepresented groups.
In 2018, we committed to devoting more than 25% of all accepted sessions to speakers from marginalized and oppressed minorities or first-time speakers. Ultimately, 42.8% of accepted sessions were submitted by speakers from underrepresented groups or first-time speakers.
In 2019, we committed to devoting more than 35% of all accepted sessions to speakers from marginalized and oppressed minorities. Ultimately, 42.9% of accepted sessions were submitted by speakers from underrepresented groups.
In 2019, we committed to devoting more than 10% of all accepted sessions to first-time speakers. Ultimately, 8.9% of all accepted sessions were submitted by first-time speakers, and we did not reach our goal.
Of those 25 accepted sessions from underrepresented groups, 4 sessions (16%) were from first-time speakers.
In 2020, we committed to devoting more than 45% of all accepted sessions to speakers from marginalized and oppressed minorities. Ultimately, 50% of accepted sessions were submitted by speakers from underrepresented groups.
In 2020, we committed to devoting more than 10% of all accepted sessions to first-time speakers. Ultimately, 26.7% of all accepted sessions were submitted by first-time speakers.
Of those 15 accepted sessions from underrepresented groups, 5 sessions (33.3%) were from first-time speakers.
In 2021, we committed to devoting more than 50% of all accepted sessions to speakers from marginalized and oppressed minorities. Ultimately, 35.6% of accepted sessions were submitted by speakers from underrepresented groups, and we did not reach our goal.
In 2021, we committed to devoting more than 10% of all accepted sessions to first-time speakers. Ultimately, 22.2% of all accepted sessions were submitted by first-time speakers.
In 2022, we committed to devoting more than 50% of all accepted sessions to speakers from marginalized and oppressed minorities. Ultimately, 31.3% of accepted sessions were submitted by speakers from underrepresented groups, and we did not reach our goal.
In 2022, we committed to devoting more than 10% of all accepted sessions to first-time speakers. Ultimately, 0% of all accepted sessions were submitted by first-time speakers, and we did not reach our goal.
In 2023, we committed to devoting more than 50% of all accepted sessions to speakers from marginalized and oppressed minorities. Ultimately, 76.4% of accepted sessions were submitted by speakers from underrepresented groups.
In 2023, we committed to devoting more than 10% of all accepted sessions to first-time speakers. Ultimately, 17.6% of all accepted sessions were submitted by first-time speakers.
Our work isn’t done. While our DEI efforts have been successful so far, we’ve committed as an organizing team to tracking our work more granularly, in order to understand where we need to evolve more intersectionally, by for instance introducing more visibility into how we serve specific underrepresented and historically oppressed groups and people with multiply marginalized lived experiences. In addition, we’ve focused on diversifying our organizing team, more than half of which now consists of people of color, women, and non-binary people.
Decoupled Days is on hiatus in 2024 but needs your support for 2025
A scene from the closing reception of the 2023 edition of Decoupled Days at the Hotel Andaluz in Albuquerque.
Many loyal attendees and supporters of Decoupled Days have probably noticed we’ve been a bit quiet this year. After considerable discussion within our organizing team, we’ve decided to take 2024 off to address collective burnout, refocus on our careers and personal lives, and enter 2025 with a more resilient and sustainable vision for our conference community. We’re grateful for all the love from our attendees and speakers, who have long boosted our contributions to the industry and the hundreds of hours of our personal time we put into this global event.
Two other factors have led to our decision to take a hiatus for this year:
First, while we’re grateful to our New York City venue, the John Jay College of Criminal Justice, for hosting us for so many years (thanks in particular to Cheryl Dantonio, our longtime venue liaison), we’re no longer able to acquire event dates with the advance notice we need to reach out to sponsors and invite speakers.
Second, many open-source projects and community-led conferences are reeling from the shocking news that the Open Collective Foundation, our supporting partner, is ceasing operations. We urgently need to transition our funds to a new fiscal host that facilitates the sort of non-profit work we do as tech conference organizers.
We need your support to make a 2025 edition happen. If you’re in the know or have connections with affordable venues in New York City that can accommodate approximately 200-250 people, we’re all ears. And if you’re a fellow collective or non-profit organization in the tech space, we’d love to learn more about your fiscal underwriting and what the best alternatives to Open Collective are for a community of our kind. We welcome any advice and ideas you may have at decoupleddays@gmail.com!
Conclusion
If you told me even five years ago that I’d still be running a flinty little conference called Decoupled Days in 2024, I’d have been gobsmacked. But as it turns out, conference organizing teaches skills, forges connections, and confers opportunities that can’t be found anywhere else in personal or professional settings. I’m so grateful to the rest of the Decoupled Days organizing team for the fulfillment we’ve found together in crafting a conference we know we can be proud of and we know others will love.
Seven years from now, my hope is that Decoupled Days will still be going strong. We have a fantastic community behind us and a stellar track record. It’s among the utmost pleasures of my career, every year, to hop up on that stage and say to a room of eager attendees leaning forward in New York, in Albuquerque, or online: “Welcome to Decoupled Days! We’re so glad you're here.” On behalf of the Decoupled Days team, we’re so glad you continue to have such faith in us.
Acknowledgments
Fond thanks to everyone who has supported Decoupled Days over the years. In no particular order:
2017, New York City
Organizers: Brian Aznar, Mark Casias, Matt Davis, Matt Grill, Bob Kepford, Jeremy Kutner, Alex Ross, Preston So, Annie Stone (organizers); Matthew Connerton, Chris Hamper, Scott Rigby, Ryan Sears, Sally Young (volunteers)
Speakers: Ted Bowman, Edward Chan, Patrick Coffey, Matt Davis, Jeremy Dickens, Edward Faulkner, Stephen Fluin, Luke Herrington, Mike Mangi, Michael Schmid, Daniel Wehner, Sally Young
Sponsors: NBCUniversal (Venue); Acquia, Mediacurrent, Major League Soccer, Phase2, Aten Design Group (Gold); Four Kitchens, Lullabot, Pantheon, Amazee.io (Silver)
2018, New York City
Organizers: Brian Aznar, Mark Casias, Matt Davis, Eric Hestenes, Bob Kepford, Gaurav Mishra, Preston So, Jeff Tomlinson (organizers); Willy Karam, Randy Oest (contributors)
Speakers: Danielle Armone, Christopher Bloom, Patrick Coffey, Nichole Davison, Stephen Fluin, Matt Glaman, Alfonso Gómez-Arzola, Robyn Green, John Grubb, Eric Hestenes, Clément Hurel, Prateek Jain, Bob Kepford, Mark Llobrera, Kyle Mathews, Shashank Merothiya, Trilok Nagvenkar, Bryan Ollendyke, Błażej Owczarczyk, Brian Perry, Adrian Pintilie, Yogendra Prasad, John Reynolds, Sean Rioux, Ricardo Sanz, Michael Schmid, Avi Schwab, Gregg Shanefelt, Robert Slootjes, Surbhi Sriwal, Joshua Stewardson, David Strauss, Gabriel Sullice, Kay Thayer, Tom Varughese, Peter Weber, Evan Willhite, Chris Zietlow, Adam Zimmermann
Sponsors: Aten Design Group, Therefore Interactive, Chromatic, Platform.sh (Diamond); DDEV, Four Kitchens, Pantheon, Major League Soccer, QED42, Srijan, DevShop.Support (Gold); IT Trailblazers, Valuebound, Taller, Commerce Guys, Mediacurrent, Palantir.net, Rootstack, Blue State Digital, Axelerant, Johnson & Johnson, Softescu, Phase2, Last Call Media, Gatsby (Silver); Adapt Agency, Genero (Bronze)
2019, New York City
Organizers: Brian Aznar, Mark Casias, Matt Davis, Nichole Davison, Mark Ransom Day, Bob Kepford, Nicole Mabry, Preston So, Jeff Tomlinson (organizers); Joe Tower (contributor)
Speakers: Hussain Abbas, Ashraf Abed, Brian Aznar, Matthias Biilmann, Christopher Bloom, Mateu Aguiló Bosch, Kevin Bridges, Sebastian Ferrari, Renan Ferreira, JD Flynn, Fran Garcia-Linares, Matt Glaman, Chris Glynn, Bryan Gruneberg, Luke Herrington, Nam Ho, Jamie Hollern, Bassam Ismail, Pascal Kappeler, Bob Kepford, Dominic Laycock, Evan Lovley, Stephanie Lüpold, Mike Minecki, Chris Mitchell, Dan Montgomery, Robert Ngo, Todd Ross Nienkerk, Jesús Manuel Olivas, Brian Perry, Steve Persch, Adrian Pintilie, Piyush Poddar, Michael Schmid, Gregg Shanefelt, John Snow, Chris Strahl, Ellie Strejlau, Balázs János Tátar, Shane Thomas, Heshan Wanigasooriya, Stew West, John Albin Wilkins, Evan Willhite, Ben Woll
Sponsors: Amazee Labs, Myplanet, Pantheon, Third and Grove (Diamond); Gatsby, Four Kitchens, Srijan, Netlify, DDEV (Gold); Amazee.io, Axelerant, Lullabot, Mediacurrent, Palantir.net, Phase2, Genero (Silver); Acquia, Cheppers, OpenStory (Bronze)
2020, virtual
Organizers: Brian Aznar, Mark Casias, Jonathan Daggerhart, Matt Glaman, Gaurav Mishra, Ho-Ling Poon, Preston So, Jeff Tomlinson
Speakers: Fernanda Aline, Pedro Baldin, Roland Benedetti, Samuel Campos, Jitesh Doshi, Matt Glaman, Renato Gonçalves de Araújo, Zac Gordon, Sophie Idromenos, Beth Jacobson, Lennart Jörgens, Joe Karasek, Fatima Khalid, Abhay Kumar, Daniel Lemay, Leonardo Losoviz, Elijah Lynn, David Pérez Martin, Allie Micka, Chris Oden, Brian Perry, Steve Persch, Jon Pugh, Luis Ribeiro, Rubén Rodríguez Santiago, Michael Schmid, Mark Shropshire, Robert Slootjes, Kyle Sorrels, Chris Strahl, Erik Summerfield, Shane Thomas, Anand Toshniwal, Nick Veenhof, Kevin Walsh, Evan Willhite, Rosalind Wills
Sponsors: Srijan, Tharzen (Gold); Four Kitchens, Pantheon (Silver); Acquia (Bronze)
2021, virtual
Organizers: Mark Casias, Surabhi Gokte, Gaurav Mishra, Ho-Ling Poon, Preston So (organizers); Jeff Tomlinson (volunteer)
Speakers: Archana Agivale, Mateu Aguiló Bosch, Rob Aubin, Kelly Beck, Théodore Biadala, Christopher Bloom, Baddý Breidert, Anthony Campolo, Chad Carlson, Stuart Clark, Patrick Coffey, Dave Connerth, David Corbacho, Sean C. Davis, Thomas Desmond, Kim Domenick, Colby Fayock, Matt Fleury, Ronak Ganatra, Solomon Gifford, Brian Gilbert, Surbhi Gupta, Phil Hawksworth, Sophie Idromenos, Bassam Ismail, Vertika Jain, Stefan Judis, Adam Juran, Abhay Kumar, Christopher Kühn, Matt Landers, Brian Lewis, Leonardo Losoviz, Dominika Malinowska, Tony Mamedbekov, Lisa McCray, Miro Michalicka, Mike Minecki, Siavash Moazzami-Vahid, Trilok Nagvenkar, Randy Oest, Brian Perry, Tamas Piros, Anatolii Poliakov, Lee Rowlands, Nick Sacoman, Avi Schwab, Ofer Shaal, Jyoti Singh, Samuel Snopko, Gabe Sullice, Ashish Thakur, Marek Vantuch, Joel Varty, Jim Vomero, Gargi Yadav
Sponsors: Srijan (Presenting); Therefore, Oomph, Centarro, Platform.sh, Contentful (Diamond); Four Kitchens, Emulsify (Gold); Kanopi Studios, Lullabot, Axelerant, Genero, Netlify, Blackmesh (Silver); Palantir.net, Bluehorn Digital, Acquia (Bronze); Neil Hastings, Peter Hebert, Jaden Johnston (Individual)
2022, New York City
Organizers: Mark Casias, Surabhi Gokte, Gaurav Mishra, Randy Oest, Ho-Ling Poon, Preston So, Larry Swanson, Jim Vomero
Speakers: Allan Chappell, Henrique Doro, JD Flynn, Brian Lewis, Kyle Mathews, Mick McGrath, Amy Novikau, Jesús Manuel Olivas, Steve Persch, Gregg Shanefelt, Jake Strawn, Larry Swanson, Shane Thomas, Justin Toupin, Alexander Varwijk, Jennifer Wadella
Sponsors: Four Kitchens, Gatsby, Pantheon (Diamond); Kanopi Studios (Gold); Netlify, Therefore, Palantir.net (Bronze); Oomph (Community)
2023, Albuquerque
Organizers: Mark Casias, Surabhi Gokte, Ho-Ling Poon, Preston So, Larry Swanson
Speakers: Bree Benesh, Lo Etheridge, Jeff Everhart, John Faber, Andy Fitzgerald, Bryan Gruneberg, Ashok Kumar, Danny Lake, James Luterek, Andy Marquis, Kai O’Brien, Jesús Manuel Olivas, Michael Schmid, Larry Swanson, Michael Trythall, Matthew Weil
Sponsors: Hygraph (Presenting); Orium, Vercel, Amazee.io (Diamond); Chapter Three (Silver); Flock of Moons Brewing Company, Kanopi Studios, Tag1 Consulting (Bronze); Palantir.net (Community)
2025, New York City
Organizers: Mark Casias, Lo Etheridge, Surabhi Gokte, Ho-Ling Poon, Preston So, Larry Swanson
Special thanks to Mark Casias for his feedback during the writing process.
