TL;DR
Trajectory is back for year two, and it’s going to be astronomical! We are so excited to bring you some out-of-this-world content, celebrate in our Oakland community, and have some stellar conversations around better development and release practices as an industry.

Need some reasons to attend? Here are ten.
1) Learn from industry leaders on how to empower teams
2) Stellar workshops with Space Camp
3) Space-themed block party with food trucks, libations, music, a brewery take-over, and more
4) Oakland and Jack London Square in May (Hello, 🌞!)
5) Swag and swagger (in the form of some sweet, sweet knowledge)
6) Free copy of DevOps for Dummies (and an opportunity to have it signed by the author Emily Freeman!)
7) Headshot booth 📸
8) Philz Coffee, nuff said
9) VIP access to hearing about upcoming releases and plans from LaunchDarkly
10) Lawn games (wooo cornhole!)

Who, what, when?
By now, some of you may have heard the chatter about Trajectory, our annual software conference coming up in April. One reason we are excited about this year’s Trajectory is the content we are expecting. We will see TWO days of content, kicking off with Space Camp, a workshop series led by our developer relations team. The sessions will dig into everything from getting started with feature flag management to experimentation and even integrations built with LaunchDarkly. For day two, we have some incredible speakers covering topics such as architecture and operational practices, easing the burden of migrating legacy applications, and what’s next in software development. The audience will have a chance to draw inspiration from changemakers in technology.

We are beyond thrilled to have industry experts and community leaders like Liz Fong Jones, Emily Freeman, Ana Margarita Medina, and James Governor sharing their experiences and predictions for 2020 and beyond. Each of these speakers brings a unique story and experience that we hope will inspire and educate our community and create thought-provoking conversations.

Reflecting on last year
Last year was our first year doing Trajectory, and we learned so much. We heard feedback from customers and wanted to take that into everything we are doing this year. We heard loud and clear that you wanted more stories from folks having success with LaunchDarkly’s platform. So, we have speakers from HashiCorp, H&R Block, Xero, Honeycomb, and more telling their success stories with LaunchDarkly. You also asked us for more time with experts and hands-on sessions. If this is your jam, be sure to join us for Space Camp on April 29th (the day before the main conference) for hands-on labs and training.

Don’t worry, are still keeping things fresh and fun! Last year we had Photo booths and Observabil-tea (Honeycomb's fun tea and conversation space) and flossing parties, oh my! This year, we are upping our photo booth game to doing headshots for attendees! (You can finally stop using that portrait-mode selfie for your profile photo). We heard how much attendees loved the Observabil-tea space, so we decided to do a full block party, including a take-over of Oakland United Beerworks. There will be refreshments throughout the day and spaces for attendees to have meaningful conversations about all things related to empowering teams to fearlessly deliver software faster. The flossing parties… well, let’s just say we’ll let you be the judge of your own dance party. 💃🕺

Location, location, location
The location and venue for this year’s conference is amazing, and we are super excited about it. Some of you may be familiar with their sister location in San Francisco, but Bloc15 is opening up a brand-new event venue here in Oakland. And we are thrilled to help welcome them into our community by being one of their very first events. In the spirit of this venue’s name, we are taking over the block! We have Bloc15, Esports Arena for Space Camp, and Oakland United Beerworks all for you, our Trajectory fam! We love this location for many reasons, but one is it’s in the heart of Jack London Square and a hop, skip and jump away from the San Francisco Ferry. Needless to say, we’ve been doing market research for everyone during our site visits. 🍷

For those who have not been to Oakland before (yes, that includes you, friends across the bay), let me tell you, you are missing out. As someone who just discovered the city across the bay, I’m quite enamored, and I’ll tell you why.

🤔 Did you know...
🦀 Lake Merritt is a natural saltwater lake and the first wildlife refuge in North America?
🎨 There are hidden painted Gnomes throughout the city?
🎢 Disneyland was inspired by Oakland’s Fairyland?

So there you have it! We’re so excited to host Trajectory again and we hope to see you there! If you needed 10 other reasons, that are themed, we wrote an acrostic poem. There are 10 letters in Trajectory, coincidence? I think not...

T antalizing talks
R adical revelations
A stronomical assessments
J ovial jaunts
E ducational errors
C elebratory cacophonies
T ransformative testimonials
O rbital observations
R ighteous responses
Y early yammering

Hope to see you there!