From August 15-16 the first-ever OpenTechSchool (OTS) conference will take place in Dortmund- located in the Ruhr-Region of Germany and home to Zalando's second German Tech Hub. Zalando is excited to be a sponsor and participate. My colleagues Petra Lehrmann, Ingo Weinzerl, Andreas Rueppert, Stefan Muehlenbaeumer, Janine Lehmann and I will all be there to talk to you about anything related to technology. Come say hi, or just have fun and listen to the talks!

If you’re not familiar with OTS, it’s a global movement that aims to offer free tech education to everyone. OTS brings together technology enthusiasts of all genders, backgrounds and experience levels who want to either coach others or learn in a friendly environment. Its online community shares and collectively improves its learning materials, which are available for anyone worldwide to use to organise new OTS chapters.

The OTS conference will include talks on functional programming, hardware hacking, UX, evolutionary algorithms and diversity in open source, among other topics. Find all talk abstracts here. The second day includes—in good old OTS tradition— a day of workshops and hands-on learning opportunities.

But it wouldn't be an OpenTechSchool event if there weren’t extra efforts made to ensure inclusivity and respect for diversity. The conference comes with a clear Code of Conduct that everyone—including attendees, speakers, sponsors and the organizing team—must agree to, and takes place in a completely accessible venue with a guidance system for the visually impaired. Vegan and vegetarian meal options, child care, and discounted tickets for students and the OTS community will all be available. Oh, and there will be cheesecake. What more can you ask for?

You can find all information and get your tickets to the conference here. Hope to see you!

*Photo courtesy of OpenTechSchool. Image by Hannes Woidlich, OpenTechSchool logo by James Morris.