By Carter Rabasa, a conference organizer, shipping his first conference was challenging but he learned it's about creating an experience. A year later, he shipped CascadiaJS 2013 in Vancouver, BC, which turned out to be too successful and led him to feel stuck. He then started working on the first-ever Vancouver Dev Week, a week-long celebration of the developer community in Vancouver. Carter emphasizes the importance of having a clear "why" for the event, using an anchor event like CouchDB Conf Vancouver, setting up soap boxes (promoting the event), finding people who want to help, and tying the events together with a game. The event was successful, with over 150 people signing up for the networking game and 1700+ developers attending across all events.