@Saif @Jenny and @ruben represented Discourse at Toronto Community Week, and rumor has it they had a terrific time talking about migrations, chatting with potential customers and learning about community building from workshops. They’d love to talk to you about their experience - what do you want to know?
I’ll kick it off:
Socks!?! I didn’t know that there would be socks. Now I wish I’d made it up there.
But seriously–I was glad to get a heads up about your presentation. Toronto just wasn’t in the cards for this week.
I’ll start off with this one. The socks have always been a best seller (we were giving them away for free 
to attendees)
We had a few people come up saying they were big fans of it from previous events and some were even wearing them to the event!
Did the Discourse team do a presentation? If so, was it recorded, and available anywhere?
Yes indeed! They gave a talk titled “From Dread to Dream: How Smart CMs Turn Platform Migrations into Community Gold” that was very well received! I am pretty sure there will be a recording and as soon as it’s up, we’ll share the link.
Fantastic - I look forward to viewing it!
Was great seeing you guys there! Enjoyed listening to some of your strategic approaches on platform migrations - very relevant for a lot of folks in the audience.
I didn’t realize there were socks!
My absolute favorite of the booth swag was the little “Long form is my love language” stickers. I am so not a bumper sticker with pithy sayings, but a walking, talking megathread. These stickers speak to me.
I’d be curious to know what the most common question you ended up fielding at the booth?
-Joe
I had such a great time speaking at Toronto Community Week alongside @ruben and working the booth with @Saif!
We all joined Discourse around relatively the same time so it was really fun to do Toronto Community Week together. As a migrations engineer, Ruben, covered the technical side of the migration process and I shared insights from a Customer Success perspective, with a focus on community management. Here are a few things I highlighted:
If there’s anything on this list you’d like to learn more about let me know! I’d love to share more and also hear your tips 
Next year this Led By Community event is set to take place in New York, so hopefully we’ll be able to connect IRL with those of you in the US!
Thanks for kicking this off, @tobiaseigen!
Most interesting question about migrations? Honestly, the questions that stuck with me weren’t really about the technical stuff - they were about handling resistance from long-time community members. Multiple people asked variations of “how do I convince my power users that this change is good for them?”
That section on “problematic attachment” during our talk actually got the biggest reaction. People really connected with that idea that members aren’t just being difficult - they’ve genuinely formed an attachment to the old platform. It’s part of their identity and routine. When you frame it that way, suddenly the resistance makes sense and you can address it with empathy instead of frustration.
Weather? Classic Toronto fall—mild and pleasant, but we got some light rain both days. At least we were nice and cozy inside. Still great weather for the conference, though!
Discourse socks? As @Saif mentioned, the socks were a huge hit!
@jpishgar - I’m glad the “Long form is my love language” stickers resonated with you. That’s exactly the vibe we were going for 
And thanks for the shoutout during the day 1 exercises - your mention definitely drove more people to the booth wanting to learn more about us!
“What is Discourse?” came up often. A lot of people had heard the name but weren’t clear on what we actually do. And yeah, we heard from several community managers who were frustrated because they wanted to migrate but leadership was too attached to their current platform. Sound familiar? 
Additionally, I wanted to add that sometimes hearing the words “open source” can be a bit scary and technical for some folks. I think telling those same people that it’s actually a good thing made them feel even better about Discourse
