DevCrowd 2013

This was the 3rd time I was a presenter on the DevCrowd  conference. In fact twice on DevCrowd and once on Java4People. The variety of attendees and presenters was huge, and we saw that all the time: during questions, presentation styles, there were also presentations with meat (I  mean code) and there was a presentation about soft things too.

The venue, as always, was prepared in details, we met at Zachodniopomorski Technical University in Szczecin. The guys from Szczecin JUG did a great job (as always) and prepared for us T-shirts, great lunch, comfortably furnished rooms and last but not least an “After Party”.

Only one question remained: “Will the presenters do a great job too?“.

Let’s make some retrospectives.

1. “Prawo Javy” (ang. The Java Law) – a quite nice presentation. From a different perspective (Rafał is a lawyer). The main thought was how different law interpretations can create new environment, and that this environment can make business die or flourish. A lot of real life examples like that Microsoft gets royalty fees for every Android phone. One extra tip is that “inspiration” 🙂 overrides stupid patents!
2. “Six Sigma w Projektach IT”  – (ang. Six Sigma in IT projects). I think there is one interesting point: “after implementing Six Sigma you will have 3 to 4 mistakes per 1 million opportunities. Additionally, the Six Sigma organization ensures that you will make some savings.
3. Big Data: Big problem or Big Opportunity? – this was my presentation, sooooo it is pretty hard to say if it was good or not. Anyway, I hope in the future people will think about: metrics (before implementing the feature), that we enter the information era and a lot of things are going on because of that.
4. “Jak zwiększyć wydajność pracy?” (ang. How to increase your performance at work) and “Scalding, czyli: WordCount Hadoopem nie musi mieć 70 linii” (ang. Scalding therefore, WordCount Hadoop doesn’t have to have 70 lines of code) – I was on the first one but my colleague was on the second one. My thoughts: great presentation, Łukasz tried to explain to us how our mind works. After his presentation I avoid beer (for a while), I will eat healthy food, and I have two more books to read. The first one: Pragmatic Thinking and Learning and the second one Think Fast and Slow (btw the second link is a mobile one :)). And one more thing, next time please give Łukasz more time :). Anyway Łukasz thanks for vodka & water and some other tips :).My colleague’s thoughts on the second presentation are: a lot of code and one thing to remember Hadoop empowered by Scala helps us to write concise code, which is easy to read.
5. “API Driven Development” – a solid presentation about REST, it is worth to learn about REST. We should follow Bezos principles and think about externalization of our API to the world from the very beginning.
6. “Księżycowo podbudowane testowanie, czyli rzecz o sklecaniu własnej podbudowy do zautomatyzowanych testów funkcjonalnych aplikacji sieciowych” (ang. ?!?@!#%$! – If somebody wants to have self-crypted titles please talk to Filip) – Another solid presentation. Filip showed us how importatnt automatic tests are, and that a tester should not be afraid to learn and start writing those tests.
7. Last but not least presentation was “How secure your web framework is?“- Łukasz as a lead and committer of Apache Struts2 framework told us about security holes. From Six Sigma presentation we know that bugs exist, so it is not strange to find those bugs in every web framework. Yes, even if it is written in Java. Main point: Next time instead of reading a tabloid, please check security bulletin of your framework.

But, wait, there is one more thing – After Party.

The after party was awesome. We went to Brama Jazz Cafe.  Great food, great beverages and great people are ingredient of awesome party. I met great people, shared a lot of different ideas and get a lot of feedback for my ideas. The locals directed us to some other place, and suggested us to drink The Flaming Poodle shot. They hadn’t to repeat this :). We went to Hormon (and. Hormone)   what can I say:  The Flaming Poodle shot was awesome and kicked ass. We finished early 🙂 on After After After Party – the sun had risen. But definitely it was worth it and thanks to Łukasz suggestions I hadn’t no hangover at all. Once again thanks for all tips 🙂

To summarize this I asked my friends on our way back about their opinions:

• Marta: It is a good place to start your presenter career here, organizers are very helpful, and people are great!
• Irek: I’m a newbie, so I learnt a lot! OMG! I have so much to learn about right now.
• Krzysiek: Great conference, I’m pretty sure I want to be a presenter on DevCrowd 2014, so be prepared for my speech.

My one sentence opinion is: Great job! Thanks guys. If you choose me, I will come to DevCrowd 2014 for sure.

Photos from conference are here:

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