Switzerland is a nice place to live 🙂 you have here almost everything – high mountains, good chocolate, tasty cheese and punctual trains.
What you don’t have (or barely have) are the good Developer’s Conferences. That is why, almost two weeks ago I went to Wroclaw in Poland to attend a WROC# Conference. This event was organised by none other than Objectivity Bespoke Software Specialists – my former employer – currently one of the best employers in Wroclaw! 😉
It shouldn’t be surprise to anyone that great things takes place today in Poland. The IT market grows there very rapidly, the access to great, skilled and reliable engineers is a tasty piece for every international company, which desire to open their subsidiary exactly there. In Wroclaw, for example, there is already IBM, HP, Credit Suisse, UBS and Opera just to mention few. However, having a good and interesting work is not everything for any developer…
“Bread and games“
…wrote Juvenal once… and yes… we – developers – got our games taking place on 12 March 2015 next to Centennial Hall in Wroclaw.
The conference was organised in Wroclaw for the first time, by people being a “newbie” in topic of organising large conferences – and suprisinly it was really good organized. They took care almost about everything:
- well known international speakers (Dan North, Chris Heilmann, Mark Seemann, Matt Ellis, Maurice de Beijer, Chris Klug),
- great audio support (there was no problem with voice, questions where raised using microphone so that everyone could hear either the question or the answer)
- video support (so that people, who couldn’t attend the conference could still watch it live being streamed online),
- welcome pack with some cool gadgets (like badge with old 3.5” diskette),
- food, lunch and refreshments
- and finally a great after party – with local beer brewed especially for that occasion, rock band and table soccer tournament (you could win a QuadCopter! ;o) ).
And all that was absolutely for free – everything covered by the founder and main sponsor – Objectivity.
The audience got there from the furthest parts of Poland (like Lodz, Katowice, Warszawa or Bialystok) and Europe 😛 (like me, or others coming from London).
It was really great to meet old faces I used to work with, different community members I knew only from Twitter or their blogs and naturally to listen to great speakers and their interesting talks.
So was it everything super and there were no errors at all? Well.. there were few really really small ones like:
- no information at Centennial Hall how to get to the conference
- not caring well enough about feedback from conference (after returning to hotel I’ve noticed an inquiry about quality of conference in my bag with gadgets which I was supposed to give back when I was going home…unfortunately there was no token with which I could post my feedback on some site on Internet)
- bottle necks when accessing the coffee
- lack of the information about sponsors
… but let’s be honest – is there anyone who do something for the first time in his life without errors? I guess not… so after words at the end of conference:
“See you next year!”
Peter Brookes-Smith
(Group Managing Director of Objectivity Bespoke Software Specialists)
… I can only expect that next year it will be even better.