In the beginning of this year I was quite skeptical, that I will make more then 2 conference, including the one I’m part of – jPrime.
But the end of the year was definitely very intense. After coming from St. Petersburg I had the pleasure to speak at several local events, including the oldest and most prominent local conference OpenFest. It was a great opportunity to meet not only Java programmers, but also to talk about different platforms and languages as well.
As I was in Oslo and St. Petersburg Ukrainian guys Andrii Rodionov and Oleg Dokuka approached me and invited me to submit a talk to the inaugural Devoxx Ukraine. So I did it, and very soon I’ve received an email saying I was accepted! Actually I was quite happy, since I haven’t been to Kiev for more than 5 years already.
The girls from the organisers helped me a lot to get all the invitations and was able to enter Ukraine without any problems!
By the way, that was the first time I had a direct flight to a conference, without any layovers. This is so much great! I’ve started appreciating this fact!
The conference takes place in a beautiful congress centre “Parkoviy”,
with a beautiful view of the Dnipro river. Well.. at this moment it was a foggy day (like the most of the days in November in Kiev)
The venue itself is very nice and modern..
There was even a car parked inside!
The entrance (or I would say – “the portal”) was extremely cool!
Actually the theme of the conference was like “You are in a spaceship!” which is really lovely.
Unfortunately I was there only for the second day. I’ve missed some cool sessions like the keynote by the famous scientist Lawrence Krauss. It’s also sad, that I’ve missed the BOFs at the end of the day, I’ve started enjoying them a lot. I like this live discussion that happens in between.
But what I definitely really enjoyed was the first session of the day two – “Software Engineering Theory vs. Practice: A Song of Ice and TireFire” by Baruch Sadogursky and Evgeny Borisov.
It’s not very much technically oriented, but the topic about the “Technological maturity” of a company is something I really have to dive in. I often find myself asking why we need this or another technology to solve current problem. Is the technology we’ve chosen able to solve this problem in the most efficient way and are our teams ready to implement it. Definitely a good talk!
Now I’m looking forward to see the videos of the talks I was not able to see. There were a lot of them running in parallel, the choice was hard!
As for my talk… the was a challenge for me: I had to talk in parallel with awesome Orkhan Gasimov, Doug Stevenson, Nakul Mishra, Reza Shiftehfar, Mary Grygleski .. and Dr. Venkat Subramaniam. But I was sincerely surprised when I had my room completely packed with extra chair and people standing..
So I’m very grateful for all people that have attended the talk! I hope that the attendees will find good application of the technology in their projects!
I’m happy to have received this awesome comment!
And as always – conference is meeting great people! And finally meeting them in person!
Like Michael Simons! Finally we have talked to each other in real life!
And Rafael Benevides with Dr. Venkat Subraniam
And many many more!!
As I was late to the lunch after my talk, I was arranged a special very Ukranian lunch made of borsch, vareniki and salo!
This definitely made this event very special for me! I’m really grateful to Alina and Irina for arranging it for me!
It was a wonderful conf. Made with all of the Devoxx traditions!
I had a lovely stay! I’m very grateful to everybody who made it possible!
Bye bye, Kiev! Till the next time I hope!
