Okay, a pretty crazy weekend marked the end of a few absolutely crazy weeks for me, so I wanted to write a few lines about it. Last weekend I presented a talk titled “Modular vs Monolithic Software: No Holy Grails” at the fantastic conference Eurucamp, were I was lucky enough to be accepted as a speaker alongside some really fantastic rubyists.
The Venue
The conference was held at a fantastic place called Lake Muggelsee, just outside of Berlin, with tons of trees and a great vibe. Really just what I needed to unplug from a last couple of very demanding weeks at work.
The Conference
The conference was just amazing, the atmosphere wasn’t that much of a serious, extremely work oriented conference as much as a more familiar, fun and cheerful, a good percentage of people were calmly sipping beer while listening to the talks, there first day consisted almost exclusively of wonderful workshops on topics such as JRuby, Rubinius or just basic Rails usage, so there was pretty much something for everyone.
We even had the opportunity to have a few hours of free time on saturday to enjoy the great weather and location, there were organized biking trips, martial arts workshops, ultimate frisbee games and more. Pretty awesome indeed :)
The talks were incredible too, and although there was wonderful material everywhere I have mention specially ”Superheroes can do it and so can you!” by Florian Hanke and ”All You Need Is Love” from Isaac Wolkerstorfer and his wife Joan Wolkerstorfer, in both cases their deliveries of their fantastic materials was incredible, so big thanks to them for such amazing and inspiring talks. Finally: Txus Bach’s ”Polyglot Rails Applications with Rubinius” was super interesting as well, and gave food for thought on some fascinating concepts to play with.
My Talk
I have to admit I was a little nervous about my talk when I started, I was standing in front of nearly 200 people, with some insanely smart guys paying attention, which was a little intimidating. I think I did ease into my own topic after the first few minutes anyway, and to be completely honest at that point I didn’t even think much of anything, but just focused completely on explaining the topic of my talk to the best of my abilities.
Many people had asked me about my talk beforehand, so I guess there was interest in the topic itself, I also had some really good feedback on twitter and a wonderful question from one of the attendees that I was lucky enough to have a good answer to. All in all: I think the talk went well, specially considering that it was my first time presenting. I did feel that I could have done stuff a little bit better, but I suppose that happens to everyone, I am happy with how it turned out and the feedback I got from it. Although to be honest I did have to change into a pair of shorts and jump into the lake immediately after the talk to take the edge off. :)
You can check the slides for my talk at the bottom of this post
Aftermath
I got to meet (or spend more time with) some really interesting people, the general atmosphere of the conference was incredibly cheerful and I think that added up a lot to the whole experience, most people seem to be having the time of their lives (me among them) so I think the conference organizers can sit back and relax on a job incredibly well done.
I’m definitely looking forward to the 2013 edition of the conference and try to attend. All in all it was a tremendous experience for me and it will definitely be remembered dearly. :)
