About month ago I had a pleasure to attend DevConf conference in Kraków. It was the first time after rebranding (previously DevConf was known as DevDay) and I must say from the time perspective it was really nice! I heard many good things about DevDay/DevConf before – now I can say, that these voices were indeed right. I really liked the organization, the wide variety of topics, afterparty and tasty food 🙂 Also ability to meet people with similar interest and even some old friends.

When it comes to talks itself – their level varied – some were very interesting and motivating, some – unfortunately – make me sleepy 🙁 Nevertheless, I want to focus on those worth mentioning:

Venkat Subramaniam – The Art of Simplicity

This was the talk that started the conference and in my mind, very rightfully so. It was very well conducted by Venkat. He talked about how many times you hear about simplicity and how hard it is to actually achieve it. The real-life examples were very interesting and on-point.

Jimmy Bogard – Domain Driven Design: The Good Parts

Jimmy talked about DDD in the context of a big government project. He talked about good and bad things, and what he learned in the process. Although the most interesting part was that he later was given an opportunity to do that very similar project again and could actually implement learned things.

Mark Wyner – A New Dawn of the Human Experience

AI is currently a very hot topic in IT (and even outside of it), so it’s no surprise that many talks at DevConf were about it. I was really impressed by this one. Mark talked about the current state of AI, it’s rapid development and what all of it means for us, humans. He touched many problems that we still need to address. Problems, that I personally wasn’t aware of. Very eye-opening.

Nick Heiner – How to Run a High Functioning Team

This one may be not for everyone, beacuse it focuses on managing a dev-team. Nick goes through various aspects of that task – conducting metting to managing people that work remotely. Topic is presented very throughlly and it could interest you even if you are not a manager or scrum master.

Sebastian Gębski – “Cargo Cults” in Building Modern Software Systems

The last talk I want to recomend is the most controversial. I saw mixed feelings on people’s faces after the presentation. Sebastian presented very interesting case comparing IT industry to south-pacific tribes and their bielefs. It really made me think and that’s why I wanted to recommend this one.