Enjoy
The Conclusion
So this is it. I hope to have the occasion next year to attend a new DevDays! That's refreshing and it puts things in a different perspective when you come back to work the next monday. I would say the three "must-see" talks were (in order of appearance): "Joel Spolsky - Opening Keynote", "Greg Wilson - Bits of Evidence" and "Reginald Braithwaite - Ruby".
Also, I've seen new trends and clever concepts along the way, notably StackOverflow itself. This concept is a win-win-win-win situation! Okay developers can ask questions, no magic there.. but solving other people's problems cannot be more addictive thanks to the reputation system! Developers are constantly digging the site to provide solutions to other people's problems (yes, pure generousness). Also, the way you can take the concept and apply it to other domains (like moms4mom.com) is pretty cool ROI wise. Oh and the way they placed their ads, just between the main menu and the start of the question where you hover your mouse a hundred times per day, man they thought of everything :) I think I matched all my "wins"!?
The algorithm implemented in Python to spell check some text is cool too. Not because its 21 lines long, but because you are exposed to some code actually in use by Google! Okay Google have a lot of open source code, but you rarely have an expert to explain it to you.
A lot of links were given during the day. Given my same old bookmarks, I feel more "current". There are many things I'm probably forgetting, sorry for those concerned. Oh yes, I brought back two books. One on peer code review and the other on Fogbuz. I've already started the former. Freebies!
In the end when you look at it, this was a great day. I saw pictures of the show taken by attendees and others and... you can literally feel the fellowship reigning back and on stage. And I think they passed it on to us. At least the four of us. They also gave us an occasion to sit back and question ourselves on topics beyond our daily technicalities because god knows its easy to fall into a comfort zone (that's not always comfortable). If you want some proofs of the effervescence it generated, explore forums and blogs about DevDays and see for yourself the domino* effect! All that for 99$
In the very very end :) I'd like to mention that I had the privilege to live four hours away from Toronto. The train trip was a great occasion for my colleagues and I to get to know each other better, away from the office. The links are stronger now and I think it's just great for the company. I learned with you too during the trip, thank you guys.
I'm putting time and effort on this blog and having you here is my reward. Make me feel better and better everyday by spreading the love with the buttons below! Also, don't hesitate to leave a comment. Thanks for reading!
* Butterflies doesn't carry numbers, that's not enough to make the cut on the geeky scale
Related Articles
- StackOverflow DevDays - Packing my stuff
- StackOverflow DevDays - Opening Keynote with Joel Spolsky
- StackOverflow DevDays - (Talk 1 of 6) .NET MVC
- StackOverflow DevDays - (Talk 2 of 6) Python
- StackOverflow DevDays - (Talk 3 of 6) Fogbugz
- StackOverflow DevDays - (Talk 4 of 6) - jQuery
- StackOverflow DevDays - (Talk 5 of 6) - Greg Wilson's Bits of Evidence
- StackOverflow DevDays - (Talk 6 of 6) - Ruby
See ya
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