Devoxx Belgium 2017

through the eye of a noncoder woman

I first heard about Devoxx at the beginning of 2017 when I was looking for conferences that worth attending for a startup company, like Samebug. I was reading about JavaOne when I came across an article by Zeroturnaround. This fhelped us come to the conclusion that it would be best to attend Devoxx in Belgium. Thanks to Innotrade, who bought us two tickets, we flew to Antwerp last Monday to be one of the Devoxxians. This is a summary of my experience and what I observed during the conference:

• Out of the 3,500 developers, 50 was women, out of which 50% were noncoders like me.

You know that you are attending a conference for developers when there is a line in front of the men’s restroom. Even in the women’s restroom there were a couple toilets with this sign.

• The welcome pack and give-away gifts were T-shirts, mugs and of course, STICKERs. One could easily make a contest on how many stickers can be stuck on a MacBook Pro (the stickers look better on silver background). The best ones were, of course, Octocats by Github.

There is still room for some stickers

• The most commonly used words during presentations: AI, neural network, deep learning and machine learning. You can use AI to teach a drone to fly, to do improv with a robot or even chat with one.
• You constantly hear from developers that working for Google is their dream which is understandable. However, speaking to people and seeing the presentations made me realise that even though companies like Amazon or Microsoft might not communicate or offer the “Googler feeling”, they are great companies to work for.
• Presenting something as complicated as quantum computing in a way that a wide range of audience (from nontechnical people like me, to physicists) understands it yet it still remains professional is an art. James Weaver and Johan Vos did a great job.
• Star Wars is a must have in any non-technical (coding-heavy) presentation. Maybe Jedi’s enforce the message better.

Yoda is helping you to become a better Team Lead

• One of the few sessions where you could improve your soft skills instead of your technical skills was “Empathic communication at work” done by Sharon Steed. She stutters, so before you learn anything, you have to accept the speaker and admire her bravery to stand and do the hard job of speaking for 3 hours.
• It is good to get “goodies” without doing any work, by just sharing your email address, but it feels better to work for it. Google had a challenge where you had to do 7 tutorials to get a Chromecast. My technical founder helped me tackle this challenge and we’re already using the device in our office.

Collection of branded gifts we got at Devoxx

• Coding is fascinating. It always amazes me how you write code then the machine responds, an application runs, a drone flies, a robot speaks. I have always had the desire not just to lead a tech company but to be able to code as well. Due to many obstacles this dream has to remain a dream, but it might come true one day.
• One of my favorite keynote speakers, Kevlin Henney had a great advice for anyone dealing with development: “Development needs to go further than the technical stack; the full stack includes the world and people around the software.”
• Devoxx is definitely the conference to attend if you are a developer and you want to be around fellow developers, if you have feeling that what you are doing is unique and cool, or if you have a skill that is hard to master for ordinary people, like me. I hope to be there next year!