Do. Or do not. There is no try: Be a speaker at I T.A.K.E Unconference 2016!

Nov 11, 2015 by Alexandru Bolboaca in Announcements

Simon Brown, Keynote speaker I T.A.K.E Unconference 2015

We are proud to announce that in May, 2016, in Bucharest, we will host the 4^th I T.A.K.E Unconference, bringing together 300 top-notch programmers, software craftsmen, architects, DevOps, technical managers, team leaders, startup CEOs, CTOs, technical consultants, and business analysts from more than 10 European countries.

James Shore is our first confirmed keynote speaker for this edition.

Each year, we strive to raise the standards for our participants. We are looking forward to offer them practical, hands-on sessions like workshops, smart talks, and best quality presentations. Side events, like Kata Lounge or programming contest, and networking opportunities will be included in the schedule, so get ready for one of a kind event!

As always, an invaluable role will have our speakers. Each of them brings personal experience and amazing insights, making the unconference the best place for finding inspiration and ideas for your work.

At this moment, we have just launched our call for speakers and we are looking forward to receive your submission!

If you want to make an outstanding contribution at one of the regional most vibrant events, get your proposal ready and submit it here.

We value practical, hands-on sessions, strong case studies, and personal experiences, delivered in an attractive manner. Our event is technology agnostic, so us, and the participants, expect a session that will apply to more technology stacks. No, talking only about Java or C# won’t go the finals!

While you prepare for taking the stage, take a look at what speakers and participants said about their experience:

Last week I had the chance to attend both as a speaker and an attendee my first un-conference (…). The overall agenda and the way the event is structured is very intelligent and it makes people communicate more and exchange ideas in various ways. (Patroklos Papapetrou, Speaker 2015, full blog post here)

The speakers proved to have deep understanding of the topics, and the information was clearly presented in easy-to-read slides. Nice job! (Adriana, participant 2015)

Open Space – very interesting. It’s like a round table. Everyone has the chance to say what he/she wants. Short sessions (as these: 35’, 40’) – OK. (Participant, 2015)

You can find all the details about the call here, and make sure to submit your ideas here by December 22^nd.

Questions? Share your thoughts on Facebook and Twitter, using #itakeuncof.

Putting the Science in Computer Science with Felienne Hermans

Nov 26, 2014

Most conversations about best practices in software development focus on personal preferences: Vim versus emacs, static versus dynamic typing, Java versus C#. Other domains use research to settle such questions. Couldn’t software development benefit from science as well?

Felienne Hermans, assistant professor at Delft University of Technology, had a very engaging talk at I T.A.K.E. Unconference 2014 about experiments designed and run to answer questions such as:

What is the best programming language?
Do design patterns help in any way?
Is Linus’ law correct?
Are spreadsheets code?

Watch her talk @ I T.A.K.E. Unconference 2014 edition to find out the results.

Check out more about I T.A.K.E. Unconference 2015 or see directly the Schedule.

Playing with projections

Apr 07, 2017

Enjoy the following series of interviews with the speakers, top-notch software crafters from across Europe, joining I T.A.K.E Unconference, Bucharest, 11-12 May. Discover the lessons learned and what drives them to challenge the known path in their field.

Thomas Coopman is an independent software engineer and consultant focused on the full stack: frontend, backend and mostly people, practices and processes. At #itakeunconf, in his hands-on session, the participants will be implementing projections based on an event stream we provide.

#1. Please share with us 5 things you did that helped you grow and become the professional you are today

I draw most of my inspiration from visiting and organizing events in the communities. Additionally, the Software Craftsmanship Slack Team is a great place to start discussing with craftspeople all over the world.

1) Experimenting with different career choices until it felt good

2) Exchanging experiences with fellow professionals by attending meetups, usergroups and conferences

3) Fighting the urge to assume I’m always right

4) Limiting the subjects I’m willing to learn and invest time in

5) Investing in my communication techniques. I’m continuously learning to speak non-techie. I’m practicing speaking in front of an audience.

#2. What challenges will the participants find solutions to during your session at I T.A.K.E Unconference 2017?

The ability to extract useful knowledge from a store of historical events.

#3. Recommend for the participants 3 sources you find inspiration from and would help them better understand you

1) The Software Craftsmanship and Testing community are awesome. Reach out to them.

2) Listen to any podcast or audiobook during your commute. It’s far better for your personal growth than listening to the (mostly bad) news on the radio. I particularly like these podcasts: Star Talk Radio and Hardcore History.

3) Pick up a musical instrument and learn to play it adequately. I tend to relax with a guitar in my hands or a piano at my fingertips.

Want to join Thomas and ~300 software crafters from around Europe?

Immutable data

May 05, 2016

Enjoy the following series of interviews with the speakers, top-notch software crafters from across Europe, joining I T.A.K.E Unconference, Bucharest, 19-20 May. Discover the lessons learned and what drives them to challenge the known path in their field.

Ricardo J. Mendez, founder at Numergent, is a software developer with 20 years of practice. He will share in his talk at I T.A.K.E Unconference 2016 more about immutable data.

#1. SHARE TOP 5 THINGS YOU DID THAT HELPED YOU GROW & BECOME THE PROFESSIONAL YOU ARE TODAY

Starting my own business, leaving the comfort of a company where you get a certain sense of security by deriving a regular salary, and having to deal with the hidden iceberg of new skills I had to learn but hadn’t realized I didn’t even know about.

Joining my first start up, which wasn’t the same as a usual job, nor with the degree of control of just running my own business, was a great learning experience on how to deal with uncertainty while still aiming to provide a measure of direction.

Realizing that, as a developer, your job is not to deliver code. Your job is to keep the user happy, and delivering code is only a part of that. It requires a mental shift from the technology-focused mentality one tends to have as an engineer.

Working with distributed teams, and learning to adapt to the different work and communication styles of people from different countries, has made a huge difference in adaptability, and has taught me to not assume the message is always getting across.

Going through several technology trends and epochs, seeing language and platform flame wars rage and abate, trying a bit of everything, helps come to grips with the idea that a language or a platform is just a tool, and it’s what you do with it that matters.

#2. What challenges will the participants find solutions to during your session at I T.A.K.E Unconference 2016?

The idea that being unable to modify your data can bring more flexibility is unintuitive.

However, the bigger our codebases grow, the harder it becomes to find out if a refactoring process, or even a seemingly small change, will have a negative impact. Test suites can reduce this uncertainty, but normally only inform us of a problem *after* we’ve made a change. There’s usually no way to know, in advance, how time consuming the side effects of a modification will be.

A shift in mentality towards data immutability, whatever the language we are using, will help structure the code and functionality in a way that makes it easier to grow and change down the road.

#3. What else would you like to share with participants ?

I assemble and lead project-specific teams to tackle challenges involving interaction design, data and open source. I’ve been working on software for over 20 years, across multiple industries – from desktop tools, to banking and financial institutions, to healthcare, to gaming.

I usually work with distributed teams, as I’d rather take the expertise where I find it than expect it to be around the corner, and it leads to interesting, varied teams with different perspectives.

A voracious reader, of both technical and non-technical books, it would be strange to find me without one or two tomes in progress. This extends to platforms and languages – I very much enjoy kicking the tires on both, always looking for something new to learn.

Want to join Ricardo and many more software crafters from around Europe?Join I T.A.K.E Unconference 2016!