Date: 2014-03-28 – 2014-03-30
Place: Bielsko-Biała, PL
28 March was the first day of DWO conference and in fact it was the first DWO conference for me. From the beginning I felt special character of this event. Organizations really cared about quality, interesting presentations and people.
Friday
Friday was good introduced to things which will be happening through all weekend. I listen four great presentations. And here is a brief summary of this:
Open Source – Kamil Gałuszka
When you use Open Source project try to help with their development. You can start with fixed documentation, reports bugs or issues. When you be able, you can help more. Maybe you could do some small changes. And then even more.
Hackers – Michał Czyż
Hacker is not criminal. Hacked always learn new things especially connect with IT. He trains your English, programming languages, shortcuts, using keyboard. If you want to be a hacker, you must still develop your skills.
Communication – Dariusz Wolny
Communication is hard but not impossible. We can learn how communicate better. You must realize that people perceive world differently. People have different authority, different knowledge, characters or perception.
Scrum – Kate Terlecka
Never give up. Look for other possibilities. Try new things. Learn from the best. Use good practices. And try Scrum methodology. ;]
After first day of presentations we went to Słodowania to after party. It was very nice place. And I had opportunity to meet new people from different technologies and frameworks. The IT people differ, but they have many common:
- They like Open Source.
- They support Open Source.
- They use Open Source.
- They do Open Source.
- They want to be better, learn new thinks and develop skills.
- They really like technology (They are true geeks ;]).
- In many cases they have the same problems, and learn from others how can they resolved them.
- They know that there are many technologies which can be used to solve specific problems. And they know that discussion which programming language is better than other don’t have sense.
Saturday
In Saturday I saw only one presentation. It was Mikołaj Pastuszko presentation about User Experience Design. Presentation was great. In fact I was on Mikołaj workshop at Sunday but about it below. I never before think so much about meaning things in application (or web site). Simple changes do huge difference to users. They can make application more useful or completely hard to use. After this presentation I think a lot about my web site. Is it simple and intuitive? or maybe not? If you would like you can leave your opinion.
My Saturday workshops
Introduce to the Open Source – Kamil Gałuszka
On this workshop I had special role. I and Alek tried help Kamil with workshop. We teached Ruby programmers how to develop Open Source projects. We did fork on GitHub, own branches and pull requests on example projects. It was for me new experience and I really liked it.
Lego Mindstroms – Agnieszka Pawlicka and Marcin Pawlicki
When I went to this workshop, I would like to learn programming robots. But when we got some pieces of lego penguin robot, I help my friend Grzesiu with creation of penguin beak and wings. So I become a constructor not programmer and I really like it. Then our group decided to change penguin legs. So I and Grzesiu started create new legs on caterpillar tread. It was so involved that we did not know when the time was gone. Our penguin was almost finished. We create robot and the rest of the group programmed it. We connected penguin to computer and he was alive! This was a great fun. At the end we took a photo with our child ;] All good things come to an end.
Continous Delivery – Mateusz Juściński
It was great discussion about create custom project and deliver to the client. I didn’t realize of continuous delivery problems. On the workshops we talked about it and tried figure out how could we deal with it.
Sunday
On Sunday I saw only presentation about Virtual Reality by Krzysztof Krej. It is nice to see that we can use technology like Oculus to be better in specific jobs like helping people in Africa. I think it is good way how to use. After presentation I tried to use Oculus glasses and had roller-coaster trip. Oculus is amazing thing. You put glasses and headphones and you are in different world. All what you see is like in real world. When you move your head, images move with you. Your mind know that it is not real, but your body thinks in different way. The emotions are real, you feel like you are on real roller coaster. Your body cannot stand straight. It is something incredible. I really like it. ;]
My Sunday workshops:
Missing part of Agile – Communication with NVC – Paweł Badeński
I hired about NVC and even I was a part of Marshall method workshops. It was good to remind myself about this method. I still think that it is hard to use but in general it is great idea.
User Experience Design – Mikołaj Pastuszko
These workshops I liked. It was good to be a part of it. First we start create application in groups. Next we tried find and fix your mistakes. The most important thing for me was to give the application to use by users. I didn’t realize that when we projected application in many ways we (programmers) don’t think about users. It is very important to do this. People would like to use your application but sometimes they don’t understand how to use it. When it is simple to use it’s more liked. We must think about users, not about customers or programmers when we talk about usability.
Summary
This was for my almost end of DWO adventure. After finished official part of conference, we went to dinner. All of us, old and new friends. We ate delicious food and talked about workshop, presentations and parties. I think it was great new tradition.
So, it all. See you next time on OSD.
Need help?
If you're looking for a Ruby developer with over a decade of experience, don't hesitate to contact me.
I have experience in a variety of domains, with a focus on short user feedback loops and teamwork. I can help you build a great product.