IT Camp – A Great Experience
IT Camp happened at the end of this week in Cluj. I am proud that the town I am living in hosts the biggest premium conference on Microsoft technologies in Romania. It gathered almost 400 participants, from which a significant part were from other cities. My impression was that most of them were experienced software professionals. I hope to see in next editions people coming also from neighbor countries. I think it worth the trip. All the sessions are in English, there are a lot of international speakers and there is a great opportunity to meet experienced professionals from Microsoft technologies world.
The first day was opened by two inspirational keynotes given by Richard Campbell and Tim Huckaby. I was impressed about how friendly, open and close to the audience Richard is. I think anyone could approach him during the breaks and lunch for any questions or discussions. Same goes for Tim. It was a rare opportunity to meet and speak to such great guys. Thanks for being here!
I was honored to be one of the speakers. I am glad that I have had the opportunity to speak in front of a large audience and to share my experience. I was a bit nervous to have my session in the 2nd day, on the ‘Architecture and Best Practices’ track, after notorious speakers like: Martin Kulov, Peter Leeson, Richard Campbell and Sergiu Damian. However, my story on how you can get to high code quality by doing good unit tests, fitted well after the talks of Peter, Richard and Sergiu. Peter and Richard touched other faces of quality in software. My good friend and RABS colleague, Sergiu walked us through architect’s challenges. I think, I added to both subjects by talking about code quality and the challenge to get there with the whole team. I had a good time speaking, I liked it and I’ll do it again. I hope I’ve inspired my audience in a way or another, and even if maybe some were not convinced about the technique I presented, I hope that they went away with a new perspective, maybe a new author to read or at least with a good story. I was very happy to hear someone that one of his takeaways from the conference was one of the key points of my talk. It made me to feel good J
My slides are published here. I did not have the time to include a code demo in this talk, but I will do a full demonstration on how good unit tests put a positive pressure on the production code design, next week in Bucharest at I TAKE Unconference as an Open Session.
One of the sessions I liked a lot was the one given by Peter Leeson. It was perfect! I hope to see him at next editions or other similar events in Romania. I hope that some companies active in Cluj or Romania were inspired to pay more attention to improving the quality of their products or services, because in the end this will be the only thing that would differentiate us from cheaper services in eastern countries or Asia.
All the sessions from IT Camp were recorded and will be available soon on the conference web site.
IT Camp was for me a great experience. I’ve met great people and I made some new friends and contacts. Big thanks to Mihai and Tudy for organizing this, thank you for giving me the opportunity to speak and thanks you all for attending. See you next year to an even better edition!