My first QCon
I share my exciting experience at QCon San Francisco 2023. The annual conference for exploring tech trends and learning from global developers.
I always wanted to attend QCon. I’ve followed them for the last 8+ years and consumed their content through different platforms: podcast, YouTube channel, and InfoQ.
Qcon especially appeals to me as the focus is on quality content, and stories of value, from world-class companies and developers. And is not dominated by sales and product talks from DevRels. Attending QCon, especially QCon San Francisco, was a dream.
In 2023 much to my excitement I was selected to participate - I was finally going to Qcon 🎉
How is QCon structured?
QCon focuses on emerging software trends and innovations. The conference is for software engineers and made by them.
The events are distributed over three days and organized by track:
- Each track represents a topic
- The events in the track approach the same topic from different perspectives
- A host leads each track, introduces the speakers and facilitates the conversations
It’s common to find panels with wonderful discussions or even unconferences.
My Experience
I attended the conference as a volunteer, which means I was helping with the organization. I had to choose a specific track or workshop and be present there.
Day 1
- Track: Staff+ Engineering Skills
- Host: Krys Flores
- My pick: Staff+ Engineering Skills
I was fortunate to attend this track. I was supposed to participate in a different one, and after morning registration on day one, I was allocated this track.
At the time I was unfamiliar with the topic. I was aware of the Staff+ Engineering Skill role within different companies but I had a level of confusion around the responsibilities and scope. I suppose that things happen for a reason. I felt like attending, so I quickly researched the description, host, and speakers and was very intrigued.
Funny as things work out, I ended up loving this topic. The Staff+ Engineering Skills panel was very illustrative and helped me to understand not only the role but also the current situation and potential future.
I’m glad to see growing opportunities that do not always involve going into the management route because that’s a career change with a whole new set of skills and might not be appealing to everybody.
Day 2
- Track: JVM Trends: Charting the Future of Productivity & Performance
- Host: Monica Beckwith
- My pick: The Keys to Developer Productivity: Collaborate and Innovate
I asked to attend this track. I learned Java in uni back in 2009. I think I used version 5 (nowadays, it’s 21 🙈). During my professional career, I’ve been using Java a lot, first with native Android development and later on backed services with Springboot.
The day was perfect; during the unconference I learned and enjoyed great conversations about performance and adoption from Oracle, Microsoft, Linkedin, and Salesforce experts, among others.
But my favorite event was the latest one, from Heather VanCura where I learned about the Java Community Process and how new features and proposals work.
Day 3
- Track: Emerging Trends in the Frontend
- Host: Jeff Wagner
- My pick: Server Driven UI - Streamlining Mobile Development and Release
My relationship with UI development, UX, and design is very close. I understand the importance of a great architecture and performance, but at the same time, I’m fascinated by how users engage with the product. So, attending this track was the logical choice.
The Server Driven UI event made a huge impact on me. During my career, I had the opportunity to be involved in library development and dynamic UIs. Still, seeing how companies like Uber, Airbnb, and Google leverage the power of dynamic UIs and create a whole backend driven UI blew my mind.
Workshop day 1
I attended workshops in uni, but until this day, never in my professional career. This day, I took 2, a morning and afternoon one, each of them of around 3h:
- Organizing for Fast Flow: A Practitioner's View on Implementing Team Topologies
- Lead Like Lasso – Creating Connection and Belonging in the Tech Space
The experience was better than I expected. I chose to attend these because to be a great professional, you have to excel in your area and, at the same time, have a basic knowledge of interpersonal skills.
In both, we had a combination of lectures and group activities that made us think out of the box and be open about some of our vulnerabilities.
Workshop day 2
For the second day, my selection was a little bit more techie, and the format was the same:
By the end of the day, my vision about CICD and observability completely changed. I never thought about how deep it is the relationship between your delivery goals and the technology you use to enable them.
Conclusion
At the beginning of this post, I said: “QCon San Francisco, was a dream” but it exceeded all my expectations. 🤯
I couldn’t expect such a great experience in just a week. I had the opportunity to:
- Attend talks for world-class experts in the capital of technology
- Understand the current trends in different areas
- Get to know better the importance of team structures and values
- Learn standards and procedures to make existing tools better and more resilient
On top of that, networking with people, having great food, and enjoying and discovering a different city are other significant benefits of this conference.
I’ll be back. 😎