Wroc# 2016 - knowledge, networking and Objectivity office tour!

A few days have passed since the Wroc# conference, however, now I am finally able to write about Wroc# 2016. For me, this conference lasted three days and I needed some time to recuperate.

I arrived in Wrocław the day before Wroc# in order to take part in the Pre-wroc# meetup organized by the Wrocław .NET User Group. It was a nice warm up before the conference. I talked to some old friends and met some new ones.

The next morning I went to the Wrocław City Stadium which was the home of Wroc# 2016. The conference was opened by Łukasz and Wojtek. After them, Susanta Ghosh welcomed attendees on behalf of Objectivity. At the beginning of the conference the organizers informed us of a change in the agenda. I thought “oh no, Mark Rendle didn’t come again”, but It was only partially true. Yes, he didn’t come to the stadium but he was in Wrocław. So instead of him, the first speech was given by Ian Cooper.

Ian Cooper’s speech From Monolith to Microservices was a seamless and instructive talk about: when to go into microservices, how to do it and the benefits for your company, your customers and you as a developer. Ian as usual, used his profound knowledge and explained everything in a very consistent way. His speech was a finely woven thread that incorporated the previous, current and upcoming statement. He composed his speech in a way, that he showed you both the trees, and the forest: paying attention to fine details as well as the bigger picture. Ian’s presence was the most memorable part of the conference for me. I spent awhile talking with him during the after party and this was a very exciting experience.

The second speech was given by Mark Rendle, and he spoke about My First Startup (And Other Mistakes) and as he said, he was late deliberately to show us that he makes mistakes. Mark told us about what he learned dealing with his own businesses. I learnt the following from his speech: Perfect something. Then add something more, and perfect that too. Repeat. That is my summary of his great presentation.

After Mark, Enrico Campidoglio came on stage with the speech: The Things Git Can Do (that none of the GUIs ever told you about). He tried to tell us that Git is not hard but I am still rather sceptical about this. I think Enrico didn’t stress enough that using some of the commands that he showed us can be really harmful.

The next speaker had a difficult task because she was after the launch break. And lunch was very tasty and plentiful so certainly everyone was feeling blissful, which can make you sleepy. Yet Julie Lerman, didn’t let anyone fall asleep. She did a real time demo with a small amount of live coding and used this to show how Entity Framework Core and ASP .NET Core 1.0 works on OS X with PostgreSQL database. I was amazed not only by Julie’s speech but also by Julie’s attitude and outlook. She is such a happy and positive person, I am glad that I could meet her in person and that she gave me a lot of positive energy.

The next presenter Chris Klug was the only one who was among Wroc#’s speakers last year. Then, he had an excellent performance although he struggled with Visual Studio’s crashes. Chris is similar to Julie, and has an incredible amount of positive energy that infected me during his speech. This is so amazing that it actually doesn’t matter what he talks to you about, you simply want to listen to him and you have a lot fun. This time he talked about What Do You Mean “a front-end build pipeline”!?. He showed how to use npm, Node.js, Bower, Gulp to process TypeScript and Less. As an example, he used a very simple angular 1.x application.

The last presentation before the discussion panel was given by Glenn Condron. This presentation exceeded my expectations. Glenn show us ASP .NET Core 1.0 and during his presentation he used the new dotnet command and almost the whole presentation was conducted in the live coding style, which is always a great challenge. I am a big fan of ASP .NET Core and after this presentation an even bigger fan. I hope that Glenn and other folks from his team popularise this framework because it is worth it.

The discussion panel was the last official point in the agenda and I really liked this point. In Wroc# 2015, it was an impromptu point and it turned out to be one of the best. This year, it was planned beforehand and it was even better. This year’s discussion was moderated by Mark Rendle and he did a great job. Thanks to him the discussion was very dynamic and simultaneously very funny.

Wroc# is famous for its after party. This year it was even better than last time. There was plenty of delicious food, home brewed beer prepared especially for this occasion and splash mixes. And foremost, it was an occasion to talk to nice, wise and friendly people in an unique atmosphere which can only be experienced during Wroc#’s after parties.

I cannot state strongly enough how amazing Wroc# is. This conference is the best one I’ve ever been to. If I had to choose only one conference every year to attend, it would be Wroc#.
Ula, Łukasz, Wojtek you must put a lot of heart into this conference, and that’s why it is so amazing.

The post-conference evaluation asked: Would you come next year if we decide to do Wroc# again? My answer is definitely YES and I hope that my collection (see picture below) will be bigger next year.

Another question from the post-conference evaluation was: What improvements would you recommend for our next conferences?

Really, it’s very difficult for me to imagine a better conference than Wroc#, so the only thing which I can suggest is a list of possible speakers for the next conference. I think that what is considered Bleeding Edge now, could be a hot topic next year, and it would be nice to hear more about it. For example, my list of speakers would include:

Damian Edwards about ASP .NET Core
John Papa or even Brad Green about Angular 2
Nigel Poulton about Docker (this is already a hot topic)
Steve Sanderson about modern Web

WebAssembly could be Bleeding Edge next year, and maybe it would worthwhile to invite someone to speak about it.

Mentors are essential in life and this year I met one of mine at Wroc#: Ian Cooper. If I could be so bold, I would like to ask the Wroc# team to invite my other life mentor, Martin Fowler.

I know that my wish list is almost impossible to fulfill but there’s no harm in writing about it.

The day after the conference, thanks to Ula and other Wroc# team members, I got a tour of the Objectivity office. It was very nice to see behind the scenes of Wroc# and to find out first hand what an amazing company Objectivity is. Thanks to the Wroc# team for this opportunity. Best to everyone and hope to see you next year at Wroc# 2017.

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