Geekstone bonding happy people

Geekstone conference 2015.

“Happy IT people” – these words could summarize the entire description of the first Geekstone conference held on December 3^rd in Novi Sad, gathering everyone from those who are best informed about IT trends, to those who are less informed, curious, willing to learn what is in that “box” called “a computer”. Why have I summarized my impressions exactly in this way? Indeed, one of the lectures was related to success and happiness, but it was not the only thing that caused such a sensation when, the following day, you rewind everything that had happened and realize that you may have attended the commencement of a nice, ennobling and interesting IT event that has every potential to become a tradition and be held yearly. 

Satisfaction and a ruined project

The first morning's lecture by Alexander Kjerulf from Woohoo INC was attended by a full largest hall of Arena Cineplex. He opened this conference by speaking about „Happiness and success in IT“. This was a very interactive lecture, with plenty of personal touches from the speaker's own experience, whose manner of presentation persuaded the audience to participate as well. Although the topic might not have been narrowly related to technical expertise, but rather a reference to humanity and people in a company, Kjerulf was definitely a great choice for the first speaker because, instead of cold logic and technicalities, in the beginning he presented a human being as the major factor in an organization and thus perhaps „melted“ the audience. And not just that! Geekstone conference also gathered people that are not so much into the IT sector, but this lecture made them consider the rest of the sector thoroughly. „No one is happy at work, if he/she doesn't perform it well“ and „Happiness depends on success but also on the relationships among people at work“ were the messages sent by this speaker.

Following his lecture, Boban Mikšin from Vega IT Sourcing spoke about how he had ruined his project. This was an unusual topic, personal and far from dull, by which he excellently followed up on the previous lecture and where he spoke about the absence of relationships (communication) between developers and clients and how that could lead to the collapse of a good idea, but also the dissatisfaction of participants in the project. So, on the one hand we had a man who had abandoned his IT career and became happy, and on the other hand, the audience heard the experience of a man who participated in a project that was considered as ruined from the very beginning (the audience's conclusion), but was not discouraged to continue his quest for happiness in the IT field.

- One of the things I liked was the fact that the topics were not exclusively technical, and there were more talks about people in the IT field and their happiness and unhappiness, and I believe that such topics are of great importance – said Mikšin.

According to him, this topic made him think thoroughly and now he had a chance to share his experience with others.

- I believe that this is a very important for all of us since it says that it is okay to admit that we have failed, i.e. that we are not perfect, and what's most important – to draw lessons for the next time. In short, honesty, proactivity and transparency are, in my opinion, the key decisions that contribute to a project's success – said the speaker from Vega IT. 

And some IT stuff...

The above was followed by more expert lectures organized in two halls, where both of them lacked no visitors whatsoever. There were talks about „tricks“ in object-oriented programming and how to make codes easier to maintain. The presenters also referred to topics such as AngularJS, Azure App service, ASP.Net 5, scrum methodology, real-time stream processing with Samza, and many other as well.

I was particularly thrilled by Zoran Horvat from Mediatech Solutions, who had showed not only his exceptional knowledge in the field of object-oriented programming, but also an enviable degree of transferability of his knowledge in such a manner that those who just made their first steps towards object-oriented programming, could understand the talk and become intrigued to go further in the creation of their codes.

Also, Dragoslav Ogar from A4ATCP DOO presented the innovations in ASP.Net 5, but this review was all but dull, since this speaker's talk was very spontaneous and humorous, making the audience hope for a three-hour talk (to the least), instead of one-hour. Apart from that, the photo showing a packed small hall where people were willing to stand on steps in order to listen to the speaker, says more than a thousand words.

I certainly must not forget Bernardin Katić from Insa Investment Software AG, who drew the audience into the story of scrum methodology and its implementation in theory, but also in practice within the company he works at. This was perhaps the most interactive lecture that was not held in its entirety (judging by the number of slides in the presentation) because the audience was involved from the very beginning, and was able to interrupt the speaker to ask a question at any moment. And the number of questions was large... both for this speaker as well as other mentioned ones. Others who participated in this event provided their personal touch and most probably became a part of a historical moment – birth of a new place of gathering people from the IT world.

 In addition to the abovementioned, the speakers who also participated to this event were Hans Filers (Clockwork), Bas Jansen (Nedap retail), Robert Žuljević (Levi9), Predrag Jelesijević (Secondary School of Electrical Engineering in Belgrade), Stanko Nikolić (Merit Solutions), Srđan Božović (Microsoft Serbia), Tanja Vukov (Institute for Biological Research) and Nemanja Stančić (New and Rising App studio), where all of them put Geekstone in the center of topics that everyone wants to hear about. However, this was not the only point of this meeting. There was also the first-mentioned human bonding: connecting, meeting, communication. Geekstone has successfully achieved its goal: putting the world of computers and the human moment all in one place. 

Learning and motivation

One of the event organizers, Maja Božić, said that she realized that some things could have been organized better, but that on the other hand she had received a bunch of feedback from people saying that they had been pleased with speakers, that they were motivated and that they had learned something.

- The idea to organize the Geekstone conference arose from the needs of people from the community. So far we have organized only meetup events and, through conversations with people during such events, I have realized that there is a great desire for personal development and socializing, so the conference was the next logical step for me. Now when it’s all over, I have realized that organizing such events makes sense, and I will do everything in my power to maintain the quality and improve any things that can be improved - said Božić, adding that more meetups and workshops can be expected in the forthcoming period.