The 5th Socrates Conference in Germany has been my first continental Socrates Conference (I’ve been to UK twice plus another one in the Canaries). What a mind blowing unconference! I got even more value from Socrates than I expected! this has been the biggest in size ever with almost 190 people. There were so many people that it felt like there were 3 conferences going on at the same time. Even in my last couple of hours in the venue I still found new faces, people I thought I didn’t see before. Despite of so many people the atmosphere was excellent as usual and the organization brilliant. Congratulations to the organisers! everything was organised with German precision! Danke schön 😉
Unfortunately Andreas – one of the founders – couldn’t join us but I am glad he is recovering well.

I’ve learned many things, met old friends (although I wanted to spend more time with them!) and made new ones.

I have to thank my friend Ivan (@istepaniuk) for being our host and guide in Amsterdam and for driving us to Soltau. Thank you Imo (@kabomi), Juan (@_jmgomez_) and Adrian (@eidrien) for your fantastic company.

Thank you Pierluigi Pugliese (@p_pugliese) for your excellent job as facilitator and the conversation/coaching we had during lunch time.
Notes:

  • Twitter hashtag was #socrates15
  • Really like the idea of the world cafe on Thursday to get people thinking on what they would like to happen the next days.
  • There are so many proposals that is hard to remember some sessions when looking at the panel, that makes it even harder to choose sessions. Next time I’ll write down in paper exactly the minimum and most effective sentences I’ll need to present my proposal so that I’ll just have to read when the time arrives. Talking to the mic is a bit unconfortable when not used to it.
  • I’ll book more time to spend with my friends and specially with my colleagues.
  • In the sessions intended for me to ask questions, to be taught something or to have a discussion is not necessary to have slides but it’s worth preparing the session. It could be a script, a few examples to discuss on, a set of questions… something to facilitate the session and an idea of what to achieve with it.
  • Some of the most valuable moments happen out of the scheduled time table or in those with a small group of people. Next time I’ll plan to spend about half of each day out of the rooms, talking and coding with people or even coding on my own in places where others can see me and join.
  • I will propose maximum one session per day, then I’ll feel more relaxed and free to change plans.
  • Sleeping enough is key to enjoy the event until the end, otherwise I am already a zombie at the end of the first day. Nightly discussions are super interesting, I’ll probably oversleep in the morning at least one day to be fresh and ready for the night.
  • Socrates is an open space where I can go without any session prepared, people are so amazing that there will be for sure a lot of stuff to learn.
  • The idea of workshops on Sundays is brilliant we’ll do the same in Socrates Canaries. I’ve learned many things on Sunday working on a walking skeleton and solved many doubts regarding DDD. Special thanks to Bardford (@gruebelinchen), Björn, Felipe (@felipefzdz), Martin (@md42), Dimitry (@dimitrypolivaev), Ivan and all the people that stepped in and out during the workshop.
  • It’s the right time for our team to embrace ES6 and use it in the project we are starting from scratch. Thank you Wolfram (@wolframkriesing), Marco (@marcoeimrich) and Christian (fonzygruen) for all the insight and information. Thank you also for ES6Katas and Ramda.js – we’re gonna use both. Thank you also for valuable resources like NodeSchool and the refactoring kata (refactoring to functional style using Rambda) proposed by Marco.
  • Property-based testing is definitely something I want to try. Thank you for the insight and opinions on when to use it and when not to use it, specially to Pawel  (@pawelduda) and Kuba.
  • The theory of type systems is super interesting, I would like to get the slides from Ivan (@ikusalic) and compare how Type Classes in Scala are different to generics in C#.
  • Informal discussions like “Developer Ethics” are perfect to be hold during lunch time. I’ll propose topics for lunch time like in this conference, so that I’ll know what to talk about with people I don’t know but who share a common interest. Unfortunately tables were not big enough this time to join some lunch discussions.
  • I really like the metaphor of the power lifting in pairs to explain pair programming, thank you Houssam (@houssamfakih) for sharing your experiences along these years of practise.
  • I want to learn more about Event Sourcing and CQRS. This is the second conference where people recommend Event Storming and I haven’t used it in a real project. It’s on my to-do list.
  • Thank you Tobi (@tpflug) and Chris (@c089) for organising the Power Point Karaoke once again and the variants. Thank you Adrian, Pawel, Christian (@dertseha) & company for such hilarious nights. I plan to play the PP Karaoke on the New Year’s eve with family and friends.
  • Choose the blue route in the GPS, not the red one – although Germany is beautiful.
  • 30 mins Gym + 30 mins sauna after the sessions is a must. German get naked in the sauna no matter if there are men and women mixed.