How we went to New York Developer Week
About a month ago, the New York Developer Week (NYDW) conference for developers was held in the USA, where we gave a talk “Highly reliable, high-loaded architecture of the front-office system in bank”. In the post we share our notes on the conference. And we will devote the next post to the report that was submitted there.
We have several times at various events and conferences in Russia told about the features of the architecture of the Unified Frontal System of Sberbank and at some point we realized that feedback from colleagues from other countries would be useful to us.
NYDW was perfect for this. First, developers from industry leading companies take part in it. For example, after us with a report about OpenTracing and the best logging approaches for microservices, engineers from Uber spoke, and in neighboring audiences you could listen to experts from Microsoft, Google or IBM.
Secondly, although the New York Development Week is a fairly large industry conference for developers, it still cannot be classified as one of the largest. This year, according to our feelings, about 1,500 engineers and developers took part in the event, which, for example, is less than at the top Russian RIT ++ or HighLoad conference.
Thirdly, it was just a great chance to improve our English and get new useful contacts, which we used.
Like many, our acquaintance with the "Big Apple" began with the legendary yellow taxi. And immediately we were waited by two not too pleasant surprises. As you know, the prices for taxi services in the United States can not be called low - the road 25 km from the airport to the hotel cost $ 55.
The second surprise was waiting for us literally in the back seat. According to the rules, riding in the front seat with a taxi driver in the US is prohibited. The passenger is always located only at the back. At the same time, for safety, a transparent plastic wall separates it from the driver, due to which the back space becomes even smaller. As a result, the road from the airport to the city was more like a trip to the "pen" of a police car.
June New York was pleased with good weather: the temperature did not fall below 25 degrees, and the wind from the sea constantly maintained a feeling of freshness. However, it was not possible to swim - the water in the ocean warms less and did not rise above 20 degrees.
In the city, like in the movies, there are many small cozy cafes, and also whole wagons with ice-cream travel around.
Although we arrived at the very beginning of the conference, we did not attend the opening day. The fact is that there were no reports that day, and the participating companies actively hunted visitors: almost anyone could come to the event site on the first day and try to get a job at Google or any large IT company. For us, this question was absolutely irrelevant and instead we spent the day exploring the city.
At the same time, in order to gather contacts of promising programmers, event partners often go for small tricks. For example, on the initiative of one of the companies a free lottery was organized, the prize in which was a new quadcopter. To take part in the draw, it was enough to leave your business card with contacts.
The main activities at the conference were on the second and third days. Especially for registration, we arrived in advance by 8.45 am, but we were not the first to arrive. By this time, the entrance was already a queue of several dozen participants.
At the same time, about half of the programmers were clearly not from the United States. For example, in a break between presentations, we met with colleagues from China and Venezuela; Russian was heard in the corridors several times.
This time the conference was held at the Brooklyn Expo Center, which looks like a hangar, which is a huge glass box decorated from the inside in a loft style.
In addition to the huge registration area, the building had several halls, the largest of which can accommodate about 500 students. The remaining rooms are smaller - about 100 people. A total of about 30 reports were presented at the conference. The main topics are machine learning, blockchain, artificial intelligence, web development.
But about mobile development this year almost did not tell. This topic was only slightly raised in the Cloudflare report on optimizing the interaction between client and server applications.
On the first day, the speakers remembered a speech by Google’s lead engineer Vadim Markovtsev, who presented an open source study using machine learning algorithms. Also a surprise caused a big stir caused by a master class using GitKraken from the conference sponsor, Axosoft.
I also remember the speech of the technical director of Kong Inc, with the report “Blowing up the Monolith” on the practices of the transition to the micro-service architecture. However, he was marked not so much by a bright report, but by an example of how not to do it. Although he spoke good English, for some reason he decided to speak without a microphone and because of this he was hardly heard. As a result, after a few minutes, the students began to leave the hall.
Our performance was scheduled for the second day. For the report, we were allocated 25 minutes. Speech passed without problems. Even before coming to New York, we rehearsed several times and performed as good actors who complement each other perfectly. The audience accepted our presentation with interest.
The hall for 100 people was filled in about half, and after the speech several questions from the audience followed. For example, they asked if we were planning to switch to containerization, asked about our vision about the possibility of automating part of the processes. Several listeners came up later to exchange contacts and request the text of the report.
Overall, NYDW met our expectations. For the first time, we had the skill of speaking at a foreign event in a foreign language. Armed with the experience of speaking at such a venue, you can prepare for a presentation at other even larger developer conferences almost anywhere in the world.
THREE REASONS TO SPEAK AT NYDW
We have several times at various events and conferences in Russia told about the features of the architecture of the Unified Frontal System of Sberbank and at some point we realized that feedback from colleagues from other countries would be useful to us.
NYDW was perfect for this. First, developers from industry leading companies take part in it. For example, after us with a report about OpenTracing and the best logging approaches for microservices, engineers from Uber spoke, and in neighboring audiences you could listen to experts from Microsoft, Google or IBM.
Secondly, although the New York Development Week is a fairly large industry conference for developers, it still cannot be classified as one of the largest. This year, according to our feelings, about 1,500 engineers and developers took part in the event, which, for example, is less than at the top Russian RIT ++ or HighLoad conference.
Thirdly, it was just a great chance to improve our English and get new useful contacts, which we used.
TAXI AND QUADROCOPTER FOR THREE
Like many, our acquaintance with the "Big Apple" began with the legendary yellow taxi. And immediately we were waited by two not too pleasant surprises. As you know, the prices for taxi services in the United States can not be called low - the road 25 km from the airport to the hotel cost $ 55.
The second surprise was waiting for us literally in the back seat. According to the rules, riding in the front seat with a taxi driver in the US is prohibited. The passenger is always located only at the back. At the same time, for safety, a transparent plastic wall separates it from the driver, due to which the back space becomes even smaller. As a result, the road from the airport to the city was more like a trip to the "pen" of a police car.
June New York was pleased with good weather: the temperature did not fall below 25 degrees, and the wind from the sea constantly maintained a feeling of freshness. However, it was not possible to swim - the water in the ocean warms less and did not rise above 20 degrees.
In the city, like in the movies, there are many small cozy cafes, and also whole wagons with ice-cream travel around.
Although we arrived at the very beginning of the conference, we did not attend the opening day. The fact is that there were no reports that day, and the participating companies actively hunted visitors: almost anyone could come to the event site on the first day and try to get a job at Google or any large IT company. For us, this question was absolutely irrelevant and instead we spent the day exploring the city.
At the same time, in order to gather contacts of promising programmers, event partners often go for small tricks. For example, on the initiative of one of the companies a free lottery was organized, the prize in which was a new quadcopter. To take part in the draw, it was enough to leave your business card with contacts.
25 MINUTES ON STAGE
The main activities at the conference were on the second and third days. Especially for registration, we arrived in advance by 8.45 am, but we were not the first to arrive. By this time, the entrance was already a queue of several dozen participants.
At the same time, about half of the programmers were clearly not from the United States. For example, in a break between presentations, we met with colleagues from China and Venezuela; Russian was heard in the corridors several times.
This time the conference was held at the Brooklyn Expo Center, which looks like a hangar, which is a huge glass box decorated from the inside in a loft style.
In addition to the huge registration area, the building had several halls, the largest of which can accommodate about 500 students. The remaining rooms are smaller - about 100 people. A total of about 30 reports were presented at the conference. The main topics are machine learning, blockchain, artificial intelligence, web development.
But about mobile development this year almost did not tell. This topic was only slightly raised in the Cloudflare report on optimizing the interaction between client and server applications.
On the first day, the speakers remembered a speech by Google’s lead engineer Vadim Markovtsev, who presented an open source study using machine learning algorithms. Also a surprise caused a big stir caused by a master class using GitKraken from the conference sponsor, Axosoft.
I also remember the speech of the technical director of Kong Inc, with the report “Blowing up the Monolith” on the practices of the transition to the micro-service architecture. However, he was marked not so much by a bright report, but by an example of how not to do it. Although he spoke good English, for some reason he decided to speak without a microphone and because of this he was hardly heard. As a result, after a few minutes, the students began to leave the hall.
Our performance was scheduled for the second day. For the report, we were allocated 25 minutes. Speech passed without problems. Even before coming to New York, we rehearsed several times and performed as good actors who complement each other perfectly. The audience accepted our presentation with interest.
The hall for 100 people was filled in about half, and after the speech several questions from the audience followed. For example, they asked if we were planning to switch to containerization, asked about our vision about the possibility of automating part of the processes. Several listeners came up later to exchange contacts and request the text of the report.
Overall, NYDW met our expectations. For the first time, we had the skill of speaking at a foreign event in a foreign language. Armed with the experience of speaking at such a venue, you can prepare for a presentation at other even larger developer conferences almost anywhere in the world.
Report authors and travel companions:
- Lead Leader, IT Systems Development, Mikhail Peresypkin
- Chief Architect of the Unified Frontal System Roman Shekhovtsov
- Head of the Frontal Systems Department of the International Block Yury Sporynin