How not to panic if a lot of programmers came to visit?
Lifehacks of our IT conference
Hello dear Internet of Things lovers! Let me remind everyone that my name is Oleg Plotnikov. I am the director of the industrial Internet center of a large Ural IT company. Recently, we organized a large-scale conference IT.IS. Usually gathered no more than three hundred guests. However, this time something went wrong and the result exceeded all our expectations. Two weeks before the start of the conference, almost 800 people registered on the site. For the Chelyabinsk region - this is success. But we had no idea how to fit this “success" in the hall and not scare him away with the number of all our speakers.
How not to panic if programmers come to visit us?
I share with you our valuable experience in organizing the Ural IT.IS-2019 conference.
How did the idea come about
We regularly attend IT conferences. This is a really interesting and rewarding experience. But at some point they realized that we could not always find something new for ourselves there. But ourselves, on the contrary, have something to tell and something to share. And without hiding anything, because it would help others avoid mistakes.
The competencies of Chelyabinsk developers have long reached a new level. A couple of years ago there was a really big outflow of specialists from the city, but now everything is changing. There is always work here and it is more than promising.
Our experts can safely talk about the entire production cycle of intelligent products - starting with an idea and ending with the introduction of technology. All this information in the framework of the reports, workshops can be obtained not dosed, but in full and completely free of charge.
Two years ago we held the first IT.IS conference. Only 100 people took part in it - half of which are company employees. They talked about web development, mobile applications, the concept of "Smart City" in Chelyabinsk. For dessert - informal communication with all participants and a buffet table.
What was wrong?
For us it was a “breakdown of the pen." Experience in organizing such an event at that time was not enough. We picked up a not very convenient place in which everyone could not physically fit. There were few speakers at the conference, there were few of those, too, so we met at 5 o’clock and quietly went home.
What changed?
First, we changed the venue. We chose a more suitable spacious hall for this, which can be quickly transformed into several convenient locations. Guests now listen to reports in three different sections simultaneously.
Secondly, they invited speakers from other companies. After all, our goal is not just to share our experience, but also to rally the IT community in the region. In addition to Intersvyaz specialists, speakers from the Yii Core Team, Everypixel Media Innovation Group, ZABBIX, Yandex and Google made presentations.
Thirdly, we have changed the approach to reports. They were divided into several of the most popular topics: machine learning, artificial intelligence, the development of mobile applications, infrastructure, networks, services and telephony. A total of 25 reports (6 of them in reserve) and 28 speakers.
They increased the conference itself - now it takes two full days. On the first day, guests can listen to speakers, present their achievements, receive constructive criticism and feedback, and in an informal setting communicate with speakers at the buffet table. The second day is completely devoted to workshops and master classes.
What happened?
IT.IS-2019 became the fourth free industry conference from our company. The news that it is really interesting here scattered instantly. Mostly thanks to word of mouth. But we were still surprised when the number of registered exceeded 700. In Chelyabinsk, in principle, there are not so many programmers - we thought. And they were not mistaken. The guys decided to come from all over the region. In addition to existing specialists, there were many students. Everyone obviously did not fit into the conference, but we did not begin to cancel the registration at our own peril and risk.
They didn’t panic either. We decided to focus on the situation. As a result, not all came, but only 60% of the registered participants. But even that was enough to feel how important such conferences are to people.
The most common question was “why not for free?” I answer - why not?
We managed to gather like-minded people for whom this trip cost almost nothing, but in return brought useful experience, interesting acquaintances, new knowledge, contracts and business connections.
Conference program
Our conference was very eventful. The speakers presented a lot of open business solutions. The most popular were the following:
Papers:
Google SRE Engineer Konstantin Hankin:
How I Learned Not to Worry and Loved a Pager
Konstantin Hankin's report described the basic principles of SRE at Google: a department that focuses on the reliability and maintainability of large systems. Google’s SREs not only monitor the health of services, but also make sure that the systems are easy to develop and accompany with the efforts of a small team.
Yulia Smetanina, Engineer, Machine Learning Department, Intersvyaz:
How Methodius became Anna: experience in developing and launching voice message classifiers
This report is about the features and problems that we encountered when automating the processing of voice calls from customers. We told you which way you will have to go from training the classifier of call topics to introducing the system into the productive. And why, when solving practical problems, it is important to think not so much about stacking and neural networks, but about the design of user interfaces and the psychology of people.
Intersvyaz Product and Innovation Director Alexander Trofimov:
Agile Application in Iron Development
This report is about Agile's application in electronics development. About the positive experience and the rake, as well as about what you need to be prepared for by customers and contractors who decided to work on Agile in a project related to iron.
Director of the Industrial Internet Center at Intersvyaz Oleg Plotnikov (it's me, it's me): Filling a smart city
I talked about my directions in a smart city. Control of heating mains, dispatching housing and communal services, lighting control, environmental monitoring, I have already written about a lot in my articles. I’ll write about something else.
Master classes
Workshop from the head of the development department of Intersvyaz Company Ivan Bagaev and the head of the group of web application development Nikolai Filipp:
Optimization of a web project for high loads
For the workshop, the organizers took on the understandable task of event monitoring, implemented in PHP and the yii-framework. We examined typical methods and tools for optimizing PHP projects for high loads. As a result, in an hour and a half it turned out to increase the project productivity by several orders of magnitude. In general, the workshop was designed for mid-level developers, but according to reviews, even some experienced developers found new points for themselves.
Workshop from the developer, data analysis specialist in the Yandex.Vzglyad project. Alexey Sotov: Meet the
Neural Network Fastai Framework
Participants processed the text using neural networks using the Fast AI framework. We examined what a language model is and how to teach it, how to solve the problems of classification, text generation.
Workshop from the engineers of the machine learning department of Intersvyaz, Yuri Dmitrin and Yuri Samusevich:
Deep training for recognizing objects in images
The guys helped solve the problem of recognizing objects in images using various neural network architectures in Keras. And the participants considered what approaches there are to data preprocessing, what are the effects of hyperparameters during training, and how data augmentation can improve the quality of the model.
We also went too far with the food at the buffet table, so it was enough not only for workshops that were on the second day of the conference, but even for a full breakfast with colleagues in the office.
The abstracts of all workshops are available on the conference website itis.is74.ru/conf
. You can watch the impressions of the conference of guests and participants of the event in the video
VIDEO