How I went to CodeFest

On March 31 and April 1, CodeFest happened again in Novosibirsk. In this post I will tell you how I went to the largest development conference in the Urals and why you should go next year too.

I recently watched some spreading cranberries that were filmed in Britain. There some kind of espionage story unfolds in Russia in the thirties. The plot to tears is simple and naive (spoiler: good guys win). Most of all I was touched by the episode when the hero takes the train from Leningrad to Moscow and makes an intermediate stop in Siberia (it is naturally cold there and there is nothing there). In general, in the minds of many people working in IT, the geography of Russian technology conferences looks similar: there are Moscow and St. Petersburg, and there are regions, but it’s cold and there is nothing (and beyond the Urals - the end of the map). Fortunately, “in reality, everything is completely different from what it really is” (c).

In Russia there are many cool regional events that are worth a trip. Over the past year I participated in the Science Festivalin Barnaul, spoke at Fenista in Nizhny Novgorod, unfortunately, did not get to Secon in Penza, but I heard a lot of good and next year, I think I’ll get there. But again, like last year, I went to Novosibirsk.

Codefestso far the largest IT conference outside of Moscow that I have seen. The Novosibirsk Exhibition Center gathered 2,000 people. Several parallel threads allow you to learn about technology everything you were afraid to ask: QA, Backend, Frontend, Mobile, Management. I spoke in the Keynote stream, it was a separate series of “think-over” reports in which I talked about the future of artificial intelligence, about how we use artificial intelligence in ABBYY, about projects in which it is already applied, and about the possibilities of its application in future.

I have several criteria for assessing the quality of the event:

• Logistics. Do participants and speakers understand where and when to go?
• Timing Do the organizers follow him, do they moderate the discussion, do they fit into the announced schedule?
• Program of presentations and interaction of participants. People come to the conference to learn something new and to meet interesting people. The task of the organizers is to think about the content of the reports (does it correspond to the stated topics and interests of the audience), and about the formats of interaction during breaks (are there areas for communication, are there any formats in which people can communicate effectively with other participants).

In my opinion, the CodeFest team has dealt with all these points. And I want to say separately about the questions after the report. In order to fit into the time stated in the program, the CodeFest organizers ask the speakers after the report to go to specially designated places for further communication with people who did not have time to ask their question. So the schedule of reports does not "go", and all those interested in the topic can more fully understand what they "hooked". Either this is the merit of the organizers, or the academic level of Novosibirsk is affecting, but the discussion after my report was very good. It's nice when people listen carefully, think, and then ask.

Briefly summarized: you need to go to CodeFest next year. It's worth it!

Ivan Yamshchikov, ABBYY Technology Evangelist