HighLoad ++ is a dish that is served by highly loaded

Perhaps the main difference between the conference of developers of highly loaded HighLoad ++ systems from many others is the absence of hidden goals. There is not a single person or organization behind us that would impose the rules of the game or hunt for an event, such as:

• Large company
• Tolstosum sponsor
• State structures

For many years, HighLoad ++ has remained an event that some developers organize for other developers .

Nine years ago, we adopted several strict rules for ourselves, which we try to strictly follow. We will not list them all - for this the time will come, we will name only the main ones.

The main thing is that the budget of the conference is drawn up in such a way that there always remains the possibility of holding it even in the absence of partners. It would seem - what does it give?

As a result, we do not have sponsorship reports. Any presentation is selected by the Program Committee along with all reports. Such a practice shocking the marketing departments of many companies trying to present their own speakers: “How so, we paid, now also prepare a report?”

Work with the speaker

We always work directly with the speaker and only with him - any letters from other interested parties (including HR and PR directors) are sent to “Processed”. Why?

Because no intermediaries advertising their own employers will be able to submit a good report. This can only be done by an author who is deeply versed in the topic.

It is useless to ask us - "On what topic would you like to hear a report?" The answer is obvious - to the one in which you are better versed, which you will be interested in reporting.

A living person will be in front of a large audience during the performance. If he is a specialist and reads a report for other specialists, then why is the company here, no matter how eminent it is? We honestly believe that if you are a good specialist, it is not so important where you live and work, because if your performance is bad, nothing will help you.

Program committee

The program committee, like the rules, has not changed for several years. This is a team of serious professionals and recognized practitioners, each of whom is fluent in his theme. Together they come together a couple of times a year to select dozens of the best reports from hundreds of applications.

Faces

Maxim Lapshin
Maxim is a permanent member of the Program Committee, he knows everything about everything, but most of all - about the video. Maxim worked on the video when we were still printing. "Hello, world!"

Maxim was also printing "Hello, world!", but only on Erlang. Max writes a Comet server on Erlang in the evening, and the task of real-time gluing images from two cameras and broadcasting the glued image to a couple of tens of thousands of users is completely trivial for him.

Alexey Rybak
Alexey Rybak - probably one of the best technical managers on the Russian Internet, is also a permanent member of the Program Committee. We never cease to be amazed how, by managing dozens (or maybe already hundreds?) Of developers, Aleksey continues to be aware of all the details of many technologies. Where does this domain knowledge come from? Why is it for a leader of this level? What are they doing there at Badoo, planning to take over the world?

Nikolay Samokhvalov
Nikolay Samokhvalov - a permanent member of the Program Committee, invited to our conference the largest number of interesting Western speakers.

Nicholas is often in the Valley and brings to the committee meetings the pleasant semantics of the ocean. An activist of the PostgreSQL community on Runet.

Konstantin Osipov
Konstantin Osipov oversees the database section in the Program Committee: he understands this topic thoroughly and knows almost everyone. If the speaker is not known to Konstantin, then he finds him on YouTube and scans previous speeches, trying to determine whether this suspicious type can be trusted to speak at our conference? If Tarantool (the database that Konstantin is developing) is written with the same responsible approach to business, then we recommend that everyone urgently switch to it!

Alexander Gorny
Alexander Gorny is a Runet legend, now also on the Program Committee.

Alexander has gone from developer to director of information technology, while working in leadership positions in three of the four buttons of the Runet (Rambler, RBC and Mail.ru). We are pleased to use the accumulated knowledge, numerous connections and multifaceted experience, as well as, to be honest, the lobbying opportunities of Alexander, in the preparation of the HighLoad ++ conference program.

Ivan Zolotukhin
Ivan Zolotukhin - representative of the Program Committee in Europe. He has secret knowledge about Moscow, once after the conference he brought our western guests to the bell tower of the Cathedral of Christ the Savior.

Those were so stunned by the sounds of multi-ton bells that beat right above their heads that they now line up for those who want to come long before we announce a set of reports for next year.

Igor Sysoev
Igor Sysoev - tuning fork of the Program Committee. If Igor says that he would go to this report, it means that this is a very good report, very correct and useful, but about ten people from all over Russia will understand it. We take such reports, not least in order for Igor to drop by the conference.

Andrey Shetukhin
The Program Committee is known for its extreme rigor in selecting reports for the program. But there is one professional whose critical mind finds flaws in all reports - this is Andrey Shetukhin.

Andrei questions the novelty of most topics and the usefulness of 99.9% of the research submitted to us. Thus, Andrei's healthy skepticism helps HighLoad ++ maintain a high level of quality. We are thinking about establishing a special prize named after Andrei Shetukhin for the best, only perfect report, which he will appreciate positively.

Last year

From the point of view of drawing up the conference program, for example, in 2014, we can report that we selected 86 best performances from more than two hundred incoming applications. Acceptance of reports, of course, begins many months before each conference.

The expert zone, which also debuted on HighLoad ++ last year, turned out to be the main highlight of the conference. This can be seen without problems at major Western events, but we are glad that in Russia it was on HighLoad ++ that the opportunity to communicate directly with knowledge carriers for the first time appeared.

As our experts characterized the two-day experiment: "Pee failed to retreat."

Because any visitor to the conference had the opportunity to communicate directly with technology developers and technology consultants. Accordingly, it was possible to ask any questions - often it is, experts often come to the conference with a specific task: how to do something, optimize, scale.

Last year, you could scout everything on issues related to MySQL and PostgreSQL, Tarantool, Sphinx, NGINX, Erlang, video, and heavily loaded architectures.

Why democracy does not work

Democracy is something that definitely does not work when organizing IT conferences.

After all, if you give the opportunity to choose the speakers speakers (and we tried this way, which will be devoted to a separate publication), then people choose reports based on the number of familiar "keywords" in the theses. And in the end, the program does not consist of interesting speakers, but of those speakers who have managed to write theses of their own speech better than others.

The program committee approaches the choice of reports in a completely different way.

Each of the participants in the PC is a professional with experience managing other people and, most importantly, these are people who read the resume. You won’t deceive the participants of the Program Committee in beautifully written text, since the essence is the main thing for them.

Most participants of the Program Committee attend not only Western conferences, but also almost all Russian events. And therefore, even if the speaker appears to be a "newbie" - we know about him how he performs and behaves on stage.

After collecting all the applications and closing their acceptance, the Program Committee meets in person and makes a collegial decision for each of the speakers - this is the only way to create a balanced and competent program from the best applications, in which there will not be a hundred reports on NoSQL with enough MySQL.

And so that every reader, including those who have not yet participated in HighLoad ++ conferences , we have a small selection of books and videos to explain what is really happening at our conferences.

Based on all past conferences, free books are published: books.ontico.ru
On the Vimeo channel, about a quarter of the total video captured over the years is uploaded: vimeo.com/ontico
If you are still not enough, then there is a third option for fans - all in 8 years : eightyears.highload.ru

And the last : For Habrahabr users, the conference offers a special discount of 15%, all you need to do is use the IAmHabr code when booking tickets.

See you at HighLoad ++!