Introduction

I've always wanted to be a part of a development conference ever since I started working in the role of a software developer. I feel that attending conferences helps one to be acquainted with the latest developments taking place in the field of software development around the world. It's a great way to interact and network with a lot of enthusiastic and like-minded people.

In this post, I'm going to share my experiences of participating in Developer Week Europe 2022 Conference.

Background

Initial Motivation

Last year, I began my career as a Software Developer in Qt which is a framework of C++. I started learning about it and that's when I came across Qt World Summit 2021 which was to be held on Nov3,2021 and was calling for speakers to share their experiences about working with Qt. Having been working for a few months in Qt, I had neither much exposure nor expertise to contribute much to the Qt World. I wanted to learn about the industry experts and recent trends in Qt development. This created a longing in me to be a part of other conferences in the future.

A gift from Qt Forum

Ever since I started learning Qt, I found Qt Forum extremely helpful and engaging. Experts in that forum have helped me immensely with my doubts and made me more confident about what I was learning. One day, I received a message from one of my fellow mentors in that forum urging me to vote for him as he wanted to receive the ticket for Developer Week Europe 2022 which was to be held virtually on 27th and 28th Apr,2022. This is the post in which the Qt Community Manager has posted to give 10 free tickets for the Developer Week Europe 2022 Conference to those who receive maximum votes. He received the ticket along with other 2 members for whom I voted. Another good thing happened to me in return. Guess what? The remaining tickets were given to those who contributed to that discussion and I received a ticket too!

I learned a major life lesson from this incident as a Chinese Proverb says,

“A bit of fragrance clings to the hand that gives flowers. “

My first-ever Developer Conference

As promised by Pedro in Qt Forum, I received a mail with the link for registration. This is what the confirmation mail looked like after I registered,

I was super excited to attend it but the difference in the time zones of the conference and where I was located was around 8 hours! which made it difficult for me to attend . Adding to my woes, the conference was held during my office hours but I had mailed the organizer to get me access to the recorded versions of the talk. I still have not been able to access the recorded version of the conference because of so much travel and other personal commitments in May. I hope to share the gist of the talks once I get time to be back on my learning journey.

About the conference

• Day 1 : 27.04.2022 , 10:00 - 19:00[GMT +01:00] 14 sessions

• Day 2 : 28.04.2022 , 11:00 - 17:30[GMT +01:00] 9 sessions

• Each session was 25 minutes long comprising of the Main Stage, 2 Workshop Stages and an Open Stage.

• There were over 100 speakers from more than 50 countries.

• There was a provision for personally connecting with the members for networking.

• There were hackathons and some fun challenges for the participants.

Topics discussed were

1. AI and ML
2. Dev Innovation
3. API and Microservices
4. Dev Ops and Security
5. Cloud Native and Cloud Computing
6. Dev Exec & DevLead
7. Containers and Kubernetes
8. JavaScript Summit
9. DevLead Conference

I will discuss more about the key highlights of the talks of this conference in the next part.

Sharing some of the snapshots from the conference-

Conclusion

I would like to thank Miki Szeles for introducing readers to this giveaway. I am also grateful to him for discussing the rules of this giveaway and I got my Eureka moment of finding the topic to write about during that discussion.

I've visited my home for a month and bit occupied with some of the personal commitments for which I was doubting for not being able to participate in this giveaway. Thanks to the moderators for being so kind to shift the deadline to 25th May,2022 for which I am able to participate in it.