I just attended Brisbane CITCON 2009.
To my surprise, I greatly enjoyed the event. Thanks to all concerned!
I said ’surprise’: this is the first OpenSpace event I have ever been to. I expected (with a smidgin of dread) a Gen-Y look-at-me-aren’t-I-clever-don’t-tell-me-things-I-don’t-already-know ego-fest. I found a group of passionate (mostly non-Gen-Y, it has to be said) cluey developers getting together to show&tell and discuss real issues, problems and solutions.
A couple of piccys. The first is of the collaboratively-produced topic board/conference schedule:
Living proof that the agile concept of “no centralised control” can work…
The second piccy is of the illustrious Dr. Paul King of ASERT, in his presentation groove(y):
And no conference could possibly be complete without a T-shirt:
There’s a Flickr page.
For some reason, I had expected a Ruby love-in. I had expected to hear the fanboys raving about how Ruby was innovatively solving the problems of testing and CI. Half of me had been hoping to see/hear this. There was some nice stuff about Watir but nothing that changed my world-view (I’m actually a little disappointed…it’s A Good Thing to have one’s world-view shaken up a bit every now and then ;-)).
I confess to being a little surprised to not hearing a Hudson buzz; IMHO it’s an excellent CI server. I was unsurprised to be hearing a Git buzz…confirmed my opinion that this is the Next Big Thing in Version Control. I was quite surprised when a “hands up” survey asking “who knows about JMeter” failed to elicit more than a couple of hands in the air…wake up people!
In (sad) contrast to the Oracle Free Breakfast Session I had attended a few days previous, this free event was worth far more than I paid!
In summary: an excellent event. Recommended.
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Can you see me?
