Navigating My First Tech Conference
DevNexus happened a few days ago, it was my very first conference, and I definitely can’t wait to attend more.
Before the Event
I signed up to go to DevNexus without even knowing what it was about. The only thing I knew was that it was a tech conference. Why wouldn’t I want to spend two days with people who enjoy the same thing I do? Anyway, because I had no idea what to expect, I went to the all-powerful interwebs and used Google to search for the schedule. Most of the topics listed were about Java, a language that is widely used but really does not fall under my current interests. So I made a list of the talks that had nothing to do with java. This list included Kafka, software architecture, Kubernetes, functional programming, javascript, mobile development, and a few others. Some of these talks happened during the same block, so I ended up ranking them. After ranking them, I had my schedule figured out. I knew what time each talk was and where I had to be.
I also talked to some people who attended last year. They gave me some tips, such as arriving early for free breakfast and taking an empty bookbag for all the free swag.
Lesson: Check out the conference schedule and speakers beforehand so you have a good idea of the talks you want to go to.
