Life hacks of our IT conference
Hello dear fans of the Internet of Things! Let me remind everyone that my name is Oleg Plotnikov. I am the director of the Industrial Internet Center of a large Ural IT company. We recently organized a large-scale IT.IS conference. Usually gathered no more than three hundred guests. However, this time something went wrong and the result exceeded all our expectations. Two weeks before the start of the conference, almost 800 people registered on the site. For the Chelyabinsk region, this is a success. But we had no idea how to fit this βsuccessβ in the hall and not scare it away with the number of all our speakers.
How not to panic if programmers come to visit?
I share with you our valuable experience in organizing the Ural conference IT.IS-2019.
How did the idea
We regularly attend IT conferences. It's a really interesting and rewarding experience. But at some point we realized that we canβt always find something new for ourselves there. But on the contrary, there is something to tell and something to share. And without hiding anything, because it would help others avoid mistakes.
The competence of Chelyabinsk developers has long reached a new level. A couple of years ago, there was a really big outflow of specialists from the city, but now everything is changing. There is always work here and it is more than promising.
Our specialists can quite easily talk about the entire cycle of production of intellectual products - starting with the idea and ending with the implementation of technology. All this information within the framework of reports, workshops can be obtained not in doses, but in full and completely free of charge.
Two years ago we held the first IT.IS conference. It was attended by only 100 people - half of which are employees of the company. They talked about web development, mobile applications, the concept of "Smart City" in Chelyabinsk. For dessert - informal communication with all participants and a buffet table.
What was wrong?
For us, it was a "pen test". There was not enough experience in organizing such an event at that time. They picked up a not very convenient place in which everyone physically could not fit. Few speakers spoke at the conference, there were also few topics, so we met the deadline of 5 hours and calmly went home.
What has changed?
First, we changed the venue. We chose a more suitable spacious hall for this, which can be quickly transformed into several convenient locations. Guests now simultaneously listen to reports in three different sections.
Secondly, we invited speakers from other companies. After all, our goal is not just to share our experience, but also to unite the IT community of the region. In addition to Intersvyaz specialists, speakers from the Yii Core Team, Everypixel Media Innovation Group, ZABBIX, Yandex and Google made their presentations.
Thirdly, we have changed the approach to reports. They were divided into several of the most popular topics: machine learning, artificial intelligence, development of mobile applications, infrastructure, networks, services and telephony. A total of 25 reports (6 of them in reserve) and 28 speakers.
We increased the conference itself - now it takes two full days. On the first day, guests can listen to the speakers, present their achievements, receive constructive criticism and feedback, and communicate with the speakers at the buffet table in an informal setting. The second day is completely devoted to workshops and master classes.
What happened?
IT.IS-2019 became the fourth free industry conference from our company. The news about what is really interesting here, scattered instantly. Mostly thanks to word of mouth. But we were still surprised when the number of registered ones exceeded 700. In principle, there are not so many programmers in Chelyabinsk, we thought. And they weren't wrong. The guys decided to come from all over the region. In addition to the existing specialists, there were many students. Everyone obviously did not fit into the conference, but we still did not cancel the registration, at our own peril and risk.
They didn't panic for long either. We decided to take a look at the situation. As a result, not all came, but only 60% of registered participants. But even this was enough to feel how important such conferences are for people.
The most common question was βwhy is it free?β I answer - why not?
We managed to gather like-minded people for whom this trip cost practically nothing, but in return it brought useful experience, interesting acquaintances, new knowledge, contracts and business connections.
Conference program
Our conference turned out to be very eventful. Speakers presented many open business solutions. The most popular were the following:
Reports:
Google SRE Engineer Konstantin Khankin:
How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Pager
The report by Konstantin Khankin described the basic principles of the work of SRE at Google: a department that focuses on the reliability and maintainability of large systems. SREs at Google not only monitor the health of services, but also ensure that systems are easy to develop and maintain with a small team effort.
Julia Smetanina, Machine Learning Department Engineer at Intersvyaz:
How Methodius became Anna: experience in developing and launching voice message classifiers
This report is about the features and problems that we encountered when automating the processing of customer voice requests. We told you what path you have to go from training the classifier of call topics to implementing the system into a productive one. And why, when solving practical problems, it is important to think not so much about staking and neural networks as about user interface design and human psychology.
Intersvyaz Director for Products and Innovation Alexander Trofimov:
Applying Agile to Hardware Development
This report is about the application of Agile in electronics development. About positive experience and rake, as well as what customers and performers need to be ready for when they decide to work on Agile in a hardware-related project.
Oleg Plotnikov, Director of the Industrial Internet Center at Intersvyaz (it's me, it's me): Filling the smart city
I talked about my smart city directions. Control of heating mains, dispatching of housing and communal services, lighting control, environmental monitoring, I have already written about many things in my articles. I'll write about something else.
Workshops:
Workshop from the head of the development department of the Intersvyaz Company Ivan Bagaev and the head of the web application development group Nikolai Philip:
Optimizing a web project for high loads
For the workshop, the organizers took the clear task of monitoring events, implemented in PHP and the yii framework. Considered typical methods and tools for optimizing PHP projects for high loads. As a result, in an hour and a half it was possible to increase the productivity of the project by several orders of magnitude. In general, the workshop was designed for mid-level developers, but according to reviews, even some experienced developers found new points for themselves.
Workshop from a developer, a data analyst in the Yandex.Vzglyad project. Alexey Sotov:
Getting to know the Fastai neural network framework
Participants processed the text using neural networks using the Fast AI framework. We considered what a language model is and how to train it, how to solve problems of classification, text generation.
Workshop from the engineers of the machine learning department of Intersvyaz Yuri Dmitrin and Yuri Samusevich:
Deep Learning for Object Recognition in Images
The guys helped solve the problem of recognizing objects in images using various architectures of neural networks in Keras. And the participants considered what approaches to data preprocessing are, what hyperparameters affect during training, and how data augmentation can improve the quality of the model.
And we also went a little too far with food at the buffet table, so it was enough not only for the workshops that took place on the second day of the conference, but even for a full breakfast with colleagues in the office.
Abstracts of all workshops are available on the conference website
And you can see the impressions of the conference of guests and participants of the event in the video
VIDEO
Source: habr.com