I am so proud that I participated in helping to organise such an amazing event. Most of the things went quite well, people were happy, and it was fun. Kudos to Samuli Hakonemi, Aleksi Pousar, Harri Määttä, Juho Vepsäläinen and Joni Nevalainen and everyone else who stepped in to make this amazing event happen. All the sponsors, volunteers, the venue, Sea Life. This was a success because we have so many companies and individuals who are active in the community. I encourage you to step up and join the active developers who organise events and meetups and keep talks and discussions going in all community forums.
Gofore has been an active contributor in the meetups because for us, the community matters. We want people to learn and hear about new things because that’s what we do internally at Gofore. In our field, we need to learn new things and keep improving ourselves professionally (and personally) and it is easier to do that together. It is also fun to have some beer and snacks with other developers and talk about developing software.
Use Judgement, no need for Permission
It took some daring to go to the marketing people to say “Can we get the GOLD sponsorship please”, and some daring to join the meeting when React Finland was created. Also, it took a lot of daring to step onto the stage with over 200 people – but daring is part of our company culture. I dare you to step onto the stage in meetups, and conferences – it was a blast!
I was lucky to meet a lot of the speakers and hang out a little with them, and all of them were really nice down to earth people. Such a privilege to be able to attend the speakers’ dinner, talk to them backstage and hang out with them.
I was not sure if I should do a lightning talk to such a big audience since I have only done few meetup talks. I got encouragement from Ken Wheeler just before my talk, and my colleagues were cheering me from the Lounge when I was about to start. I am so happy I did the talk because I dared to do it. People said it went well – and I think it did. There was only one hiccup with my slides since I was reordering things just before getting onto the stage.
I was happy to see that so many people had installed the React Finland Conference App. We got some good feedback and we will be repeating ‘the mistake’ next year, hopefully with some additional features that we can use during the conference. This year we simply ran out of time adding all the features we wanted. You can still give us feedback on the react-Finland slack channel, tell us what you want to have in next years app.
Last week was so amazing and now I am a bit exhausted but happy that I participated. A lot of goforeans dared to buy a ticket and dared to come onto the stage when we introduced ourselves. The support and cheers from colleagues have given me a warm and fuzzy feeling!
I hope to see You at meetups and conferences in the future!
