Besides the days getting shorter, colder, and more rainy, November marks a special month in Endava. Like every year in November, we are greatly anticipating the upcoming week: DevWeek is starting! A one-week, internal conference aimed to exchange knowledge and experience among all our developers around the globe and to celebrate our craft. This is a great opportunity to learn from others, socialize, and have fun together. This is my first DevWeek as Head of Development and I am immensely proud and excited to share with you why.
What makes DevWeek really special to me is the diversity of the program. On the one hand, you have the global talks, ranging over various topics, from deep-dive sessions into highly technical topics to meta-level discussions about general challenges of our craft. On the other hand, you have locally organized events and talks all around the globe! Every location shares their agenda which makes it a perfect opportunity to join local events of other locations, discuss, and exchange knowledge!
2023
This year, I’m particularly looking forward to our lineup of global presentations, kicking off with Boris Cergol, our Regional Head of Data, delving into ‘AI Engineer: A Development Opportunity’. I’m especially excited about the talk by Nicolae Giuriou about “Caching Strategies for High Traffic Systems” and Marko Pavkovic’s “The Secrets of Scaling: How to Design and Build Solutions for Big Enterprises”. Software Architecture? We got you covered! One talk about “Hexagonal Architecture” by Marian Gradea, and another by Cristian Manea: “API from an architect’s point of view – there is life after REST. What about GraphQL, gRPC, Thrift, or JSON over POST?”. But it’s not just purely technical topics. I’m also looking forward to Sophie Lewis’ talk “Your Hidden Garden: The Art of Self-Teaching and Rapid Improvement”!
One of the things I love the most about Discipline Weeks (like Testing or Architecture Week), is the exchange of knowledge and experience between all our locations around the globe. This becomes a challenge to find suitable time slots for everyone to join, but it amazes me every year to hear talks from almost all over the world! The exchange, the discussions and Q&A afterwards ensure that the experience does not stay isolated in one location but can be shared around the world.
But it’s not just talks! We have panel discussions, interviews, workshops, quizzes, coding puzzles, games, and a lot of social events in every location. While this event is about learning and exchanging experiences, it’s also a celebration of our craft. And this should be fun and interactive! As with any conference, a big part is socializing in networking. In times of Hybrid Working, it’s more important than ever to get together and meet face to face, have fun and celebrate together!
DevWeek in Berlin
For our local events in Berlin, we set our own special theme for this year: “Software Development is so much more than writing code”. We want to highlight the diverse challenges of our craft and break down silo thinking. Therefore, we invited colleagues from other disciplines like Testing to give a talk. We start off our local event with a panel discussion including our Community Coordinator and DevWeek Organizer, Stiven Llupa, and colleagues from our Game Development team (Ingo Hessling, Olaf Spiewok, Sebastian <Denzi> Denzer, Felicita Wetter) discussing the special challenges, differences and analogies of Game Development to other parts of Software Development. Over the upcoming week, we will hear a very diverse set of talks about Google Cloud & Cloud Computing (Wilmar Gutierrez), “How to Approach Technical Problems” (Jonathan Neidel), Personal Branding for Developers (Moritz Wachter), and finish the week with an inspiring and thought-provoking talk about “Diversity & Inclusion in Development” by Stiven Llupa.
Additionally, this year, we introduced a new format of Lightning Talks. Short sessions of 15-20 minutes, few (or no) slides, and an audience discussion afterwards. For the first time, we will also have one talk in German every day and it makes me (as the initiator of our Apprenticeship program) very proud to see one or even multiple talks given by our apprentices and graduates every day! In total, we will have 15 local talks and an evening event on 4 out of 5 days!
With such an amazing agenda ahead of us, I am really excited for this week’s DevWeek. It’s the perfect opportunity for all our developers to exchange knowledge and learn from colleagues from all around the world. At the same time, it’s time for us to celebrate our ever-changing craft with all the old and new challenges we experience on a daily basis.
Finally, I’m particularly thrilled to present on ‘Personal Branding for Developers’, sharing insights into building and enhancing your professional identity in the tech world. Additionally, my ‘Fun with Figures’ session will take you on a small journey through the world of Jupyter Notebook, demonstrating the exciting interplay between finance data and Python. These topics resonate deeply with me, as they combine my professional and personal interests perfectly.
As we gear up for DevWeek 2023, let’s embrace this exclusive opportunity to grow, innovate, and connect within our Endava family. I’m eager to see many of my fellow Endavans there, ready to share, learn, and collectively shape the future of our craft.
