Last week I had the chance to be part of a great event in a beautiful and peaceful city of Sweden : jDays @ Göteborg
I was amazed about the diversity of talks – although the conference is mostly about java – and the quality of the presentations. I attended some general talks like the “Future of Programming Languages” by Ola Bini and several presentations about Java8, streams, re-factoring to Java8 etc. I loved also the “secrets of a remote developer” talk by Ryan Chartrand. I am so delighted that someone shares the same ideas with me about remote working in general.
I was lucky to see two of my talks accepted and I think both of them did pretty good. Regarding the first one, about software gardening, I know that every time I discuss this topic I have various feedback. People will either love it or hate it. And jDays wasn’t an exception. I picked the two corner-cases of the feedback I received and I just copy and paste them here :
Here’s the most “negative” one
“Nothing in the presentation is new, just said in a different way that, in my opinion might damage the reputation of software engineers. I might make the same parallel with for instance a cleaner, child carer or factory worker. Every profession has the same need for love for their work to make it good. The need of a parallel to engineering is important to keep the principles and learn from the history of engineering and contribute back to improve our society.”
And here’s the most “positive” one
“One of the most inspiring talks I’ve ever heard. I think I will change my title to software gardener right away!”
I love both of them, and this is exactly my purpose when I speak for a topic. I want people to argue against or for my talk and tell their own opinion, their own point of view. You don’t have to agree with me – nor do I have to agree with you. 
The second talk was about productivity and speed in development teams. I had the “luck” to be the last presenter so although I was expecting no more than ten people to join, including me and the staff we were many more – quite a success I guess. Feedback for this talk was not so controversial – I guess we all agree and we all want to be more productive as individuals and as a team. The problem is how we can achieve this :). I will definitely include all the feedback, suggestions and questions in my future presentations.
| Reference: | My Talks During JDays2015 from our JCG partner Patroklos Papapetrou at the Only Software matters blog. |
