t3chfest 2019

Main track during the t3chfest 2019. Looks cool.

First of all, it is free. Also, speaker expenses are covered. Yes, the conference offers no breakfast or lunch, but they provided a coffee break both days. And yes, they might get the venue for free.

But still: organizing a free event with +1000 atendees has its drawbacks. As in Meetups people tend to register online and then forget attending to the event —** assholes**. At the same time, t3chfest is held in a public University and tries to involve the student community. That’s a noble (and a necessary) approach that I haven’t seen in any other conference I’ve ever attended.

The conference offered all talks in streaming, and people watching the stream even made some questions for the speakers. Isn’t it great? This should be the norm. It allows people to enjoy the talks even if they can’t be physically in the event. I’d say it is a great tool to achieve work and family reconciliation.

Plus, several people told me they watched my talk live, so I even like the idea better.

Diversity everywhere: line-up and topics

I also love how the conference was so diverse: Vicenç noticed that he attended to almost only female-driven talks. Then I realized I did the same thing. This is hard to achieve: in most tech confs, the speaker line-up tends to be dominated by men.

But I also enjoyed diversity regarding the topics. For me, it is becoming increasingly clear that attending a tech conference means stepping out of the comfort zone and attending talks that are not your main focus. It is the best place to get exposed to different fields and ideas, and it is harder to get disappointed when you know next to nothing about a topic.

So I just wanted to thank you all the t3chfest volunteers for the fantastic work they have done, and to congratulate them for the success. Hopefully, I’ll be there next year to enjoy it again.

btw: I talked about webpage bloating, how the Internet is getting obese, and how it is becoming an accessibility issue. Video recording is here, slides are here. Thanks everyone for coming! I was happy to see so many people there and also to get the change to talk to you afterward.