Before TeamLeadConf2020, I only gave talks on technical topics - GraphQL, PWA, GoLang, etc. Turs out thst technical and non-technical reports are strikingly different things. But everything happens for the first time and TeamLeadConf2020 turned out to be an entrance ticket for me to the world of non-technical reports 🙂
As in the case with technical reports, I decided to start right away with a conference from ONTIKO. I will not dwell on ONTIKO for a long time - I will only say that it is the top (in my understanding) among the IT Conferences of the CIS. TeamLeadConf began only in 2018 and now, after only 2 years, it gathers thousands of people, speakers for 3 two-day streams - the result is worthy of respect!
Day zero. Rehersal and preparty
The first day began with a rehersal with Roman Poborch. It was curious to look at the conference space the day before the start - everyone is at work and you can see how tomorrow this place will be saturated with team leaders and experts, and now it is saturated with bustle and construction 🙂 As if I looked into the code of our backend in projects.
On the rehersal, by the standard, I met new people in the IT world. This time with team leaders - from CFT, pmclub and other companies. After listening to Dmitry Ilenkov's report about the p3 project management framework, I started my speech
The rehersal did not last long - 26 minutes. Recommendations were given (standard for me) to decrease the speech rate and increase the content in the report. I also stayed to listen to other runs - it is incredibly interesting and useful to participate in this process 🙂
After finishing the rehersal, I checked in the Hotel Marriot and went to the preparty for speakers and activists of the IT communities. This time the prepaty was extremely interesting - we were fed. We only fed ourselves 🙂 we cooked under the supervision and clear instructions of the chef in the culinary establishment CulinaryON. I love conferences for these wonderful opportunities to look at new things that I myself would never have thought of looking at.
After the preparty, I walked along the Garden Ring, the new and old Arbat and went to sleep.
First day. Perfomance and networking
After waking up and having a good meal, I again went to the WTC and, on this day, everything was calibrated and brought to perfection. I was very quickly given my speaker badge, I went into the speaker's room and went to the networking zone to communicate and meet new people.
KnowledgeConf and Zinc prof
First of all, I went to the KnowledgeConf booth, where I also plan to speak, but have not yet received the approval of my report. As part of the KnowledgeConf stand, a drawing was held for the most insidious crime against knowledge - I immediately remembered the documentation for the REST API that I kept in the form of messages myself in the general chat on Telegram. I took second place, but the winner kindly gave me the main prize - a ticket to knowledgeconf.ru/2020.
Then I went to the Zinc Prod podcast booth. I had never heard of this podcast before, but I immediately subscribed to it - now I sometimes listen 🙂 They held a small competition - they had to write a poem about the Rust programming language. I quickly got my bearings, wrote a rhyme and won first place with a podcast T-shirt and a book as prizes.
Lunch and report
After the zinc prod, I met Sasha Makarov. We went to lunch with him, talked about PHPRussia 2020 and much more, and I went to prepare for my report.
My report was the first after of a break in hall No. 3 and, due to these, the hall was almost completely empty - I did not miss the opportunity to photograph it.
At the moment, the hall began to actively fill up and, at exactly 14.00, I began my report. And I had a big fail. Somewhere in the 17th minute of the speech, I realized that I had a couple of slides and content for 3-4 minutes. I still don't understand how this happened, but I finished my report at the 21st minute of my speech - the situation was saved by questions that were enough 🙂 You can watch the recording of the report on YouTube.
After speaking and answering to all questions, I went, urgently, to close work tasks - unfortunately, for now, I am the vital part of my own company and I had to urgently answer all questions from customers and developers.
The rest of the first day
Then I went to getto know stands further, but without fanaticism. I was just interested in who was doing what. It was interesting to get acquainted with OTUS, an online education company. Who knows - maybe someday I'll try myself as an official development teacher. For now, I limit myself to constant training of my developers as part of the workflow.
The second day
The second day turned out to be more eventful for me - several speakers familiar to me spoke and, in general, there was more time, because that day I did not perform and was just a listener 🙂
Training of professionals without leaving the department
The first report of the second day - a report by Nadezhda Potayenko on how to improve the skills of developers within the company. In general, a very interesting report and history. CFT - Center for Financial Technologies (the company where the speaker works) launched the "Zolotaya Korona" money transfer system and the growth in demand for their product was very great and the team had to face various difficulties. She spoke about this in her report.
It is always interesting to listen to the experience of other people and companies, it is especially interesting to hear about negative experiences and decisions after this negative experience 🙂 The team's work process is divided into 3 cities - Moscow, St. Petersburg and, attention, Tomsk! I know from myself what Tomsk is - a time difference of 4 hours. We have one developer from Tomsk and it's not always easy, but they have an entire office in Tomsk full of people! I asked Nadya a couple of questions after the lecture and my question was chosen as the most interesting - for this I was presented with the book "Stream" 🙂
P3Express - how to put things in order in projects
Dmitry Ilyenkov, founder of the Project Management Club, spoke about how you can implement projects using p3express. For me, initially, the project was associated only with "Project at work, order, terms, deadlines, etc., etc." In fact, using the p3express framework, a project can be called anything. Delivery of a large system for a state corporation, development of an internal chatbot, preparation for a son's birthday - all these are, in fact, projects and for all of them, one way or another, the p3express framework is suitable.
The essence of the framework is in 37 stages of the life cycle of each project. During the report, Dmitry stopped at each stage and told what he is. I have not yet begun to apply this in my work and life, but this does not negate the fact that my projects are also divided into these stages - I just do not record it 🙂
Onboarding based on Lamoda exapmle
Alexander Afenov, Lamoda team lead and member of the PHPRussia 2020 PC, spoke about onboarding - from the basics to the important details. I heard the first version of this report at the 2019 Strike in Innopolis. At TeamLeadConf 2020, Sasha covered this topic in more detail and, despite the fact that I had already heard the report, it was interesting to me again. I don't do onboarding very often - we do not have new developers very often so far.
Sasha's report gives, it seems, quite obvious onboarding practices that I simply forget about, but now there is something to rely on. Plus, on the second day, I managed to have lunch with the speaker and talk about PHPRussia and other IT events, where we are planning, one way or another, to appear 🙂
Later, I invited Sasha for an interview in MoreView.
"We need to talk ..." or how not to lose employees
Mikhail Emelyanov from CFT spoke about the 1-to-1 practice they practice at CFT to maintain the mood of employees. He also shared how they represent interaction with employees in the form of a Trello board.
It is curious that employees left me for various reasons, but, almost always, the reason for leaving is that the employee felt ill at ease or not needed. Indeed, having 1-to-1 encounters could correct this feeling. I will know from now on 🙂
"My own HR" by Alexander Dementyev
I met Alexander during the rehersals - he gave me feedback on my speech. And I listened to his report only during the speech itself. The content is quite interesting - it seems, on the one hand, some points were quite obvious, but, on the other hand, all these obvious things were collected in one place in a convenient format with a presentation.
After the report I went to the hotel to work, so later i can attend the afterparty
Afterparty
Gradually, the conference itself came to an end and speakers with community activists went to the afterparty. Afterparty took place in the "TAP & BARREL PUB" bar. As always, everything was cool 🙂 I won't go into details.
As a conclusion
This was my first experience of giving a non-technical presentation - a new experience, unsuccessful in some things, excellent in others. But I was satisfied and will look for new opportunities to speak at such conferences. I was recently approved at KnowledgeConf, where I will talk about deallocating structures.
Thank you for attention!
