DevConf 2024

The year the ducks took over. #duckconf #devconf2024

This week was DevConf 2024 and once again I had the privilege of speaking at one of my favourite conferences and the best conference to speak at.

Even though I got to go to the conference twice, I still didn't get to see all the talks I wanted too, there were just too many. I'll have to keep an eye on the official YouTube channel for the videos.

To all the organisers, sponsors and speakers thank you for making the conference epic !

A special thanks to Robert MacLean and Candice Mesk and the rest of the crew who work so hard behind the scenes to make DevConf the epic conference it is.

Tuesday - DevConf Johannesburg at Emperor's Palace.

The morning started off early for all the speakers as we got signed in and then on to centre court for our group photos.

After the photos it was a chance to go greet all my Johannesburg DealX colleagues and "conference-friends" as they all arrived and obviously make a tour of the sponsors to grab some of the swag for the family.

Candice Mesk and Robert MacLean did their usual introductions and announcements. With the highlight being ???? Ewald Horn (The Dog thinks I'm a ??, no_take_only_throw) 's simplification of the of the Code of Conduct as "Don't be kak, be lekker!" something I think we should all aspire too.

Next up was the awesome keynote by John Kamara , where he introduced his PDI model and explained how, as AI becomes more prevalent we must not leave any people behind.

It was then on to the first break of the day and a chance to get more food and a few cups of the awesome hot-chocolate with a caramel shot from the BBD sponsored coffee stands.

First talk of the day was Pippa Hillebrand and her awesome talk "Rewriting a datastore, at millions of transactions per second". It was one of those talks where I just sat there nodding along as I, like almost all developers, related to her story of the ups and downs of rewriting a datastore.

Next up was Cayden De Wit's talk "How modern computers play board games" where I almost immediately felt stupid as he explained how he wrote code to play the game of Bao. I absolutely love Cayden's talks as he manages to cram so much into such a small amount of time.

After that it was on to Rudi Grobler 's talk "From Overheating to Overachieving: A Comedic Tale of Hacking My Car". It was funny, entertaining and educational and something I've been wanting to do but wasn't brave enough to try.

It was then lunch and time to fight the crowds, find some food and huddle round a small table and swap stories with random strangers about the conference, speaking and life as a developer

After lunch I took a break from attending talks and went to hide in the speaker room and make sure that Miss Duckworth was ready for her debut on stage and frantically do some last minute code and slide changes.

Then it was my turn to do the speaking, standing on stage, blinded by the lights with a microphone sticky-taped to the side of my face.

Like always I was nervous, but soon the story-teller in me took over and I told the tale of how I built a massive yellow, 3d printed duck, shoved a bunch of Raspberry Pi 's into it all running various AI models to create a talking AI rubber duck.

Another short break and chance to catchup with long lost friends and chat to people about Ducks, AI, software development and casino's.

It was on to the next talk of the day, Allan Pead 's "Building Yourself an AI Powered Microscope". Little did I know that his talk was similar to mine, but also so different. He had built a digital microscope that was connected to AI models hosted in the cloud that allowed it to read the labels on chips and take voice commands.

It was then on to the final talk of the day, William Brander 's "How building a portable escape room made me a better developer". Which had him explaining how he built a portable escape room for his kids and how things he learnt building it made him a better software developer. I've had similar ideas of building something like this for my kids, after seeing his talk I've changed my mind its far too much work

The day ended off with drinks and a last chance to catchup with new and old friends before heading off to another speaker dinner.

Thursday DevConf Cape Town - Century City Convention Centre.

Told you being a speaker is awesome, you get to go to DevConf twice ??

The day started out the same as Johannesburg with Candice Mesk and Robert MacLean doing their introductions and John Kamara delivering another killer keynote, pretty sure the second one was even better than the first.

Then on to the food, swag gathering, chatting to sponsors, friends and making new friends. I again got to go meetup with all my Cape Town DealX colleagues and a few that made a special trip to Cape Town to come to DevConf.

First talk of the day this time was Reuben K. 's "Death to the Server : The New Serverless Era". This talk was all about using serverless technology and cool stuff like Investec 's programmable banking, with a little AI, to make a cool service that attempts to stop you from eating too much junk food.

Next up was Renette Ros 's talk "Navigating the Storm: Tools and Patterns for Resilient Systems in the Face of Production Chaos" about building resilient systems and slaying dragons!

After that it was on to ???? Ewald Horn (The Dog thinks I'm a ??, no_take_only_throw) 's talk "If it's everywhere, why aren't you using it?" or "let's get hit by projectile candy". Ewald has started getting tamer, he didn't send anyone to the emergency room and didn't swear nearly as much as last time, still an epic talk though!

Then it was lunch and time to find coffee, food and Marcel's Frozen Yoghurt , not sure how DevConf got it right but it was awesome and we now expect this every year!

After lunch I went to Clifford De Wit 's talk "So you want to be a CTO?", this was one of those talks I had heard was good and it exceeded my expectations. I'm still not sure I ever want to be a CTO and this talk confirmed what I've always thought, it's not something you rush into and its a decision that requires careful thought. It also not a bad idea that if you're thinking about it, you can start preparing for it now by starting to pick up some valuable skills.

Then it was my talk again, Miss Duckworth performed beautifully as we once again got to entertain the crowd. I still can't decide which crowd was more fun.

After a short break, more coffee and catching up with friends it was time for another talk.

This time it was Michael Minutillo and his "The science of queues: Performance monitoring theme parks (and distributed systems)" which I think was all an excuse to justify a trip to Disneyland. It was an awesome talk though and he made a duck joke so even better.

The last talk of the day was Benny Ou and his "10 Lessons I Learned About Engineering Leadership from Ted Lasso". This was another great talk and makes me thing maybe I should go watch Ted Lasso.

It was then onto drinks and more "networking" as we all got to catch-up some more and people could take selfie's with Miss Duckworth.

The highlight was getting to see the Texpand robot in action and it posing for photos with Miss Duckworth.