IT Jam 2012 held in NSC “Olimpiiskii”

September 1 is not only the day of knowledge, peonies, and teachers, but it is also a day of fun for more than 3,000 IT specialists in the NSC “Olimpiiskii“. Truly speaking, I have not seen anywhere else such a long queue for registration. When registering, in addition to cute notebooks-pens-markers-pins-magnets, you could also get a card of the first off-line social network, RFIDLE. The card is linked to my Facebook page, and with the help of it, I can give likes, add friends and upload photos using special terminals. The idea is excellent, but unfortunately, terminals often denied. In a couple of days, RFIDLE sent me a questionnaire by mail, and it turned out that we became participants of a beta testing, so let’s hope that developers are already fixing the system.

The card of first offline social network RFIDLE

“We are here to celebrate!” said IT Jam slogans. On two stages (under the titles “New ideas and technologies” and “From vision to implementation”) technical gurus told stories of their success in a simple and humorous way. Apart from Ukrainian speakers Max Istchenko (founder of the well-known DOU Ukrainian developer community) and Michael Zavileiskii (General Manager of the DataArt company), there were also foreign guests: Christopher Marsh (technical developer at AKQA), Greg Young (independent consultant and entrepreneur), Torben Maygaard (Ciklum founder) and others.

Companies raffled off licenses (I, for example, wanted to win a license from JetBrains for Resharper, but alas, failed to), cups, T-shirts, Lego; held competitions and polls (DataArt gave everybody beans in bags for voting; some members even took them home, maybe in order to plant). But I was lucky enough to win a 20% discount on the preparation for the Microsoft certification in the training center, which is also good. Around the pavilion, there were Chucks Norris with jokes and a different stuff for entertainment.

Community spot “Podcasting”

But the most important thing was going on in the community spots, where developers of different areas were communicating and exchanging contacts. Ironically, I almost missed the .NET lectures but had a great time with the guys from Podcasting. It was very entertaining to learn from the “inside” how to create podcasts, as I often listen to Mikhail Marchenko and to his podcast “Frankly about IT careerism”.

The format was very different from a usual developer conference, and not everybody was satisfied (according to twitter feed), but the holiday totally depends on the mood of its participants, so everyone, who wanted it, had a great time.