Stream of Ry

Last September 8, we attended the DevCon at Y4IT. It is a mini-event, hosted by PSIA and G2IX.

What is DevCon?
From the site:

DEVCON is designed to be a premier gathering of all Filipino software engineers. [...] to encourage collaboration, interaction, and mentoring among the leading practitioners of the Philippine Software Industry. DEVCON adapts the global best practices for skills improvement and professional advancement among Filipino software engineers.

The template that they wanted people to adapt consisted of Birds of a feather, Lightning talks and a Hackathon.

Lightning talks
Lightning talks are, as the name implies, talks that are spontaneous (or at least are supposed to be) and could be about any topic that is related to technology. Ideally, they’re supposed to last no more than 5 minutes (or was it 10?) to discuss a topic.

Birds of a Feather
Birds of a feather is a discussion, or a debate if you will, about opposing views regarding technology. It serves as a way for common, and uncommon, points and counter-points to come up. This way, it gives the audience a more rounded view on the issue being discussed.

Hackathon
A portmanteau of “hacking” and “marathon”, Hackathon is basically a coding-session. This part was not implemented at this particular DevCon due to time constraints.

At around 4 PM, we made our way to the Bahay ng Alumni where the DevCon is being held. The registration booth had some people lined up to be registered so I decided to help out on it. Sad thing about this is that, people are registering but they’re not going inside. They were just after the DevCon pins that were being given out. Feeling a bit shamed about the situation, my friends and I decided to sit in front for added participation. At least, we were eager to participate.

DevCon @ Y4IT started with a presentation by Ms. Diane Suico from PSIA introducing what DevCon is (which I was not able to listen to in its entirety because I was helping out at the registration booth). The DevCon proper was started by Mr. Winston Damarillo, Chairperson of PSIA and CEO of G2IX. It started with the Lightning talks with some seed speakers provided for by G2IX and associates.

I have to comment that though it was called a “Lightning talk”, the talks took, on average, 15 minutes or more which pretty much defeated the purpose of it being lightning-like. I have to admit though, that it is hard to build up a compelling case and bring it down in under 15 minutes. Ask the TED speakers.

The lightning talks started with why social networking sites are booming and how it relates to looking for a “soulmate”. Some equations were even provided! Next was a talk about cloud computing in a nutshell and how it is a by-product of several advancements “under the hood” or “behind the cloud”, so to speak. Next was about the game development industry here in the Philippines, how it started and how it is growing. This was more of a question and answer by two speakers. The last one was about open source software. The “saucy story” part amused me enough to give out a comment on mic. (^_^)v I got a t-shirt for that too. They offered a lightning talk slot to the audience and I was really reluctant on taking it, even if they were giving out an iPod touch because the topic that I wanted to talk about was already discussed (the Open Source part) and I was drawing up blanks when I was trying to think up of a topic. If I was given enough time, though, I would have discussed how open source will be able to help students.

After that was pizza break. I was only able to get one slice though, because someone from the audience asked me something about open source stuff. @_@

After the pizza break was birds of a feather. I was sort of “pushed” (by myself) into joining the session because nobody wanted to volunteer for Linux at first. So I decided to join the BoaF session as one of the two Linux guardians. The questions went in this order:

• From a software architect’s/programmer’s PoV, why do you use ?
• If put in a situation where you are forced to use , will you use it? Why or why not?
• S/he [someone from another OS camp] said that [enter what they answered to Q2], how will you defend ?

Normally, I dislike such discussions because I believe that everyone is entitled to choose what they wanted to choose but because they seemed like they were asking for a showdown, I gave them one. What pissed me off somewhat is that some of the participants answered the question with an end-users’ PoV, which swerved the discussion to another direction. Some of my assumptions did not hold true anymore and I felt a bit torn between answering/countering from a developer’s PoV or from an end-user’s PoV. Maybe I’ll discuss some of the points raised in the discussion in another post.

The Hackathon did not push through because of time constraints, I think. (Of course, I’m speculating here.)

At the end, it had the feeling that the event was lacking something. It lacked the discussion and mingling with IT practitioners that it promised. It had the same vibe as any other tech-talk out there — passive. I think this had something to do about how we teach students today. We seem to stick it to them too much that they do not know as much that it makes them feel powerless and afraid on approaching people who knows more. It makes them say to themselves : “Hindi ko pa kayang makisabay. Saka nalang kapag alam ko na ‘yan” which really is just a spiral downwards because if they do not try, they won’t get better. I guess it’s called a mini-DevCon for a reason. Now, I want to attend a real DevCon.

All in all, a fun time. One of the many things that made Y4IT 2009 worthwhile for me.

*edit: I need to find some pictures. Calling G2IX. Pictures please. *