Impressions from the Better Software 2013

The BSW has just ended and this is my post of impressions about the conference.

This was my first BSW and I don’t really have a way to compare this one with older editions.

It was an emotional rollercoaster, indeed. I arrived the 11 early in the morning by train, jumped into the first cab I found outside the train station and checked in the hotel.

It was 7am and I was totally in awe, still worried from the evening before: 3 hrs to my talk and I didn’t had the time to rehearse properly. I slept 4hrs at most and I was a total mess…

After a very motivational introduction by Andrea Provaglio, the bar of expectations were already set a bit high.

Then It came my turn.

I had one big fear, I’m not really good at being polite or conventionally politically correct, so having to speak in front of a paying audience could be somehow tricky: you know, paying people usually wants a good value for their money, they want to learn something new, hopefully something they cannot learn by themselves.

I wasn’t really sure I could provide all these things.

I missed a lot of interesting points while speaking, my first concern was about rushing to the end to avoid exceeding my given time and I actually forgot to say a lot of things. BTW, in the end, a lot of people liked the talk and I was told that I even made them rethink about how they work everyday.

Mission Accomplished!

Here’s the slide of the conference. I also added today an audio track I recorded at home, just to give you an idea of what I presented… please forgive me the poor English.

[slideshare id=28110873&doc=hhthankyouforcodingreduced-131111043759-phpapp01]

Well then…

If I have to give a rate to the whole conference, I will give a solid 8.

It was really a blast. I had tons of fun, which is always good, I met lot of people, friends and newcomers, and I taste the thrill of presenting an unusual talk to big audience.

Probably my vote is biased by two facts:

  1. one is that, as a speaker, I didn’t pay and I was in frenzy all the time
  2. the second is that I personally know a lot of people, so conference like these always looks like a family reunion

With a more honest take, it would be probably a 7 1/2 (with a plus mark, for the effort).

Things I didn’t like:

  • The lack of gadgetry, experiences are always good, but you always have a way of fueling the recall. The next year, T shirts for everyone.
  • The days, Mon and Tue are no-no days, maybe motivated professionals didn’t attend because it’s much harder to take a Monday off than a Friday.
  • Overlapping workshops and talks, me do not like
  • WTF, no ending words or a closing talk?

Things I do like:

  • Location Location Location, beautiful venue, but with an average conference room
  • New faces! Always welcomed, sometimes it gets boring to hear the usual suspects
  • Subjects were various, I like variety and the paradox of choices
  • Workshops, I attended one and It was well conducted and followed by an awesome conversation

Things in the Meh category:

  • Networking time and tools. It could use some improvements, eg: badges are not really useful to identify people’s interests and were not conversational starters.
  • The themes and the quality overall were good but the overall target audience of the conference wasn’t really well defined (historically system that tried to please everyone just failed).
  • The Information Wayfinding: I watched people and sometimes they just wandering around without knowing what to follow, without a clue on what to expect next. And I saw a lot of people changing conference room hopping around looking for something more suitable for their needs. Information scent didn’t work well.

Closing Notes

It was a solid good conference and I heard many friends saying that it was way better than the last year. The funny thing is I was told that the last year the event was much bigger and crowded, but on the opposite side it was less interesting, so many attendees of the last year did not show up this time, skipping the whole for good.

This year, with all the conference management changes, it was a sort of transitional kinda of event, yeah a good one, but do I believe that the next one will be the real big thing.

BTW, GG everyone!

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Hoang Huynh
Experience Strategist at PRSD
I'm an ill fated romantic technonerd with a passion for anything that makes lights and sounds, I live in the future and I have a very clear point of view on the definition of “experience” , “design” and “innovation”, but I use to talk about it only during coffee breaks.
I often lose myself into infinite activities where I can live, work, teach, learn on how people interact with the future.
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