Congresses

WeAreDevs Vienna

We had the opportunity to attend the We Are Developers world congress from June 28 to the 1st of July. This was the second time our whole company attended the We Are Devs congress. The first time for most of our employees in Vienna was in 2019 and it was an offline congress. With 2020 came a new year and with it came a different perspective on how organizers can hold conferences.

In 2019 we had the opportunity to speak not just with all the speakers but also with the other participants. We had a lot of interesting conversations next to a cup of coffee. We have to speak about the expo, it was magnificent offline we could talk to the employees of the company that got in the conference with a booth or a table. Our team even had the opportunity to win a game inside the conference. (If you are interested in what we won check this out: WeAreDevs2020) All in all, it was plenty of fun with really great eye-opening speeches and presentations. When we got home we had a lot of ideas and it came clear that we have to participate next year.

WeAreDevs World Congress

Then 2020 came with Covid-19 and the World Congress become delayed to 2021 summer. In 2020 March we told you that we will present in the world congress in this little snippet. Two of our members had a great idea about Blockchain and Gaming presentation and they applied and got in.

In 2021 we came to realize that they will not delay the congress anymore. The email came it will be held online and we have to reapply with the presentation. In a year a lot has changed in the industry so we had to rewrite the presentation. The presentation got thru and we got the schedule for the 29th of June in the afternoon. We had almost no free time at all from 9’o clock in the morning till 4 or 5 in the afternoon we watched plenty of presentations and because we could not do face-to-face networking we came up with an idea.

The idea was about how will we spend our free time while we attended the congress. We made a SWOT analysis about our team and company. We used the time for team building and mind storming until 2 in the morning. The lack of networking brought us some team building and long group meetings after the congress but we could work together on our projects.

One major event was when our team member Kiss György could present. The presentation was about Blockchain and Gaming! We had a blast workshopping ideas for it.

Compering Offline to Online

Speakers

We have listened to many of the speakers cause all of the company had tickets and had the privlige to listen to whatever interested us. Because of the differences in our interests and our professional skills mostly we chose different presentations each time we sat in front of our computers. At the end of the day, we could talk about our experiences and what we learned from the speakers. Most of the Speakers held their speech pretty well the length and the visuals of the presentations were especially good. In my opinion, many of the speakers were used to face-to-face presentations and not doing it online and I could feel it in some of the speakers’ energy.

Networking

We could do as much networking as we could before at the Conference in Vienna, but we had some chats online thru the platform that the congress provided us. Last time we were in Vienna so many people liked our T-shirts that we figured that time that we will need to bring some extra with us to give out. This was the time that our merch store came to mind. ( – Merchandise ) We plan to attend similar conferences and workshops not just for learning but for networking as well.

Gamification

In Vienna, we had a game throughout the whole conference where you could collect points for different activities. Like scanning each other’s passes for contact information, asking questions thru the platform from the speakers, and visiting some of the booths from sponsors. In this online Congress, it was a bit difficult to gamify it for the attendees. They had ruffle tickets with serious dev packages and some entertainment systems like they had a PS5 and a Gameboy advanced. We did not play all the games but we tried them out in the short breaks between presentations.

Expo

At the Vienna Conference, it was clear who were the main sponsors they had the best booth in the Conference. We spent most of the break time chatting with the exhibitors but online we did not have the mood for it we spent it together talking about work and the presentations. See you in 2022!