🇺🇦 How I went to IT Jam 2011 in Odesa

July 22, 2011 | Kyrylo Silin · @kyrylo · bluesky:@kyrylo.org · mastodon:@kyrylosilin

Apologies in advance for the photo quality, tilted angles, and other possible mishaps. First, I’m no photographer. Second, I was inexperienced with the camera I brought, and as a result, had no idea how to set it up. Lastly, the camera itself wasn’t top-notch. You might want to grab a cup or two of your favorite drink before diving in—this is a long one.

The journey begins. Kharkiv

One fine evening, my friend Serhii called with a plan: he wanted to attend a conference (IT Jam) for software developers and IT professionals. Without hesitation, I was in. My reasoning was simple: I’d never been to a conference, and I wanted to see what it was all about—not for knowledge, but for the experience. After all, I believe the benefits of watching a talk are the same whether it’s live or on video.

So, we formed a group of four, each of us registered online, and bought round-trip train tickets. Since the conference was free, it was affordable for any student.

Farewell, Kharkiv!

Arrival in Odesa

I’d been to Odesa before, but only in passing. My football team was once en route to Illichivsk for training, and we were packed into a tiny yellow bus at the Odesa train station, so I remembered little beyond surviving that cramped ride.

This time, we arrived at Odesa at 8:30 a.m. to perfect weather—not too warm, not too cold. With a couple of hours to spare before the conference began, we decided to wander around and find breakfast.

Here we are, inspecting the map and planning our route.

The sea station, where the conference was held, was within walking distance from the train station. Suddenly, a man with keys in hand approached us as we studied the map. He offered us a ride, clearly as an unlicensed taxi driver, so we declined.

Our route took us down Odesa’s most famous street, Deribasivska, and then onto Pushkinska St., which has a similar feel. Passing several notable buildings, we joked that we should visit those instead of the conference.

Pushkinska St from a sidewalk.

The intersection between Pushkinska St and a Random St. The Random St view.

After some unspoken consensus, we ended up at McDonald’s for breakfast. Fast and convenient. I’m not a frequent visitor, so I defaulted to the Big Mac menu, but it wasn’t available on the breakfast menu. After some tough deliberation, I ordered a fancy omelette with a latte—my first-ever latte.

With breakfast done, we had just enough time to reach the sea port. The streets of Odesa seemed deserted—until we reached the Potemkin Stairs, where everything clicked into place.

The view of the beautiful sea port, and an ugly ads banner.

Still not too late to hop on a train home.

At the sea port. Try to spot me.

Nearby, there was a monument with an egg and a well-built toddler inside. Unimpressive. Not even the cannons, yachts, shipyards, or various ships caught my attention as much as the sheer length of the queue.

Whoa… Quite a line.

The ship’s name is Amerigo Vespucci. Built by Italians in 1931. Used by Ukrainians in 2011.

The conference begins

After our walk, we headed to the conference and signed in. To my pleasant surprise, there were quite a few women attending. One perk was the free food: cookies, tea, coffee, water, sandwiches—you name it. Naturally, it disappeared fast.

Quite the line to sign in.

A snack before the opening was a good idea. For those who weren’t hungry, there was info about the conference to read.

The spectacular Sasha, one of the presenters, opens the conference.

About the conference

A quick overview: the conference had 42 talks, each 30 minutes long with 10-minute breaks between. Topics included mobile tech, Java, web dev, .NET, Quality Assurance, and general tech. Every 40 minutes, from 11:10 a.m. to 3:40 p.m., attendees chose from seven simultaneous talks. Unfortunately, only Spider-Man can be in seven places at once, so I only managed to attend seven talks.

The talks

The first talk I attended was on building a simple Rails 3 app using Git and GitHub, and deploying it to Heroku. Even though I was familiar with the topic, I was curious to see it done by an expert.

However, the speaker, Serhii Parizhsky, had technical issues and was replaced by Andriy Mykhailov, whose topic was Puppet. A few attendees walked out in protest.

I missed most of the Puppet talk while fiddling with my camera in the dark room, but the speaker’s style wasn’t particularly engaging.

Fortunately, the second talk was about Rails. Originally, I planned to attend a talk on online payment architecture but switched because I was eager to see the Rails talk. So I stayed put.

Serhii and Sasha. Sasha announces Serhii.

Serhii had issues with his computer, so he borrowed a laptop running Ubuntu from the previous speaker. To my surprise, he struggled to use it—couldn’t unlock the screen, compared Gedit to Notepad, and struggled to create a new file.

Eventually, he typed “rails new appname” (or something similar) into the terminal. A reasonable question from the audience—“What are you even doing?”—sums up this talk. I was disappointed.

The third talk covered Agile development methods, presented by Dmytro Lapshyn. He was confident and knowledgeable, but Agile didn’t resonate much with me. After the talk, a silver-haired gentleman struck a deal with Dmytro, apparently impressed.

The fourth talk on leadership by Dmytro Mindra explored the role and types of leaders in a team. It was engaging, well-presented, and straightforward.

Next, Naos Wilbrink, a Dutch specialist, spoke in impeccable English about data privacy. His clear and precise talk was my favorite, as he emphasized the value of every bit of information. The audience was lively, with plenty of questions.

“Crotches”.

The penultimate talk by Yevhen Dmytrychenko was on load testing tools. Not the most applicable topic for me, but interesting nonetheless.

I had hoped to attend a talk on neural networks in e-commerce, but it was replaced with Leonid Bugaev’s semi-promotional session on motivation. Despite the shift, I enjoyed it.

Rework is a nice book, but it’s too abstract—just like the talk.

After the talks, there was a break, with tweets tagged #itjam displayed live on a TV. Easels with paper and pens were scattered about, and someone even sketched a Java “Hello World” program.

Then came a lottery with conference tickets as prizes, including one for RubyShift in Dnipropetrovsk, which I was secretly hoping to win. Sadly, no luck.

The next part of the conference was an interview with the “big bosses” of Ukrainian software companies. I didn’t catch their names, but I do remember their way of speaking—it was all the same. And it was horrific. They weren’t speaking Russian, nor Ukrainian, nor even English. It was a nuclear mix of all three languages.

They’re all Ukrainians (except one), so why on earth were they doing that? I’ll cut the big nub from Denmark some slack—at least he was speaking English.

Question: “Do you use any math in your company?” Answer: “We do. We play poker!”

Wrapping up

It was time to leave. In general, the “big bosses” panel was underwhelming, loaded with ads and irrelevant content. One boss proclaimed, “The best programmers are in the USA. And… they are Russians.” It was a popular line, but I strongly disagree.

Despite a few downsides, like English-only materials, I enjoyed IT Jam. The conference was informative, and I’d gladly attend next year. But really—why no Ukrainian or Russian option? A bit pretentious, perhaps?

The conference is over. But only for us.

No trip to Odesa is complete without a shot of the famous Potemkin Stairs.

Odesa is a cool city. Goodbye, Odesa!