About:Rolling-Scopes-Conf
This last weekend I was in Minsk, Belarus, for the first time and I am happy to say it was pretty cool. It was more like a (volunteer) work trip than a touristic one but very pleasant either way!
So, like most of my volunteers travels, I was there to speak and run a booth at an event — Rolling Scopes Conference. @gabriel_micko was there last year and enjoyed it so much that he recommended it to me too. I was curious to see a conference like this in Eastern Europe, curious to go outside the western bubble, so I accept it pretty fast too.
I was happy to find out more later about the meetups they held and the huge amount of community work they do! Chapeau bass, ladies and gentlemen!
We run a small booth in both days of the conference and we also had two talks on Saturday. I spoke about my favorite topic lately — @webcompat showcasing examples of issues, tools to help you build a better web and how you can contribute to this platform.
You can find the slides here — kind of the same as the ones used at FOSDEM. I will need to change that logo though to the new one. The recording can be accessed here. I have decided to write more about presentations/talks, the struggles that you have sometimes, so stay tuned!
Gabriel’s workshop/talk was about GraphQL.
Our scope at the booth — beside sharing swag, of course 😅— was to promote the Developer Survey — which you can also take here mzl.la/devsurvey (“very few” questions). Gabriel also implemented a selfie bot which you can access here: https://mozilla.webrtc.rocks/ Share yours with us, don’t be shy!
I did not manage to attend many talks, but like in FOSDEM the HTTP2 one blew the house! I heard some about PWA and I was looking to see if people are into them or still not convinced.. In the second day, most of the talks from Stream A (near our booth) were in Russian so I did not get much. If you are interested to listen to some of the talks you can find them here.
I enjoyed very much the dinners as I got a change to meet the great speakers present there. I felt a bit as an outsider, felt like everyone knew each other and I’ve missed the introductions.. Glad the feeling was not for long.. I have to admit, liking the IPA beer helped me in approaching people as as always some like it and some h̶a̶t̶e̶ ̶i̶t̶, let’s say, like it less — and so we broke the ice.
I really appreciate conferences that plan some fun creative activities for their attendees. This time @rollingscopes Conf made a challenge to get the best masterpieces from clay. Of course I joined it — not for the prize— but to relax a bit and .. to make a “product placement” in that area. Most of the art pieces were related to software and there were lots and lots of logos. You can definitely see more on Instagram.
I also continued the tradition of running while in a new city or at a conference — both to get some quality energy running in the veins and to discover the city. Not sure yet what was the highlight of the run — the park discovered and explored or being stopped by the police..
I really liked the people I’ve met and I want to thank them for the warm welcoming! Also for the patience they had while they taught me some words in their beautiful language (special shout out to Paul cause I did bug him with maaaany questions). дзякуй!
Hope some of the speakers met there will consider coming to Romania ( more specific in Cluj) for some conferences. I would love to meet them again! I‘ve made a little storify with my fav moments that you can check to get a bit of how the conference was for me.
And Minsk, Minsk is really a beautiful city — definitely recommend you to visit it someday! Maybe in a more sunny period though 😉. I would definitively love to come back again!
