Djangocon.eu in Warsaw: I’m coming!¶

Tags: django, djangocon

Yeah, I booked my ticket this afternoon. I’m in!

The final batch (40% of the tickets) went on sale at 16:00 CET and our secretary got my ticket in at 16:05, except that my boss’s credit card didn’t work. So I had to grab my own, but I’m in.

I’m happy that the company that I work for (Nelen & Schuurmans) pays for my ticket. Going to a conference is an essential part of keeping my knowledge up-to-date. I told them that during my job interview.

That’s actually a funny story. I’m a civil engineer by education, so I don’t have an official IT background. Lots of experience, but no official IT education. So the second question I got during my job interview was something like: we were actually looking for a real solid IT programmer and now we’re getting a civil engineer again. We already have one :-). So… how do you learn? How do you keep your knowledge up to date?

I liked the question. I had no problem pointing at my experience (which they knew about: of course they googled me beforehand). And what about learning and keeping my knowledge up-to-date? Well, two things, I answered:

• Reading a heapload of blogs. You see a lot of useful stuff that way. You know what new things to keep track off or what to investigate. You get a solid feel for what’s good and what’s bad. (Of course I also read programming books; I also learn from colleagues).

• Going to at least one conference per year.

So… I’m going to djangocon.eu 2013 this year. That’ll be hard work writing all those summaries again :-)

See you in Warsaw! Now to plan the train trip. I prefer a train trip to a plane, when practical. From Utrecht to Warsaw is some 12 hours: fine with me. I like reading and looking at the landscape. And I like trains :-) Double bonus: conference with build-in train trip.