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A “No Fluff” Weekend Posted Thursday, March 4, 2010 4 Comments
Early Spring is one of my favorite times of the year. No, it’s not because I’ve had enough of a New England winter (although that is usually the case). It’s because it’s one of the two times a year my favorite technical conference - No Fluff Just Stuff (aka NFJS) - comes around to the Boston area.
If you’re like many engineers, you’ve been to your share of technical conferences. Sure, you get some value from them, but the travel is a hassle, you spend a bunch of time trying to score t-shirts and various tchotchkes and you find a wide variance in the quality of the presentations and speakers. One of the tag lines for the event is “Local Venue, World Class Event” - and it lives up to it.
A few years ago, I had the pleasure of attending a different kind of conference. One MUCH more focused on quality, affordability and excellent technical content than any other I had attended. No merchant booths, no sales pitches and no overwhelming crowds. The conference series is aptly named: “No Fluff, Just Stuff” and it lives up to that reputation. It delivers some of the best speakers and relevant technical content I’ve seen, all while keeping the attendance low (it’s capped at 250). This is important because, well, if you’ve ever tried to corner a speaker after a presentation at some big conference, you know how hard that can be.
The show has some other big pluses: It’s very inexpensive (IMHO) for what you get, AND it travels the country, meaning that you’re likely to find it within driving distance. It does have one (potential) downside: it’s held Friday afternoon through Sunday evening. Personally, I’ve found this makes it easier to attend (no missing work and no travel), but for some folks it can be a bit of a hurdle to overcome. My advice: try it. I bet you’ll be back. I’m coming up on attending my seventh conference. In a row. I like it that much.
More importantly, I’ve managed to convince many of my colleges to do the same thing over the years. For the Spring NFJS, 16 Constant Contact employees are attending, and it’s like that nearly every time the conference comes to town. I consider that to be one of the most powerful indications that the conference is valuable - when that many of my co-workers also feel it’s worth a weekend to attend.
One of the things I really enjoy about working at Constant Contact is that we have lots of folks who are passionate enough about technology and so eager to learn that they willingly give up one or two weekends a year to attend. If you’ve never spent a weekend with a bunch of other engineers to share a passion for learning like that, well you’re missing out.
I’ve met some amazing speakers and authors over the years at NFJS: Neal Ford (author of The Productive Programmer), Brian Goetz (author of Java Concurrency in Practice), Scott Davis (author of Groovy Recipes) and Venkat Subramaniam (author of Programming Groovy and Programming Scala, just to name two) and many others. This is of course in addition to fellow engineers at other companies working on cool tech and fun projects.
The weekends can be very tiring (in a good way!), but I always find them exhilarating. They really help me recharge my technical curiosity and serve as a great reminder about why I love this industry.
The larger point I’m trying to make is: find a way to look outside your day-to-day technical world. See what else is out there. Learn about some new technologies. You never know how that may help. Even if you don’t find a use for some of the technologies, learning is useful for it’s own sake, especially in our industry.
The opinions expressed here represent those of the author and not those of Constant Contact, Inc. Read Blog Terms
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Chris Coleman | 5:07 PM March 5, 2010
I agree 100% Jerry. I’ve been to 4 NFJS conferences and each one was valuable to me. I had been in Virginia for a while, but now I have to transition to the Raleigh sessions this year - I’m looking forward to it.
To everyone who hasn’t been - read carefully what Jerry writes, it’s true. Jay (the organizer) does a wonderful job bringing some of the brightest Java minds together.
John Kroubalkian | 10:51 PM March 7, 2010
Thanks for the blog post!
NFJS is a great value. I really enjoyed my experience with NFJS. I’d have to say, of all the speakers I really enjoyed Scott Davis and Venkat the most.
They put the PRAGMATIC in pragmatic programming. Hands-on, use-it-now information.
RJ Salico | 7:39 AM March 8, 2010
This is a great summary of what of NFJS is all about. I will be attending my third NFJS event here in Tampa in April. I agree, after a long weekend of technical presentations, I leave with a better understanding of technologies I don’t see in my “day-to-day technical world” and a curiosity to learn more.
Jerry Gulla | 1:35 PM March 8, 2010
Thank you for the comments. It was (as usual) a great conference. I saw a few sessions that really surprised me (in a good way!). I hope to write something up about them soon.
Although it’s a long weekend, it actually makes me more energetic about coming back to the office on Monday.