Spaces Summit - Launching for the 3rd edition
On June 13th, we organize the third edition of Spaces Summit: an internal tech conference for and by bol.com IT. From the start of the idea three years ago at a “borrel” (Friday afternoon drinks), Spaces Summit has become the biggest event inside bol.com IT to get inspired, learn, share knowledge, show off and get together as a community . This third edition will again be bigger than last year: a total of 500 attendees (150 more than last year!), an unusual afternoon keynote, inspiring talks on a variety of subjects, good food and a larger number of guests who can find out for themselves what the community at bol.com is passionate about.
Three years ago, it all started with the idea that bol.com should host its own tech conference. We are growing fast and with so many development teams and so many developers, it’s hard to keep track of what everybody is working on and what people are enthusiastic about. So, to share knowledge and to get inspired by colleagues, Spaces Summit was born: a conference for IT, organized by IT. With the growing number of developers at bol.com, over 500 by the end of 2019, this opportunity to learn and to show off cool stuff you’re working on is more important than ever.
With only a few days to go until the third edition, things are really starting to roll: the program is fixed, keynotes have been arranged and registration of participants closed last Friday! Now it is coming down to details and creating the energy and vibe to get everybody excited.
The Program
The program promises to be awesome: 3 parallel tracks, 15 tools-in-action talks, 12 4 lightning talks and 2 amazing keynotes. Except for the keynotes, all speakers are bol.com tech enthusiasts or friends from ah.nl. Topics are ranging from testing to automated coffee tables, from game rendering to understanding intelligence and from Kubernetes jungles to why being a software developer is the best job in the world!
The marketplace, AKA what to do in between talks, will feature a solar car, stands by Google and Hashicorp, arcade gaming, conference stickers, a security game and many more cool things. There is no chance of getting bored when outside the conference rooms.
And, for the first time, there will be an afternoon keynote to get the energy back after lunch. This keynote is given by people from RealLifeGaming, https://prisonescape.nl). To be completely sure it works, it’s been dry-tested on the Spaces Summit crew a few weeks ago and it was impressive. We’re looking forward to the real thing!
Bring a Friend
With so many interesting talks and such a large IT community inside bol.com, sharing our knowledge and energy with several friends of our IT-ers seemed like a great possibility to give a little insight into what bol.com is passionate about. So, with a number of spots available, all developers were given the opportunity to invite one (or more) of their tech-friends to join Spaces Summit. And it’s been a great success: the forty exclusive “golden tickets” are all claimed and together with another forty guests (friends from ah.nl, students and new colleagues/bol.commers) a total of eighty people from outside bol.com are joining this conference, which is a first!
What’s left to do? The traditional dinner with the organizing committee was last week, so that’s already in the pocket; time to arrange the last finer points and make everything come together to create a great conference! Let’s space-suit-up!
Want to know more about Spaces Summit? Check out spacessummit.bol.com.
Don’t have a friend inside bol.com who has invited you? Don’t worry! Videos of talks and blog posts will become available on techlab.bol.com and there will this year even be a podcast hosted at Spaces Summit. To get into the spirit of things, have a look at the videos from the last two years.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7Nm19X53oIM&list=PLhGhapSlMxRh1tpzOxErpu3KgN8ssI7M6
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lyx8v7ysCLM&list=PLhGhapSlMxRhdT9M_tEgHIqzqiToBA55y