Title: ACCU Conference 2018: Trip Report

Author: Bob Schmidt

Date: 08 May 2018 18:05:29 +01:00 or Tue, 08 May 2018 18:05:29 +01:00

Summary: Kris van Rens shares his experiences from ACCU 2018.

Body: 

Splendid! I’m going to the ACCU2018 conference in Bristol!

Ever since becoming a member of the ACCU in 2016, I have wanted to go. Of course, the ACCU journals are great, but actually meeting the ACCU team, regular writers, as well as hundreds of other like-minded people, is just priceless. I was pleasantly surprised by the family-like open atmosphere, and at the same time by the quality and technical depth of the talks. Sure, I had been to other conferences before, but I’ve never encountered something quite like this.

The general aim for my visit of course was professional development (or, that’s what I promised my employer…). Sharpening my C++ programming skills and understanding. But the conference offered so much more. Aside from all the great in-depth talks on C++, there were loads of talks about other programming languages and programming in general. But then still, there was a plethora of other topics covered. Just to name a few: inclusivity/diversity in the technical field (see [1]), organisational/technical team leadership (or not), human reasoning processes and even a pub quiz. And then besides all the invaluable content of the talks, the proficiency of some of the speakers was just mind-blowing. Very inspirational.

Obviously the keynote talks were single-track talks, but being able to only be present in one place at a time meant missing out on at least four other interesting talks. I’m very thankful to the conference committee for arranging the video recording of (many of) the talks. It will take me quite some time still to soak up all of the content I marked as interesting – which is a lot.

One of the highlights for me was getting a closer look into the kitchen of C++ standardization. A number of committee members were around to give talks, and were grilled on Friday (well, it wasn’t that bad). I was pleasantly surprised at how many of the conference attendees had standards proposals in progress or even accepted.

Another interesting (and recurring) topic was our failing education system when it comes to the educating of good C++ programmers. There is education in the general topic of computer science, but that’s not quite the same. The result is an ecosystem in which many programmers have become ‘dark matter programmers’ – generally incompetent and oblivious to professional improvement. In my opinion, it is partly our jobs as improvement-aware professionals to take care of this. So, whenever you’ve visited a conference/read a book/learned something/etc., tell your colleagues/friends about it! Share with them the links of videos/blog posts/Overload articles, cook up a mini-course, whatever suits you, it will make a difference.

The underlying issue partly seems to have its roots in kids of a young age for which insufficient programming teachers are available. And that’s exactly where initiatives like Code Club come in. Code Club [2] is the charity organization that organises programming workshops for kids. I joined in on the workshop on Thursday and it was great fun! I’m definitely going to give this a follow-up, if only it were on my own kids (evil grin).

Hand-in-hand with the serious business going on at the conference were the end-of-the-day lightning talks. Ten or so five-minute talks about literally anything, interlaced with light-speed famous scientist quizzes led by Pete Goodliffe. There were serious topics in there too, but most of them were a good laugh.

Then there was the conference dinner, the theme of which was ‘magical’. Great food, great atmosphere, great people, Russell ‘the grey sorcerer’ Winder, and a magician making a fool of us (and himself); what more do you need?

All-in-all, I’d say the experience for me was life-changing. With some of the misery going on in the world, it’s sometimes good to realise there are so many people that actually can be utterly lovely to each other ;-)

I surely hope to be there again next year!

References

[1] https://github.com/include-cpp/include

[2] https://www.codeclub.org.uk

Notes: 

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