SD Best Practices Moscow

The highlights of SD Best Practices Moscow 2007 conference involved, of course, the great speakers (and their great presentations) who participated in the recent two-day event in Russia. But the cool stuff was this:

Meeting rooms with names like "Puskin Hall," "Tolstoy Hall," and "Chekhov Hall." Of course, my short presentation was in the "Conference Hall." Go figure. Lunch? Served in "Glinka and Mussorgsky Hall"

Then there were the translators. I've never been translated before, at least not verbally. But there were these guys in a booth off the side of the stage, who were translating from English to Russian (and where appropriate Russian to English) in real time. Listening via headphones, talking into microphones, and transmitting to audience members who had on wireless headsets distributed at registration. Kind of like a mini United Nations, if you get my drift. And very impressive.

Of course, I made the mistake of talking faster than I should have because I was told we were running a little behind and didn't have that much time. But the translators seemed to keep up -- although I have no idea how they could have possibly kept up with Jim McCarthy who presented a keynote entitled "Software for Your Head: How to Create Corporate Genius" that focused on effective team building. Jeez, I had a hard time keeping up with him.

Unlike me, subsequent speakers knew what they were doing. For instance, Nizam Ishmael, an IBM e-commerce architect, gave a great overview of Eclipse, speaking at a cadence that the translators could comfortably keep up with. Other speakers from the U.S. included Bruce Eckel, who discussed design and development issues from a philosophical standpoint, and Terri Quatrani, a last-minute replacement for Scott Ambler. Terri discussed "Best Practices for Innovative Software Development."

Still, one of the best presentations was that of Bertrand Meyer's who discussed testing and the need to automate the process when and where it makes sense. (Bertrand, it should be noted, was recently acknowledged by the ACM as its recipient of this year's Software System Award.

Our most gracious host at the conference was Valentin Makarov, president of RUSOFT, an association of software development companies from Russia, Byelorussia, and Ukraine. We learned a lot at the conference, particularly how dedicated Russian software developers are to their craft, and that their skills, tools, and informational needs really aren't that much different from their peers elsewhere around the world. I can't wait until the SD Best Practices Moscow 2008 conference.

Posted by Jon Erickson at 12:35 PM  Permalink