CodeFest 2014 Brought a Record-Breaking Amount of Participants to the Novosibirsk Expo centre

Conference for IT specialists working in the sphere of project development, testing, and management CodeFest was conducted in Novosibirsk for the fifth time, and it was the 3^rd conference held at the Novosibirsk Expo centre International Exhibition Complex. These years saw the amount of the conference participants rise threefold, or even fourfold. Organizer of CodeFest Yevgeny Vasilkov told us in an exclusive interview to www.novosibexpo.ru why people from all over Russia (and other countries) come together in Siberia, why IT specialists need to be united, what difficulties one can encounter when choosing a place for such a large-scale event, and what we should expect from CodeFest Conference in the future.  

- This year CodeFest Conference is held for the fifth time. Could you tell us how it all started, what’s the official history of this event?

- There is only one official version, and it remains unchanged for the last 5 years. It goes like this: at some moment we realized that Novosibirsk lacked a platform that would unite the IT sphere as well as IT specialists, decided to take charge of this initiative and create such a platform. It all started when a group of 2GIS specialists got together and organized the first event. It was part of the ‘Siberian Internet Week’ held at the ‘Siberian Fair’ back then. That event was very small and home-like, but we felt the people’s need to have such a conference and decided to go on. The amount of CodeFest participants keeps growing every year. The first event back in 2010 brought together only about 500 people, today we have more than 1,700. We just wanted to unite IT specialists of Siberia, and it all seems to have turned out pretty well.

- CodeFest is strongly associated with Novosibirsk, the conference became somewhat of the city brand. Do you think such an event is held in Novosibirsk simply by accident? 

- First of all, we come from Novosibirsk, that’s why we organized the conference here. We thought that Novosibirsk had a huge amount of IT specialists who theoretically felt the need for interaction and experience sharing. And at that time IT specialists were kind of too isolated though everybody seemed to know each other. But we wanted the people who work nearby to be more united, we wanted the IT community to become more friendly and civilized.  And I believe that’s what actually happened.  

- Today CodeSest features specialists from many other cities, and not only from Novosibirsk.

- Yes, the event is getting famous, and it’s a natural thing that many people from other cities and towns of Siberia, the Ural Region, and the European part of Russia feel interested and come to the conference. We obviously bring lecturers who are not only interesting to people in the ‘Siberian province’ where there are balalaikas and bears, but to any forward-thinking programmers.  

- How has the list of participants and the program of the conference changed over these 5 years?

- The basic program is always very similar – it includes products, testing, and project management. It is adjusted, sometimes we narrow some segments but the main topics usually stay the same. Of course, the list of participants changed over time. Initially 99% of participants of the very first conference were from Novosibirsk. Now 50% of people are from Novosibirsk and another 50% are those who came from other regions. The share of people from other cities is constantly growing.    

- Why, do you think, people come to CodeFest?

- They come to get some knowledge, new ideas, to communicate with their colleagues. Sometimes, just to get out of the everyday hustle and bustle. An IT specialist is a person who is thinking about the code all the time. Sure, I exaggerate. Nevertheless, IT guys are pretty isolated from the outside world. But this doesn’t mean that they don’t need to interact with the others. They need to constantly keep in touch with their colleagues in order to follow new trends. Experience sharing is crucial for mastering new technologies. And today the rate of introducing these technologies is increasing significantly, that is why it is so good to come together each year, communicate with each other and then try to use the acquired ideas in your work. The achieved results can be discussed next year.     

- What effect does the conference have on specialists, on companies, and Novosibirsk in general?

- As I already said, participants are given opportunities to get new ideas and, probably, new knowledge.  Anyway, true specialists are always reading something, trying to learn something new but here they talk to people who use these or those technologies in a deeper way, that is really acquire new experience and new ideas. Besides, specialists can physically talk to people they only saw virtually. As for companies, I think that CodeFest gives large groups of employees good opportunities to conduct a corporate discussion right at CodeFest. But we limited the maximum amount of visitors from one company to 130 employees, and this limitation is not accidental. Companies can really benefit from such visiting sessions. There are a lot of IT companies in the Siberian Region. Travelling Moscow just to take part in some conference can be too expensive for companies’ employees but they can easily come to Novosibirsk, and in many aspects the conference quality is even better here. It important for the city to develop the IT sphere. People’s opinions about the city are based on what it has to offer. Let’s say that if 300 years ago all that people could see here was bears and gypsies, that was what they thought about Novosibirsk. And if today we see a lot of good products and events in Novosibirsk, it naturally positively affects the image of the city in general.   

- What so special can CodeFest 2014 offer?

- This year we have very many unique lecturers who you can meet only at CodeFest, including people from abroad. They are James A. Whittaker, Axel Rauschmayer, Peter Vesterbacka from Rovio Entertainment, Michael Palotas and Ruotger Deecke from eBay, representatives of Google, Microsoft, Booking.com and others. We also have foreign lecturers who came last year, were very impressed by Novosibisk and CodeFest, and decided to come again. I think this is a very good sign. And the amount of participants is currently record-breaking this year. 

-  Was it hard to find the right place for having such a large-scale event?

-  Choosing the right place is not only related to finding a venue of suitable capacity. The venue also has to provide comfort to the event participants. We need sizeable halls, we have to be able to organize coffee breaks, serve meals. Technically, it may be possible to rent an area at the ‘Siberian Fair’ even now. Construct temporary halls there and try to conduct some event there. We would be able to accommodate lots of people but the place would be uncomfortable. Listening to lectures would be impossible, because people in the neighboring halls would interrupt each other. And you can hardly organize normal catering there. Actually, there are many peculiarities. I’d say that except for the Novosibirsk Expo centre there is simply no complex where we could organize an all-in-one event for so many people. And I’m glad that back in 2012, literally one month after the opening of the complex we risked and tried to move to the Expo centre. We were so worried that something could go wrong. But since a month before the event we had learned that we had no venue, we thought it all could not be any worse. And we never regretted that. Everything here is done on a very high level.     

- Am I right that after CodeFest 2014 is finished you’ll start preparing for CodeFest 2015?

- Yes, our life is divided into two stages: before and after CodeFest. The ‘before’ stage is already the ‘after’ stage, and vice versa. We usually start preparing for the next event in September-October.   

- This year CodeFest already has a record-breaking amount of participants, famous experts. What are your plans for the future?

- I think that what we see today is the level where you can stop for some time and go deeper instead of expanding. I mean stop trying to achieve a certain amount of participants or lecturers. The main goal is improving competence in terms of the event program itself, feel what interests the audience better, foresee trends and, perhaps, be the first to speak about some of them.