What will happen on TechTrain, and why should I go there?

There are events with which everything is simple: by name you immediately understand what will be there and whether you want to go there. You see the words “Rammstein concert” - and that’s it, no questions. But there are events where so many things are happening that the name doesn’t fit it. We have to understand in more detail.



This weekend at the TechTrain St. Petersburg IT festival there will be a lot of everything: from the Doom match with John Romero and the auction of Richard Stallman to the Habr stand and the quest with prizes. So here you will not understand at first glance, even if you went to last year's TechTrain. What exactly will be there? And, most importantly, do I want to go there?



Therefore, we wrote what to expect, and to each item we added the answer to the direct question: “Why do I need this?”

Reports

Do not wait for the super hardcore “like at IT conferences”. The conferences have a narrow specialization, so there are such deep speeches that you sit and feel how you are being dampened by deep pressure. And TechTrain will bring together IT specialists in completely different directions, will take place on the weekend - so the themes are more universal.



But at the same time, we don’t want not superficial pop music with common words, but really good reports. How to achieve this? Call experienced professionals who have dedicated their performances to more than one year of life. For example, anyone can speculate beautifully about the differences between artificial intelligence and human. But there is “anyone”, and there is Ivan Yamshchikov , who studies such issues at the Max Planck Institute. When such a person compares biological algorithms and machine learning, it wasn’t you touching a bug with a paw.

Why do I need it?

There are several different reasons, see for yourself which are relevant to you:

• Touch the legend. This is primarily about Richard Stallman and John Romero , and their participation is not limited to reports, so they are described in more detail below.
• Develop as an IT specialist. Although TechTrain will not meet some fierce hardcore, there will be reports on specific technologies that may be useful to you. For example, if you haven’t worked with GraphQL yet, pay attention to the report “Forming a Picture of the GraphQL World”. And if you are a javist - then on the "Spring Patterns" by Evgeny Borisov.
• Develop as an IT specialist, but not in technology. Code is important, but work is not limited to it. For example, do you feel that technical interviews drank a lot of your blood? If yes, pay attention to the report about them.
• Open the mind. It is unlikely that you personally need to deceive AI in your work (if necessary, tell us in the comments what kind of work you have). But it is curious, after all, whether it is possible to outwit all these fashionable neurons. Grigory bobuk Bakunov , who will talk about this, has long been interested in this topic - he previously wrote about the idea of ​​anti-recognition makeup.

Having understood what you want, you can open the full program and see what corresponds to this. The first two rooms will feature presentations selected by our program committee. And the third room and the Demo Stage are provided to IT communities and companies: they also have something to share, and we ourselves still do not fully know what they will tell. It can be seen that they have very different topics - the quick launch of a microservice, the creation of a local IT community in their city, the isolation of runet, the experience of using Flutter.

Stands

Have you seen TechTrain booths last year? Consider that you have not seen, because this time there will be noticeably more. Dozens of different IT communities, dozens of companies, podcasts and not only - in general, eyes run wider than on the summer sale on Steam.

Why do I need it?

• Take part in the quest. This time they decided to gamify the event: at the festival it will be possible to get a special brochure, and then perform tasks at various stands, receiving for each print. After collecting a certain number of seals, hand over the result to us, and the first 500 passers will receive a memorable gift, and later among all the passers we will win prizes (the main one is a quadrocopter).
  
  
  
  Tasks were invented by those companies on the stands of which they will need to be performed. So they can vary greatly - from passing a mini-test to posting on social networks.
• Find friends in luck. This time there are so many communities that for whatever popular programming language you drown, you will find like-minded people. If you are not connected with IT as a developer and you are not worried about the languages, the community will be there for you: among their names you can see abbreviations QA, SRE, CIO and HR.
• To communicate with Habr. Denis deniskin Kryuchkov will be present at his booth - so that you can personally speak with the founder of the resource on which we are now talking.
• Take part in the move. Stands are not only valuable information, but also contests, discussions, quizzes.
  
  
  
  For example, Embox is an open OS for embedded systems, and there will be interesting hardware on its stand, including moving robots. And in competitions from Go SPb it will be possible to find out: can you spoil a bad code even more? Can you distinguish fictional code from the present? And how many characters do you type per minute? Wait, what does “not in this professionalism of the programmer” mean, but what then?
• To learn something from companies: since there will be very different ones, they can be interesting in different ways. There will be those whose products IT specialists use in their work (JetBrains do not need to be introduced). There will be those that we know from the "consumer" side - like the online movie theater Okko. There will be those whose products are not aimed at IT specialists at all, but many developers are involved in creating these products (for example, Kontur).
• Learn about the right conference for you. In addition to TechTrain, we hold many IT conferences on various topics (from Java development to testing), and we ourselves will also have stands - come and tell us everything.
• Get the stickers! It seems like a frivolous point, but on company stands the stickers always attract such keen interest, and IT laptops are often so glued that for many this is clearly an important motivation.

Entertainment

The quest will not be the only way to entertain yourself, and several organizations will be responsible for the "entertainment" at once.



At the "Museum of Soviet gaming machines" the name speaks for itself. RetroTechSquad give play on retro computers and old game consoles. At the Toy Library they make wooden toys, including reconstructing old ones from photographs. Sintez Event are engaged in VR / AR. And finally, Speedcubes.ru offer to collect a Rubik's cube for speed.

Why do I need it?

• To touch the past. It is one thing to start an old game at home with the help of an emulator, and quite another - on the hardware for which it was originally created.
• To touch the future of the future. Nobody knows what will happen in the future, but VR / AR technologies continue to evolve - maybe we’ll still tell the children “I tried it before it became mainstream”.
• Well, Rubik's cubes are equally subject to people in the past, in the future. How. Stop it. Collect?

Auction with Stallman and deathmatch with Romero

When people of such caliber as Richard Stallman and John Romero arrive, many want to not only listen to the report, but to personally interact with the legend. And there will be such an opportunity!



First, both can be asked questions. Secondly, both will be ready to give autographs. Thirdly, it will be possible to buy merch from both. Romero will bring posters and perhaps some Masters of Doom books. And Stallman is even going to arrange a small auction with lots related to the Free Software Foundation - so that you can maintain freedom with your ruble (preferably cash).



And fourthly, we plan to arrange a small Doom match with Romero. That is, one of the spectators will be able to fight in deathmatch mode with a person who coined the word “deathmatch” itself! Of course, there are much more people who want to participate than places. But even looking at this is already interesting - and we will display the game on screens so that it can be clearly seen from the outside.

Why do I need it?

If the names of Romero and Stallman speak in your heart, then you yourself know why. But even if they don’t respond, it’s just that the scale of the personality is worth it not to pass by. Someday it will be possible to tell the grandchildren "I saw Stallman, he had a beard more than I have now!"

Rest

Much more can be mentioned. For example, for children under 12 admission is free, and the children's room allows you to leave the kids for a while - so this is also an opportunity to get out of the house with the whole family on weekends.



But the main thing from the still not mentioned, perhaps, is:

Why do I need it?

For communication.

• To see old IT acquaintances with whom you have been writing to each other for years, “We must already meet at last, but that we are like these.” If you need a reason and a place to meet, then the festival is perfect.
• In addition to old friends, to know new people. It’s easy to shut yourself in a bubble, communicate with those you already know, and stop discovering new things - and here there is a great opportunity to expand the circle.
• In order not just to listen to the speakers, but if you have any questions, discuss with them. After the report, the speaker goes to the discussion area, where he can be questioned properly.
• In order to finally get an idea of ​​what others live.

And in the case of communication, everything is in your hands. We can provide discussion zones and stands - but we cannot agree with your friends about a meeting or ask a speaker a question for you. Here you can make yourself a dream festival.



But we can at least give a link to the @techtrainfest Telegram chat: during the festival there will also be communication on all issues related to it. If it turns out that you will be in splendid isolation at the festival, you can chat and find a company of interest.



And if during the time remaining before the festival some other useful information appears - you can find out all the relevant information on the site , and there is also a memo for the participant .



If according to the results of the text you came to the conclusion that you want to go, you can buy a ticket there . See you at the weekend!