This year was a bit different, though. As circumstances dictate, we felt it was best to do an online event this year, which of course created a few challenges, but also opened up a few new doors. Now that the event is done, it’s a good time for a bit of reflection.
We had a record number of attendees this year, which was helped by the possibility to participate from the comfort of your own homes. We also had a record number of Solita people attending, since they had set up small localised Core parties, where they’d watch the sessions from the TV screen and have a chance to meet and greet meanwhile. So that proved to be a very successful part of the event.
On the challenge side, of course, as at its core, the Core was a virtual event, we did not have that feeling of face-to-face, random chats on the hallways, and most certainly the beer and other refreshments were all virtual, as well. I think we coped with that as well as we could, but you definitely lose something in this area. Also, timing our event right after a workday was at the same time a challenge and an opportunity.
The unique things we got to experiment with was having an Easter Egg hunt, with very active participation, a meet&greet with the speakers, and of course it was very easy to publish the excellent presentations right next day, to be watched on-demand by many more who did not have the chance to attend. Also, it was a very tight-packed bit of tech content, since we had two tracks going on within a 2 hours window, so a pretty concentrated package of knowledge. I was also happy to see our brightest minds from development, data, and cloud units bring some best practices to the table – I think there was something for everyone.
So I have to say, this was a very refreshing experiment, and I’m glad we found the energy to run it, and learn from it. It will be interesting to see what shape and form the Solita Core event will take next year – it would be the fifth Solita Core so in many ways a special one.
Solita Core 2021 agenda
- Anahit Pogosova: You’ve got m@il! A story of a not-your-typical newsletter
- Juho Friman: The Holy Grail – Write Your Own Programming Language From Scratch
- Joona Immonen: Trunk based development – How to push to the master like a boss with continuous deployment
- Denzil Ferreira: Music to my ears – facing the documentation demons
- Antti Peltonen: Mr. Consultant or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Public Cloud
- Mikael Kujanpää: Making Tests Meaningful
- Antti Loukiala: Dev and Data – Different but same
See all videos here