My experience as a crew member at NDC

Originally posted on Medium.com

Working at NDC, managing tracks with Steve Sanders, Troy Hunt, Jon Skeet, and David Fowler and Jon Galloway (from top in counterclockwise order)

If you ask a hundred software developers around the world what their favorite dev conference is, many of them will probably respond with a passionate and resounding: “NDC!”

Yes, I agree! It’s impeccable — from the quality of speakers to the variety of topics to the open, social atmosphere, and first-class food.

I really LOVE it and I had the great opportunity to join Crew Team at NDC Oslo 2017. NDC stands for Norwegian Developers Conference and is one of Europe’s largest conferences for .NET and Agile development.

The first conference was held in Oslo in 2008. Today, NDC Conferences are five day events with two days of pre-conference workshops and three days of conference sessions. They are being held in Oslo, London, Sydney, and Copenhagen.

What makes the NDC different is the quality and the quantity of the speakers and the topics it offers. Having this in mind, I must say it was a challenge for me to dive into the heart of the conference where the crew made all of these wonderful talks happen. It was my first experience working abroad at the conference.

First, thanks to my friend Alexey Volkov who lives in Oslo for a hearty welcome. I can’t imagine my trip without his incredible support and it was a pleasure for me to spend time with him and his welcoming family.

Second, Oslo is a festive city and deserves a dedicated post about the amazing places I visited. The only minus point is that almost everything there is exorbitantly expensive. The attendance fee for the conference is also not cheap — fortunately, crew members don’t pay for it.

The atmosphere at the conference was totally amazing and, yes, inspiring. I worked in the morning in the conference rooms but also had a lot of free-time in the afternoon.

I was backstage and connected with different people from all over the world. The open space with lots of seating and food made it perfect for interacting with people. You just grabbed something to eat or drink, took a seat, and talked away.

There is enough space in Oslo Spectrum to host hundreds and hundreds of participants

I’d like to say some words about working as a crew member.

The hardest day was the first one with the preceding preparation the day before. For making NDC really stunning and fantastic, there were a lot of jobs to do, but it’s worth every second and we felt relaxed but motivated during all of the workshop and conference days.

I was responsible for one of conference rooms during most of my working time. I had to check the presence of speakers and prevent any kind of occurrence that could affect the quality or even being of a particular talk.

Also, I presented special gifts to every speaker and collected feedback cards (from red to green, very bad to very good, respectively) from the audience. These results were quickly handled by our great crew team and entered into the computer.

In composition with big screens and news feeds, the event became near real-time and very interactive. I did my best to help every attendee get the most out of every conference day. Of course, there were a lot of conference partners and they brought nice entertainment part of every day. Robots, artificial intelligent, virtual reality games… I felt like I was in the future.

But don’t forget that NDC is in the top lists because of its awesome talks and first-class speakers. If you are interested in NDC Conference talks, you can easily find a specific day or talk at NDC Oslo on Channel9, e.g., start with this one about ASP.NET Core.

Talk: ASP.NET Core Futures Roadmap by David Fowler and Jon Galloway

or watch NDC talks on YouTube.

And, of course, join one of the greatest Software Developer Conferences in Oslo (June) in London (January) or Sydney (September).

I hope to visit you at NDC!

Thank you for reading!