Last Friday, 28.03.2025, I gave my first ever talk at a tech conference, SREday London 2025. Today I wanted to reflect on that experience, which was been a great one overall for sure. I really enjoyed the vibe of the conference, it was very chill with these cozy cinema rooms to watch the talks and no one was really trying to sell me anything - sure there were a few booths from vendors sponsoring the event but they weren’t aggressively trying to make contact with you.
(btw am I still allowed to use the word “vibe” or has “vibe coding” ruined it already?)
When it comes to networking at these kind of events, I always find myself struggling starting a conversation with people. As such I am always super grateful when other people take over that hard part and start talking to me. This time there where Jonathan Perry and Jorge Lainfiesta who took the initiative of talking to me, thanks a lot for that. In both cases I again didn’t feel like I was being sold on anything, just tech people nerding out about tech and I loved it.
I also liked the organization of the whole event, these cinema rooms really helped to give the whole thing a chill atmosphere - it never felt like giving or receiving a lecture, more like hanging out and telling stories.
If I had to critize anything it would probably be the dinner where instead of taking peoples names the waiters would take your location with your order - so once you ordered you where not supposed to move around anymore. Especially for the context of a conference where you are supposed to talk to a lot of different people this seemed like a rather odd decision. Perhaps it was an attempt at Chaos Engineering?
Overall an amazing event and I was really happy with my experience speaking in public on a tech conference.