My first conference!

So, React India conf ended a couple of weeks ago as I write this, but what I experienced is to be cherished forever. I am still overwhelmed, hoping that writing about it makes me sober 😛

Also, if you have not watched the Hotstar special at React India, check it out here

and DO NOT, I repeat DO NOT miss out on the entry if you are a true bollywood fan 🙈

So this all began with me asking my EM, “I want to attend the conference. Can you help me with the passes?” To this, he casually replied, “Give a talk there, easy peasy”. I was wondering - Give a talk. Me. At an international tech conference. Easy Peasy. Okay he must be definitely kidding. A little disclaimer about me here, I have been around amazing folks since the beginning of my career and I don’t know lots of things so I was muddled whether I would be able to present something that would make sense and am I the right person to do so, because I am a very tiny contributor to what we are gonna talk about.

But with this blog and the video, you must have figured it out that I made it to the conf. So, cutting short these dilemmas to the conf week, I and my colleagues had already outlined the content we wanted to present by now, we had worked on the slides as well. Ours was the last day, last talk and we(I and my co speaker) were arriving a day before the conf, which meant we had sufficient time to practise, coordinate, and do dry runs. Right?
Oh, I wish. This was a myth. The moment I stepped in Goa, I started meeting folks from the airport itself, and the talks continued to happen - at the venue in the day, in the night, in the conference hall, in the workshops, in the garden, on the beach, in the lobby area, on the booths, during the meals, off the breaks - Basically it just went on. And it was only until two hours before the talk we realised, ouch, we need to be at least somewhat prepared. And with 1.5 dry runs and lots of esteem, we did it.

Key Takeaways -

• Of course lots of goodies 😛

• Lots of things to flaunt about - meeting and spending time with tech celebrities 🙈

But majorly -

• Give things a shot - Do not be hesitant to ask for what you want even in professional settings (life in general as well) You are either way not getting it, but you might get it, if you ask for it. I from sharing the interest of attending the conf, to actually speaking at it - classic example here!

• You don’t need to know it all to be an awesome techie. You just need to know how to figure things out. Ask the right questions to you and folks around and chase for the answers.

• Go, talk to folks around. You get some useful insights and ideas about where you have been moving in circles.

• It can be an eye-opener, a turning point for you as you get highly pumped to contribute to the community.(by any means - open source, blogs, podcasts, videos, tweets - me beginning with writing this)

• Be humble. Dance your way to celebrating tech and life in general. Enjoy every bit of your journey.