Organizing the “first born” of IT Talks @ TVH: an excited journey

One thing I really love about our Digital Delivery Manager, Ann Mattheeuws, is how she approaches things direct and comes straight to the point. About the organization of the IT event, she just came to me: “Come on, this is something just for you.” When I asked her about the reason why, she answered: “Well, I’ve been to your baby shower, and that was so well organized.” I can tell you that organizing a party for friends and family and a professional event for IT people is slightly different. Without having some moment to think about it, she already dragged me to the first meeting with some stakeholders, where I just needed to dive into the deep. And so the excited journey began..

But where to get started, when you don’t need to buy baby decorations, blow balloons and bake cakes? So completely out of my comfort zone, I started looking for people who want to share their knowledge and which other people would want to listen to. But what kind of topics will be interesting for the people we are hosting, and what kind of people do we want to host? Getting started was hard, and it took me a while to get in touch with the right people. The deadline was set to tight, and it was really a relief when it was pushed back with a month. With that extra breathing space, we were on a roll, and we just went hard! So hard and passionate, and when the number of people registered for the event went through the roof, it already felt rewarding.

And then it finally came to it, the IT Talks event, the first born. You can only make a first impression once, but we just nailed it. Andreas Evers from Pivotal talked about transforming monoliths, Mathias Verraes from DDD Europe introduced us into Domain Driven Development. We hosted more inspiring internal and external speakers, and covered a with range of tracks: Frontend, Backend, Architecture and Infrastructure. After those weighty talks, we ended up lightly with some comedy.

The atmosphere was so great, only smiling faces. It’s possible that the great beers had something to do with that though.. TVH people got to show how passionate they are about IT. Even Dominiek Valcke, CEO of TVH Parts, thought the same; “IT Talks has put TVH on the map in the IT community in Belgium (and maybe beyond ;))”.

All the hard work and accumulated stress, just to come to that grand finale, the evening of the event. But when I compare this to developing software, it gives you a higher level of fulfillment. You get to work on the project from beginning to end, get in touch with a lot of (new) people, and in the end, you get respect for the work you’ve done. Not that I never get that from a piece of software, but when it’s delivered to the customers, it’s harder to estimate that level of success.

What really surprised me was that I felt down about a week after the event. Just like having the baby blues. So I guess that makes the comparison match. Also doing the cake thing, for showing how thankful I am towards my colleagues. So please, can I start organizing the second edition soon? I guess it’s that, or having another baby..

By: Marieke Vandamme, Senior Software Engineer