I'm sitting at the TelAviv airport waiting to board my flight. My ridiculously long flight that will see me going through the following airports: TLV-> CDG->LHR->GLA. All in all, it will take me over 14 hours for what should have been only 6 hours. Was it worth it? It was and then some more.
This year I was fortunate to get an invite to speak at CodeMotion Tel Aviv. I missed my chance to make it at the Italian CodeMotion but I didn't care that much. I don't have any friends in Italy. On the other hand, I have loads in Israel. It was also a great opportunity to escape the -2C in Glasgow and spend a day in the sun and 20C. It was a surreal feeling in the middle of winter.
But this was not just a social visit even though thoroughly enjoyed the social aspect of catching up with friends and also making new ones! This was my last talk for 2015 and I felt it was a special one. I felt that I came a long way since I started public speaking a year ago. But this is only the beginning and there is a lot more work to improve and grow as a speaker. So, I came to Tel Aviv to talk, once again, about open source and, hopefully along the way, inspire a few developers to join the Open Source community. The conference was held in a cinema multiplex and my room was massive. The screen was even bigger and I'm glad I followed the organiser's suggestions to use a light background. Dark slides don't work well in a dark room (or any room for that matter).
My talk was right after lunch so on top of making sure I conveyed the right message, I also had the added challenge to keep everyone awake. I think I managed both. I got the audience's engagement early on and I even got a few laughs throughout the talk All in all, I think it went well but the participant feedback will be the final verdict. You can find the slide from my talk here:
http://www.slideshare.net/christosmatskas/how-to-become-an-awesome-oss
The conference was very well organized and I have to give it to Ofir for ensuring everyone made to the conference on time. However, I think that keeping all the speakers together in the same location would have been much easier in terms of logistics. The catering was also excellent and I enjoyed the local cuisine. If there was one thing that I would change was the microphone. Although not a dealbreaker or impediment in any way, I like to have my hands free. This time, I had my slide clicker on one hand and the microphone on the other, so it was a handfull (see what I did there?). Not that it stopped me from delivering my talk.
I would have to give special thanks to Sebastian (@serialseb) and Igal (@hmemcpy) for being in the audience and cheering from time to time :) Also special thanks to the organisers for having me and making sure the event and my talk run smoothly.
Finally, I shouldn't forget Gil (@gilfink), Shay (@ironshay), Omer (@omerraviv) and Ariel (@arielBH) and Shai (@shai_reznik) for their excellent company, breakfast, lunch and dinner and for making my stay, no matter how short, a memorable experience. Until next time, thank you CodeMotionTLV for having me and thank you Israel for the warm welcoming.