4th DeafIT Conference on 10./11. November 2017 in Frankfurt am Main

Report 2017

4th DeafIT Conference on 10./11. November 2017 in Frankfurt am Main

DeafIT Conference 2017: The participants

In the "German business capitol" - Frankfurt am Main - the 4th DeafIT Conference was conducted after the three preceding conferences in Munich, Nuremberg and Hamburg.

We may welcome not only the many participants from Germany and Austria but the first time one from Switzerland and the hearing people at the conference of this year.

DeafIT Conference 2017: DeafIT Founder Tobias Burz

Tobias Burz, Founder and Pionier of the DeafIT Conference, sent many thanks especially to the Premium Sponsor Techdata during his welcome and introduction. He is glad that the interest for the great conference is still great although there are many schedule conflicts of other events in germany. About 50% of these participants have registered the first time.

At the DeafIT conference topics were presented: DevOps, Software Development and UX (User Experience).

The lectures on these topics were varied and of the highest standard, so that each participant could take a lot of them with great interest for their own needs and professional activities.

DeafIT Conference 2017: DeafIT team mit the Premium sponsor TechData

On Friday afternoon, the conference started with two lectures "IBM Bluemix - of how to realize an app idea in the cloud" by Harald Uebele "TechData) and "Digital Experiences and the new variety" by Jo Spelbrink.

DeafIT: Right in the picture: Harald Uebele (TechData) with the lecture about IBM Bluemix — Right in the picture: Harald Uebele (TechData) with the lecture about IBM Bluemix

Although these two lectures have different topics, the similarities between the use and development of the cloud apps and the challenges, experiences and possible solutions of the content management for a wide variety of enduser devices were able to identify similarities.

DeafIT: Jo Spelbrink „Digital Experiences and the new variety“ — Jo Spelbrink „Digital Experiences and the new variety“

Jo Spelbrink's talk was a cheery discussion between Jo and the audience, which brought a very relaxed mood.

DeafIT: gettogether with dinner — gettogether with dinner

This atmosphere was continued in the evening at the annual "gettogether", in the restaurant "Ong Tao", where all visitors got to know each other better and could exchange their experiences about their work but also talk outside the working world. The following Saturday, it continued with many lectures and topics from the main topics in the information and technology industry.

The first lecture started with the keynote "Technology". Matthias Stommel, the IT businessman and industrial engineer at CryptoTec AG, was on the subject of "Blockchain - What is it? What can she do? Why the hype? "And showed here what is behind this technology and its development. He is convinced that blockchain technology has tremendous potential to revolutionize many industries, especially the financial industry. For example, third parties, e.g. provide banking services between end users, be made redundant by Blockchain. Nepomuk Seiler, the software engineer from gutefrage.net GmbH, talked about his experiences from two years of development on the "master branch" and a "continuous deployment" infrastructure, in which every commit goes live. Here, questions and solutions were shown: How does development work? How are code reviews done? What happens in case of error? In what kind of work environment is this possible? He pointed out that for Continuous Deployment, as with any other release strategy, risks and benefits must be weighed in which he could explain various types of failures in concrete events.

DeafIT: Left: Matthias Stommel with Blockchain - Right: Nepomuk Seiler with „master branch“ und „continuous deployment“ — Left: Matthias Stommel with Blockchain * Right: Nepomuk Seiler with„master branch“ und „continuous deployment“

The topic "Digital Business Process Management - What is Business Process Management (BPM)?" Was presented by Leif Möhr, Senior SQA Engineer at Kofax. He compared BPM with Industry 4.0 and demonstrated the use and advantages of digital BPM as an example in the various areas and their use in OCR (input), database (Process), Process (Process / Output) process. Bettina Schmolla, SAP HCM senior consultant at Atos, then reported on the importance and influence of various Unicode procedures for program development in Germany and abroad.

DeafIT: Left: Leif Möhr with Business Process Management (BPM) - Right: Bettina Schmolla with Unicode — Left: Leif Möhr with Business Process Management (BPM) * Right: Bettina Schmolla with Unicode

During the two-hour lunch break at a rich and varied buffet, the participants could exchange ideas and get to know each other even better. For this they were able to visit the sponsor stands of OpenMind IT Training, Workplace and Deutsche Gehörlosenzeitung in the foyer and obtain information in discussions.

A lecture on "GraphQL - The better alternative to RESTful API?" By Fabian Spillner, Software Engineer of gutefrage.net GmbH aroused the interest of the participants since this programming language was only published for 2 years by Facebook and has quickly gained popularity. Fabian introduced GraphQL as an alternative to REST API, proving that GraphQL could promise faster applications and better developer experience over REST.

DeafIT: Left: Fabian Spillner with GraphQL * Right: Jörn Koch with Delegs project — Left: Fabian Spillner with GraphQL * Right: Jörn Koch with Delegs project

In last year's lecture on the Delegs project, the project leaders were able to prove that there is a written language for sign language that gives users the opportunity to learn, write and read the sign language. At this year's lecture, Jörn Koch, senior software architect at WPS, showed a further development of the new architecture of the delegs editor and an outlook on the follow-up project with the topics gamification and open source. For this follow-up project, they are looking for the first time two deaf / hearing impaired software developers and Jörn Koch asked the participants for applications and the DeafIT team to publish the vacancy. They also plan to make the delegate code permanently available to the (deaf) developer community.

After the subsequent coffee break, all participants came together to two other topics.

Florian Erfurth reported on his experience in applying for the job as IT manager at various companies and gave the participants valuable tips and advice. He encouraged them to apply for appropriate leadership positions. The last speaker was Vincent Rothländer, freelancer and former Sopra Steria Consulting consultant, with the keynote software development on "What is Microsoft AI and what can it do?". He demonstrated to participants the tremendous power of Artificial Intelligence (AI) services provided by Microsoft AI (Artificial Intelligence). This can shorten development times and simplify the effort for developers and data scientists.

DeafIT: Left: Florian Erfurth with experiences in job applying * Right: Vincent Rothländer with Microsoft AI — Left: Florian Erfurth with experiences in job applying * Right: Vincent Rothländer with Microsoft AI

The final round unanimously decided on a fixed date on the second weekend in November, during which the DeafIT Conferences will take place every year. This ensures that everyone then knows exactly when the conference will take place and thus everyone can make an appointment in advance in their own calendar.

The interesting DeafIT participants and Sign language interpreters

Tobias Burz announces Munich as the next location for the DeafIT Conference 2018 and the publication of information in the DeafIT website by February 2018 at the latest.

The feedback in the survey was far more positive than in previous years, which was probably due to the more professional environment, food and service in the conference hotel. Also, the participants liked the very good interpreting assignments (written interpreters and sign language interpreters).

There were some wishes below that we do not want to withhold here: the lectures should contain more different topics and therefore be shorter. Likewise, there should be the opportunity to exchange more information with each other outside the lectures and to provide more company stands.

The DeafIT team would like to sincerely thank all sponsors for the great support of this conference, the sign language interpreters and the localized interpreters, who have done outstanding translations, and the participants, without whom the great conference would not have been successful.

See you next year in 2018 again!

Your DeafIT team

Text: Tobias Burz
Pictures: DeafIT

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