.NET Conf UY v2017: DONE

Past week was the 4th edition of the biggest and most important community conference about Microsoft technologies in South America.
This is a non-profit we founded back in 2014 with a crazy idea to grow the Microsoft community in Uruguay and has now spread to Argentina and Colombia, with the vision to expand to Chile and Peru in 2018.

The numbers

More than 450 people registered for .NET Conf UY v2017. From those, 47% were Software Developers, followed by 18.5% IT students, the rest gets divided pretty equally between Software Architects, Team Leaders, Managers & Executives, Directors & Owners, and other functions.

This edition hosted 39 speakers from 4 different countries, 9 hands-on labs (workshops) on 3 days, 2 Keynotes about Microsoft innovation on Day 1 and about Women in Technology on Day 2, with 34 talks on 2 days of conference, total of 5 days of events ending with an After Party! So far, .NET Conf Global (which is the name we opted in 2017 as the umbrella organization of every edition) has hosted more than 130 speakers from 12 different countries, and more than 30 organizers and collaborators have put a lot of effort to deliver a total of 6 editions in 3 countries since 2014 supported by more than 120 sponsors from several parts of the world.

Some additional numbers about attendees:

• Only 5% don’t read neither speak English — considering Uruguay is a Spanish speaking country this is great!
• 41% have Professional Working English proficiency level.
• 45% have 6+ years of experience in the IT industry followed by a 22.5% of 3 to 5 years of experience.

Some thank you words

I would personally like to thank everyone involved in this including our great sponsors, every speaker, every attendee, every collaborator and of course: the great organizing team we have!

I also would like do a special recognition to the collaborators who work in Kaizen Softworks who have put the conference in their shoulders and push alongside us to make a great conference, they are: Brian Hardy, Bruno Giordano and Nicolas Bonora.

Hands-On Labs (Workshops)

The conference always starts with Hands-On Labs (HOL), this time we had 9 workshops splitted between 3 days, 3 workshops per day. The location was the education institute from one of our sponsors, Cultural Alliance Uruguay-United States. We had 2 hours HOL about .NET Standard, Azure, Xamarin, Progressive Web Apps, Microservices, Power BI, SQL Server and more!

Conference

34 talks including 2 Keynotes in 2 days of conference was a Big Mac of tech information no developer should miss.

It all started with Eduardo Mangarelli keynoting about 4 innovation projects Microsoft has been working on, these were great examples where Microsoft technology is being applied and was excellent to inspire the audience to achieve more. Every talk and every speaker were awesome and some of the topics covered on Day 1 were: Data Science, Docker, Cognitive Services, Facial-Speech-Image recognition, Machine Learning, Microservices, Progressive Web Apps, Mobile Development, .NET Core and more.

Day 2 was another inspiring day that started with Carolina Bañales speaking about Women in Technology, a very important topic we always care about in our conference and she is a great example and loves to inspire others in this industry. Then we had many good speakers who delivered talks about: Azure Cosmos DB, Angular, ASP.NET Core, Chatbots, Big Data, DevOps, TypeScript, Infrastructure as Code, Open Source and more.

Sponsor Booths

Several sponsors opted to use the booth space they have as part of their sponsorship opportunities and companies who were GOLD sponsors like Kaizen Softworks enjoyed attendees coming to their booths to learn more about the company, participate in raffles like Kaizen who had a Fire 7 tablet, an Amazon Echo Dot and a Chromecast to raffle between participants and of course: participate in the main raffle of the whole conference which was 2 flight tickets to Rio de Janeiro thanks to TocTocViajes. How did they participate to win this amazing prize? Easy, every sponsor installed our official conference sponsor app and was able to scan the QR codes of attendees who installed our official conference attendee app (both apps available in iOS and Android). All attendees who had been scanned by every sponsor booth was a candidate to win the prize. This was a clever move to promote visiting every sponsor booth.

A raffle takes place at Kaizen Softworks booth:

Speaker Dinner

We love to take good care of our speakers and sponsors, that’s why at night on Day 1 of Conference we invite every speaker and GOLD sponsors to enjoy some food, music, fun and networking on a more private space. This time, Kaizen Softworks new office of 5900 sq ft was the place where we enjoyed typical food from Uruguay!

Selfie taken at the Speaker Dinner:

After Party

After 5 days packed of information and learning, we ended with a beautiful After Party where every attendee, sponsors, speakers, organizers and collaborators enjoyed and celebrated another fun conference! Food, drinks and music were part of this in the 26th floor of ANTEL Tower enjoying a 360 degree view of the city like no other.

Speaker Trip

We know our foreign speakers had traveled pretty far from home to come to our conference and we value that a lot. In order to make their long trip worth it we say thanks by spending one day with them showing the city and having lunch together.

Speakers enjoying a day off with the organizers. Taken at the Old City Gates in Montevideo, Uruguay:

Photos, Talk Videos anyone?

We record every single talk and have photos of every moment of the conference. Follow .NET Conf UY on YouTube, twitter and facebook and you will know when new talk videos are available.

What’s next?

This was another great conference, the 4th edition in Uruguay. A conference that was born here and inspired other communities in South America to have their own sister edition. Nowadays it is recognized as the biggest and most important community organized conference about Microsoft technologies in South America. We are more than happy with Argentina and Colombia who started their .NET Conf AR and .NET Conf CO this year with our help. Next year, Chile and Peru are in the roadmap. Who knows what else is waiting for us? I can’t wait for more challenges like this. See you at the next conf in who knows which country ;)