Drupal­con in Prague

About 1700 people registered for this year's Drupalcon. More than three times the number of people who attended the event in Szeged 5 years ago. I had an experience that made me want to give up my tie and leave the big company to create something new.

I don't know if this year's Drupalcon will bring any turnaround, but I do know that...

1. Prague is beautiful,
2. beer is a delicious drink,
3. it was helpful to come to the CxO day.

Eighty-five people attended today's CxO event. The whole point of the event was to give the big ones a space to challenge the little ones. The former was looking for talented suppliers, the latter for job opportunities. The first roundtable saw Europe split in two, and it became clear that everyone west of Switzerland had plenty of what everyone east of Hungary had little of.

HR vs. people

One of the American guys asked me if we call things about people HR here in Europe? I mean, it is about people; why should we call them resources? He answered pretty correctly as if Taylor hadn't timed the Model T assembly line at their place. Valid, 100 years have passed since then, and the mentality seems to have improved.

Then one of the Indian outsourcing CEOs was asked if they are already working agile, which also means that the developers are in direct contact with the customers, right? You know so that they can understand the business needs to do their job better, and maybe even enjoy what they do. Our man asked back that an IT company's most important business factors are the human assets-s, aren't they? We should protect them, shouldn't we? We were asked back that by an asset, you mean people. Pista, John, Géza...

Otherwise, the atmosphere was not half as bouncy, with faces being very understanding. The waterfall/agile issue was quite a hot topic all day; you could hear all sorts of things about it; one of the speakers, for example, was doing agile fall to the delight of the others. Then, when I brought up the concept of an agile contract, one of the British gentlemen stated that there was no solution to the fixed budget/agile problem. He had never seen anyone sign a contract that did not include scope and final amount. At least not on the western side of the European fault line.

I am once again convinced that

1. familiarity with software development methodologies is a significant comparative advantage that can be used to make things happen,
2. it's essential to choose your customers well; you need to excel in the market to be able to say no to opportunities that look attractive, so you can focus on relationships that work well,
3. most of the time, it's not the speakers you should be networking with.
4. In the light of the above, being subsumed under the big players that dominate the market risks losing freedom, degrading the people in your company into a resource, and you won't be able to enforce agile operations along with a waterfall contract. I'd instead stick with more minor, lesser-known players, being comfortable with the budget that comes with it so that it doesn't compromise people's freedom and the work experience.