CITCON 2024, Zagreb, Croatia

The essence of CITCON. People sitting in circles, talking to each other.

Introduction

This was the seventh time I went to CITCON. It’s one of the best conferences. It’s as much about the official content as it is about the hallway track and the events before and after the conference.

During CITCON Berlin in late 2023 I was talking with Zoran Regvart about trying to organize the conference in Zagreb. (The conference was in Zagreb in 2014.) I had some previous obligations for at least the first half of 2024. I thought about organizing it in late 2024 or even 2025. Zoran was very interested in getting the conference to Zagreb, so he did all the hard work of finding the venue and sponsors. So, I got what I wanted. CITCON in Zagreb. In addition, I didn’t need to do any work. Zoran (and others) did it all.

Wednesday

The conference started for me with dinner. The organizers met for dinner on Wednesday evening. (I wasn’t one of the organizers, I just had dinner with them.) Getting a few hours of social time with such an interesting group is one of the great parts of going to the conference.

Friday

Pre-Conference

Since I wanted more social time with people from the conference, I organized a run on Friday morning. It was a very small group, just the two of us, but it was great to get some exercise and to socialize at the same time.

Conference

The conference starts with introductions and attendees proposing sessions. As usual, I proposed a few sessions (this time five) and one of them got enough votes to be scheduled for Saturday.

Saturday

Saturday is the main event of the conference. Sessions that get enough votes on Friday are scheduled for Saturday. Each session lasts an hour. There are usually four of five sessions happening in parallel.

Pre-Conference

Saturday morning started with a run. Another local attendee organized a sightseeing run downtown. A small group of us, five or six, met early in the morning and spent some time running around, sightseeing and socializing.

Session 1

I started the day with IIs YAML Evil? session. It was an interesting discussion in a small group. I have opinions on yaml, and so do other people. I got bored after about 30 minutes and moved on to another session.

The next one I attended was Failure Stories That Became Success or Not. It was a bigger group, but it didn’t catch my attention so I moved on.

The final session of the first time-slot I attended was What Standard/Best Practice Did You/Your Team Stop Doing? What Happened?. It was a smaller group. The discussion was mostly about remote work.

Session 2

I went to Switching From Selenium to Playwright or Similar Tool session. It was a small group but it was so interesting that I stayed there for the entire session. (That doesn’t happen often.) We discussed various advantages and disadvantages of Selenium and similar tools. The summary is that all tools get the job done. Which tool you pick is a matter of preference. Moving to another tool requires a big investment once you have a test suite of a certain size.

Lunch

Lunch was great. Lunch break is long, so after getting some food, I set up a table with various dark chocolates (50% to 95% cocoa) and led a simple tasting session for a few small groups. (It sounds way more formal than it actually was.)

Session 3

I visited a few sessions. Is Code Quality Actually Important? and Platform Engineering sessions were meh. One session was a live podcast recording. I arrived too late and the door was closed. I guess they didn’t want a lot of doors opening and closing in the recording. (I learned after the conference that it was the Tactics for Tech Leadership Podcast, but no podcast was recorded.)

I ended up in the Tools for Productivity session. A fun thing sometimes happens at the conference. The session was scheduled, but nobody appeared. Near the end of the session time a few of us didn’t like other sessions and ended up starting the session. It was a pretty good session, especially considering it was very short.

A few tools were mentioned:

• Notion
• Obsidian
• Roam Research

One book was recommended:

• Make It Stick

Session 4

The penultimate session I went to was Content Creation. It was a very good conversation, mostly about podcasting.

People involved in creating a couple of podcasts were there:

• 0800-DEVOPS
• Troubleshooting Agile

Session 5

The final session was also a lot of fun. One of my proposals got enough votes, so I was leading the Hyperactive Hive Mind session. It was mostly about personal productivity.

I recommended a few Cal Newport’s books (as I frequently do):

• Deep Work: Rules for Focused Success in a Distracted World (2016)
• Digital Minimalism: Choosing a Focused Life in a Noisy World (2019)
• So Good They Can’t Ignore You: Why Skills Trump Passion in the Quest for Work You Love (2012)

Closing

During the closing session people mention their Aha! Moment. I was pleasantly surprised when a few people mentioned dark chocolate tasting and Hyperactive Hive Mind.

Looks like I missed a couple of really popular sessions, one about cats (it was during lunch, I was busy with dark chocolate) and Prediction Markets.

During the closing session, I’ve realized that CITCON is the place where I first hear about the next big thing. For a while, it was continuous integration (CI) but these days it’s very much about artificial intelligence (AI).

Post-Conference

About half of the attendees went to dinner after the conference. While waiting for dinner I played a few games of chess with Karlo Šmid. (There was way more chess in Berlin.) It was great to spend some time relaxing and just casually talking after an exciting conference.

I have learned after the conference that besides already mentioned three podcasts, a couple of regular attendees of the conference have published a book, Agile Conversations.

Conclusion

I really like CITCON. I plan to go to the next one, if possible. I hope it returns to Zagreb in the future, for the third time.