Dev8D: Five minutes with Tom Fallon

Feb 14, 2012 by michelle-pauli

“It’s not intimidating at all!” says Tom Fallon, third year student at Manchester Metropolitan University, having been inspired to come to Dev8D for the first time after a great experience at the event’s little sister, DevXS

Why are you are Dev8D?

I found DevXS to be interesting and when I heard about this being a post-grad developer conference I thought it would be really interesting as it would be full of people who were more experienced in the industry. I really enjoyed DevXS because of the environment – the competition was very tense but it was good because everyone was really into what they were doing in every field and it was great seeing other people’s projects and skills.

When Chris Gutteridge did a lightning talk he mentioned RDF, we got talking afterwards and basically he helped me with what I should be doing next. We emailed after the event and he gave me advice on where to look within the RDF world for what I wanted to do with my third year project.

How have found Dev8D so far?

It’s less about competition and more about the experience of seeing what others in the industry are doing and what their knowledge base is and, especially collectively, what people are doing now and what skills are emerging now.

What are you looking forward to?

I’m looking forward to learning more about web development such as HTML 5.

How’s Dev8D for a first timer?

It’s friendly but at my university a lot of people didn’t want to come because they felt that their knowledge would be dwarfed and they would look stupid in comparison to people who had been in the industry for many years. Because I’ve been to DevXS I knew that it would be a friendly atmosphere. The emphasis needs to be on the fact that although it’s a post-grad event, even if you’re a student as along as you’ve got an interest it doesn’t matter that you have less experience and you’ll always be able to take something away from the event. It isn’t intimidating at all!

What do you think you will take back to your studies?

Based on just the one talk so far I’ve been able to start using HTML 5 and I might use that in my masters project.