Dev8D: Meet the organisers: Ben O’Steen

Feb 14, 2012 by michelle-pauli

Ben O’Steen, coordinator of Dev8D’s open sessions, explains the concept and argues that “nowadays a developer is only really as good as his network of friends”

What’s your role at Dev8D?

I’m a freelance developer and in charge of open sessions and lightning talks at Dev8d

What does that involve?

We’re doing something different this time. Normally people come in and they’re a bit unsure or tired to begin with and they just want to absorb information. Over the course of the day they start to realise what sessions they want to happen or that they would like to run.

So the plan this year is to we start with something formal and then go into something more loose and flexible. We start with the sessions we think people want and end with the sessions we know they want.

How does that work?

The people that feel that they want to run a session put up information about it – just on a pinboard on the wall – and anyone who is interested in that talk puts a dot next to it – we call it dotmocracy. By the end of the day we’ve got a good idea what people want to attend

That’s the Can Do element, but we also have Do Want – if you want to know something but do not know who to ask then you also put it up there on the wall and we will find someone who can run that sessions. It may not happen the same day but we will try to make them all happen by the end of the three days.

You’re very busy putting work into Dev8D but what do you also hope to get out of it?

Meeting new people, learning about things I didn’t know existed, the open flow of the open sessions – where you do not know what’s going to turn up but it will be interesting.

You’re an old timer now at Dev8D – how do you think it has changed and evolved over the past few years?

People know what to expect now from the event and we have a better idea of what is best for the schedule for the day – how to suit the people who generally turn up. Every year we get a lot of people who have come before and may 30-40% who have never been before. We’re trying harder to welcome the newbies and one new thing we’re trying is to make the lunchtime two hours long and that is focused on getting people who do not know each other to meet and get to know each other, to make new friends. Nowadays a developer is only really as good as his network of friends.