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Explore DDD 2017 Review

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I just returned from Denver, Colorado, where the first Explore DDD conference was held.  I originally heard about it earlier in the year on Twitter via the organizer Paul Rayner and decided to submit a couple abstracts for the CFP.

Fat Controller CQRS Diet

The talk that was accepted and which I delivered on Friday morning was my Fat Controller CQRS Diet talk.  The talk revolves around trying to decouple your application from top I/O layer or framework.  More info on the talk can be found in my series of blog posts as well as a episode of Software Engineering Daily podcast.

Domain Driven Design

I stumbled upon Domain Driven Design somewhere around 2010.  I actually found it because of watching a talk online from Greg Young making some indirect references to Domain Driven Design and CQRS.  The talk caught my interest and within no time I was captivated by DDD and CQRS.  I instantly went and purchased the book.  That was a very significant point in my software development career.

Explore DDD

The speaker lineup at this conference was simply incredible.  Eric Evans, Rebecca Wirfs-Brock and Ward Cunningham were the keynotes.  Crazy. I cannot really believe that I was chosen to speak at such a conference. Imposter Syndrome was maxed out to 11. It didn’t take too long to have some conversations at the conference to realize that I had different experiences and views that proved to be valuable.  This didn’t knock down the imposter syndrome completely, but definitely lowered it a just a tad.  On the other hand, the amount that I learned from discussions and talks were like no other conference.

Community/Family

This really summed it for me.  There was a real sense of community/family.  I can’t really put my finger on why that is but I have a few guesses.

Conference Space/Location

Incredible.  38th Floor of the Grand Hyatt, looking over downtown Denver.  The floor itself was broken down into 3 track rooms, general gathering room where food was served, as well as a unique blue track room.  The blue track was reserved for spontaneous modeling, discussions, problem solving, whatever.  I actually had several interesting discuss here and it was kind of a good place for the “hallway” track in some respects.

Paul Rayner

The conference kicked off on Wednesday evening with the keynote by Eric Evans.  Paul spoke to intro the conference as well as each day with some house keeping notes.  I felt the way Paul gave such a calm welcoming, really set a tone for the entire conference.

Thank You!

Hands down an awesome conference.   Thank you to Paul for organizing an incredible event and selecting my talk.  All the attendees and speakers (from all over the world!) for making it feel like a family. I highly recommend attending this next year.  I hope to see you there!

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