I’ve participated in several tech panels this year, and here’s a rundown of some key takeaways.
Infobip Shift – Red Hat Open Source Panel
The folks at Red Hat hosted a side event at Infobip Shift to talk about the “role of open source in enterprise organizations”. Panel roster included Ivan Brezak Brkan, Kevin Dubois, Manuel Hahn and myself.
We dove into some classic, but crucial topics – how to sustainably fund open source projects, security concerns when using open-source libraries, and the ever-elusive quest to “future-proof” IT projects. Given the way third-party components can be abandoned or even hijacked, these conversations are more relevant than ever. Too bad we missed the juicy WPEngine vs. Matt Mullenweg drama by a month; it would’ve given us a lot more to chew on…
In short, the current WP drama is showing all of this problems at once (again) and it doesn’t help our enterprise adoption that two of the most prominent web players are fighting to death. Couple of conclusions from the panel:
- Enterprises need to empower their developers to build and maintain their own open-source tools. Not just to give back to the community, but to flex their internal open-source muscles.
- An easy win for enterprises to support open-source? Donations to foundations and sponsoring community events.
- Corporations must educate themselves on the realities of open-source. There are so many myths floating around that you could fill up entire zoom rooms with them. Here’s more on this > Why WordPress and Open Source Applications are a Great Solution for Government Online Projects
- Conference Link: https://shift.infobip.com/
- Photos: https://www.flickr.com/photos/shiftsplit/albums/
Digital Labin – Is the Tech Crisis a New Opportunity?
Digital Labin’s growing steadily, with around 900 attendees from across the IT spectrum – developers, designers, PMs, and content creators. Our panel, “Is the Tech Crisis a New Opportunity” had a full house, with seasoned speakers like Antonio Perić Mažar, Domagoj Ostović, Mateo Perak, Martin Morava, and myself. We had a bit of fun reminiscing about the IT “golden days” (spoiler: they’re not coming back), but we tackled some real issues too. Here are the highlights:
- This isn’t our first crisis, nor will it be the last.
- Previous crises, like the 2009-2012 financial meltdown, or even COVID, hit tech harder than today’s situation.
- Today’s “tech crisis” stems from the deflation of pandemic-driven expectations. Interest rates are up, investments are down, and startups are feeling the squeeze. This has created a developer surplus, which is driving down salaries across the IT service sector.
- Case in point, Neuralab is receiving five times the job applications compared to pre-pandemic times. Employer branding may be easier now, but business development? Not so much.
- Conference Link: https://digital-labin.com/
- Photos: Google Drive Download
Web3 Tales Conference – Real World Asset Tokenization
If there’s one tech space still buzzing with that DIY, hacker-garage energy, it’s Web3, and the Web3 Tales conference confirmed it. While the conference wasn’t purely for developers, the talks skewed toward regulatory, FinTech, and eye-opening enterprise topics (you could for instance observe that all modern banks have a web3 project running through their org – where RBA had a great example and talk)
Anton Golub, Marina Markezić, Morana Jerković and myself spoke about tokenizing real-world assets (RWA) – a concept as old as the Bitcoin whitepaper itself. A few key points from our discussion:
- Some still advocate for private blockchains, but honestly, reinventing the SQL wheel doesn’t make sense in 2024. If you’re in Web3, public blockchains are where the real innovation and value is.
- Stablecoins like USDC and USDT are becoming Web3’s killer app, proving that non-Web3 assets can be tokenized and managed on-chain.
- I also pointed out that RWA is basically used as new buzzword as the industry needed a new thing that will replace NFTs (which reputation was tarnished during the covid-era). This is a shame as NFT’s are just a non-fungible token concept – which in turn is a root stone for all RWA work.
- Conference Link: https://web3tales.io/
- Photos: https://www.flickr.com/photos/201617327@N07/
Game Changer Zagreb – Modern Video Content in eCommerce
The GameChanger event has a refreshingly new format – panels only, with a diverse range of speakers from all sorts of backgrounds. This leads to some pretty fascinating discussions.
One example – there was a panel where speakers talked about Gen AI as this technology is increasingly human, extremely anthropomorphizing the whole stack; which I wrote earlier is a big problem. Now, kudos to Davor Aničić for successfully bringing the GenAI hype down to earth, explaining nicely that it’s just software on a disk, i.e., a next-token predictor. It seems like it was necessary for someone to actually say it because we’re already entering an era where speaking against AI is becoming some sort of blasphemy – as can be seen by the Nobel Prize 😬
Our panel was, on the other hand, focused on more down to earth content problems – What’s the role of a video content in modern eCommerce projects. The panel team was comprised of: Alen Ćorković, Ivan Andabak, Sven Hamzić, Dino Oreški and myself. Couple of notes:
- Video – unlike text, illustrations or images – is an unforgiving format. You need to think about scripts, actors, faces, products, props, lighting, cameras and editing – all while in the same time keeping in mind the whole point of this content and its storytelling arc. Keep in mind that storytelling bets any other video production item.
- Interactive content is not a silver bullet that will resolve all of your online business problems – it’s just one tool in your digital utility belt.
- Video usage should strictly depend on the business plan > marketing plan > and then finally content mix plan. Ignoring any of these steps will lead to extensive budget expenditures and missed content opportunities.
- Conference Link: https://gamechanger.hr/
- Photos: TBD
Finishing thoughts
What struck me most about these Croatian tech events is how tech is still in its infancy here. We’re seeing better content, growing attendance, and an increasing diversity of topics, with events merging business, design, and engineering into multi-track sessions. It’s a solid and needed approach to tackling modern tech problems.
And here’s a quirky, almost profound observation: despite all this groundbreaking technology, business cards are still being handed out like it’s the ’90s! 🤷