33rd Degree in Poland

I made it! I went to Poland for the first time – sorry I should have said, I went to Krakow. Krakow is a lovely city with lots of beautiful old buildings that survived wars and various occupations. Great people that were born in Krakow or are linked to Krakow include Oskar Schindler, Jean-Paul II, Mikołaj Kopernik (better known as Nicolas Copernicus), Helena Rubinstein, Roman Polanski and many, many more. Unfortunately Krakow is very close to Auschwitz and I must admit that disturbed me. I cannot yet cope with the atrocities and the commercial side of it. I would have loved to visit the Schindler Museum as for me he represented goodness and hope in these awful times.So maybe next year, if I am invited to the 33rd Degree conference.

The 33rd Degree Conference – that’s what I was supposed to talk about. Named the 33rd Degree conference by the organizer, Grzegorz Duda, after reading “The Lost Symbol” by Dan Brown who describes the Scottish Freemason Rite or the highest degree one can attain, it is no doubt the conference for Java Masters.

It was good meeting some of our authors including Pragmatic Bookshelf people – Neal Ford, Ted Neward (who by the way does not wear a name tag), Michael Nygard, Venkat Subramaniam. Out of the 59 talks and 5 workshops, there were only 3 talks in Polish and the rest were in English. This explains why people came from Germany, the Czech Republic, Ukraine, Slovakia, Estonia, UK, Switzerland, Finland, Israel, and even 2 from India. Altogether there were 380 delegates – a great achievement for a first conference!

When I asked Grzegorz if he intends to repeat the conference in 2012, his answer is:
“For sure!!!” due to lots of feedback like “It was the best conference I have ever been [to]” and “no need to go to Devoxx, to learn from top speakers”.

See you in 2012 in Krakow!