Confoo 2024

Con-foo ?

Since 2010, Montreal has been hosting Confoo, which features over 150 presentations by international speakers from all walks of life; startups, large companies, independent consultants, everyone has a wealth of enriching experience to share.

A True Knowledge Feast

The variety of topics is there. This year, we had the pleasure of attending conferences on career paths and advancement, management, architecture, AI, accessibility, web technologies, Big Data, UX & UI, and so on, in short, everything that Libéo might encounter in the development of our projects.

It is also an opportunity to meet former colleagues, learn more about new companies or new products. The collaboration spaces and the Confoo partners’ booths were waiting for us to talk about their offers, give away some swag, and get discovered. There were also giants of the Open-Source web like SensioLabs, which is responsible for the Symfony suite.

AI, Again and Always AI.

Obviously, this year again, artificial intelligence was on everyone’s lips from start to finish. However, the tone had indeed changed since last year. In 2023, there was a bit more reassurance following the arrival of ChatGPT. Is the developer’s job in jeopardy? Will artificial intelligence make the programmer’s job obsolete? The answer was quite categorical at that time: no. On the contrary, AI has become a leading tool for today’s developers. It was, therefore, a very popular topic: Chatbots, Copilot, AI & SQL, Machine Learning, more than fifteen conferences managed to put AI in the forefront, filling our heads with new ideas while motivating us to refine the use of these powerful tools.

Large-Scale Enterprise Problems

The wide variety of speakers on-site also gives us an idea of the challenges faced in large service companies, which can have several million users as clients.

Optimization techniques, security, deployment methods, team management, product management, all facets of development projects face significant challenges when deployed on a very, very large scale.

These are shared experiences that pique our curiosity, make us question ourselves, bringing new considerations when we work on our projects at Libéo. The lessons learned can thus be useful to us every day, making our achievements always more solid and our management methods always more efficient.

Refining Skills or Learning Something New!

With the range of conferences offered at Confoo, choices have to be made. Do I want to learn a little more about a subject I know, or do I dive into something new and unknown?

After a few years of attending Confoo, I find that the strength of the conferences offered most often lies in those that address a subject unknown to me or that bring a new angle. Given the time allotted per time slot, speakers don’t really have time to talk in great detail or depth. Therefore, it often happens that topics are only touched upon at a high level.

This is where different and unknown subjects become interesting, as they offer a window into a new world. Who knows what it can trigger?

Let’s take a few examples from Confoo.

Marc-Olivier Fiset, CTO at Rum&Code, offered to share his knowledge and experience on the Elixir language, a language unknown to the “general public”. He was able to share his enthusiasm and passion for this technology.

Barry Stahl, Solution Architect at Carvana, presented us with optimization algorithms inspired by nature. Have you ever heard of optimization techniques of the firefly, ant colony, or bees?

Thank You, Confoo

The 2024 edition was another success, both in terms of participation and the quality of the conferences and speakers. The meetings during these three days have marked us, and we return with our heads full of ideas and a thirst for sharing with our dear colleagues. Thank you to Yan Larrivée for organizing another superb edition of Confoo. We obviously encourage you to participate in the coming years.