My experience in Socracan 2020

At the beginning of February I had the opportunitty to attend the Socracan (Socrates Canaries) that this year was held in the south of Tenerife at the ITER (Instituto Tecnológico y de energías renovables). In this post, besides explaining a bit about the Socrates (Software Crafters and Testers Conference), I would also like to tell my experience about the event. First of all I want to thank Carlos, Dácil and all the Lean Mind team for giving me the opportunitty to attend the event and share this experience with them. I would also like to congratulate the organization team of this event for the excellent job they did to make sure everything went very well. They did a great job and it was reflected throughout the event.

Socrates is an event attended by people from all over the world who care about software quality and testing. It is an event where you learn and share with others. There are discussion groups about some topics and people can make presentations and as usual, informal conversations arise. There isn't a schedule and no speakers are defined before the event starts. Proposal are presented during the event in the morning and voted on by the participants immediately afterwards. It follows an Open Space format, in which attendees propose specific topics and then vote to decide which topics will be presented. Topics can be held simultaneously and attendees decide which sessions they want to attend and can also change meetings at any time.

It was the first time I attended the Socracan. I have met colleagues and it has allowed me to meet great professionals. It is very exciting to meet such motivated people with different profiles within the software industry. In any conversation you joined, you could always learn something from the oher person.

One thing that is very normal to happen is that you are interested in several talks, but those talks are held at the same time. In my case what I did was to talk with a colleague who was going to attend the talk that I could not go to and then we both put together the notes we had taken or explain what we had learned.

Being an event attended by people from different parts of the world, the talks were in English and the communication with other people was mostly in English as well. In my case, depending on what I wanted to say, it was a bit difficult for me to express myself in English with my colleagues. Explain a topic in another language such as English, at least for me is still difficult and in this event I didn't do it. But little by little. Next time I hope to be more prepared to do it.

This event lasted a couple of days and I had the opportunity to stay in the ITER facilities with colleagues and people who had come from different countries. After the dinners we used to meet most of us to talk, do katas, play games, dance or even sing karaoke. Those moments allow you to connect with people you might not have talked to before because you hadn't had the chance and they can give you a lot.

For me it has been an experience that I won't forget and that if possible I will try to repeat next year. Once again, many thanks to everyone who made this event possible and to all the people who participated.