Monki Gras happened again! Though, in its Monki Gras 2015 incarnation, it acquired a heavy metal umlaut and a ‘slashed zero’ in its typeface; an allusion to its Nordic nature: Mönki Gras 2Ø15
What is Monki Gras?
Well…
So, how to explain #monkigras? Like TED but smaller, more random and with @monkchips in charge
— Paul Johnston (@PaulDJohnston) February 2, 2015
And Ricardo makes a good point, explaining why I, and others, just keep going back:
Back home from @monkigras. @redmonk has me completely spoiled as to what a conference is supposed to be like.
— Ricardo J. Méndez (@ArgesRic) January 31, 2015
There’s a single track of talks so you are saved the effort of making decisions about what to see and you can just focus on listening. The speakers entertain as well as inform, which, I really like.
While it is a tech conference, there’s little code because it’s about making technology happen rather than the details of the technology itself. So there are talks on developer culture, design, and data, as well as slightly more off-the-wall things to keep our brains oiled.
In James’ very own distinctive words:
turns out if you ask people to be creative and not just give the normal pitch they do a fucking great job. #protip for conference organisers
— Mönki Gras (@monkigras) January 29, 2015
What a great crowd, all celebrating #nordiccraft! pic.twitter.com/2wmsrrzv52
— Mönki Gras (@monkigras) January 29, 2015
Why go all Nordic this year?
All the speakers this year were Scandinavian in some way. It was probably the most rigorously applied conference theme I’ve ever seen (mostly, conferences come up with a ‘theme’ for marketing purposes which usually gets mostly forgotten about by the time of the conference itself).
What have the Nordics done for us? <- Basically the theme for #monkigras this year. Turns out, quite a lot. ☺
— Laura Cowen (@lauracowen) January 29, 2015
James talks a bit more about this on the Monkigras blog. A surprising amount of tech we know and love comes out of the relatively sparsely populated Scandinavian countries. For example:
@monkchips Yes please. Don't forget, Finland builds our internet <3 #ssh #irc #git #Linux #MySQL #opensource cc @gabbicahane @monkigras
— Pia Henrietta K (@PHenriettaK) January 5, 2015
And, apparently, Finland leads the EU in enterprise cloud computing:
Cloud computing used by 1 in 5 enterprises in the EU in 2014, 1 in 2 in Finland #Eurostat http://t.co/CuMAzNIPoD pic.twitter.com/JGMwAJ1v5Y
— European Commission (@EU_Commission) December 9, 2014
Are the Nordics really that different from anywhere else?
Well, this graph seems to say they are, if only for their taste in music:
Metal bands per 100.000 inhabitants #monkigras pic.twitter.com/eTZf2MJl59
— Lars Trieloff (@trieloff) January 29, 2015
Which suggests there is at least something different about Nordic cultures from the rest of Europe, let alone the world.
So several of the speakers delved into why they thought this led to success in technology innovation and development. For example, there’s the attitude to not recognising when you’re failing and giving up so that you can be successful by doing it another way:
There is no shame in turning around and giving up. And give up as soon as possible then you don't die. – Norwegian Mountain Code. #monkigras
— Laura Cowen (@lauracowen) January 29, 2015
A Swedish concept, lagom, which means ‘just the right amount’ was credited with the popularity of the cloud in the Nordics. And, indeed, with pretty much anything we could think of throughout the rest of the event.
The cloud is more popular in the Nordics, because it allows you to spend just the right amount (lagom) on infrastructure #monkigras
— Lars Trieloff (@trieloff) January 29, 2015
Similarly, you could argue that lagom is why Docker is popular among developers:
Why is @docker so hot? It allows developers to get back to craftsmanship, not to worry about things they don't care about #monkigras
— Danese Cooper (@DivaDanese) January 30, 2015
One fascinating talk, by a Swedish speaker based in Silicon Valley, was about the difference between startups in the Nordics and Silicon Valley. For example, the inescapable differences between their welfare systems were credited as being responsible for different priorities regarding making money. (Hopefully, videos of the talks will be put online and I’ll add a link to it.)
Obviously, all this talk about culture can, and did, drift into stereotyping. I did get slightly weary of the repeated comparisons between cultures, though interesting and, often, humorous.
Anyone who uses stereotypes is a terrible person. #monkigras
— Simon Phipps (@webmink) January 30, 2015
Developer culture
One of the things I’m most interested in is hearing what other companies have learnt about developer culture and community. For example:
Spotify has scaled to over 1,200 people by getting developers to work in small autonomous "Squads" http://t.co/5yFvMBQcvn #monkigras
— Sam Shead (@Sam_L_Shead) February 2, 2015
There’s more about this talk on Techworld. And Spotify have blogged some funky videos about the developer culture they aspire to (part 1 and part 2), which are well worth watching if you work in software development.
Something that I’m working on at IBM is increasing the openness of our development teams so, again, I’m always interested in new ways to do this. This is something that Sweden (yes, the country!) has adopted to a surprising extent:
Swedish citizens take turns at curating the official @sweden Twitter account! #monkigras
— Laura Cowen (@lauracowen) January 29, 2015
Innovation and inefficiencies
One important message that came across at Monki Gras 2015 was that you have to allow time for innovation to happen. It’s when things seem inefficient and time is not allocated to a specific activity that innovation often occurs.
A nice example of this is the BrewPi project. At Monki Gras 2013, Elco Jacobs talked about his open source project of brewing beer and using a Raspberry Pi to monitor it:
I bumped into him this year and what had been a project now occupies him full-time as a small business selling the technology to brewers around the world. A pause in his education when he had nothing better to do had enabled him to get on with his BrewPi project and, after graduation, turn it into a business.
Fun conversations about @brew_pi at #monkigras http://t.co/sXYGvJ6ck5
— Paul Johnston (@PaulDJohnston) January 30, 2015
It's really important that Finland has really inefficient universities because people start tinkering and solving problems #monkigras
— Paul Johnston (@PaulDJohnston) January 29, 2015
Data journalism
There’s a lot talked about open data and how we should be able to access tax-funded data about things that affect our lives. The Guardian is taking a lead with data journalism and Helena Bengtsson gave a talk about how knowing how to navigate large data sets to find meaning was vital to finding stories in the Wikileaks data.
Inspiring talk on “Data Journalism” from @HelenaBengtsson at #monkigras. Talking through how learning simple SQL helped use @wikileaks data.
— Daniel Appelquist (@torgo) January 29, 2015
She started out in data journalism in Sweden where, in one case, she acquired and mapped large data sets that revealed water pollution problems around the country, which triggered a several stories.
It’s not just having the data that matters but the interpretation of the data. That’s what data journalism gives us over just ‘big data':
@beauvais: Sure. We see the same with our analysis. When we hand people data, they largely don't care, without the interpretation.
— Donnie Berkholz (@dberkholz) January 29, 2015
Also, I found out a fascinating fact:
Scandinavia: gov info is public unless classified otherwise. Rest of Europe: gov info is confidential unless they say otherwise. #monkigras
— Laura Cowen (@lauracowen) January 29, 2015
Anyway, that’s about as much as I can cram in. We also found out random things about Scandinavian knitwear and the fact that Sweden has its own official typeface, Sweden Sans. And we ate lots of Nordic foods, drank Nordic beer and (some of us) drank Akvavit. And, most importantly, we talked to each other lots.
The thing I really value about Monki Gras (on top of the great talks, food, drink, and fun atmosphere) is the small size of the event and all the interesting people to talk to. That’s why I keep going back.
P.S. A good write-up of the talks
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