As Conference organizers, we visit other conferences to check what is trendy, find ideas or simply get inspiration. This year, Øredev will welcome Mario Aquino who is one of the organizers of Strange Loop, a multi-disciplinary conference that aims to bring together the developers and thinkers building tomorrow's technology, like Øredev!

Mario will visit Øredev for the first time in November and as a lot of opinions and expectations.

"As a conference organiser, I look at session lineups with a critical eye. Exceptional conferences create platforms for professionals from different domains, paradigms, and tech stacks to share insights with peers. Øredev will do that: the program teems with a massive array of topics spanning mobile, agile, enterprise, human dynamics, design, and concurrent programming. On top of that, this year Øredev is focusing on the Arts. The Arts! Where most software conferences simply build a schedule around current tech trends, Øredev explores the connection between technology and the beauty in creative human endeavours.

The keynote I am most looking forward to will be delivered by Randall Munroe, author of xkcd. No other web comic captures the mix of irony, humour, frustration, and humanity that is the world of science and computers. It is a touchstone for nerds, communicating experiences that we so often share. xkcd speaks to software developers and science geeks from many backgrounds, with insights that make us think. It reaches a wide audience in the same way that Øredev will this year, with its serious technical core, diverse range of subject areas, and integration of the Arts theme.

But conferences are more than the sum of their talks. The schedule is the seed for a community hungry for new ways of creating great technology. People connect around common interests and share a diversity of perspectives. We will relate to each other in meaningful ways and scatter ideas that may grow into the next great open-source project. Ideas from all over the world might take root in any of us. Perhaps it will happen over jazz music on Wednesday and Thursday nights. The most interesting person at Øredev will be someone I never expected.

A great experience comes from finding connections in the ideas that we bring with us to those shared during interactions with attendees and speakers. As well, I hear that on Monday night we will jump into the ice-cold Baltic for as long as we can stand the frosty waters, then warm up in the sauna and dine with an international audience of nerds, artists, and creative types. How cool is that?"