Developer conference Bacon provides food for the brain

I’m at the Bacon conference in Blackfriars, London today and tomorrow, and it’s not the usual sort of weekend conference you might expect.

It’s being held at The Mermaid Conference and Events Centre which was formerly a theater and has been really nicely refurbished. So things are fancy.

Bacon is about things that developers love. So far this morning that appears to be Rails trolling, chiptunes, butler robots, design/developer pairing and meditation on why folk code.

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Mind Candy is here and they seem set for expansion as they are looking to hire around 50 tech people very soon. SoundCloud is also here and letting it be known that it is hiring for its engineering team. To see cool companies like this hiring at an event lends a certain optimism that working in this field is a good thing and that there is likely to be work.

This event is less about pitches than it is about entertaining talks and pitches. Aside from one small area for sponsors, the main idea is to have a think around what it is to be a developer.

It’s safe to say that ‘developer’ as a blanket term is really too broad these days, but there are certainly themes that can be explored and are pertinent to everyone in the room.

The opening keynote with Scott Porad, CTO of the Cheezburger Network  was surprisingly less about laughing at feline photos and more of an encouragement for everyone to have a think about why they do what they do. Porad says that “software is a figment of our imagination” and as a result, considering our values and identity will help developers and coders come to a better realization about what it is they want to make.

It’s an interesting thought for those laying down code to look at the wider picture and not just the current line they are about to compile.

It’s fairly certain that more ideas will be sparked in talks about LEGO Punks, CSS in the 4th Dimension, Neural Networks, Beer, Coffee and time management to come that somewhere in there, is something akin to bacon that all developers will indeed love.

I’ll have more from this event soon so look out for updates.