Preamble
Disclaimer: most of the talks I will mention in this article are in French. However, subtitles are available for each of them.
As a long-time conference enthusiast, I started being part of this world well before becoming a speaker myself.
I regularly attend conferences to listen to people talk about a wide variety of topics, and I also enjoy watching recorded talks when they are available (which is very often the case).
In conversations, I often say things like “hey, you should watch this talk, it’s amazing”. So I thought: why not share here the talks that had the biggest impact on me?
Small disclaimer: I’ve watched a lot of conferences in my life, so this is a deliberate choice to limit the list to a small selection. I’ve loved many talks that are not listed here, but the ones that are included have a very good reason to be there, which I’ll explain each time.
I’m also very happy to have had the chance to be in the audience for most of them.
Enjoy the talks!
TensorFlow et l’apprentissage profond, sans les équations différentielles (Martin Görner)
Here we’re starting with some very, very heavy stuff. I worked as a deep learning engineer between 2017 and 2021, and at some point, you have to start somewhere.
Back in 2016, AI was clearly not as trendy as it is today. In our current era, where AI has taken over the world, YouTube is full of popularization videos on the topic (sometimes good, sometimes… not so much).
Having had no AI courses in my academic curriculum, I started teaching myself through all kinds of resources (notably technical articles related to technologies used to implement deep learning).
Until I stumbled upon this recorded talk by Martin Görner, where he talks for almost three hours about neural networks, starting from the very basics.
As far as I know, this was completely unheard of at the time. He blends theory and practice with impressive dexterity and pedagogy. Everything is illustrated with concrete examples.
We start from scratch and navigate through the world of deep learning via three of the most fundamental types of neural networks: MLPs, CNNs, and RNNs.
To this day, this video is the best resource I know to understand the foundations of deep learning. He also presented an English version, just as high-quality and just as interesting, if only for the vocabulary variations.
A must-watch conference.
Le Web, ses frameworks et ses standards : déconstruire pour mieux (re ?)construire (Hubert Sablonnière)
I’ll admit I wasn’t sure what to expect when I walked into the room, but I was blown away.
We immediately dive into the history of the Web, told with an excellent level of storytelling, leading to a deep questioning of many decisions made throughout the evolution of web technologies.
A must-watch for any front-end developer, and at the very least captivating for any developer.
Il est difficile de faire simple (Olivier Huber)
Olivier is just a regular guy, and yet, he’s going to explain how he built, among other things, a graphics card and a sound card.
For most people, even software engineers, these tasks seem insanely complex. At least for me, it’s intimidating (to be fair, I already break a sweat when I have to assemble a Lego set).
Olivier has a real talent for demystifying hardware fundamentals and manages the challenge of teaching the basics to everyone in under an hour.
This is not only a lesson in technical pedagogy, but also a lesson in learning itself: anyone can turn a passion into knowledge by training with the right resources. Everything is explained extremely clearly.
In one sentence, I’ll quote a comment left by an audience member on OpenFeedback: “A passionate and inspiring speaker!”
Let’s play Factorio (Julien Wittouck)
I’ll be honest: I had absolutely no idea what to expect. I’m not even a Factorio player; for the first two minutes, I wondered what I was doing there.
Apparently, my curiosity about watching someone bold enough to say he was going to play a video game on stage for an hour at a conference like DevFest Nantes got the better of me and pushed me to sit down and watch Julien play Factorio.
From the very first joke, based on the parallel between the game and the design patterns we deal with daily as developers, I immediately understood what I was about to see for the next hour: a massive overview of development practices I’ve encountered throughout my career, represented with surprising accuracy inside his gameplay.
The preparation work for this talk must have been huge, but it was worth it: this is a truly unique talk, both in its format and its storytelling.
Any developer is guaranteed to have a great time watching this conference, you have my word.
(con)test-és et (dé)test-és MAIS (at)test-ables ? Les tests techniques dans le cadre des recrutements de profils (Magali de Labareyre & Laurent Grangeau)
When I decided to write this blog post, I set myself one rule: only present talks that truly left a mark on me, without favoritism.
My opinion must be based solely on the conference itself, not on the people giving it.
So you can imagine how happy I was to be able to talk about a conference presented by two very close friends.
Magali is one of my regular talk partners and an incredible speaker. Laurent, on the other hand, is the person I consider my mentor in the conference world.
This conference matters a lot to me because the topic itself matters a lot to me: technical recruitment.
As a candidate, but also as someone who has designed and conducted technical tests, I’ve often asked myself: “What makes a good technical test?”
What’s certain is that there are several methods I find questionable, and others that are much better. When recruiting a candidate, the goal is to be as efficient as possible to gather the most relevant information about their real technical level.
From a candidate’s perspective, it can also be very frustrating to feel that you weren’t evaluated on truly relevant criteria.
So how do we do it right? Magali and Laurent have thought deeply about this question, and it shows. This talk provides a broad overview with objective insights based on real professional experience.
This conference should be watched by any team looking to design truly relevant technical tests.
Go sans fioritures : quand le standard suffit (Nathan Castelein)
This is a great example of storytelling. The speaker pretends to be Tony Stark and has to save the universe by building a REST API in Go.
The problem is that he relied too heavily on external tools. He now has to adapt to survive.
Through this talk, Nathan shows that Go’s standard library already provides all the elements needed for most common use cases. He mainly focuses on building an API engine, setting up structured logging, and writing test tools.
The goal is not to tear down commonly used libraries, whose usefulness he clearly acknowledges, but to help us realize just how powerful the standard tools already are.
Don’t miss it if you’re a Go developer!
Retourner le cerveau de sa Gameboy et les attraper (vraiment) tous 💪 (Audren Burlot)
This is another conference I walked into almost by accident, guided by curiosity, and it turned into a real favorite.
One of those talks where you’re guaranteed to have a great time.
Audren is a massive troll. The intro alone, packed with jokes, takes up nearly half the talk, and yet he still managed to win over the entire room. He takes us back to our childhood and then smoothly hits us with low-level assembly, and it just works. The low-level technical part is perfectly digestible.
The pacing, the story, the slides, the demos, everything is extremely well executed. A true professional job.
100% recommended!
🧑🎨 L’art de bien rater sa conférence 🥱 (Jean-François Garreau)
Speaking of trolling mixed with pedagogy, how could I not recommend this one?
You’re probably about to watch the worst talk of your life, presented by the worst speaker imaginable.
But don’t be fooled: this is, of course, a brilliantly orchestrated masquerade by Jean-François to better illustrate his point.
Once the fake mini-talk is over, everything is dissected to explain what makes a bad talk, and what makes a good one.
A dense collection of tips and speaker feedback, absolutely worth watching if you’re interested in this field, or even just in public speaking.
Tips pour combattre le syndrome de l’imposteur (Aurélie Vache)
This is a topic that’s very close to my heart.
Aurélie is like many of us. She has often felt illegitimate and not up to the task in what she was doing, and she talks about it openly and honestly.
An inspiring and motivating talk that genuinely encourages self-confidence, along with a whole set of practical tips you can apply yourself.
If you’ve ever been in this situation, or fear that it might happen to you, this is a must-watch.
Cats, Qubits, and Clouds: The Quantum Future (Holly Cummins)
2019 was the year I started getting interested in quantum computing. After consuming a large number of articles and videos on the subject, I was still completely lost.
After all, quantum computing is based on quantum physics itself, one of the hardest domains to grasp from a human perspective, in my opinion.
This conference doesn’t dive into technical details, and that’s not its goal, which is probably what made it stand out to me at the time.
This is a high-level popularization talk that won’t turn any of us into quantum engineers, and that’s perfectly fine. The goal is to understand what we’re talking about globally, which is the most important thing when approaching such a vast subject.
It’s refreshing to attend a conference on this topic with this level of explanation.
Certifications : guide du collectionneur de succès IRL (Ambre Person)
I’ve never really been interested in certifications in my life, but I’ve always found them intriguing. That said, this field didn’t really feel like my own, I figured that one day, someone knowledgeable would have to explain it all to me.
Good news: Ambre is an extreme try-harder. As a hardcore trophy collector in video games, Steam achievements were no longer enough for her. It was time to tackle IRL achievements: technical certifications.
High-level overview, real-world feedback, motivating speech, practical advice, everything is there.
It’s all in the title: this talk truly is a guide for real-life achievement hunters!