HighLoad ++ is a highly loaded dish.

Perhaps the main difference between the HighLoad ++ high-load system developers conference and many others is the absence of hidden targets. There is not a single person or organization behind us that would impose the rules of the game or hunt at an event, such as:

• Large company
• Tolstosuma sponsor
• State structures

For many years, HighLoad ++ remains an event that some developers organize for other developers .

Nine years ago, we adopted several strict rules for ourselves, which we are trying to strictly follow. We will not list them all - for this time will come, let's call only the main ones.

The main thing is that the conference budget is drawn up in such a way that there is always the opportunity to hold it even in the absence of partners. It would seem - what does it give?
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As a result - we have no sponsorship reports. Any speech is selected by the Program Committee on a par with all reports. This practice shocks the marketing departments of many companies trying to introduce their own speakers: “How did we pay, now also prepare a report?”

Work with the speaker

We always work directly with the speaker and only with him - any letters from other interested parties (including HR and PR-directors) are sent to “Processed”. Why?

Because no intermediaries advertising their own employers will be able to submit a good report. This can only be done by an author deeply versed in the subject.

It is useless to ask us - "On what topic would you like to hear the report?". The answer is obvious - to the one in which you understand better, to which you will be interested in reporting.

A live person will be in front of a large audience during a performance. If he is an expert and reads a report for other specialists - then why is the company here, no matter how famous it is? We honestly believe that if you are a good specialist, it is not so important where you live and work, because if your performance is bad, nothing will help you.

Program committee

The program committee, like the rules, has not changed for several years. This is a team of serious professionals and recognized practitioners, each of whom has an excellent command of his own subject. Together they gather a couple of times a year to select a few dozen of the best reports from hundreds of applications.

Persons

Maxim Lapshin
Maxim is a permanent member of the Program Committee, he knows everything and everything, but most of all he knows about the video. Video Maxim was engaged when we were still typing "Hello, world!"

Maxim also typed "Hello, world!" but only on Erlang. Comet-server on Erlang Max writes in the evening, and the task of gluing real-time images from two cameras and transmitting the glued image to a couple of tens of thousands of users is completely trivial for him.

Alexey Rybak
Alexei Rybak - probably one of the best technical managers of the Runet, is also a permanent member of the Program Committee. We do not cease to be surprised how, having managed dozens (or maybe hundreds already?) Of developers, Alexey continues to be aware of all the details of a multitude of technologies. Where does this knowledge of the domain come from? Why is it a leader of this level? What are they doing in Badoo, planning to take over the world?

Nikolay Samokhvalov
Nikolay Samokhvalov, a permanent member of the Program Committee, invited the largest number of interesting Western speakers to our conference.

Nicholas is often in the Valley and brings to the committee meetings the pleasant semantics of the ocean. Activist community PostgreSQL in Runet.

Konstantin Osipov
Konstantin Osipov oversees the database section of the Program Committee: he understands this topic thoroughly and knows almost everyone. If the speaker, Konstantin, is unknown, he finds it on YouTube and scans previous speeches, trying to determine if this suspicious type can be trusted to speak at our conference? If Tarantool (the database that Konstantin is developing) is written with the same responsible approach to business, then we recommend everyone to go straight to it!

Alexander Gorny
Alexander Gorny is the legend of Runet, now also in the Program Committee.

Alexander went from a developer to an information technology director, while having worked in management positions in three of the four Runet buttons (Rambler, RBC and Mail.ru). The accumulated knowledge, numerous connections and many-sided experience, as well as, to be honest, Alexander's lobbying capabilities, we are pleased to use in the preparation of the HighLoad ++ conference program.

Ivan Zolotukhin
Ivan Zolotukhin - Representative of the Program Committee in Europe. He possesses secret knowledge about Moscow, one day after the conference he took our Western guests to the bell tower of the Cathedral of Christ the Savior.

They are so stunned by the sounds of multi-ton bells that are beating right above their heads, that they are now lining up in a queue willing to come long before we announce the set of reports of the next year.

Igor Sysoev
Igor Sysoev - tuning fork of the Program Committee. If Igor says that he would go to this report, it means that this is a very good report, very correct and useful, but about ten people from all of Russia will understand it. We take such reports, not least in order for Igor to look at the conference.

Andrey Shetuhin
The program committee is known for its extreme rigor in selecting reports to the program. But there is one professional whose critical mind finds flaws in all the reports - this is Andrei Shetuhin.

Andrei questions the novelty of most of the topics and the usefulness of 99.9% of the research sent to us. Thus, Andrew’s healthy skepticism helps HighLoad ++ to maintain a high level of quality. We are thinking about establishing a special prize named after Andrey Shetuhin for the best, the only impeccable report, which he will rate positively.

Last year

From the point of view of the preparation of the conference program, using the example of 2014, it can be reported that we selected 86 best speeches from more than two hundred incoming applications. Reception of reports, of course, begins many months before each conference.

The expert zone, which debuted on HighLoad ++ last year, was the main highlight of the conference. This can be seen without any problems at major Western events, but we are glad that in Russia it was HighLoad ++ that first appeared the opportunity to communicate directly with knowledge carriers.

As our experts have characterized the two-day experiment: “We could not pee to move.”

Because every conference visitor had the opportunity to communicate directly with technology developers and consultants on these technologies. Accordingly, it was possible to ask any questions - often it is, experts often come to the conference with a specific task: how to do something, optimize, scale.

Last year, you could explore everything on issues related to MySQL and PostgreSQL, Tarantool, Sphinx, NGINX, Erlang, video, and high-load architectures.

Why democracy does not work

Democracy is something that definitely does not work when organizing IT conferences.

After all, if you give the opportunity to choose listeners of speakers (and we tried this way, what a separate publication will be devoted to), then people choose reports on the number of familiar “keywords” in theses. As a result, the program does not consist of interesting speakers, but of those speakers who have managed better than others to write abstracts of their own speech.

The program committee approaches the choice of reports in a completely different way.

Each of the PC participants is a professional with experience, managing other people and, most importantly, people who read the resume. Participants of the Program Committee will not be spent with beautifully written text, since the essence for them is the main thing.

Most members of the Program Committee attend not only Western conferences, but almost all Russian events. And therefore, even if the speaker is presented as a “newcomer” - we know about him the way he performs and behaves on the stage.

After collecting all applications and closing them, the Program Committee meets in person and makes a collective decision on each of the speakers - this is the only way to form a balanced and competent program from the best applications, which will not have a hundred NoSQL reports with a sufficient number of MySQL.

And in order for every reader, including those who have not yet participated in HighLoad ++ conferences, we have a small selection of books and videos to explain what is actually happening at our conferences.

Free books are published on the basis of all past conferences: books.ontico.ru
On a Vimeo channel, about a quarter of the entire video captured over the years is uploaded: vimeo.com/ontico
If you are still not enough, then there is a third option for fans - all in 8 years: eightyears.highload.ru

And finally : For the users of Habrakhabr, the conference offers a special discount of 15%, all that needs to be done is to use the code " IAmHabr " when booking tickets.

See you at HighLoad ++!