Conferences: The Talk Is the Product

Alexey Fedorov co-founded JUG Ru Group, which runs about twenty conferences a year. His path began with a mathematics club, School 239, and a mathematics degree, followed by doctoral work and Java compatibility engineering at Oracle. Leaving the vendor bubble led to meetups, a Java community, and the first large conference.

JUG Ru Group treats each talk as a product: clear theses, preparation, review, reliable sound, and a venue designed for listening. It chose focused technology conferences over a festival about everything. Alexey argues that mature professionals outgrow one language and repeatedly learn new roles.

InBetween is a conference for managers at the layer between team tactics and abstract strategy. Managers here work with departments, dependencies, resources, and decisions without universal recipes. Their value comes from holding a complex model of reality and understanding why the same practice produces different outcomes.

The frame is tested against metrics, Goodhart's law, platform engineering, and queueing theory. Dependencies add delay, while rules limit adaptability. Alexey also discusses limited cross-company collaboration and a world where endless hiring cannot buy growth: leaders must make the economics work without growth.