Outbrain’s Internal Engineering Conference — 2nd Edition!

In 2020, when the pandemic struck, the in-person encounters of industry conferences that we are all accustomed to suddenly became very challenging. Developers couldn’t fly to international destinations, nor attend local conferences or meetups. The culture of office work was turned on its head, and the ability to share knowledge and collaborate with colleagues was significantly curtailed. The very experience of learning suffered, and the general vibe was low.

At Outbrain, “learning together” and “expanding your toolbox” are core values, and our developers’ experience is a top priority. So, in July 2020, we launched the ob.i/o Internal Developers Conference and it was a HUGE success. The event included four separate tracks, a business session, Ignite, and renowned keynote speaker Kent Beck. The event was such a hit, we knew we were going to do it again…only better :).

So, on August 4, we held the ob.i/o #2 conference! It was a hybrid program with four tracks (not the same as last year though, more on that below…), featuring Outbrains’ internal speakers, one panel about how Outbrain is becoming an “Impact driven” organization, guest speakers, and one awesome keynote from Spotify.

The implementations from last year: Lessons learned

The moderation team

Last year, the mission of building the conference agenda was only handled by our guild managers. They did a great job, but this year, we aimed to engage our employees in planning and crafting the agenda too. Plus, this year, we had to take into consideration the fact that there would be a live session and that involved a lot of work. To this end, each guild manager recruited engineers to join the effort and make the agenda the result of genuine teamwork.

Tracks & content

Last year, the tracks were divided by guilds, such as backend, frontend, data science and devops. The great thing about this approach was that the audience was very targeted so we were able to be very accurate with content curation. On the other hand, the tracks only focused on the same scope and the silos were very clear.

This time, we wanted to create a more ‘blended’ atmosphere. So we developed generic tracks: Programming, Scale & Architecture, Data and Building a Product. This way, we upgraded our participants’ experience and opened up the option to jump between tracks and attend talks that are relevant and interesting to the individual, and also interact with other engineers who are not in the same guild forum.

Live sessions

The first conference was sort of like a pilot. We thought that putting too much effort into live (Zoom) sessions would be too risky. So last year’s agenda and sessions were a combination of YouTube videos. After the huge success of the conference, we knew we had to take it to the next level, so we decided this year to go with live presentations. This also provided a great opportunity for our engineers to present projects they worked on. In each track, an internal session was given by Outbrain engineers.

Doing these live sessions was very valuable to the presenters, who had the rare chance to share their stories, work on their public speaking skills, and have a video produced of their talk. They also got the benefits of updating and syncing with engineers from different groups to see what others in the organization are doing.

The second live talk in each track was given by external guest speakers. This was very refreshing, and also gave a sense of how seriously we take the conference. Bringing an external guest creates a promise for both sides. For our engineers, it showed that their learning experience is important to us and we’re willing to put all resources into making it diverse and interesting for them. And for the guest speakers, they got the promise and enjoyment of a fully engaged and interested crowd.

Feel free to visit the Outbrain Engineering YouTube channel and see all live sessions on the “ob.i/o 2021” playlist.

Always pay attention to your organizational context

As many of you know, 2021 was the “Year of the IPO” for the tech ecosystem in Israel and also for us at Outbrain. On July 23, we became a NASDAQ-listed company. The excitement around the event created an interesting momentum. During the end of July through the first part of August, it was all about celebrating and providing awesome events for our employees, including the ob.i/o conference.

However, as a company that is driven by content, we knew we had to incorporate the issue of becoming a public company into the conference agenda. That context determined the “tone and voice” of our two sessions at the “main hall” assembly.

The first session was delivered by Rotem Shacham, a principal at Viola Venture VC, and gave us an interesting glimpse of the Israeli tech ecosystem compared to other countries and what the ‘new normal’ of life in the land of unicorns would be like.

The second session was the keynote by Marcin Floryan, Technology Operations Lead at Spotify, titled “Spotify under the hood. Story of growth, challenges and opportunities”. Marcin shared with us how you can still maintain innovation, a high level of execution, engagement, and technological excellence, even in the process of growing as a public company.

To sum up

Producing internal events is as challenging as producing an external one. You still have to build a set of expectations with your audience, create the right atmosphere and make sure that your participants are fully engaged.

For the ob.i/o. #2 event, we also created a fantastic buzz among the external community by publishing the agenda in advance. Hopefully (but no promises!), next year’s ob.i/o will be open for software engineers outside Outbrain. Until then, we invite you to follow more Outbrain Engineering activities and announcements at our LinkedIn page.