I just got back from one of the most fun weekends in a long time. 40 software nerds, camping by a river next to a pub in the middle of nowhere.
This was DDD Outback, hosted at the iconic Nindigully Pub 500km from Brisbane.
DDD Conferences have been a big thing in Australia for over 10 years, and I’ve attended and spoken at several in Australia, particularly the Brisbane one many times. I love them.
DDD Outback started as a joke, which got momentum, and a domain name, and then was brought to life by DDD Brisbane organisers Bronwyn, Chris, and David.
And it was amazing.
Everybody arrived some time on Friday afternoon and set up camp on the river. We came from a slightly different direction and got 45kms of gravel road where we saw nothing but Cows, Kangaroos, and Emus.
Dinner was either at the pub, or cooked at the campsite, and we sat around the fire and caught up with old friends and made new ones.
There was an impromptu astronomy session, and I got the chance to try my hand at some astrophotography.
Saturday morning we got up to the -1 degree morning, made some coffee and breakfast by the river, and headed to The Shed, our room for the day.
Chris kicked things off with a welcome and a little introduction to the area and then the talks started.
The talks
Larene Le Gassick kicked this off with her keynote “You are welcome in this world”, a story about her dad, the design of microwaves, and how by being inclusive in who we involve in the design process of things we build affects who is able to use them. A nice start to the day.
Next up was Brendan “Turtle” Graham talking about his adventures with Vibe Coding, some super practical tips on how to apply some good guardrails. It culminating with an awesome demo video of his 10yo son building and shipping a customised Tic Tac Toe game.
After morning tea we had a surprise panel, 3 people drawn from a hat, to discuss remote working. It was interesting how many people missed the office and preferred going back. A correlation with the type of people who will drive 5 hours for an event I suppose.
Kieran Wood gave his first talk, a look at the antiquated security and encryption methods used by some older satelites, how quantum computers are a threat, and some new algorythms coming to save us. In a first for any conference or tech event I’ve been at, he concluded it by taking everybody outside and launching a home made rocket!
After lunch, Christoph Donges talked about various caching methods for .NET apps, from the naive to some really new options. I’d not heard of FusionCache before, but I’ll definitely have a closer look on my next project. Some funny discussion happened afterwards where people shared some caching horror stories.
Next Steve Morris gave two shorter talks, one looking at the production schedules of regular TV Series to dispell the myth that agility doesn’t mean not having a plan, or deadlines. The second one is how he took a MVP approach to building his own hovercraft.
After an afternoon tea, Gert Jansen van Rensburg also talked about LLMs, some strategies for working with them as a developer, and a really lovely story about how he used Claude to help build an app to manage a medical condition for his daughter. It was a very “human” look at the tech and a lovely talk.
And to finish the day it was my turn with a 50 minute rant. “Better Software Through Talking to People” is a new talk for me, looking at the ways that people have misunderstood movements in our industry (Agile, DevOps, Kanban, etc) and how they really boil down to the same shared principles.
Giant Burgers
After some group photos we had dinner, the Nindigully Pub is famous for some of the biggest burgers you’ve ever seen. Then it was drinks and chats around a campfire until late in the night.
The Long Drive Home
The next morning we packed up, said our goodbyes, and set out for home where we arrived many hours later and completely exhausted, but still buzzing.
This was a very special weekend, everybody who made the trip was there for the love of it all, and made it fun. For me, it gave me a whole bunch of renewed energy for connecting with dev communities, something that also aligns with my work with YOW!
I hope there’s a DDD Outback next year, and if there is you can be sure I’ll be there.
A huge thanks to the organisers, the sponsors, the speakers, all the attendees, and of course the historic Nindigully Pub. This was an amazing time.
Some photos by John O’Brien and Larene Le Gassick
