JCrete 2018 was my first unconference ever (Check out wikipedia to learn more about what's an unconference). I really loved it, love the spirit, the quality of unparticipants, disorganizers who work hard for almost a year to welcome us as a family members, no sponsors, everything is crowdfunded, crowdsourced, self disorganized etc

I've been attending many conferences around the word but the quality of people and discussions at JCrete was really unexpected. I couldn't miss any session or any excursions to the awesome beaches in Crete (by the way, one of the best all over the word, I went to Balos, Falassarna, Elafonissi etc) Old Town, visited oldest olive tree in the word. My experience was just awesome and I'm so lucky to get my first ever invitation to this magnificent Unconference (It was also fun to travel to that island with my lovely wife & daughter)

Beside contributing in many sessions, I've suggested two sessions that got scheduled during the week (Day 3 & 4):

• API Management to share what's we are doing actually with many customer for their digital transformation as we believe at xHub that Digital transformation is simply DevOps + API (I'll be giving a keynote at DevoxxMA about it so don't miss it)

  Schedule for #JCrete Day 4 pic.twitter.com/DYws4fKEqc

  — JCreteUnconf (@JCreteUnconf) July 26, 2018

• JakartaEE, Microprofile & JCP with Ivar Grimstad (@ivar_grimstad) to discuss about the future of Java Entreprise and what's the status here

  Schedule for #JCrete day 3 pic.twitter.com/4qaDqKDv31

  — JCreteUnconf (@JCreteUnconf) July 25, 2018

JCrete isn't only about technical discussions but also startup, team management, soft skills, best practices etc. Everyone contribute every day to create each day’s schedule & lazily of course ?

You can check the full schedule of the sessions that has been suggested and scheduled

If you are wondering what was the schedule of @JCreteUnconf 2018! Really ? my first #JCrete & #Unconference experience ? brilliant people with top notch content. Thanks a lot for all the disorganizers @heinzkabutz @javaperftuning @rgransberger @aalmiray @IXSC & others ??? pic.twitter.com/iHk0dxSqle

— Badr Elhouari (@badrelhouari) July 26, 2018

The session that marked my un-participation was the 'startup experience' one! with some inspiring people -including entrepreneurs, investors, people who managed to raise 250+ Million Dollars $$$ - that humbly share and exchange ideas about entrepreneurship journey. A high quality of discussions and some key points for tech startups that we have never even discussed in Morocco Unfortunately. Previously I've decided to stay silent about startup in Morocco even I had some experience in international level (France, US, Canada and Now Spain), I have met with many startups even in Silicon Valley since 2010 but I've decided to focus more on the coding culture in Morocco! After this session I was asking myself if I stay silent or should I highlight and blog about some key elements. I've decided to do some jumps in the beautiful Mediterranean Sea to figure out a decision :D

So after a couple of jumps forward, I did come up with a few ideas that I'll be talking about in the near future -from my point of view & only about tech startups-

• Why our ecosystem sucks in Morocco? And till now we don't yet have a sustainable ecosystem (Where is the result of FikraInvest initiative, where entrepreneurs after tons of hachathons, why there is so many institutions without real synergies and without result? Where is important updates in financial law about stock option and interesting stuff for Startups)

• Where is real Tech talents? How to educate them to work in startups (I'm not even talking about talents who leave the borders and not even salaries inflation by the actors that start to realize the importance of the 'in house development')? Why we don't have the culture of Tech advisors (even the few Tech startups that have managed to make it to advanced levels, I've never heard about Tech advisors before)

• How we can hack the culture to have a real humble entrepreneurs with some success stories and not people who only believe on "Fake it till you make it". We need unicorns & real inspiration and not only illusions

Was a "SurReal" inspiring experience! Can't wait to see my invitation for next year again -If I got lucky to get one again ☺-

Truly an unforgettable trip! There is no better to summarize it than this beautiful Sketchnote from my darling Hanae ?