This recap is coming several days late, but day two of the conference was amazing! The second day’s talks were much more relevant to my work as a developer and I remained incredibly engaged the whole time. I basically lived at the Builders Stage! So many great talks that were relevant to my work as a developer.

My networking skills are definitely in need of some work, though. I would get nervous and scramble for things to say or ask instead of letting the conversation just flow. The most embarrassing moment was when after I shook hands with someone and made to leave, I sidehugged the man for absolutely no reason at all. I was mortified and walk ran away as fast as I could! Aside from that horror story of a moment, my nervousness while networking didn’t seem to be too detrimental.

Some highlights from Day 2:

1. Marcus Woxneryd of ustwo’s talk about the real human value of employees and company culture was amazing and quite uplifting. Watch a recorded version of this talk from Web Summit here.

2. The panel on Open Source software was really amazing. And the tag question at the very end about how to create a culture in open source that is much more open to women and other underrepresented minorities was just as valuable as the rest of the talk. It’s good to know IBM and jQuery are actively thinking about these communities and how the embedded culture in technology can be prohibitive of truly open participation.

3. Bryan Liles’ talk about continuous app deployment and the common mistakes companies — especially start ups — make while trying to push their updates was incredibly useful for me.

4. Mike Janke of Silent Circle gave a great talk about cryptography and privacy in the modern era and how government influence is constantly butting up against user privacy rights.

Honestly, the whole second day was a real home run. I’m incredibly glad that I was able to attend two days of Collision Conference and can’t wait to start utilizing what I learned (and improving my networking skills).