Infobip Shift Croatia 2024 : An Honest Return of Experience

Picture this: you're excited, you've booked your tickets, and you're ready for a couple of days of intellectual stimulation at what you think is a tech conference. Except, it's not exactly what you'd imagined. Allow me to break it down, with my usual dose of honesty because, really, you deserve the truth.

A Slightly Deflated Balloon

Infobip Shift, Zadar, Croatia, September 15-17, 2024, we went there with Aziz, fellow developer at BearStudio. The website promises an event for 4,000 people. Reality check: I counted 1,000 chairs, max. Sure, the venue could theoretically hold 6,500 people, but half the space was just... air. They probably thought we wouldn’t notice the missing crowd, but come on, I’m not blind. Typical inflated numbers that tech events love to throw around, sponsored by big companies to puff up their feathers. Speaking of which…

Credit photo: https://www.instagram.com/infobip.shift
Where are the 4000 people ?

High Hopes and Reality Checks

Tejas Kumar’s session, “AI Engineering Today and Tomorrow,” was like the one bright spot in an otherwise cloudy conference. Aziz had seen Tejas at React Paris 2023, and he delivered again with that same mix of clarity and actionable insight. He laid out how any dev could pivot to AI engineering with minimal coding—yep, even you who still battles CSS grids. And then he casually dropped a gem: Langflow. This tool makes working with GPT-3.5 simple, and affordable, and lets you play with real-time data without losing your sanity (or touching a line of code). For a moment, it felt like the conference might actually live up to its promise. What I understood from the talk is that by being able to use an API, I’m officially an AI engineer too!

When the Promising Turns to Pitching

Fueled by Tejas’s talk, I strolled into the round table on “The Impact of AI on Junior Developers.” Tejas was joined by someone from Microsoft, and I thought we were in for a genuine discussion. Wrong. Simi turned it into an extended commercial for Microsoft tools, complete with a hint of desperation—because let's be honest, Copilot has been losing ground to Cursor AI. What should have been a session full of practical advice for nurturing new talent in the age of AI became another generic product pitch. The room was buzzing, but not in a good way; the disappointment was almost palpable.

The Thin Line Between Insightful and Insulting

Outside of a few exceptions, most of the conference felt technically shallow, like skimming through a YouTube tutorial with the sound off. One talk that could have broken the trend was “Standardized Dev Environments: Improving Productivity.” It started on point—talking about the pain of setting up environments that make onboarding feel like a bad escape room. But just when we were getting somewhere, the demo wasn’t working, he just couldn’t show us the amazing work they had been achieving. The talk was given by the CTO of the company and in just a second, its credibility dropped to 0. In a devops talk, no less. If there’s one lesson here, it’s this: always have a video backup, folks. It was frustratingly basic, but somehow not surprising.

Amid this sea of sponsored fluff, there was a beacon of authenticity: **Anton Kazakov’s talk on “Healthy Performance & Career Management for Engineers.**” As an engineering director at Canonical, Anton didn’t waste time with buzzwords. Instead, he shared a decade's worth of experience, offering a framework that’s both fair and growth-oriented. His session felt like one of those rare moments where you don’t just nod along—you actually write down notes.

We also attended the talk of Elian Van Cutsem about Astro Studio. He usually organizes React conferences. The presentation covered Astro, a web framework designed for content-driven websites, and introduced its new database platform, Astro Studio. Elian explained how Astro differentiated itself through its unique approach to JavaScript: by default, it compiled everything to pure HTML and CSS, shipping zero JavaScript to the client. This wasn't just a performance optimization—it was a fundamental design choice that let developers explicitly opt into interactivity only where needed.

You can find the talk on youtube. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SszN-3s8RvI

But these were the 2 exceptions.

Too many other talks felt more like sales pitches wrapped in keynote slides.

This trend is exactly why we’re launching Fork it! Community, to cut through the noise and bring real tech value to the table. Whether through conferences, meetups, or workshops, our aim is simple: keep it real, share true experiences, and leave the marketing gloss at the door. Developers deserve spaces where they can learn, challenge, and grow—not just be sold to.

It’s Not a Conference, It’s a Sales Pitch

Turns out, Infobip, the host of this "conference," isn’t just some event organizer. Nope. They're a colossal company with 50,000 employees. That’s right, 50,000. And surprise, surprise, the whole event feels like a cleverly disguised marketing campaign for Infobip.

I mean, the keynote was basically a long infomercial. Imagine paying 300-400 euros to be part of an audience for a company’s product launch. Yeah, we paid to get pitched to. After day one, Aziz and I started heading to the venue just to grab coffee. Honestly, we were tempted to stay at the hotel and do some actual work—because at least that would’ve felt productive.

The After-Party That Wasn’t

We were promised an after-party, and I had my hopes up. I mean, it’s Croatia! I envisioned networking over drinks, maybe some casual business chat. Instead, we ended up in a nightclub, not the best place to have meaningful conversations. Honestly, Aziz and I bounced out pretty quickly.

Credit photo: https://www.instagram.com/infobip.shift
Seriously, who wants to be there for networking ?

“Day Two” or “Why Bother?”

Day two was, in a word, pointless. The talks were almost exclusively sponsor-driven, and we figured we’d gain more by working than by sitting through hours of promotional fluff. So we skipped out, back to the hotel for some real work. I mean, why waste the day, right?

So, Is It Worth It?

Is InfoBip Shift worth your time and money? Well, if you're looking for a laid-back team-building experience in a charming city, Zadar’s not a bad choice. The food trucks were decent, and there was even a free barber—which might sound off topic, but it was really cool to be able to enjoy some side activities besides the tech talks. And the serious tech talks? Eh, not so interesting and sounding too much like ads.

If you’re after genuine insights, prepare to filter through a lot of corporate sales pitches. If you enjoy big-company promos and can tolerate some mediocre sessions, go for it. Otherwise, save your euros, find a more niche, developer-focused event, and make sure to avoid any conf that feels more like an advertisement than an actual knowledge-sharing platform.

As for me? I’ll think twice before grabbing tickets to the next corporate tech “event.” You’ve been warned.