Day 2. More awesome? Definitely yes. Just like an addict, I’m feeling the withdrawal symptoms. Facebook gave me the best week of my 2015 yet and I am extremely grateful for that. Day 2 at my first major developer conference taught me some more lessons that I want to share with you. I’d love to know what you think of the day 1 lessons as well.

Small time investments in people go a long way

I have recently made a pact to myself to help as many people as possible without expecting anything in return. All it takes for me is to listen to them and then react accordingly. I don’t (usually) have to go out of my way, but this investment of time, I hope, will go a long way in the future. I made a point to talk to many great people today at F8, and listen to their stories and empathize with them.

Diversity in tech is noticeable when it’s present

I think Facebook had a very diverse set of presenters. There were obviously mainly males, but it was fascinating to see many females from software development, growth and design teams share their insights. Diversity if noticeable when it’s present, but very easily ignored when it’s not.

People love true appreciation

I also tried to appreciate and thank the event coordinators for F8 and personally met with many of them. Having hosted a hackathons (which was much smaller and had less stakes), I empathize with them to some extent and kind of understand the position they are in and the amount of time and energy they put in. True appreciation for such great work, and genuine grateful is loved by them and recognizes their hard work (Go Bambi, Steve, Christina and team).

Work hard and work fast

Some of the talks today at F8 were only mildly interesting to me. I didn’t want to waste my time because I understand that it’s a static asset that doesn’t appreciate or deprecate over time (no pun intended). I wanted to be productive even when I was slacking off, so I worked on a side project and completed it’s deployment pipeline. The lesson? Not only it is important to work hard, but also to work fast. You got good work done, and you get a lot of good work done!

Bets > Predictions

No one knows where the future is. No one knows where the world is headed (are we in a bubble, by the way?). No one can predict what will be the next big thing. But we can make bets. Smart, calculated bets will pay off eventually. Facebook is making a lot of them by trying to capture people’s attention whenever they want to communicate - no matter what the medium or source. With their bets in chat apps, VR, drones and global Internet connectivity, we can conclude that all their efforts and bets converge at the same vision - to connect the world. But they cannot predict what will stick, they can just throw a bunch of innovation and try to take calculated risks.

So that’s it. That was a brief list of the things I learned at my first major developer conference. I truly appreciate the effort and hard work of all the people who made such a great event possible and successful. On to bigger things!