Almost two weeks ago, I had the pleasure of speaking at Voxxed Days Bucharest 2026. This was my third Voxxed Days Romania event; I’ve spoken at Voxxed Days Bucharest before in 2024, and in 2022 I gave two talks at Voxxed Days Cluj-Napoca, including stepping in as the closing keynote speaker to replace Tom Cools who unfortunately couldn’t make it.
Travelling
On the plane from Schiphol to Bucharest, I immediately ran into fellow Dutch speakers Alexander Chatzizacharias and Sander Hoogendoorn. It turned out that Sander and I were both staying near the new venue so we took an Uber together from the airport. Ana-Maria Mihalceanu had very helpfully shared instructions with the speakers on how to best get to our hotels.
Speaker dinner
Since the speaker dinner was near the old venue, Sander and I ended up walking across Bucharest for about an hour, partially through a park.
The speaker dinner was a nice place to catch up with fellow speakers. Some I has seen only the week before at different conferences. The food was a wonderful display of Romanian hospitality, as always.
Conference day
The conference was opened by organisers Andra Ghibuțiu and Alex Proca. Andra revealed that this was sadly the last edition of Voxxed Days Romania. It was an honor to be part of this event. Fortunately, Andra and Alex will continue to organise different events in Romania.
Sander gave one of the keynotes on the conference day, which unfortunately I did not get to enjoy as I had to go and prepare for our talk, which was scheduled right after. It was nice that he mentioned me, and also used something in his keynote that we had talked about the evening before on our way to the speaker dinner. 🙂
Piotr and I once again took the stage with Learning modern Java the playful way, after three conferences in four days the week before! As always, it was a joy to give this talk, and the audience was wonderful! Thank you for your lovely feedback.
The slot right after ours belonged to George Patrașcu. Our talks were scheduled back to back, which meant a hasty change over between speakers, mics and laptops. In the confusion, Piotr left the dongle for his clicker behind on stage. We only found out after he had already left. Fortunately we were both speaking at Devoxx UK the following week, so I could return it to him there.
The hallway track
One of the things I love most about conferences is seeing friends and meeting new people. At Voxxed Days Bucharest I got to catch up with some familiar faces, like Abdel Sghiouar, Ana-Maria Mihalceanu, Brian Vermeer and Loïc Magnette. I also got to meet new speakers like George Patrașcu, and talk with other attendees. This is a good way to hear what people are working on, and get feedback on how we can help them better.
And of course, some of the best conversations happened in the hallway track in between sessions.
Leaving for Munich
Unfortunately I couldn’t stay until the end of the event, as I had to travel to Munich where I had to record a video the next day.
Thank you!
Many thanks to Andra, Alex and the whole team of organisers and volunteers for making Voxxed Days Bucharest 2026 such a lovely event. And of course, thanks to all the sponsors and attendees who made it possible. It was a privilege to be part of this final edition, and I wish Andra and Alex all the best with their future endeavours.