Here we are back from the 404 festival! More precisely, we returned from it on Sunday. But from the abundance of information received during the trip, my mind was so impressed that on Monday I could not even write a report. Actually, when I came to the office on Monday morning, it seemed to me that I hadn't been here for a week, it was such a busy weekend.

I was at the festival for the first time, but according to experienced people, it gets prettier from year to year, and this year it was more interesting and more fun than last year.

There were a lot of reports. Even too much, in my opinion — I was always afraid of missing something important, and I'm not the only one. People in groups shuttled from one hall to another. Traffic jams sometimes formed in the lobby.

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I remember the Estiva stand. They were selling geek cookies. I didn't get to try it myself, but those who tried assure me that they were very tasty.

Why am I all about food? Probably because, despite the excellent coffee breaks, I wanted to eat almost constantly :) The brain worked so actively, perceiving incoming information, that the energy was consumed simply wild.

In parallel with the entertainment in the lobby, reports were held in three halls of the hotel, although to some they seemed an absolutely superfluous addition to informal communication in the corridors of the Holiday Inn.

On the first day, I tried to attend as many reports as possible, although later I was told that it was best to hang out in the lobby at such fests, it was there that the chance to communicate with those people with whom you did not even dream of meeting was highest. However, I took the word "conference" seriously and walked around the halls with an intelligent look, sometimes even making notes in a notebook with the brand name "404".

By the way, it was at the festival that I finally realized how much I needed a smartphone. After all, even there, some of the events take place online. Tweets are constantly flowing, you can immediately get nice bonuses for likes. As my colleague said: "If you are at such an event without a smartphone, then you are in the thick of things, but with your mouth taped shut." Oh, yes, that's how I felt.

A monitor was installed in the recreation area, which displayed tweets with the official tag #404fest, but I never sat there.

The reports were extremely diverse. Useful, funny, and some only caused confusion: why did I listen to this? A huge plus for the organizers — 30 minutes were allotted for each report and they were not allowed to exceed the limit, so the next speaker presented himself to the public on time. In my opinion, for such events with a large number of people, compliance with such a framework is a very important (and rare) organizational moment.

I will tell you about the performances that I remember. Unfortunately, we were late for the opening and were a little upset, because the Courage Bambei held the opening. However, we still managed to listen to him for 20 minutes. On the second day, he also had a report on how he voices the series. Pirated videos from his performance are already on YouTube.

A long-time friend of our company, Sergey Kotyrev, told about how user testing is carried out in their company using the Eye-Tracker device. With the help of infrared sensors, the device captures the movements of a person's pupil when he looks at the monitor while performing a task. Based on the pupil movement maps created by the device, it is possible to draw interesting conclusions about user behavior and significantly improve the product interface.

Ilya Birman was pleased with the report about the "Flying Asphalt Paver", in which he told with humor and in one breath about how to finally make the designer's talented pictures turn into a beautiful website, and not remain pictures.

Of course, I will note Alexey Ponomar's report on how we make a Life Hacker. Our blog is quite popular and many people wanted to know about its "kitchen". Alexey spoke about our comment system, badges, social media work and how we work with readers' feedback.

On the second day, when fatigue began to manifest itself a little, the report of Yevgeny Kobzev from SKB Kontur added cheerfulness. The point is not only in the report itself, which, however, was interesting and useful, but also in the charisma of the speaker. An important role was played by the presentation, designed with a bit of humor. So I sat with my mouth open for half an hour. Even moved from the far end of the hall closer.

And she did the right thing, because very soon the hall was packed. It was the turn of Peter Didenko's report. Whom they came to listen to first of all because he is Pyotr Didenko. But, I'll tell you, he fully met the expectations.

I was amused by the report "Circus 2.0". The guys, using the example of circus artists and animals, told who is who in Internet projects. Their satirical performance with jumps and the image of horses was remembered for a long time.

In general, my head is still spinning. Messages with the tag #404fest continue to appear on Twitter. A sea of business cards and handouts await my attention on the desktop, and I was inspired and energized for work again. Such events are worth attending at least because for two days you get into a crowd of people who are really interested in their business, who are burning with ideas and love their work. They are constantly improving, sharing knowledge with each other and making it easy and fun.