Hello everybody!
It’s me reporting again after the UX Alive conference is finished!
I have to say that it was a great experience and also I would like to thank you for encouraging me towards that direction.
So, here is what happened:
The first day was the conference one (the other two were workshops).
The day that you somehow have to meet new people out of nowhere… Well, it wasn’t that difficult, a hi is the perfect started of every conversation. So, I 've met a couple of guys and out of nowhere I spot Matthew! Perfect chance to meet him now, that is early and not so many people are everywhere! 
The conference began and the speakers are really interesting… I don’t think that I’ve been to a better organised conference so far… Everyone has great insights and they share their personal way of thinking with great presentations! Had to distinct Matthew with his really brave and attempt to live sketch his presentation! It more or less worked although I guess that there were some flaws that can and will be addressed! 
Lunch break and, oh boy, you should take a look at that buffet! hahaha
So, day one finishes, it’s been great so far… A walk on Istiklal with a couple new friends and then home to get some rest…
Day 2 was more relaxed for me. I just had one workshop. It was in the afternoon, the Hepsiburada prototyping workshop. Unfortunately that didn’t go that well. It was the only bad impression from the 3 days experience. The workshop happened completely in turkish and while the UXAlive team tried to simultaneously translate what was going on, it was impossible to keep up with the workshop. 50% of us wasn’t speaking turkish, even so, the Hepsiburada team didn’t show any moments of trying to communicate with the english speaking attendees.
There were some organisational problems (turkish speaking workshops not mentioned in the schedule) throughout the UXAlive conference but I think that it will be fixed next year (many of these problems were solved by the UXAlive team on the second day of the workshops).
Anyways the second day finished and I had a lot of time for conversations and self-esteem boost with again some new friends. 
The third day was the most exciting one.
Started with the Aras Bilgen workshop “User research for everyone” that was really great and very helpful on what user research should be and how we should target it to our goals about a project.
Second workshop was the Michael Mckay “Design Thinking in Corporate Environments: Facilitating & Driving Customer Centricity”. That was great,too. It had a really unique way of discovering issues about a product, using just about everyone, setting everything on a scale of importance and realizing how everything should be addressed and which way. Great workshop, too, even though my team was more of talk and less do… We managed in the end… 
Third workshop was the night workshop and it was hosted by ATOLYE. It was really awesome and it produced some real forward thinking in everyday work problems. The place the workshop was happening was great and it had a great atmosphere. Really inspiring place to work. Congratulations to the ATOLYE team for the work.
The day finished with an awesome party right next door. Beer, chat, smile, fun, great times after all!
It was a really good experience and I don’t regret it at all. I would like to thank everyone here for telling me to go. My confidence got a really good boost and I have some really useful input from that and I will try to work my way into making it work. I have to say some real good people that I met were really the ones for me that made the whole trip so much more than just a costly conference-educational experience.
I hope that I will have soon enough news of where I’m heading to and what projects I’ll be dealing with.
Have a good day everyone!
Dimitris
P.S.1 - Sorry if there are some mistakes, my english have some flaws…
P.S.2 - @mattymcg , did that career counselling sessions happen after all? I didn’t get to see that anywhere…
