TL;DR: I spoke at Boiling Frogs — the conference I consider the best in Poland. I was afraid my topic wouldn’t be good enough for that room. It was. But the most valuable part of the day had nothing to do with my talk.
Boiling Frogs is the conference I registered for without checking the agenda first.
One day. Three tracks. No filler. The selection is tough by design — hundreds of submissions, a handful of slots. The result is a room full of people who actually care. Engineers, architects, CTOs, QA specialists, product people — all choosing your talk over two others running in parallel.
I’ve been attending every year. Getting accepted to speak there meant something to me ☺️
The fear
My fear wasn’t an empty room. It was a full one 😓
I kept asking myself: Is this topic deep enough for this room? Boiling Frogs attracts experts. People who’ve already solved the problems you’re talking about, or who have strong opinions about how they should be solved.
That’s a specific kind of impostor syndrome. Not “am I good enough to speak?” but “is this topic good enough for this particular stage?”
What actually happened
People came. They listened 🔥
I was nervous at the start, found my rhythm after a few minutes, and finished stronger than I began. The Q&A was real — the kind where people push back and dig deeper. Several people came up afterwards to continue the conversation.
I’d give myself a 4/5.
The audience feedback confirmed it: average 4.17/5, 8 out of 12 ratings were fives. The main critique — not enough depth on specific examples — was exactly what I already knew. That’s actually a good sign. It means the room was engaged enough to want more.
One mistake I won’t repeat: I went out with friends the night before instead of going to sleep early. Not a wild night, but enough to feel it the next morning. Noted 📝
The speakers’ room
After parties at tech conferences are loud. You end up shouting over music, losing threads mid-sentence, and going home with a handful of LinkedIn profiles you’ll never follow up on.
The speakers’ room is the opposite.
Smaller group, quieter space, people who’ve all just been through something intense and want to actually talk. I didn’t try to meet everyone — I focused on a few conversations and let them go deep.
One that stuck: a long conversation with Mateusz Rosiek, who gave a talk on product engineering as a CTO who’s built that culture from the inside. Product thinking is a gap I’m aware of and actively want to close in 2026. I had a lot of questions.
And that’s actually something Mateusz reinforced: ask as many questions as you can. The more you ask, the more you understand — and sometimes you end up raising a problem nobody else thought to bring up. He also recommended The Mom Test, a book about how to ask questions the right way, especially when validating ideas. Adding it to the list.
Breakfast with a stranger
Before the conference even started, I sat down for breakfast next to Rafał Pieńkowski — not a speaker, just an attendee. We started talking and didn’t stop.
It turned out we had a lot in common. My talk was about refactoring a legacy monolith toward a modular monolith — and Rafał had been doing exactly the same kind of work on his side. We spent a good chunk of time comparing experiences on what we did, how we approached it, and what worked. Those kinds of conversations I really like 💚
Then it got better: he also uses a split keyboard. And we’re both from Pomerania. At some point, it stopped feeling like a coincidence and just felt like meeting someone you were supposed to meet.
As it turned out, he’s connected to the same PHP community I’ve been part of for years. By the end of the after-party, he’d introduced me to several more people I wouldn’t have met otherwise 🔥
The world is small. The best connections often happen before the first session starts.
What I’m taking away
I came to give a talk. I left with a few conversations I’ll be thinking about for weeks 🔥
If you’re considering submitting a CFP to Boiling Frogs — do it. The worst outcome is a rejection email. The room doesn’t eat you alive. More often, it just wants to keep talking 🎤
Thanks to everyone who showed up and asked questions — you made it easy 💚
You can find the slides and all my other talks at damian.dziaduch.pl/talks 👈
