Developer Champion
A few weeks ago, I presented my new "User's Guide to the Disruptor" talk to the London Java Community. Since it was very kindly hosted at Skillsmatter, there is a video of the presentation available, and the slides are below.
Continue reading "New Disruptor Presentation Unveiled to the LJC!"
Last week I went to get my hair cut (yes, sorry, this is a story about hair). I had thought long and hard about what I wanted. I researched, checked styles online, and bought a magazine so I could show my hairdresser exactly what I was after and there would be no confusion. I was determined I would not be spending that ridiculous amount of money on something I was not going to be happy with. I was even bold enough to ask for some changes to it at the end, which I have never ever had the courage to do before.
In theory, I am busy writing material for my upcoming speaking events, rather than writing terribly illuminating posts on my blog (see what I did there?). In actuality I am being lazy and have pretty much taken January off for a recharge.
In the spirit of doing something which ticks both the event-speaking and blogging boxes, this is a quick update on the conferences I'm confirmed for so far. Put the following dates in your diary - these are my first international solo speaking events:
And now, after an absence of several weeks, you get to see how long it takes me to write some of these posts.
I was putting up the Christmas decorations one Saturday when my worst fear was realised1 - one of my three strings of lights was not working.
The first two went up fine. The third lit up when I plugged it in, and in less than a second went out. Curses. This is not what I wanted, this was supposed to be a short exercise in making my tiny little flat look festive.
So I set about the tedious task of starting from the end closest to the plug and replacing every bulb, one by one, with a spare one to see if it magically lit up again. When it doesn't, you take the spare back out and replace it with the original bulb. I remember my parents going through this ritual every Christmas, the tediousness of this activity is more memorable than the fleeting joy of shinies.
Continue reading "Christmas decorations teach me a lesson about troubleshooting"
When you're applying for a job at LMAX, your CV (or résumé, for our American readers) usually comes through me and I decide whether to call you for a technical phone screen.
I'm going to let you into a secret.
At JAX London Mike and I presented "Understanding the Disruptor - A Beginner's Guide to Hardcore Concurrency". This is the session we initially previewed to the London Java Community a few weeks earlier. The content is the same, but the feel of the presentation was quite different to us - the venue for the LJC event was more intimate, and it was easier to interact with the audience. At JAX, we were up on stage, which was pretty cool actually, but meant that it felt more like a lecture and it was less easy to connect with the audience.
Saturday was, hopefully, my last conference of the year. My lucky readers should start to see some posts which are not simply me gushing about another opportunity to hang out with awesome people and learn about interesting "stuff".
Panel with: Martijn Verburg; Regina ten Bruggencate; Trisha Gee; Antonio Goncalves; Claude Falguière; Kim Ross
I'm back from Devoxx, having had lots of food for thought. In particular, my panel on Why We Shouldn't Target Women generated a lot of discussion and I'm still trying to process it all.
The panel went really well, we got decent interaction from the audience, and of course my fellow panel members were awesome. I managed to restrain myself from using the opportunity as my own personal soap box and allowed other people to speak occasionally. Sadly the only male on the panel stole the show somewhat, so Antonio won't be invited in future... Actually in seriousness, it was great to have a guy on the panel to present his point of view. It was interesting that he's a father, highlighting that parenting issues are not the same as women's issues, and conflating those two concerns hurts both genders. But Antonio's hair is far too shiny and pretty and he's funnier than I am, so I'm not standing next to him again.
Stephan wearing the Brazilian flag at the opening keynote
The Diabolical Developer
Conferences are clearly something that appeal to me - I love meeting people and chatting about interesting and (sometimes) intelligent things; I love learning stuff and indexing it away, possibly for future references; I love hanging out with people like the LJC guys (Ben, Martijn and John); I love kicking around ideas of what more we can do at LMAX with our lot (Mike, Dave, Dali).
Dave's Continuous Delivery
I'm really looking forward to my panel this afternoon, I'm going to be ranting about how we target women for tech jobs. Should be fun.
Nice 'tash!
Shameless plug: Mike and Dali are raising money for men's health with their rather awesome 'tashes. It took guts to stand up on stage and present with that handlebar, please give a penny or two
A couple of weeks ago, I was at JAX London along with a number of the London Java Community regulars (Martijn/Ben/John/Sandro/Simon/Zoe I'm looking at you....)
My purpose for attending was largely to present the Hardcore Concurrency for Beginners talk that Mike and I debuted at an LJC event a few weeks back. Almost as important was catching up with the aforementioned LJCers and meeting with as many people as would talk to me. After the disappointment of the sessions at Java One, sitting in a room being talked at was quite low down on my list of priorities. Sometimes it's nice to be wrong.
Continue reading "JAX London – I learn stuff and meet people"