Developer Champion
Posts about Conferences, User Group Events, and other gatherings.
So, before everything gets pushed out of my head, GOTO Copenhagen.
It was my first conference "alone", in that I didn't have friends and colleagues from LMAX or the London Java Community there with me. And certainly at the start of the conference, I wasn't the only one who was standing around, hoping someone would talk to me (in all honesty some of the photos above are a little unfair - the schedule was a very nice, simple phone app so most people spent a lot of time playing with their phones).
Today I was at the Girl Geek Meetup conference. I didn't advertise it much because I've said in the past I don't really agree with women-only events, and actually I felt quite uncomfortable telling you guys I was going to be there, knowing the majority of my readers weren't allowed to attend.
It's probably worth explaining why I went, so a) I can give you guys and excuse but b) conference organisers can see what people like me are looking for in a conference.
Continue reading "In which I defend the Male species at an all Female event"
I'm late with my write-up of QCon, and what's worse, it will be partial - "sadly" I was in Lanzarote on a training week with the running club from the Thursday (8th) so I missed most of it. A sacrifice I had to make for 7 days in the sunshine...
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:
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"
Last Tuesday Mike and I unveiled our brand shiny new presentation: Understanding the Disruptor, a Beginner's Guide to Hardcore Concurrency. This was a preview of the talk we'll be doing at JAX London on the 2nd November.
A video of the session is available, as are the slides. I promise not to say "so" anywhere near as many times when I repeat my performance at JAX (is there anything more painful than watching yourself on video?).
Continue reading "Mike and I debut our new Disruptor presentation"
Having been back in London for a few days I've had some time to digest the madness that was last week.
My lasting impression of JavaOne is almost entirely positive. Granted, it was my first major conference, so maybe I'm just not jaded yet. But let me tell you what I loved about it (yes, I did cover some of these in my last post):