Yolande Poirier from OTN interviewed me at Devoxx about my new job at 10gen, Women in IT (bet that surprises you), how to be a role model, and Agile. Enjoy.
Devoxx: The Problem with Women – A Technical Approach
As well as talking about, you know, actual work-type-stuff, I was encouraged to give my "Technical Approach to Women" presentation at Devoxx. This went so well at JavaOne that I thought it would be difficult to top. Also, I wasn't convinced it would work at Devoxx, because the theatres are not well suited to audience participation - the seats are warm and comfy, the room is dark, the speaker is on stage in front of a massive screen....
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Agile++: When Agile Goes Well
If you see anything about LMAX - the Disruptor, Continuous Delivery, or even the selection criteria for hiring developers, you'll see that LMAX is pretty keen on Agile. However, no-one's documented the Agile process there, as far as I know. Although I personally had it on my todo list, I never had the motivation, the hook to do it. And I realised eventually that's because I'm not sure it's a process that would work very well for another team, in another company, working in another business.
Summary of Devoxx 2012
Devoxx 2012 from Roy van Rijn on Vimeo.
Devoxx topped off a crazy two months of conferences. I've heard people talk about the conference season in the past, and been slightly (OK, very) jealous of all that jet-setting. I'll admit, however, to a slight feeling of relief that my focus until Christmas is pretty much going to be coding. I hope.
Devoxx 2012
This week I'm at Devoxx for the whole week, and already I've achieved two things I didn't manage last year: I drank Belgian Beer and I've spent some time in Antwerp itself.
Why We Shouldn’t Target Women
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.
Devoxx: The story so far
Stephan wearing the Brazilian flag at the opening keynote
- European conferences are different (and cool) because you get to hear even more languages spoken than you usually do in London (apparently the most diverse city in the world for spoken languages). I think the idea of a Paris Devoxx with 75% of the talks in French is brilliant - I'm always banging on about diversity, we shouldn't expect developers to learn in English only.
- Really great to meet up with some of the people I met at Java One and am starting to feel more a part of the global community.
- Seems to me there are slightly more women here than at the other conferences I've been to, and not just because Regina and I pulled together four women for a panel on women technologists. And once again, a lot of guys asking why this is, because they want things to change.
- A highlight was seeing my namesake, AutoTrish, up on a cinema-sized screen in front of hundreds of people at Dave Farley's Continuous Delivery presentation.
- Building on from my twitter revelation at JAX London, I've found twitter very useful here for messaging people I want to meet up with, but also for chatting to new people and making new friends. It's not quite as intimate as JAX London though because there are billions more people here, so the chances of actually bumping into the twitter friends is much lower.
- Have had lots of interesting conversations with people about the Open JDK, which I guess is the logical extension of the interesting conversations I had about the JCP In San Francisco.
- A community event like this is different to an event like Java One, because a single organisation isn't calling the shots. It's interesting (and great) that Oracle and Google can both be here talking about the cool stuff they're up to.
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