ABSTRACT: When you were hired by your current employer, you might have thought it was because of your winning personality, your dazzling smile, or your encyclopedic knowledge of /insert technology here/. But it's not. You were hired for your ability to sit and concentrate for long periods of time to solve problems, then placed in an environment where it's utterly impossible to do that! Who decides that, despite overwhelming evidence that it's bad for productivity and people hate it, that you must sit in a cubicle? The furniture police! This keynote describes the frustrations of modern knowledge workers in their quest to actually get some work done, and solutions for how to gird yourself against all those distractions. I talk about environments, coding, acceleration, automation, and avoiding repetition as ways to defeat the mid-guided attempts to sap your ability to produce good work. And I give you ways to go on the lam from the furniture police and ammunition to fight back!
BIO: Neal is Software Architect and Meme Wrangler at ThoughtWorks, a global IT consultancy with an exclusive focus on end-to-end software development and delivery. Before joining ThoughtWorks, Neal was the Chief Technology Officer at The DSW Group, Ltd., a nationally recognized training and development firm. Neal has a degree in Computer Science from Georgia State University specializing in languages and compilers and a minor in mathematics specializing in statistical analysis. He is also the designer and developer of applications, instructional materials, magazine articles, video presentations, and author of the books Developing with Delphi: Object-Oriented Techniques (Prentice-Hall, 1996), JBuilder 3 Unleashed (Sams, 1999) (as the lead author), Art of Java Web Development (Manning, 2003). He was editor and contributor of the 2006 and 2007 editions of the No Fluff, Just Stuff Anthology. His language proficiencies include Java, C#/.NET, Ruby, Groovy, functional languages, Scheme, Object Pascal, C++, and C. His primary consulting focus is the design and construction of large-scale enterprise applications. Neal has taught on-site classes nationally and internationally to all phases of the military and to many Fortune 500 companies. He is also an internationally acclaimed speaker, having spoken at over 100 developer conferences worldwide, delivering more than 600 talks. If you have an insatiable curiosity about Neal, visit his web site at http://www.nealford.com. He welcomes feedback and can be reached at nford [at] thoughtworks [dot] com.
ABSTRACT: The economy is tanking. What's a programmer to do? We will talk about what developers can do to ride out the economic downturn by setting themselves above the competition (both at home and abroad). We'll start with what you can do to be prepared for hard times, then discuss how developers can differentiate themselves online and off.
BIO: Luke Francl is software developer, currently working on web-based applications using Ruby. He is the lead developer for Tumblon.com and an author on the RailSpikes.com blog. He has spoken at conferences world-wide and co-organizes the Twin Cities area tech events MinneBar and MinneDemo.
ABSTRACT: The single most important tool in any developers toolbox isn't a fancy IDE or some spiffy new language - it's our brain. Despite ever faster processors with multiple cores and expanding amounts of RAM, we haven't yet created a computer to rival the ultra lightweight one we carry around in our skulls - in this session we'll learn how to make the most of it. We'll talk about why multitasking is a myth, the difference between the left and the right side of your brain, the importance of flow and why exercise is good for more than just your waist line.
BIO: Nathaniel T. Schutta is a senior software engineer focused on making usable applications. A proponent of polyglot programming, Nate has written two books on Ajax and speaks regularly at various No Fluff Just Stuff symposia, universities, and Java user groups. In addition to his day job, Nate is an adjunct professor at the University of Minnesota where he teaches students to embrace dynamic languages.
| Attachment | Size |
|---|---|
| Schutta Hacking_Your_Brain.pdf | 4.57 MB |
| Neal_Ford-On_the_Lam_from_the_Furniture_Police-slides.pdf | 13.27 MB |
| Francl Maximizing Developer Value.pdf | 8.14 MB |
