Author: Heidi Waterhouse
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The Art of Booth
I originally wrote this up as an internal blog post, but I think it may be useful for other people, too, so I’ve cleaned it up a bit and taken out most of the proprietary stuff, and added some explanations. I had never in my life done boothwork before this job, so I was surprised…
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Lady Conference Speaker Dress-up
Colored hair has never disrupted my ability to do my highly-visible, public job, either. Almost every form of dress code you can think of is about asymetrical respect – the less powerful person is forced to comply with power’s standards of hair/clothing/expression. https://t.co/yB5RGz9JpD — Heidi from LaunchDarkly (@wiredferret) January 15, 2019 I look like this:…
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My favorite talk of 2018
This is the talk that I saw this year that has changed my thinking the most, that I have referred to most often. Fixme, by David Heinemeier Hansson
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The naming of cats… or feature flag patterns
Eeee! I’m super excited to start this year because something I’ve been working on for a while is ready for all of you to look at! Feature Flag Glossary It’s hard to use a pattern, or even imagine it, if you don’t have a name for it, so we put together all the names for…
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On the Origin of the Speciated Conference
I go to so many conferences! It’s an awesome and amazing part of my job. I speak at them, but I also attend them. I sit in the front row and live-tweet. I attend talks. I participate in unconference sessions. I talk to people in lines, and at lunch, and at the afterparty. I give…
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Speaker’s Hierarchy of Needs
I’ve been thinking about what I need to be a happy speaker, and what I expect, and what I hope for, and it seems to me like it’s a a hierarchy of needs, like Maslow. This is absolutely not intended to “call out” any organizer or make anyone feel bad. The vast majority of my…
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Help, I need somebody!
I may have mentioned that I have an executive function disorder. That is the category AD(H)D falls into. What that means for me is that it is often a lot of work for me to make decisions and organize tasks. All of the traits that make me an excellent systems thinker, like holistic views, consideration…
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On a jet plane…
I’ve been in Europe for the better part of three weeks now, and I’ll be going home Saturday. As you can imagine, I thought long and hard about everything I brought with me. I never want to take more luggage than I can comfortably manage on my own, up and down subway stairs. This is…



