I write about software development, tools, and people.
And how marketing makes it all better.
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A No-Kill Shelter, Petting Zoo, and U-Fish Trout Pond Disclaimer: I am not a real sysadmin, but I do talk to many of them, and this humorous presentation is meant to highlight the problems of Going To The Cloud as…
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A Parable of the Polar Vortex
The best time to shovel your driveway is immediately after it snows, but failing that, any time before you have driven on it. Driving on fresh-fallen snow compacts it into something between “ice” and “pure evil”, depending on the temperature,…
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The Year That Was 2018
A wrap-up of my year’s travel, including links to conference talks, and photos of places I’ve been.
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Choose Your Own Deployment
I love the aha moment people get when they grasp a concept. It’s a lot of what gives me energy about this job. Being there to help people see how an abstract concept can make their concrete life better is amazingly…
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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.…
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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…
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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…
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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.…
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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…