Speaking
Tinkertoys, Microservices, and Feature Management (ScaleConf 2019)
I got the video from my trip to ScaleConf in Capetown, South Africa. This talk is an interesting trick, because I don’t talk about testing anywhere in the title or summary, but it’s really all about how testing is a vital part of microservice architecture, and how testing needs to change to work with feature…
Book Review: Academic Slide Design by Ann E. Fandrey
This book says “Academic”, but it’s also an excellent resource for the person writing technical/software presentations. We often face the problem of trying to convey really important concepts in a way that serves people who are primarily listening to us as well as people who are reading the slides, either because they don’t speak the…
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.
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 rewarding. Because of this, I try to change up all the parts of my talks,…
“Style is a way to say who you are without having to speak.” —Rachel Zoe
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:…
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…
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…
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…
Upcoming appearances
DevOpsDays Seattle
DevNet Create
GOTO Chicago
Deliver:AgileAlliance
O'Reilly Software Architecture/Velocity
The Lead Developer London