Posts
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, humidity of the air, humidity of the snow, etc. I just went out and shoveled…
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,…
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…
“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:…
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
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…
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…
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