Enjoy the following series of interviews with the speakers, top-notch software crafters from across Europe, joining I T.A.K.E Unconference, Bucharest, 11-12 May. Discover the lessons learned and what drives them to challenge the known path in their field.
Joe Wright, Senior Developer, Coach & Architect, helps people deliver software that’s well designed, fully tested and released early. You will learn from his case study at #itakeunconf about how a team can go from individuals to a mob.
#1. Share with us 5 things from your experience that helped you grow & become the professional you are today
# Make time for deep work
Set a few hour blocks aside each week that you will dedicate to improving yourself or creating something each week. As a parent, I’ve had to start doing this by getting up early to grab two hours each day. During this time you can learn a skill, practice coding, write a book or make a podcast. It’s far too easy to let distractions rule your life. Make time to do something you are proud of.
# Become a facilitator
I think everyone is terrified of public speaking. It’s an unnatural thing to do. Our ancestors learned this behavior as a survival instinct – if lots of carnivores are looking at you then you are probably the dinner. Time to run.
Getting over this is an important step that enables you to have all sorts of life experiences. Speaking at conferences, leading workshops and meeting interesting new people. The way I beat the fear was by volunteering to co-organise a well-attended meetup. Each month I would have to get up in front of a room of my peers and say some boilerplate about welcome and the agenda. But just that act of getting up and speaking was enough to dull the fear over time. I’ve not been made into dinner yet.
As well as building yourself up as a speaker, it helps improve your network of people. People like speaking to the host at an event and it gives you an easy opportunity to learn about those people, then take a mental note when you might want to get into contact with them in the future.
# Ask for help
Don’t feel you have to figure everything out yourself or read up online. Reach out and ask people for help.
As you spend more time in your career you meet more people – and one day you’ll have a question you’d love to ask them. It’s even easier now with social media and video conferencing. People will give you 30 minutes of time online or meet you over coffee to give you their advice if they think you’ve got an interesting question to answer.
I always have a list of three things I want advice on. You never know who you are going to meet.
# Improve in more than one dimension
At first, newly minted developers want to get projects released and in users hands. During this, you try to get better at creating software that can be changed to meet their needs. Eventually, newer technology comes out, which promises to solve the problem of getting code out quicker and is easier to change.
It’s quite easy to fall into the trap of just learning technology stacks. This can be rewarding, but that’s not the only way to improve as a developer and meet people’s needs.
Seek out opportunities to see the world from the other functions in software. If you tester goes on holiday then volunteer to stand in for them. If you have an ops team then ask to pair on making the release process smoother. Facilitate a retrospective for another team. Run a usability session with real world users to see how your product is used. Stepping into another roles shoes helps build empathy, which will allow you to work better with others people in the future.
If you tech stack isn’t challenging you then concentrate on improving your “soft skills”. Teach someone how it works. Figure out ways to promote and resolve conflict on your team. Fix the root causes of communication and process issues that slow you down.
# Find people that will challenge you
It can be hard to get feedback about how you are doing. Are your ideas valid? Often you can’t get this feedback in your workplace. Seek out a group of people or a person that is willing to challenge how you think.
For me, this is the Lean Agile space and my local code craftsmanship group.
Consider these people that challenge you your core group. The way you work should be consistent with the ideals of that group. So don’t ever worry about saying what you think at work, just make sure you stay true to the principles of your core group.
#2. What challenges will the participants find solutions to during your session at I T.A.K.E Unconference 2017?
- How can I reduce communication, approval, and tech debt issues from slowing down my team?
- How can I measure and improve how a dev team spends their time?
- How can I get started doing this at my work?
#3. Recommend for the participants 3 sources you find inspiration from and would help them better understand you
- Deep Work: Rules for Focused Success in a Distracted World by Cal Newport (book)
- Facilitation advice – available here
- The Goal by Eliyahu M. Goldratt and Jeff Cox (book)
Want to join Joe, +30 international speakers and ~300 software crafters from around Europe?
Register now for I T.A.K.E Unconference 2017!
Node.JS OSS
Enjoy the following series of interviews with the speakers, top-notch software crafters from across Europe, joining I T.A.K.E Unconference, Bucharest, 19-20 May. Discover the lessons learned and what drives them to challenge the known path in their field.
Alexandru Badiu, Development Lead at Branded Entertainment Network, will share more in his talk at I T.A.K.E Unconference 2016 about maintaining a Node.JS OSS package.
#1. Share with us 5 things you did that helped you grow & become the professional you are today
- I got the chance to work with technology from a very early age (think ZX Spectrum, Intel 8088) and also with assembly language. This taught me to appreciate constraints and never ignore optimization or be lazy.
- Discovering OSS via the Allegro game library lead me to a wealth of code to analyze and learn from.
- Getting a job in the IT department at the university while being a student there leading to four years of experimenting with whatever I wanted to.
- Teaching at the same university.
- Getting involved in the Drupal community, taking part in the creation of Romanian branch, organizing various camps and teaching Drupal.
#2. What challenges will the participants find solutions to during your session at I T.A.K.E Unconference 2016?
How to simplify your development workflow.
#3. What else would you like to share with participants
- I am a very bad theremin player. The theremin was the first electronic instrument ever invented and you play it by not touching it. Check it out, it’s pretty cool.
- I am passionate about synthesizers, old hardware and horror movies.
- I am an amateur musician using Gameboys, Commodore 64 sound chips and other retro things. I once played music in the Gara de Nord railway, at the info panel.
- I like to ride statues (usually of pigs) while pretending to be Bastian from the Neverending Story.
Want to join Alexandru and many more software crafters from around Europe?
Remote pair programming
Enjoy the following series of interviews with the speakers, top-notch software crafters from across Europe, joining I T.A.K.E Unconference, Bucharest, 11-12 May. Discover the lessons learned and what drives them to challenge the known path in their field.
Raimo Radczewski is a freelancing software craftsman living in Berlin, Germany. He’s organizing Berlin’s Software Craftsmanship Community where he supports craftspeople with professionalizing and sharpening their skills, but also reflect on their current practices and how they can work better as teams. At #itakeunconf he will be sharing about Remote Pair-programming.
#1. Please share with us 5 things you did that helped you grow and become the professional you are today
I think the most important thing that shaped my career has been the Software Craftsmanship movement. I first went to an OpenSpace in 2012, then Coderetreats, then SoCraTes, then organizing OpenSpaces and such. The community has really supported me and helped me grow in every professional aspect I could think of.
#2. What challenges will the participants find solutions to during your session at I T.A.K.E Unconference 2017?
The most challenging part of working remote is keeping an inter-human connection to the person on the other side to make up for the tools that so rarely work. It also helps to use the least-broken tools and find a structure that works for the individuals that want to pair up.
#3. Recommend for the participants 3 sources you find inspiration from and would help them better understand you
I draw most of my inspiration from visiting and organizing events in the communities. Additionally, the Software Craftsmanship Slack Team is a great place to start discussing with craftspeople all over the world.
Want to join Raimo and ~300 software crafters from around Europe?
Register now for I T.A.K.E Unconference 2017!
Building a multiplayer game server and keeping (most of) your hair
Enjoy the following series of interviews with the speakers, top-notch software crafters from across Europe, joining I T.A.K.E Unconference, Bucharest, 11-12 May. Discover the lessons learned and what drives them to challenge the known path in their field.
Opher Vishnia, Creative Developer at Interlude, is a multidisciplinary creator, invested in many different and often unrelated fields at the same time: computer science, art, music, design, math, game development and more. He is going to share at #itakeunconf more about building a multiplayer game server.
#1. Please share with us 5 things you did that helped you grow & become the professional you are today
√ Invest in personal projects. Think of a project that you think is fun to make and just start hacking at it. Developing something for yourself, where you make all the decisions rather than for a company you work for, is an amazing tool for learning and growing.
√ Join in the conversation. Is there an online group or a meetup for your area of development? That’s a great way to make new personal connections and learn along the way
√ Find an open source project that you like and start contributing. A good place to start would be a tool or library that you already know and use. Your contribution doesn’t have to be code – you can open an issue, improve the documentation or write a tutorial.
√ Take initiative. Is there something in your workplace that can be done better and sounds interesting to play with? Step up and do it. Suggest researching a new topic, or introducing a new tool the workflow. It’ll provide an interesting new challenge and a break from the daily routine. Plus it’ll make you look cool.
√ Stay optimistic. Sometimes these challenges are frustrating, and there are days you won’t make any progress, but the moment you have that “a-ha” moment is worth it all.
#2. What challenges will the participants find solutions to during your session at I T.A.K.E Unconference 2017?
Participants will learn about why making synchronized multiplayer games in the browser is so hard and what solutions do we have at our disposal to tackle those.
#3. Recommend for the participants 3 sources you find inspiration from and would help them better understand you
√ Codepen.io is a wonderful tool for inspiration on the web
√ Games in general. Just get Steam and play something!
√ Multiplayer Game Programming: Architecting Networked Game by Josh Glazer & Sanjay Madhav – A very comprehensive book on all things multiplayer
Want to meet Opher, +30 international speakers and ~300 software crafters from around Europe?
Register now for I T.A.K.E Unconference 2017!