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.
Ricardo J. Mendez, founder at Numergent, is a software developer with 20 years of practice. He will share in his talk at I T.A.K.E Unconference 2016 more about immutable data.
#1. SHARE TOP 5 THINGS YOU DID THAT HELPED YOU GROW & BECOME THE PROFESSIONAL YOU ARE TODAY
Starting my own business, leaving the comfort of a company where you get a certain sense of security by deriving a regular salary, and having to deal with the hidden iceberg of new skills I had to learn but hadn’t realized I didn’t even know about.
Joining my first start up, which wasn’t the same as a usual job, nor with the degree of control of just running my own business, was a great learning experience on how to deal with uncertainty while still aiming to provide a measure of direction.
Realizing that, as a developer, your job is not to deliver code. Your job is to keep the user happy, and delivering code is only a part of that. It requires a mental shift from the technology-focused mentality one tends to have as an engineer.
Working with distributed teams, and learning to adapt to the different work and communication styles of people from different countries, has made a huge difference in adaptability, and has taught me to not assume the message is always getting across.
Going through several technology trends and epochs, seeing language and platform flame wars rage and abate, trying a bit of everything, helps come to grips with the idea that a language or a platform is just a tool, and it’s what you do with it that matters.
#2. What challenges will the participants find solutions to during your session at I T.A.K.E Unconference 2016?
The idea that being unable to modify your data can bring more flexibility is unintuitive.
However, the bigger our codebases grow, the harder it becomes to find out if a refactoring process, or even a seemingly small change, will have a negative impact. Test suites can reduce this uncertainty, but normally only inform us of a problem *after* we’ve made a change. There’s usually no way to know, in advance, how time consuming the side effects of a modification will be.
A shift in mentality towards data immutability, whatever the language we are using, will help structure the code and functionality in a way that makes it easier to grow and change down the road.
#3. What else would you like to share with participants ?
I assemble and lead project-specific teams to tackle challenges involving interaction design, data and open source. I’ve been working on software for over 20 years, across multiple industries – from desktop tools, to banking and financial institutions, to healthcare, to gaming.
I usually work with distributed teams, as I’d rather take the expertise where I find it than expect it to be around the corner, and it leads to interesting, varied teams with different perspectives.
A voracious reader, of both technical and non-technical books, it would be strange to find me without one or two tomes in progress. This extends to platforms and languages – I very much enjoy kicking the tires on both, always looking for something new to learn.
Want to join Ricardo and many more software crafters from around Europe?Join I T.A.K.E Unconference 2016!
Journey to Agilandia
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.
Liviu-Stefanita Baiu, Senior Business Analyst and Analysis Discipline Lead, has worked as a full-time Business Analyst for the last 5 years, in a couple of companies, in an Agile environment. He will share at #itakeunconf real-life samples of the techniques and tools and how they helped get along in Agilandia.
#1. Please share with us 5 things you did that helped you grow & become the professional you are today
Some of the most important turning points in my professional life are related to the people – my family and people I’ve met and work with along the way.
√ The set of values I learned from my family is the basement for all I am today, and I will name only a few – fairness, transparency, and loyalty helped me get through various situations I encountered.
√ Along with the above values – assuming responsibility for the things I’ve done allowed me to become trusted and receive honest feedback about my activity. Getting the right feedback (positive or negative – we all have successes and fails) and learning from it – this is something of value for me, and I try not to repeat the mistakes I’ve made along the way.
√ I like to read and I was encouraged to do so – this got me to pay attention to details and try to see beyond words and facade.
√ Making a career switch, thirteen years ago when I joined Transart, was a turning point. And the things I learned there for almost seven years, allowed me to naturally evolve to become a Business Analyst.
√ The colleagues and superiors I had, in my previous employments, contributed something to my evolution – their appreciation, as well as their disapproval, and always their advice.
#2. What challenges will the participants find solutions to during your session at I T.A.K.E Unconference 2017?
My session is nothing about panacea, rather a proposition for the participants to use a set of tools, techniques, and attitude to tackle the complexity of software projects in an Agile environment. Some of them tools will help them understand the product vision, and other can be used for passing it on to the teams they work with. The match between them and each participant’s work environment as well as the value they bring in everyday work is a decision that relies solely on each and everyone from the audience. This toolkit worked for me, it may work for others.
#3. Recommend for the participants 3 sources you find inspiration from and would help them better understand you
I play GO (or wieki) – an ancient Chinese strategy game – unfortunately less often, I enjoy reading Fantasy and Sci-Fi literature, but one of the books I enjoyed reading is a military treaty – Sun Tzu’s Art of War, and one of my favorite authors is Mario Vargas Llosa, from a professional perspective Patrick Lencioni – The Advantage was an inspiration. And to conclude – the best source of information is the team you work with, they will show you what you need to learn so you can work together.
Want to join Liviu 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?
Call for speakers open
We have opened the call for speakers. For next year we decided to keep the topics that you hold dear: architecture, design principles, TDD etc. and also add some new areas that are becoming more and more popular these days: mobile, big data, scaling architecture etc. Visit the page to learn more.
If you know somebody that has something valuable to share with our audience, we’d appreciate it if you shared the link for the call page.
***
Have any questions about the call for papers or the unconference? Let us know in the comments.
[newsletter-form]