Win an invitation to I T.A.K.E. Unconference 2015

Mar 13, 2015 by Madalina Botez in Announcements

The week to celebrate #famousITwomen brings you the chance to win an invitation to The Europe Software Craftsmanship event dedicated to Software Architecture, Software Design and Technical Strategy – I T.A.K.E. Unconference 2015.

Most of our followers have probably found out more about the roots of technology from the #famousITwomen stories here on the blog. As a gift to you, here’s an invitation that you might enjoy – thanks for following us. There’s how you can get it:

Leave a comment hereby saying Who’s your favorite famous IT woman. Or share a link where to read more about her. She can be Ada Lovelace, or Barbara Liskov, or any of the women who left stamps on tech history, anyone that might have inspired you. Use the #famousITwomen hashtag.

You can enter the competition until Mon 16th of March. The one who has most likes for his/her comment will be rewarded on Wed 18th of March. If you are a software craftsman we encourage you to comment too and win the invitation for her.

Looking forward to see you at I T.A.K.E. Unconference 2015 in May!

P.S. Keep an eye on the blog for amazing stories about #famousITwomen who’ve made breakthrough contributions along the history www.itakeunconf.com

Find more about I T.A.K.E. Unconference.

Developers are not computers

Mar 29, 2017

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.

Csaba Patkos, Team Lead Syneto, is a technical practitioner with 15 years of experience in the field. Joining #itakeunconf 2017 as speaker, he will share more in his talk about his experience of growing up as a team leader, mentor, and coach for the team he works with daily.

#1. Please share with us 5 things you did that helped you grow & become the professional you are today

Reading … I mean a lot. 40-50 books / year are doable. They can mix in a few novels / literature as well.
Made plans and fought to achieve them. Think about where you want to be in 6 months or 1 year and define the steps you need to take to get there.
I love programming and software engineering. I do it daily, with dedication.
Built some useful daily habits that are helping me to get better. For example listen to audio books when driving, daily reading, daily plan of work, etc.
Talked to the people I admire and I used these talks as sources of inspiration. So, don’t be afraid to approach your professional idols, they are people just like you.

#2. What challenges will the participants find solutions to during your session at I T.A.K.E Unconference 2017?

√ Some people just won’t listen to you.

√ Some people just want to force their ideas on you.

√ Some people don’t care about the topic, they just pick fights with you.

√ Some people think you don’t care, even though you really do.

√ Other communication issues.

#3. Recommend for the participants 3 sources you find inspiration from and would help them better understand you

Want to join Csaba and ~300 software crafters from around Europe?

Immutable data

May 05, 2016

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!

First two confirmed keynotes

Nov 05, 2014

Happy to announce that Simon Brown and James Lewis are keynotes for the next year edition. Software Architecture and Microservices Architecture are the topics they are masters on.

Simon Brown, award-winning speaker and author of Software Architecture for Developers – a developer-friendly guide to software architecture, technical leadership and the balance with agility. Simon has provided consulting/training to software teams in over 20 countries, ranging from small startups to global blue chip companies. He blogs @ www.codingthearchitecture.com Tweet him @simonbrown

James Lewis, Principal Consultant, introduced evolutionary architecture practices and agile software development techniques to various blue chip companies: investment banks, publishers and media organisations. He blogs @ http://bovon.org More about his take on Microservices here where he worked jointly with Martin Fowler.

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Have any questions about I T.A.K.E. Unconference 2015? Let us know in the comments.

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