SwanseaCon is a conference for people who build quality software as part of an agile team http://swanseacon.github.io/ <h4 id="swanseacon-2019---call-for-speakers-is-now-closed">SwanseaCon 2019 - Call for speakers is now closed.</h4> <p>Thank you to each and every person who took the time to submit to our call for speakers for SwanseaCon 2019.</p> <p>We had a fantastic response to our call for speakers and are now busy going through lots of submissions.</p> <p>Keep an eye out over the next few weeks as we will be announcing all of our fantastic speakers.</p> <h4 id="for-more-advice-or-information">For more advice or information</h4> <p>While we aim to get back to everyone in the next few weeks, due to the volume of submissions we received this may take longer than anticipated so please be patient.</p> <p>If you do however want to chase up your submission please feel free to get in touch.</p> <p>Email: [email protected] Twitter: twitter.com/SwanseaCon</p> Sun, 17 Feb 2019 14:12:34 +0000 http://swanseacon.github.io/blog/call-for-speakers-now-closed http://swanseacon.github.io/blog/call-for-speakers-now-closed <h4 id="swanseacon-2019---call-for-speakers-is-now-open">SwanseaCon 2019 - Call for speakers is now open.</h4> <p>The call for speakers for the 5th year of SwanseaCon is now open and will close on Saturday 16th February 2019!</p> <p>Whether your somebody who’s never spoken before or maybe you have traveled all over the world giving talks. If you help to design, develop, test or release software as part of an agile team then we want to hear from you.</p> <p>Perhaps you have an inspiring story you want to share or maybe a lesson learnt from something that didn’t go so well? Want to run a workshop to help people to learn different ways of doing something? What ever you ideas please get in touch, we would love to hear from you.</p> <p>Previous years we’ve had speakers from all different background, travelling from all over the world (one year from Sydney, Australia) to speak.</p> <p>Below are some of the talk titles that were submitted, accepted and run at previous SwanseaCon events.</p> <h5 id="swanseacon-2018-sessions">SwanseaCon 2018 Sessions</h5> <ul> <li>Where’s my free lunch</li> <li>Nature of Learning</li> <li>Do or don’t. There’s no try. Or is there?</li> <li>The Systemics of the Liskov Substitution Principle</li> <li>Continuous security</li> <li>Strategic Autonomous Design: Patterns and Heuristics</li> <li>Testcontainers for Real Integration Tests</li> <li>Automating your test infrastructure with Kubernetes</li> <li>Lessons from the floor… what it means to be a first-time Product Owner</li> <li>How to build products people care about</li> <li>Working in the open works</li> <li>MySQL 8 Server Optimization</li> <li>I am here for an argument – Working with conflict in teams</li> <li>Questioning requirements: improving quality for everyone</li> <li>Anxiety Under Test</li> <li>Cross-team pair testing: lessons of a testing traveler</li> <li>How to parse a file</li> <li>releaseflow: a healthy build, release and deploy process</li> <li>Azure from A-Z</li> <li>Kubernetes for .NET developers</li> <li>Cracking the WIP</li> <li>UI Testing - Selenium? Rich-Clients? Containers?</li> <li>Culture for the win</li> <li>From Bedroom to Boardroom</li> </ul> <h5 id="swanseacon-2017-sessions">SwanseaCon 2017 Sessions</h5> <ul> <li>Pair-Programming From a Beginner’s Perspective</li> <li>Harnessing Culture for Great Agile Relationships</li> <li>Building a REPL for Phunkie, with Phunkie</li> <li>The Future is Serverless</li> <li>Scaling Continuous Delivery is not black magic</li> <li>Serverless with Azure Functions - the rebel service</li> <li>Scale @ Netflix</li> <li>The Domain-Driven Coding Architect</li> <li>Agile life lessons - looking beyond the processes</li> <li>Acceptance Testing on Mobile</li> <li>10 things you need to know about BDD, Cucumber and SpecFlow</li> <li>Defining MVP with Scenarios</li> <li>Unit Tests: Let’s get skeptical</li> <li>‘I am Groot’ - Learning Agile Testing</li> <li>Building Empowered Teams at Scale</li> <li>Developing an agile mindset: leading teams to think beyond the tools, techniques and process.</li> <li>Turning Development Outside–In</li> <li>The trouble with culture</li> <li>Making Agile safe again: resisting the Borg</li> <li>Test Driven Deployment</li> <li>Branching strategies: choose wisely to minimise costs</li> <li>Limiting WIP in the kitchen sink (aka ‘shamelessly capitalising upon an argument with my wife…’)</li> <li>Live coding a chatbot in less than 15 minutes</li> <li>Travel guide to continuous delivery</li> <li>Motivation for You, your Craft, your Team and your Org</li> </ul> <h5 id="swanseacon-2016">SwanseaCon 2016</h5> <ul> <li>Let’s Do Kano Analysis of SwanseaCon</li> <li>It doesn’t always have to be Scrum</li> <li>Introducing Eager Design</li> <li>A Toolset for Creating a Potentially Releasable Product Increment</li> <li>Seven ineffective coding habits many F# programmers don’t have</li> <li>Education for Engineers</li> <li>From Scrum to Flow using Actionable Agile Metrics</li> <li>How deep are your tests?</li> <li>Tech Communities as Fandoms</li> <li>How and Why to Love Cucumber</li> <li>User-Story Point estimation: a new approach</li> <li>Scaling MySQL</li> <li>Software Craftsmanship vs Lean Product</li> <li>An Insider’s View Of Agile In The Public Sector</li> <li>KISS me quick; The battle against complexity</li> <li>Organisational Wide Agility</li> <li>Migration - from ‘Jurassic Park’ to MicroServices</li> <li>SonarQube to manage our technical debt and increase value</li> <li>Teal Organisations: A Living Example</li> <li>Skills For Crafts</li> <li>Why so serious?</li> </ul> <h5 id="swanseacon-2015-sessions">SwanseaCon 2015 Sessions</h5> <ul> <li>What Is Continuous Inspection, Anyway?</li> <li>Managing global teams : Lessons learned</li> <li>Level Up Your Tests</li> <li>Taking back BDD</li> <li>Use your type system; write less code</li> <li>Scala in GOV.UK Digital Services</li> <li>Spreadsheets are Code</li> <li>How to use Theory of Constraints to scale big agile development teams?</li> <li>Software architecture vs code</li> <li>It doesn’t work that way in enterprise</li> <li>The differences between US and European startups from a technical leadership point-of-view.</li> <li>Lean UX and Agile development taking the Public sector to new levels</li> <li>Exploring alternatives to software estimation with #NoEstimates</li> <li>Refactoring mount doom: the story of a story</li> <li>Common mistakes in TDD – can you guess?</li> <li>Bringing Agile Concepts to Operations</li> <li>Legacy Code is Fear</li> <li>Designing and building a micro-services architecture. Stairway to heaven or a highway to hell?</li> </ul> <p>If you do have a talk that’s a bit different, please do not be put off - submit it or get in touch ([email protected]) and we can discuss it with you if you’d like?</p> <h4 id="attendees">Attendees</h4> <p>Some of our previous attendees have held the following positions:</p> <ul> <li>Developer</li> <li>Tester</li> <li>Professor</li> <li>Entrepreneur</li> <li>Apprentice</li> <li>Trainer</li> <li>Delivery Director</li> <li>Software Architect</li> <li>Business Analyst</li> <li>Scrum Master</li> <li>Director of Digital Services</li> <li>Blogger</li> <li>Product Owner</li> </ul> <h4 id="speakers-package">Speakers’ package</h4> <ul> <li>Conference ticket to attend the event</li> <li>Refreshments</li> <li>Lunch</li> <li>Free Wifi at the event</li> <li>Participant pack</li> </ul> <p>For out of town speakers we are able to also provide:</p> <ul> <li>Travel (maximum of £250)</li> <li>Hotel stay (maximum of two nights covered) Anything not listed above is not included. Please contact us about any specific requests.</li> </ul> <h4 id="ready-to-submit">Ready to submit?</h4> <p>We would love you to submit! Please head over to the <a href="https://swanseacon.co.uk/speaker-info">call for speakers</a> page and we will be in touch soon.</p> <h4 id="for-more-advice-or-information">For more advice or information</h4> <p>We hope the above provides enough information about SwanseaCon and the types of sessions we are looking for.</p> <p>If your stuck or have any questions please get in touch. We’re happy to provide further advice if you need more help before submitting your session.</p> <p>Email: [email protected] Twitter: twitter.com/SwanseaCon</p> Sun, 09 Dec 2018 14:12:34 +0000 http://swanseacon.github.io/blog/call-for-speakers-now-open http://swanseacon.github.io/blog/call-for-speakers-now-open <h4 id="meet-the-sponsor-alcumus-group">Meet the Sponsor: Alcumus Group.</h4> <p><img src="/img/partners/Alcumus.JPG" /></p> <h4 id="who-are-you">Who are you?</h4> <p>Louis Cross – Internal Tech Recruiter at Alcumus</p> <h4 id="what-do-you-do">What do you do?</h4> <p>I have an awesome job. I’m responsible for recruitment for every technical role at Alcumus. I work really closely with our hiring managers to get the best people into our Alcumus Technology teams to really drive our Tech-led business.</p> <h4 id="how-long-have-you-been-in-recruitment">How Long have you been in recruitment?</h4> <p>4 years!</p> <h4 id="have-you-sponsored-or-attended-swanseacon-before">Have you sponsored or attended SwanseaCon before?</h4> <p>We are super excited to be sponsoring SwanseaCon for the very first time, and really proud to be the Platinum Sponsor! Since we’ve become a sponsor I’ve had messages from friends, ex colleagues and candidates that are interested in what we’re doing in the tech space – and I’ve got loads to tell them! I’d encourage anyone from the Swanseacon audience to get in touch if they’re interested in progressing their career with us.</p> <h4 id="what-made-you-want-to-attend-and-also-sponsor-swanseacon-this-year">What made you want to attend and also sponsor SwanseaCon this year?</h4> <p>Alcumus has a strong heritage in helping organisations be Safer, Healthier and Stronger through technology-led compliance and risk management. This year we are taking that to a new level and need the best tech talent from the South Wales area to help us get there – it’s a genuinely exciting work that makes a real difference to people’s lives and we wanted to share our vision with the audience at Swanseacon.</p> <h4 id="are-there-any-sessions-that-you-are-looking-forward-to-at-swanseacon">Are there any sessions that you are looking forward to at SwanseaCon?</h4> <p>Questioning Requirements: Improving Quality for everyone. Sounds like an interesting topic and ultimately is what our company is about. Looking forward to hearing more about that from a new perspective.</p> <h4 id="did-you-enjoy-this-post">Did you enjoy this post?</h4> <p><a href="https://swanseacon.co.uk/">Pop over to say hello to Alcumus, our platinum sponsors at SwanseaCon 2018</a></p> Tue, 14 Aug 2018 17:19:00 +0000 http://swanseacon.github.io/blog/meet-the-sponsor-alcumus http://swanseacon.github.io/blog/meet-the-sponsor-alcumus <h4 id="meet-the-speaker-stephen-mounsey">Meet the Speaker: Stephen Mounsey.</h4> <p><img src="/img/people/StephenMounsey.jpg" /></p> <h4 id="whats-your-session-topic">What’s your session topic?</h4> <p>Conflict in Agile teams</p> <h4 id="why-is-your-topic-important">Why is your topic important?</h4> <p>Because every one of us deals with conflict each day. We disagree on all sorts of stuff. Agile values collaboration and consensus decision making for that to work we need to be able to work with conflict and disagreement in our teams.</p> <h4 id="what-are-the-prerequisites-should-the-audience-have-for-attending-your-session">What are the prerequisites should the audience have for attending your session?</h4> <p>Nothing special, a thirst for learning a bunch of tools for dealing with conflict</p> <h4 id="how-long-have-you-been-in-this-industry">How long have you been in this industry?</h4> <p>Over 10 years</p> <h4 id="what-is-one-of-those-things-you-wish-you-knew-when-you-started-out-in-this-industry">What is one of those things you wish you knew when you started out in this industry?</h4> <p>Keep learning, all the time.</p> <h4 id="have-you-spoken-at-or-attended-swanseacon-before">Have you spoken at or attended SwanseaCon before?</h4> <p>I have it is a great event, one of the highlights of my year.</p> <h4 id="what-made-you-want-to-speak-at-swanseacon-this-year">What made you want to speak at SwanseaCon this year?</h4> <p>As a tester speaking at events which broaden my spectrum of learning is a key goal for me. I want to speak at SwanseaCon because it’s an awesome event and I really want to go again.</p> <h4 id="are-there-any-sessions-other-than-your-own-which-you-are-looking-forward-to-at-swanseacon">Are there any sessions other than your own which you are looking forward to at SwanseaCon?</h4> <p>Looking forward to many of the sessions, they are usually of a very high standard.</p> <h4 id="did-you-enjoy-this-post">Did you enjoy this post?</h4> <p><a href="https://swanseacon.co.uk/">Get your tickets today to see Stephen Mounsey and many others at SwanseaCon 2018</a></p> Mon, 06 Aug 2018 17:19:00 +0000 http://swanseacon.github.io/blog/meet-the-speakers-stephen-mounsey http://swanseacon.github.io/blog/meet-the-speakers-stephen-mounsey <h4 id="meet-the-speaker-elisabeth-hocke">Meet the Speaker: Elisabeth Hocke.</h4> <p><img src="/img/people/lisihocke.jpg" /></p> <h4 id="whats-your-session-topic">What’s your session topic?</h4> <p>Beginning of this year, I started out on a testing tour. I had many pair testing sessions with many different testers from all over the world, as experiment whether this is a feasible way to level up my skills. I am happy to share my lessons learned on this journey as well as tips to go on your own adventure.</p> <h4 id="why-is-your-topic-important">Why is your topic important?*</h4> <p>I feel that continuous learning and self-improvement is crucial in today’s ever changing world. Personally I really enjoy to increase my skills and ways how I can provide value. But how to succeed in getting better than yesterday, every day?</p> <p>Having been the lone tester in the company for a long time, I always wondered where I stand regarding my knowledge and skills as a tester. I’m not the only tester anymore, but still I wanted to become better at assessing my own skills, and especially, improving them. Learning on my own is a feasible way and can lead me that far, but I struggle doing so with hands-on topics. I rather start new things without finishing them and miss the feedback whether I’m going in the right direction. Learning in a pair or mob situation, however, already proved very valuable to me so I got myself into situations to do so with other testers. Join my talk and learn whether the testing tour solved my problem of continuously improving my skills!</p> <h4 id="what-are-the-prerequisites-should-the-audience-have-for-attending-your-session">What are the prerequisites should the audience have for attending your session?</h4> <p>The only prerequisite is to have an open mind. Although I will tell my story from a tester point of view, I strongly believe the lessons of my learning journey can be applied to many other roles.</p> <h4 id="how-long-have-you-been-in-this-industry">How long have you been in this industry?</h4> <p>I fell into testing and agile in 2009 in a little startup building an AI middleware for game developers. I’ve come a bit around since then and saw different environments, taking over different hats, but always being a tester at heart and in practice.</p> <h4 id="what-is-one-of-those-things-you-wish-you-knew-when-you-started-out-in-this-industry">What is one of those things you wish you knew when you started out in this industry?</h4> <p>I would have loved to know that there is an amazing community out there with great people learning with and from each other that are so inspiring, supportive, and encouraging. Also, I wish I would have had the courage to reach out earlier than I did.</p> <h4 id="have-you-spoken-at-or-attended-swanseacon-before">Have you spoken at or attended SwanseaCon before?</h4> <p>Last year I had the honor to speak at SwanseaCon as well. It was a wonderful event with great people and I am really happy to have the opportunity to come back this year!</p> <h4 id="what-made-you-want-to-speak-at-swanseacon-this-year">What made you want to speak at SwanseaCon this year?</h4> <p>The conference was really diverse last year when it came to the sessions. I really enjoyed listening to a variety of topics presented from different perspectives, all so relevant for development. Experience reports and personal learning stories are my favorite sessions and SwanseaCon provided plenty of those.</p> <h4 id="are-there-any-sessions-other-than-your-own-which-you-are-looking-forward-to-at-swanseacon">Are there any sessions other than your own which you are looking forward to at SwanseaCon?</h4> <p>Absolutely! This year it will get difficult as we have four tracks to choose from. I’m really curious to hear both the talks of Mashooq Badar about the “Nature of Learning” as well as Gem Hill about “Anxiety Under Test”; too bad they take place at the same time! Also, I’m looking forward to the workshop offered by Kristīne Corbus and Lisa Crispin: “Questioning requirements: improving quality for everyone”, practicing in a hands-on way to increase my skills.</p> <h4 id="did-you-enjoy-this-post">Did you enjoy this post?</h4> <p><a href="https://swanseacon.co.uk/">Get your tickets today to see Elisabeth Hocke and many others at SwanseaCon 2018</a></p> Mon, 06 Aug 2018 17:19:00 +0000 http://swanseacon.github.io/blog/meet-the-speakers-elisabeth-hocke http://swanseacon.github.io/blog/meet-the-speakers-elisabeth-hocke <h4 id="meet-the-speaker-mashooq-badar">Meet the Speaker: Mashooq Badar.</h4> <p><img src="/img/people/MashooqBadar.jpg" /></p> <h4 id="whats-your-session-topic">What’s your session topic?</h4> <p>Nature of Learning</p> <h4 id="why-is-your-topic-important">Why is your topic important?</h4> <p>Learning is a part of our survival and key to professional success. Understanding its nature helps us to become better learners. In our industry, where technologies and practices evolve so fast, effective learning is an absolute necessity. It is too important for us to simply stumble through, our approach to learning must be deliberate.</p> <h4 id="what-are-the-prerequisites-should-the-audience-have-for-attending-your-session">What are the prerequisites should the audience have for attending your session?</h4> <p>None, or maybe an attentive ear.</p> <h4 id="how-long-have-you-been-in-this-industry">How long have you been in this industry?</h4> <p>20 Years</p> <h4 id="what-is-one-of-those-things-you-wish-you-knew-when-you-started-out-in-this-industry">What is one of those things you wish you knew when you started out in this industry?</h4> <p>Critical Thinking and a deeper understanding of simplicity in Software Design.</p> <h4 id="have-you-spoken-at-or-attended-swanseacon-before">Have you spoken at or attended SwanseaCon before?</h4> <p>No</p> <h4 id="what-made-you-want-to-speak-at-swanseacon-this-year">What made you want to speak at SwanseaCon this year?</h4> <p>Many of my friends have attended and presented at SwanseaCon in the previous years. Their experiences have been amazing. I decided to experience it first hand myself this year.</p> <h4 id="are-there-any-sessions-other-than-your-own-which-you-are-looking-forward-to-at-swanseacon">Are there any sessions other than your own which you are looking forward to at SwanseaCon?</h4> <p>I am particularly interested in Sander Hoogendoorn’s talk “Do or don’t. There’s no try. Or is there?”, and and Nick Tunes take on “Patterns and Heuristics”.</p> <h4 id="did-you-enjoy-this-post">Did you enjoy this post?</h4> <p><a href="https://swanseacon.co.uk/">Get your tickets today to see Mashooq Badar and many others at SwanseaCon 2018</a></p> Fri, 27 Jul 2018 17:19:00 +0000 http://swanseacon.github.io/blog/meet-the-speakers-mashooq-badar http://swanseacon.github.io/blog/meet-the-speakers-mashooq-badar <h4 id="meet-the-speaker-chris-cundill">Meet the Speaker: Chris Cundill.</h4> <p><img src="/img/people/ChrisCundill.jpg" /></p> <h4 id="whats-your-session-topic">What’s your session topic?</h4> <p>The title of my talk is “releaseflow: a healthy build, release and deploy process”. I’ll be using this opportunity to demonstrate a real, live example of Continuous Delivery which will be suitable for both newbies to CI/CD and to those who are hardened travellers down that road. We’ll watch a code change make it’s way through a CI/CD pipeline all the way through to production live during the talk! We’ll discuss how we can apply practices that facilitate continuous delivery in our everyday work. We’ll also discuss the releaseflow.org branching strategy and why it’s superior to alternatives such as gitflow.</p> <h4 id="why-is-your-topic-important">Why is your topic important?*</h4> <p>Each software team desires to deliver value to their customers early and often. The reality that teams face is often quite different. This topic is important since we’ll identify what constitutes a healthy build, release and deploy process. We’ll chat about changes that will get your team delivering more. We’ll expose the things that are toxic and must be addressed. We’ll challenge the status quo.</p> <h4 id="what-are-the-prerequisites-the-audience-should-have-for-attending-your-session">What are the prerequisites the audience should have for attending your session?</h4> <p>It will be helpful if attendees for this session already work within a software development team in some capacity; whether that be in a supporting role such as Agile Coach, Business Analyst or Product Owner, or an active role such as Software Engineer, Ops or QA. However, they’ll be something for everyone so feel free to come along even if you’re new to the industry!</p> <h4 id="how-long-have-you-been-in-this-industry">How long have you been in this industry?</h4> <p>Over 14 years :)</p> <h4 id="what-is-one-of-those-things-you-wish-you-knew-when-you-started-out-in-this-industry">What is one of those things you wish you knew when you started out in this industry?</h4> <p>How awesome it was going to be! Seriously, there’s so much to learn in this industry. You’ll never have to lack motivation to get out of bed in the morning.</p> <h4 id="have-you-spoken-at-or-attended-swanseacon-before">Have you spoken at or attended SwanseaCon before?</h4> <p>Yes, I spoke at the first two SwanseaCon events but didn’t manage to submit something last year due to time commitments. The first year I gave an introduction to the Scala language. The second year I performed a dual act with my friend Greg Simons for a talk entitled “Get your head in the Clouds”.</p> <h4 id="what-made-you-want-to-speak-at-swanseacon-this-year">What made you want to speak at SwanseaCon this year?</h4> <p>A couple of reasons; the first is that I wanted to speak about releaseflow.org and Continuous Delivery since it’s a subject I’ve been passionate about for years. Second, I’m massively invested in the tech scene in Swansea and would love to see a rise in the innovation and craftsmanship of software here in my home town.</p> <h4 id="are-there-any-sessions-other-than-your-own-which-you-are-looking-forward-to-at-swanseacon">Are there any sessions other than your own which you are looking forward to at SwanseaCon?</h4> <p>Definitely! It looks like a genuinely great lineup! Here’s a few I plan on attending:</p> <ul> <li>“How to build products people care about” by Monira &amp; Oli from Thoughtworks</li> <li>“How to parse a file” by Matt Ellis from Jetbrains</li> <li>“Testcontainers for Real Integration Tests” by Philip Krenn from Elastic</li> </ul> <h4 id="did-you-enjoy-this-post">Did you enjoy this post?</h4> <p><a href="https://swanseacon.co.uk/">Get your tickets today to see Chris Cundill and many others at SwanseaCon 2018</a></p> Thu, 26 Jul 2018 17:19:00 +0000 http://swanseacon.github.io/blog/meet-the-speakers-chris-cundill http://swanseacon.github.io/blog/meet-the-speakers-chris-cundill <h4 id="meet-the-speaker-seb-rose">Meet the Speaker: Seb Rose.</h4> <p><img src="/img/people/SebRose.jpg" /></p> <h4 id="whats-your-session-topic">What’s your session topic?</h4> <p>Whatever your job title, you’re actually being paid to think!</p> <h4 id="why-is-your-topic-important">Why is your topic important?*</h4> <p>Books, conference talks, the internet are all awash with heuristics, patterns, models and acronyms to help us solve problems. They document how other people have overcome challenges in a way that makes those solutions accessible to others.</p> <p>They’re not magic formulae. They help us think, but they don’t make thinking unnecessary. The ability to think is our ‘secret sauce’ and we need to start realising that, while experts have valuable things to say, we need to filter their insights through our own experience.</p> <h4 id="what-are-the-prerequisites-should-the-audience-have-for-attending-your-session">What are the prerequisites should the audience have for attending your session?</h4> <p>None</p> <h4 id="how-long-have-you-been-in-this-industry">How long have you been in this industry?</h4> <p>35 years</p> <h4 id="what-is-one-of-those-things-you-wish-you-knew-when-you-started-out-in-this-industry">What is one of those things you wish you knew when you started out in this industry?</h4> <p>Not a thing.</p> <h4 id="have-you-spoken-at-or-attended-swanseacon-before">Have you spoken at or attended SwanseaCon before?</h4> <p>Yes</p> <h4 id="what-made-you-want-to-speak-at-swanseacon-this-year">What made you want to speak at SwanseaCon this year?</h4> <p>I really enjoyed it last year</p> <h4 id="are-there-any-sessions-other-than-your-own-which-you-are-looking-forward-to-at-swanseacon">Are there any sessions other than your own which you are looking forward to at SwanseaCon?</h4> <p>Probably…. but I haven’t looked yet</p> <h4 id="did-you-enjoy-this-post">Did you enjoy this post?</h4> <p><a href="https://swanseacon.co.uk/">Get your tickets today to see Seb Rose and many others at SwanseaCon 2018</a></p> Wed, 25 Jul 2018 17:19:00 +0000 http://swanseacon.github.io/blog/meet-the-speakers-seb-rose http://swanseacon.github.io/blog/meet-the-speakers-seb-rose <h4 id="meet-the-speakers-oliver-gibson--monira-rhaimi">Meet the Speakers: Oliver Gibson &amp; Monira Rhaimi.</h4> <p><img src="/img/people/OliMonira.png" /></p> <h4 id="whats-your-session-topic">What’s your session topic?</h4> <p>In our session, we’ll discuss how an experimental approach to product development will lead to the many small failures that are essential to achieving great outcomes. We’ll share stories from our experience in startups and enterprises, the mistakes we made along the way and how we came to the realisation we needed to approach building products differently.</p> <p>We aim for you to leave knowing how to practically apply an experimental approach to your product development, how to create a culture of experimentation and to recognise the dangers of launching without learning first.</p> <h4 id="why-is-your-topic-important">Why is your topic important?</h4> <p>We both started our careers as software developers and felt the pain of seeing projects we worked on not succeed even though they had great architectures, were well tested and utilised the latest development frameworks. We were frustrated at being told what to build, but not why;disappointed that our customers rarely used what we built; and fed up with seeing months, sometimes years, of hard work being written off as a mistake. We realised there must be a better way.</p> <p>We now focus our time helping teams build the right things rather than investing their valuable time otherwise. From this work, we developed a repeatable pattern for quickly prioritising and testing ideas; validating and measuring their potential; learning quickly and ensuring teams launch the right product. By applying this pattern, our teams have reduced the risk of building new products and features but are also free to independently define solutions that best solve the problems they face. We’ve found this approach also leads to more enjoyable and satisfying work.</p> <h4 id="what-are-the-prerequisites-should-the-audience-have-for-attending-your-session">What are the prerequisites should the audience have for attending your session?</h4> <p>No specific prerequisites. Come in with curiosity and an open mind. :)</p> <h4 id="how-long-have-you-been-in-this-industry">How long have you been in this industry?</h4> <p>A combined 17 years :p</p> <h4 id="what-is-one-of-those-things-you-wish-you-knew-when-you-started-out-in-this-industry">What is one of those things you wish you knew when you started out in this industry?</h4> <p>Everything is about failing and learning from it. And how fast you go through that loop. Once you realise this, it’s liberating, you can try anything and never fail, just learn.</p> <h4 id="have-you-spoken-at-or-attended-swanseacon-before">Have you spoken at or attended SwanseaCon before?</h4> <p>This will be our first time at SwanseaCon and Monira’s first time in Wales! We’re very excited at the opportunity to share our talk as well as learning from all the other great speakers and attendees.</p> <h4 id="what-made-you-want-to-speak-at-swanseacon-this-year">What made you want to speak at SwanseaCon this year?</h4> <p>This conference was recommended to us by a colleague and we wanted to share what we have learned with an audience that was as passionate about their craft as we are, so SwanseaCon made sense to us.</p> <h4 id="are-there-any-sessions-other-than-your-own-which-you-are-looking-forward-to-at-swanseacon">Are there any sessions other than your own which you are looking forward to at SwanseaCon?</h4> <ul> <li>Culture for the win</li> <li>I am here for an argument – Working with conflict in teams</li> <li>Nature of Learning</li> </ul> <p>Anything culture related sounds very exciting to learn more about as this is related to issues we face quite a lot in our engagements. Every talk always has some gems within it and we’re always looking to pick up new things.</p> <h4 id="did-you-enjoy-this-post">Did you enjoy this post?</h4> <p><a href="https://swanseacon.co.uk/">Get your tickets today to see Oliver Gibson, Monira Rhaimi and many others at SwanseaCon 2018</a></p> Tue, 24 Jul 2018 17:19:00 +0000 http://swanseacon.github.io/blog/meet-the-speakers-oliver-gibson-and-monira-rhaimi http://swanseacon.github.io/blog/meet-the-speakers-oliver-gibson-and-monira-rhaimi <h4 id="meet-the-speaker-matt-fortunka">Meet the Speaker: Matt Fortunka.</h4> <p><img src="/img/people/MatthewFortunka.jpg" /></p> <h4 id="whats-your-session-topic">What’s your session topic?</h4> <p>Azure from A-Z</p> <h4 id="why-is-your-topic-important">Why is your topic important?</h4> <p>One of the most important things when learning a new technology or platform is what to google? The rate of change with cloud, and particularly Microsoft Azure makes knowing the foundations and what is available all the more important.</p> <h4 id="what-are-the-prerequisites-should-the-audience-have-for-attending-your-session">What are the prerequisites should the audience have for attending your session?</h4> <p>Have been involved in shipping software solutions and appreciate the moving parts involved.</p> <h4 id="how-long-have-you-been-in-this-industry">How long have you been in this industry?</h4> <p>over 20 years</p> <h4 id="what-is-one-of-those-things-you-wish-you-knew-when-you-started-out-in-this-industry">What is one of those things you wish you knew when you started out in this industry?</h4> <p>You can’t know everything so focus on the basics and areas you enjoy and learn how to be good at googling for everything else</p> <h4 id="have-you-spoken-at-or-attended-swanseacon-before">Have you spoken at or attended SwanseaCon before?</h4> <p>Nope, first time</p> <h4 id="what-made-you-want-to-speak-at-swanseacon-this-year">What made you want to speak at SwanseaCon this year?</h4> <p>I am proud to represent one of the sponsors this year, Confused.com, and hope to share some of our findings from 6 years in the cloud</p> <h4 id="are-there-any-sessions-other-than-your-own-which-you-are-looking-forward-to-at-swanseacon">Are there any sessions other than your own which you are looking forward to at SwanseaCon?</h4> <p>Having heard both Hadi Hariri and Sander Hogendoorn speak a few years ago I am looking forward to hearing what they have to say.</p> <h4 id="did-you-enjoy-this-post">Did you enjoy this post?</h4> <p><a href="https://swanseacon.co.uk/">Get your tickets today to see Matt Fortunka and many others at SwanseaCon 2018</a></p> Mon, 23 Jul 2018 17:19:00 +0000 http://swanseacon.github.io/blog/meet-the-speaker-matt-fortunka http://swanseacon.github.io/blog/meet-the-speaker-matt-fortunka