I enjoy presenting at conferences, primarily in person at interesting destinations. (I could be talked into doing a remote conference too, mainly within three timezones of the eastern USA.) Mainly, I like technology-agnostic software development conferences, or about some language I know and like, such as Ruby or Elixir. Even if your conference is about some language I don’t know or don’t like, if there’s enough language-agnostic content, or I really want to see the location, I might go for it. Some of my topics are also appropriate for testing conferences.
The topics I currently have talks prepared for are:
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My ACRUMEN definition of software quality. This is completely technology-agnostic; in fact there is not even any code! I have presented full-length talks on this at Little Rock Tech Fest 2019, American Mensa Annual Gathering 2019, Software Process Advancement 2019, Nova Codecamp 2019, Codecamp Chisinau 2019, Devconf Poland 2018, and assorted Washington DC area Meetups, plus “lightning” talks at ElixirConf 2017 and RubyConf 2017, and talked about it on the Maintainable Software Podcast. (I was also selected with this topic for I T.A.K.E. Unconference 2019 but the entire conference was canceled, and as a backup speaker for RubyNation 2018 but no slots opened.) The best videos are the five-minute “lightning talk” version from Rubyconf 2017, and the 45-minute conference presentation version from Little Rock Tech Fest 2019.
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Mutation testing. I have presented full-length talks on this at JSConf Hawai’i 2020, RubyConf 2019, Heartland Devconf 2019, Elixir Remote Meetup September 2019, Abstractions II (2019), and NDC Oslo 2019, and talked about it on the Ruby on Rails Podcast episode 283 (August 2019), and the Ruby Rogues Podcast episode 459 (May 2020). I will be presenting this at DevTalks Bucharest/Reimagined 2020 and WeAreDevelopers World Congress 2021. (I was also selected with this topic for Codestock 2020 and Voxxed Days Athens 2020, which were canceled, and WeRockIT 2020, which has been postponed to an as-yet-unknown date in November, all due to the COVID pandemic.) There is some code in this, not much and fairly simple, mainly brief snippets to test, mutations of it, and tests. As you may have guessed, I have prepared versions of this in Ruby, JavaScript, and Elixir, plus also language-agnostic pseudocode. The best videos are the 39-minute one from RubyConf 2019 and the 22-minute one from JSConf Hawai’i 2020.
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Ruby “gotchas”, i.e., nasty surprises in the Ruby programming language. I spoke about that in assorted Washington DC area Ruby Meetups in 2014. Sorry, no video, but it would normally be about 45 minutes.
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Breaking into conference speaking. I haven’t actually done this one at conferences, or anywhere else that recorded it, but I have the bare bones prepped as a 5-7 minute Toastmasters speech, and intend to fill it out to 30-45 minutes for conferences.
I’m also interested in putting together talks on Elixir doctests, property-based testing, and perhaps one on both property and mutation testing, plus any other weird testing tricks I find.
Want me to speak on something not covered above? Ask me, and we’ll see.