Codosaurus

I enjoy presenting at conferences, mainly held in person at interesting destinations, that aren’t a royal PITA to get to, and reimbursing my travel expenses.  (I generally do not do remote conferences, unless they are within three timezones of US-East.)  I will also talk to a company (or their devs), for a fee (plus all expenses).

Topics

The talks I am currently pitching include:

• My ACRUMEN definition of software quality (title: “Write Better Software with ACRUMEN”).  I can also do this as a lightning talk or a keynote.

• Mutation testing (title: “Kill All Mutants!  (Intro to Mutation Testing)”).  I have prepared versions with the code in several programming languages, and lengths from 20 minutes to a bit over an hour (plus Q&A).

• Genetic Algorithms (title: “Tight Genes: Intro to Genetic Algorithms”).  Yes I do mean genetic, not generic!  This one includes lots of code (but not live coding), currently in Ruby or Python, but I could certainly translate it into other languages if you want.  I have versions prepared from 30 minutes to 50.

• TDD (Test Driven Development) (title: “TDD like a Viking: Making Mead with JavaScript!”).  This talk describes the benefits and process of TDD, and walks through several examples as I develop some helpful calculators for brewing mead.  There is quite a lot of code, but it is not live-coded.  Unlike most of my talks, this is only in JavaScript.

• Ruby “gotchas” (title: “Ruby Gotchas”).  I have done this for local user groups, for about 45 minutes.  It details some of the unexpected rough edges of Ruby, that are contrary to what one might expect, based on expectations built up by “most other languages”, or common sense.  Unlike most of my talks, this is only in Ruby.

• Ping-Pong Pair Programming (title: “Whose Line of Code Is It Anyway?”).  This is a hands-on demo with a co-speaker or a volunteer from the audience (or series of them), working on a problem and (at polyglot conferences) in a language both chosen by the audience (from a relatively small set).

• Making mead (title: “Drink Like a Chinese Egyptian Ethiopian Filipino Finnish Greek Indian Lithuanian Mayan Nepalese Polish Welsh Xhosa Viking: the History and Making of MEAD!”).  Yes, this is not a technical thing, at least in the computer sense.  ;-)

• Breaking into conference speaking (title: “You Wanna Say Somethin’?”).  This includes things like why you might want to talk at a conference, how to find the conferences, how to apply to speak at them, and a few basic public speaking tips.

I also have some five-minute “lightning” talks prepared:

• Why we prepend to lists, instead of appending, when using immutable data, as is used with most “functional” programming languages.

• Five-minute versions of my ACRUMEN and mead talks.

Want me to speak on something not covered above?  Ask me, and we’ll see.

Definite Future Speaking Engagements

I have no definite speaking engagements in the future.

Past Engagements

Speaking engagements in the past include:

*These conferences don’t record sessions, and I didn’t either.
⁺These conferences recorded, but haven’t yet released it.

Also, I was one of the co-organizers of TDDConf 2021, the very first international test-driven development conference, and appeared briefly on-screen to introduce speakers and fill time.  I was also the sole organizer of Ruby DAYCamp (no website) 2013, a semi-impromptu “overflow” event for those who applied too late for Ruby DCamp (defunct, site gone).

Likely Near-Future Speaking Engagements

Likely engagements in the next couple years or so, mainly because I was chosen already but I had to decline for that year, had to withdraw from selection for some reason but found out the talk was going to be selected, or the conference was canceled or postponed, or various other such reasons, include: