I enjoy presenting at conferences, mainly held in person at interesting destinations, that arenât 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 an additional fee.
The topics I currently have full-length talks prepared for are:
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My ACRUMEN definition of software quality (title: âWrite Better Software with ACRUMENâ). I can also do this as a lightning talk or a keynote.
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Mutation testing (title: âKill All Mutants! (Intro to Mutation Testing)â). I have prepared versions so far with the code in several languages, and have presented on this at many conferences.Â
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Genetic Algorithms (title: âTight Genes: Intro to Genetic Algorithmsâ). Yes I do mean genetic, not generic. This one includes lots of code (but not live coding), currently in Ruby, but I could certainly translate it into other languages.
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Ruby âgotchasâ (title: âRuby Gotchasâ). I have done this for local user groups, for about 45 minutes.
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Ping-Pong Pair Programming (title: âWhose Line of Code Is It Anyway?â). 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.
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Breaking into conference speaking (title: âYou Wanna Say Somethinâ?â). 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.
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Making mead (title: âDrink Like a Chinese Egyptian Ethiopian Filipino Finnish Greek Indian Lithuanian Mayan Nepalese Polish Welsh Xhosa Viking: the History and Making of MEAD!â). Yes, this is not a technical thing, at least in the computer sense. ;-)
I also have a lightning talk prepared on why we prepend to lists, instead of appending, when using immutable data. Iâm also interested in putting together talks on doctests (such as in Elixir or Python), property-based testing, any other weird dev-testing tricks I find, ways to ease into TDD/BDD, helpful TDD/BDD hints, and more.
Want me to speak on something not covered above? Ask me, and weâll see.
Definite speaking engagements in the future include:
When | Â | Conference | Â | Where | Â | Topic(s) |
---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
March 2023 |  | Frontrunners |  | Arlington, VA, USA |  | ACRUMEN |
April 2023 |  | PyCon US |  | Salt Lake City, UT, USA |  | Mutants |
May 2023 |  | J on the Beach |  | Målaga, Spain |  | Genetic Algos |
Likely engagements in the next couple years or so, mainly because I was chosen already but I declined for this year, or the conference was canceled or postponed (or moved online too many timezones away, or various other reasons), include:
Conference | Â | Where | Â | Topic(s) |
---|---|---|---|---|
Build Stuff Vilnius | Â | Vilnius, Lithuania | Â | Mutants |
Code.Talks | Â | Hamburg, Germany | Â | Mutants |
CodeStock | Â | Knoxville, TN, USA | Â | Mutants |
DevDays Europe | Â | Vilnius, Lithuania | Â | Mutants |
Devoxx Belgium | Â | Antwerp, Belgium | Â | Mutants and/or Genetic Algos |
I T.A.K.E. | Â | Bucharest, Romania | Â | ACRUMEN |
US Mensa Annual Gathering 2023 | Â | Baltimore, MD, USA | Â | Mead |
WeAreDevelopers World Congress | Â | Berlin, Germany | Â | Mutants |
WeRockIT | Â | Huntsville, AL, USA | Â | Mutants |
Speaking engagements in the past include:
Year | Conference | Where | Topic(s) | Link(s) | Mins |
---|---|---|---|---|---|
2023 | THAT Conference | Austin, TX, USA | Genetic Algos | slides* | 60 |
2022 | Central Texas Mensa Monthly Speaker Meeting |
Online (to Austin, TX, USA) | Mead | none | ~50 |
2022 | TechBash | Pocono Manor, PA, USA | Mutants | slides* | ~50 |
2022 | Nerdear.LA | Online (to Buenos Aires, Argentina) | Genetic Algos | repo, video | 30 |
2022 | Voxxed Days Athens | Athens, Greece | Mutants | slides, video | 41 |
2022 | GambiConf EU | Lisbon, Portugal | Mutants | slides, video | 29 |
2022 | MWM RG 2022 (Metropolitan Washington Mensa Regional Gathering) |
Reston, VA, USA | Mead | video | 62 |
2022 | THAT Conference | Wisconsin Dells, WI, USA | Mutants | slides* | |
2022 | NDC Melbourne | Melbourne, Australia | Mutants | slides, video | 50 |
2022 | Code BEAM Europe | Stockholm, Sweden | Mutants | slides, video | 41 |
2022 | ACCU (Ass'n of C/C++ Users) |
Bristol, UK | Mutants | slides, video | 70 |
2021 | Polyglot Podcast, released 2021-12-01 |
Online | ACRUMEN and other software quality |
audio, transcript | 44 |
2021 | Scenic City Summit | Online (to Chattanooga, TN, USA) | Mutants | slides+ | ~40? |
2021 | Scenic City Summit | Online (to Chattanooga, TN, USA) | ACRUMEN | slides+ | ~40? |
2021 | Code Europe Warsaw | Warsaw, Poland | Mutants | slides+ | ~55? |
2021 | Code Europe Gdansk | Gdansk, Poland | Mutants | slides+ | ~55? |
2021 | Kansas City Developer Conference (KCDC) |
Kansas City, MO, USA | Mutants | slides* | |
2020 | NDC Sydney | Online, darnit! (to Sydney, Australia) | Mutants | slides, video | 52 |
2020 | DevTalks Bucharest / Reimagined |
Online, dagnabit! (to Bucharest, Romania) | Mutants | video | 31 |
2020 | Ruby Rogues Podcast | Online | Mutants | audio | 68 |
2020 | JSConf Hawai'i | Waikiki, HI, USA | Mutants | video | 22 |
2019 | RubyConf | Nashville, TN, USA | Mutants | video | 39 |
2019 | Little Rock Tech Fest | Little Rock, AR, USA | ACRUMEN | video | 45 |
(Sorry for the bad audio, they don't record, so it's from my phone on a tripod, and slightly cleaned up) | |||||
2019 | Heartland Devconf | Omaha, NE, USA | Mutants | video | 44 |
(recorded on my phone, since they don't record sessions) | |||||
2019 | Maintainable Software Podcast |
Online | ACRUMEN | audio | 44 |
2019 | Elixir Remote Meetup (September) |
Online | Mutants and Prepending |
video | 45 |
2019 | Ruby on Rails Podcast | Pittsburgh, PA, USA | Mutants | audio | 24 |
(My first podcast!) | |||||
2019 | Abstractions II | Pittsburgh, PA, USA | Mutants | (none) | |
(They recorded it but messed it up) | |||||
2019 |
American Mensa's Annual Gathering |
Phoeniz, AZ, USA | ACRUMEN | (none*) | 75! |
(Again, more aimed at feedback than teaching, taking advantage of their long timeslots (and big brains)) | |||||
2019 | Software Process Advancement |
London, UK | ACRUMEN | (none*) | 150! |
(Aimed mainly at discussing and perfecting it, not so much teaching it) | |||||
2019 | NDC Oslo | Oslo, Norway | Mutants | video | 60 |
(My first delivery of this talk, not very good) | |||||
2019 | Nova Codecamp | Reston, VA, USA | ACRUMEN | video | 60 |
(Another one where they don't record so it was just my phone on a tripod) | |||||
2019 | Codecamp ChiČinÄu, by Codecamp Romania |
ChiČinÄu, Moldova | ACRUMEN | (none*) | |
2018 | Devconf Poland | Krakow, Poland | ACRUMEN | slides, video | 37 |
(My very first conference talk, so not very well done, sorry!) | |||||
2018 | assorted DC-area Meetups | Washington, DC, USA area | ACRUMEN | (none) | |
2018 | ElixirConf | Bellevue, WA, USA | ACRUMEN | video | 5 |
2018 | RubyNation | Arlington, VA, USA | ACRUMEN | slides | |
(as BACKUP speaker; didn't actually get to speak) | |||||
2017 | RubyConf | New Orleans, LA, USA | ACRUMEN | video | 5 |
2014 | assorted DC-area Meetups | Washington, DC, USA area | Ruby Gotchas | slides | ~45 |
1990s to Now |
Metro Washington Mensa's Regional Gathering |
Washington, DC, USA area | spam-protection, and non-tech topics |
(none) | 30-45 |
*These conferences donât record sessions, and I didnât either.
+These conferences recorded, but havenât 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 âoverflowâ event for those who couldnât get into Ruby DCamp (defunct, site gone).