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 six conferences and assorted Washington DC area Meetups, gave five-minute “lightning” talks on it at a couple other conferences, and discussed it on a podcast.
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. (Sorry for the bad A/V quality, but that conference doesn’t record the talks, so it’s just from my phone on a tripod. One of these days I’ll do a clean screencast or something.)
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Mutation testing. There is some code in this, not much and fairly simple, mainly brief snippets to test, mutations of it, and tests. I have prepared versions with code in Ruby, JavaScript, Elixir, and language-agnostic pseudocode. I have presented full-length talks on this at eight conferences and a remote Meetup, and discussed it on two podcasts. I’m also slated to give a full-length talk on it at WeAreDevelopers World Congress 2021.
The best videos, in increasing length, are the 22-minute one from JSConf Hawai’i 2020, the 31-minute one from DevTalks Bucharest/Reimagined 2020, and the 39-minute one from RubyConf 2019.
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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.