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Codosaurus 🦖

The talks I am currently pitching include:

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

• 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 (or not), how to find and choose the conferences, apply to speak at them, track your applications, and a few basic public speaking tips.

• Genaver (title: “Multi-Talking (not a typo!) with Genaver!”).  Genaver is a tool I have created that lets me quickly and easily generate a version of a presentation (if it’s already in HTML, not PowerPoint, Keynote, etc.), with various parts chosen such as what human-language to use for the introduction, what programming language to use for any code samples, whether to use the short, medium, or long versions of various explanations (so that the talk can fit in various timeslots), and so on.  This talk is the story of how the need came to be, how I settled on this implementation, how it works, and how to use it.  It is suitable mainly for conferences focusing on kluges, hacks, jury/jerry-rigging, etc., such as GambiConf, !!Con (BangBangCon), and SIGBOVIK.  This is currently written in Portuguese (as delivered at GambiConf 2023, in São Paulo, Brazil), but I could deliver it in English or French as well.

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, mead, and conference-speaking talks.

Other Info for Organizers

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

• Except as noted above, these are all in English, but with decent lead time to translate, I could also do them in French or Portuguese.  (In non-Anglophone countries, I also do my intro in the local language.  So far, I have done that in Dutch, Greek, Lithuanian, Polish, Norwegian, Portuguese, Romanian, Spanish, and Swedish, and will soon add German.)

• I will travel anywhere not a danger zone nor a PITA to get to, especially interesting tourist/history spots.

• If you want my talk but are afraid of the airfare expenses, let’s talk about it.  There may be options, such as combining conferences on one trip.