Track Overview
Softskills: Essential Skills for Developers
We all want to be more effective - as individuals and as teams. Improving a technical skill such as learning a new programming technique or language can help, but those gains pale in comparison to the gains made when teams work more effectively together. Or even when an individual learns a more fundamental skill such as problem solving. What many might label "soft skills." Ironically, these so called "soft skills" are often the hardest to master. In this track, we'll introduce attendees to these set of skills that help lead individuals and teams to greatness.
From this track
Consensual Software: Prioritizing Trust & Safety
Online safety has become a huge problem in the world of oversharing. Real name policies, automatic geolocation tracking, and photo tagging increase user adoption rates, but these features can be quickly abused by bad actors. This talk will discuss how to apply a "consent filter" to product...
Danielle Leong
Engineer on GitHub's Community and Safety Team
Building a High Performing Team
As software architects, we often focus on the technical side to building software including key platform or design decisions, or finding reasons to use the latest and great technologies. We forget that software is built by people, and without considering how people work together, architectural...
Patrick Kua
Tech Leader, former CTO/Chief Scientist
Lending Privilege
Diversity and inclusion have become hot topics in technology, but you may not know how you can make a difference. This talk will help you understand that, no matter your background, you have privilege and can lend it to marginalized groups in tech.
Anjuan Simmons
Engineering Coach @helpscout
Shaving My Head Made Me A Better Programmer
How do perceptions and stereotypes affect those in the programming community? This talk tells the true story of my physical transformation, and the surprising and drastic ways in which it affected how I was perceived and treated as a programmer. This new perspective allowed me to take a hard look...
Alex Qin
Software Engineer, Educator and Founder of Code Cooperative
Creating Space To Be Awesome
Bringing agile approaches into how we manage people and lead teams can have wonderful, far-reaching impact. How do we get the most out of these new ways of working and also ensure that we create an inclusive environment where all types of people can be successful? In this session we’ll take a...
Meri Williams
CTO who understands the science around helping people do their best
Softskills Open Space
Speakers from this track
Danielle Leong
Engineer on GitHub's Community and Safety Team
Danielle Leong is an engineer on GitHub's Community & Safety team who loves building tools to help make open source a more welcome and inclusive environment. She is also the founder of Feerless, an app that provides trigger warnings for Netflix users with PTSD. She's passionate about inclusivity...
Read moreFind Danielle Leong at:
Patrick Kua
Tech Leader, former CTO/Chief Scientist
Patrick Kua is a seasoned technology leader with almost 20 years of experience. His personal passion is accelerating the growth and success of tech organisations and technical leaders. He has had many years of hands-on experience, leading, managing and improving complex organisations and software...
Read moreFind Patrick Kua at:
Anjuan Simmons
Engineering Coach @helpscout
Anjuan Simmons is a technologist with a successful track record of delivering technology solutions from the user interface to the database. He combines his experiences working at Big 4 management consulting companies as well as small technology startups to implement practical solutions that can...
Read more
Alex Qin
Software Engineer, Educator and Founder of Code Cooperative
Alex Qin is a Brooklyn based software engineer and educator. She cares deeply about access to computer science education, and about leveraging technology to create positive social change. She works at Skillshare, where she leads an engineering team, and co-organizes Codeshare, an inclusive and...
Read more
Meri Williams
CTO who understands the science around helping people do their best
Meri is a geek, a manager, and a manager of geeks. She's a CTO, delighted to have recently joined MOO, and also manages her own micro-consultancy ChromeRose which helps digital & technical teams be brilliant. She has had a career spanning development, project, programme & product management and...
Read more
Track Host
Phil Haack
Director of Client Apps @GitHub and shipped ASP.NET MVC/NuGet
Phil Haack (yes, it's pronounced "hack") works at GitHub as the Director of Client Apps - a group that consists of the Desktop, Atom, Electron, and Editor Tools teams. Prior to GitHub, he was a Senior Program Manager at Microsoft responsible for shipping ASP.NET MVC and NuGet. These projects were...
Read more