Remember how I spoke at TEDxMelbourne back in August? The video is finally up on YouTube. 🙂
Month: October 2016
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My new job – and first Weekly Meetup Wrap
In case you missed the news, I started a new role this month as Director of Developer Relations for YOW! Conferences and Workshops. I first heard of YOW! back in 2012 when they gave away a conference ticket at a Girl Geek event that I attended. Since then, I’ve attended (and volunteered) at their YOW! Nights, sent team members to their conferences, and entered (and won!) their inaugural Women in Tech Speaking Competition. This past May, I travelled to Perth to speak at the YOW! West conference on making the transition from individual contributor to management, and a few weeks ago I spoke at YOW! Connected in Melbourne about knitting as computer code. So needless to say I’m a big fan of the organisation, and I’m absolutely thrilled to get to work with them to support the Australian developer community.
One of the most important parts of my role is to build relationships with local meetup groups, so I’ve been making liberal use of meetup.com…
(Yikes. And that’s pretty much just Sydney, so it’s going to be even worse once I started adding in Melbourne!)
I thought that each Friday I’d do a quick Weekly Meetup Wrap of the events that I attended. Hopefully this will give some love and promotion to the meetup groups and speakers, and maybe even introduce you to some groups you hadn’t heard of.
My first event this week was Cloud Foundry Day over at Pivotal Labs. I found out about it through DevOps Sydney, a local meetup group. Cloud Foundry is an open source cloud computing PaaS originally developed by VMware and now overseen by the Cloud Foundry Foundation. They had a number of international and local speakers sharing their experiences building cloud applications. I especially liked the talk by Lindsay Holmwood, who heads up Technology at the DTO.
I also really enjoyed the presentation by Dr. Nic Williams, CEO of Stark & Wayne. He started by reminding the audience that once you’ve gone fast, it’s really hard to go slow. That was the jumping off point for a talk about how devops lets developers and companies move faster, and why that’s critical for success.
Later that evening I attended the second Sydney pitch event for Elevacao. This organisation, founded by Marisa Warren, aims to empower women entrepreneurs to become the next Atlassian. Three different sets of women founders pitched their startups to a panel of innovation luminaries, including Rebekah Campbell from Hey You and Sebastien Eckersley-Maslin from BlueChilli. It was incredible to be in a packed audience of mostly women for a founders event like this. My favourite of the pitches was Dr. Silvia Pfeiffer for Coviu, which provides web-based interactive videoconferencing. (Coviu was used to link up the various Health Hack sites last weekend.)
On Wednesday I went along to the regular monthly SydJS meetup. The evening started with a great off-the-cuff lightning talk from Rob Howard about accessible types. Then Ian Grunert gave a quick talk about yarn, the new Javascript package manager from Facebook. (I especially liked all the excellent wool photos he used!)
Next Fiona Chan gave an excellent presentation about public speaking – why you should do it, how to get over your fears, and how to get better at it. That was followed by a highly entertaining talk from Nikolay Nemshilov on genetic algorithms in Javascript and his quest for an ever more efficient keyboard layout. The evening ended with Justin Anderson talking about the language features of Javascript, and how being more declarative in your programming can help you avoid problems.
On Thursday, I attended my first ever Developer Drinkups meetup. As you can tell from the title, this one is purely social. It was held at Spawn Point Small Bar, a video gaming bar in the CBD. Elliot Chance is one of the organisers, and he’s put together a really friendly group. There were probably a few dozen attendees in all, and I was pleased that there were a handful of women there too. We had beers; we chatted; we played some games. Great event!
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Shared today on Twitter
RT @cameronesposito: Since zero women & zero people of color weighed in on US constitution when it was written, I assume it may occasionall…
RT @tveastman: Hillary Clinton is wrong. Puppet is dead. Putin wants Trump to be Russia’s Ansible.
@_zouhir GOP = Republican, so there’s only one GOP nominee.
@aussielunix @auxesis Can one of you guys DM me? I’m gonna set up a discount code for DevOps folks to get YOW tickets. 😀
@lucykbain Thank you!!
Tonight’s meetup was in a videogame bar! Unfortunately some chick was on Mario Bros. 3 the… https://t.co/yAq8o9EuEX https://t.co/gDwlVSodYL
#frocktober day 20: Super Spy Dress from @heartofhaute. https://t.co/Mz1r4zWCVu https://t.co/7j01dTOHAd
@evanderkoogh It’s called Spawn Point. Right next door to Redoak on Clarence, but in a basement.
RT @yow_oz: .@unclebobmartin will be running his Clean Code Using TDD workshop at #yow16 in Melbourne & Sydney https://t.co/qRAjeeDeZQ
@evanderkoogh HA! That’s where we were supposed to be, but we got moved due to some other event on. *glares*
@pubtextiles Got any good remnants suitable for making a #frocktober frock??
@ADuckIsMyFiend Cake? I’m IN.
@ImaMiri11 Thanks Ima!!
@kosamari ✋
RT @RoaldDahlFans: Big news – a Wonka prequel movie is in the works! Check out the details and vote in our poll: https://t.co/wbHkZJ96kG ht…
Woke up to the dulcet sounds of cat barfing. Hello, Friday.
Local tech men: only one of you has RSVPed for Monday’s #EqualityHacks. Please come – we can’t do it without you. https://t.co/4KznhxdVsb
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Shared today on Twitter
@simonraikallen There’s some famous quote that if you’re not embarrassed by your first version, you waited too long to release
“I pretend I’ve never heard of Roman Polanski all the time.” LOL. @rosalyster has given me a dangerous new hobby. https://t.co/WRslzQYnKq
@aussielunix @auxesis Now I’m wondering if I can make both meetups tomorrow night. How late do you guys usually run?
RT @damovisa: Awesome #Hanselminutes with @daphnechong. Looking for a talk topic? “Nobody can challenge you on your experiences”. https://…
@gilmae What is that hashtag?!
If you need a laugh this afternoon… 😂 https://t.co/OHdiA5Fru2 https://t.co/qCy9g75BdL
The perils of working from home… #greensleeves #powerlesstoresist https://t.co/K3Wkkeypmr https://t.co/AI6nhXCWag
@pwcc It was actually pretty crappy ice cream for four dollars. 🙁
Ugh. I now have Mr. Whippy regret.
@mark_sabbatical Yes, and he tormented me today until I bought his shitty ice cream.
@gcouprie Beautiful!
With inadvertent photobomb by @twalve 😀 https://t.co/D39lctPrWC
Seeing double. @stevelikesyou = @twalve 😳 https://t.co/jAljT7ytEF
What do you do on vacation with another developer? Eat a lot of food and air grievances about npm. 😂 @iangrunert #sydjs https://t.co/wIgXeAefm9
Best part of Facebook releasing yarn? I’m no longer the only person using pictures of knitting wool in tech talks. #SydJS https://t.co/IvCEdQHG6A
@diversionary I KNOW, RIGHT?!
Well, I like it. But my brain might be broken. @mobywhale #SydJS https://t.co/KzQiQhlrcN
I spent a month in high school learning Dvorak, but I stopped when my Qwerty speed tanked. It’s like learning to play 2 instruments. #sydjs
This is one of the most amazing meetup talks ever. (I missed the slide about the meaning of life.) #SydJS https://t.co/UrhkO7EJNj
@diversionary @twalve Yarn pictures and metaphysical porn. It’s like you made this meetup JUST FOR ME!!
@200okpublic He was wrong!
The amazing @ButenkoMe spruikung the @NodeGirlsSydney Xmas event next month! #SydJS https://t.co/gdIzwjOZIs
Hey #sydjs folks – that link to get a free @yow_oz Sydney ticket is https://t.co/MXU0HBOHvB! Hope to see you there. 🙂
#frocktober day 19: Vintage. I’m in the home stretch! https://t.co/FKoEMnqXlz https://t.co/wRMbKOyHrY
OHMYGOD MY TEDX TALK HAS BEEN ON YOUTUBE FOR 2 WEEKS AND I DIDN’T KNOW!! https://t.co/fbqlOFEXnn
@Notionalseams That one was an extremely cheap dress from Target a few years back!!
It pleases me that my employer’s gif game is strong. 💪 https://t.co/rY6WCIYBeZ
Was reminded by @justosophy’s #sydjs talk of theory I’m working on that Elizabeth Zimmerman was declarative programmer in a knitter’s body.
If you want a sneak preview of my @yow_oz talk in Dec, this TEDx video is pretty much it. https://t.co/fbqlOFEXnn https://t.co/oVmWWfvuse
RT @RHoKSydney: RHoK is looking for a new corporate sponsor! Help the community while getting your brand in front of all kinds of engaged h…
@johnallsopp See you on the other side!
