How Can I Be A Speaker Like You? - Panel Discussion

Being a speaker is scary, until you do it a few times. Then, you start to realize it's a skill you can build like any other. This panel of speakers will give you the opportunity to ask questions, hear fun stories, and learn how you too can get started.

This session involves inviting other conference speakers at the event to be part of a panel about breaking into speaking. The goal is to make becoming a speaker seem more approachable and accessible for everyone. It's a 100 level panel, and it's hard to give an exact outline of how the session will go.

Progressive Web Apps Are The Future

Innovations in web development are quickly replacing the need for mobile apps and the app store experience. Progressive Web Apps (PWAs) are web applications that work seamlessly for every user on every device, and they are ready to change the way we build and deploy our software. Each PWA is an application that works online or offline, on old devices and new, and that users can install just like a native app on your device. This talk will cover PWAs and the technologies that make them possible: Service Workers, Fetch API, and Web App Manifest. You'll leave this talk ready to create new PWAs and add native-like experiences to your existing apps.

Build for the Future When Your Users Are in the Past

You want to build your product or SaaS (Software-as-a-Service) to take advantage of advancements in technology and design, but you have to support users on a wide variety of devices and software. How do you optimize for tomorrow's user while still serving yesterday's? In this talk, we'll discuss emerging technology trends and how to incorporate them into your product both conceptually and technically. You'll leave this talk with specific patterns you can apply today, and a repeatable process you can use as technology continues to advance.

Where The Web Is Going

The web is a strange place with many standards and browser vendors that all have to come together to make something useful. In particular, CSS and JavaScript are evolving at a rapid rate. We'll look at this evolution, and how new tools like CSS Grid, Service Workers, Progressive Web Apps, and Web Components are changing the game. We'll discuss how the W3C, WHATWG, TC39, and the IETF work together (or don't) to push the Web forward. We'll also analyze Microsoft Edge's decision to embrace Chromium, and what that means for the future of web standards. You'll leave this session with new technologies to research, and a better sense of what is to come.

Avoiding Landmines – A Tech Leader’s Guide for the Critical Decisions

As leaders, we face a lot of decisions that can make or break our teams and projects. We usually approach these decisions without training, and with no decision making framework to guide us. This does not work particularly well.

In this workshop, you'll learn a framework that will help you kick off your projects and get the early decisions right. You'll learn how to align your people, process, and technology with the needs of your projects, company and customers.

This highly collaborative workshop will challenge you with real issues faced by today's development teams, ask you to think through multiple decisions, and share your insights. You'll leave with the tools necessary to make good, situationally-aware decisions that lead to success.

Uh, So I'm A Manager... Now What?

Great developers often end up managing other developers. Unfortunately, managers need an entirely new set of skills that don't just appear with promotion. This talk covers what to do if you find yourself in a management position. We'll talk about how to avoid drowning on day 1, how to build your leadership skills, and how to make decisions (or avoid them) in order to empower your team to be successful. This talk will be valuable to both managers and those who aspire to become managers.