Move Thoughtfully and Build Things

In the modern world we live in, the pace of innovation is moving at break-neck speed. The volume, velocity and variety of information to be mindful of as we build out the next generation of applications and solutions is hard manage. All too often, we fall into the trap of "Move fast and Break things." Unfortunately, this industry mantra has done more harm than good, especially in the Java ecosystem, leading to a world of innovation that has produced harmful (sometimes tragic results).

This inspirational talk will explore the history of innovation, identifying examples of both positive and negative approaches and the impact that has resulted in, both good and bad.

In this keynote, you'll be inspired to take a break, pause for a moment, and reflect on how to "move thoughtfully and build things" in the Java community.

Developer Communities are just like coffee shops

Developer communities should smell like freshly ground coffee, or taste like an amazing cup of coffee from the remote reaches of El Salvador. In this session we'll draw on Jeremy's experience as a barista, competitor, and coffee shop owner to discuss what makes developer communities so unique, how you reach out to them and/or build them, and how to measure their viability and health.

helpful to have a power outlet nearby as brewing a cup of coffee is part of the presentation if time allows

Adventures in preparing to give someone else's talk

While it’s not likely to happen very often, there may come a time in your professional life that you are tasked with giving a talk that someone else prepared. And by prepared, I mean they’ve been the driving force at the company for a new initiative with the background to match, and are responsible for crafting the messaging, diagrams, and partnerships for said initiative. No big deal, right?

This has happened to me, and I will share the experience, give practical steps to prepare to communicate the talk, using your own voice, and making it your own.

30 years of Java, oh my!

2025 will celebrate the meaningful milestone of 30 years of Java. For a technology to continue delivering unique value for three decades is no easy feat. The reality is that modern application development is unrecognizable without Java. Rather than resting on its laurels, Java innovation continues to move forward. As much as the ongoing technical improvements make Java a unique programming language of choice fo developers worldwide, its the power of the Java community that gives it so much value. Learn how the developer community is the quiet force that gives Java so much power. In this talk, to celebrate 30 years of Java, members of the Java community will share 30 unique areas that have helped make Java the premier technology and developer community on the planet. All developers play a unique role in ensuring Java's future for today as well as for the next three decades and beyond. Come attend to be inspired and learn how to follow your passion to move Java forward.

Optimizing your development pipelines and workflows with CI/CD

Continuous integration automates the building and testing of your software, while Continuous deployment is an extension of this automation and allows for your software to be deployed after every code commit that passes your test suite. But what do those mean? How can my development pipelines and workflows actually be optimized?

Developer Experience is more than just Productivity metrics

In today's fast-paced tech landscape, the emphasis on developer productivity has overshadowed the true essence of developer experience (DevEx). While frameworks like SPACE, getDX, and DORA metrics provide valuable insights, they often miss the mark on capturing developers' real, day-to-day experiences using tools and services, instead focusing strictly on the bottom line for the company. This talk will explore the origins and evolution of "developer experience," dissect popular frameworks, and advocate for a more balanced approach that values the practitioner's perspective. At the end we will set a path towards integrating top-down metrics with bottom-up feedback, ensuring a holistic and practical developer experience that fosters innovation and satisfaction.

The Armchair-Scientist’s Principles to a Successful Open Source Project

A challenge often experienced by open-source projects is getting not only the first contribution from someone other than the core maintainers but also someone’s second and tenth contributions. The same goes for communities around an open-source project. In this talk, Floor and Jeremy will apply the meticulous methods of an "armchair scientist" to simplify these challenges. They will explore the critical role of first impressions and discuss how to lower barriers to entry through clear guidelines and well-defined tasks. In addition, they'll discuss how fostering a mentorship culture and recognizing all contributions can encourage sustained participation.

By aggregating best practices from leaders like Dawn Foster and analyzing real-world examples, they will discuss ways to equip project leads with strategies that balance the needs of maintainers and contributors, aiming for a more sustainable community and successful project outcomes.

From DevOps to DevGoals: Applying Tech Metrics to Soccer

Imagine if your favorite football team was run by tech geeks obsessed with metrics and frameworks. Welcome to an exploration of software engineering metrics (DORA, SPACE, etc.) applied to the beautiful game of football! We’ll discuss how these common engineering metrics relate to the foundational aspects of football, like: Failed Set Plays, Time Wasting, Yellow Cards, Recovery From Conceding a Goal, and number of times a player rolls across the pitch after being touched by a whiff from Ronaldo’s latest perfume. Let’s blend the worlds of DevOps and soccer and learn how these seemingly unrelated fields share more common ground than you might think.

Platform Teams? DevOps? Here be dragons, or just a fad?

Platform Engineering & Platform Teams: Are they a new thing or are they a fad to disappear & come back 20 years later with different fabric and colours, but better music? Or is it the natural evolution of what we have been doing since we were cutting our fingers on the insides of servers and racks?

In this talk, Jeremy will draw on almost 30 years in tech, along with input from others in the industry, to explore Platform Engineering and Teams, the evolution in the industry, and how it fits into the expansion of DevOps today.

From DevEx Disaster to Delight: How to Champion a DevEx Revolution in Your Organization

Is your development team struggling with bugs, inefficient tools, and demoralizing processes? Do you often hear your developers expressing their frustration with the deployment process and the codebase? Don't worry, this talk is your ticket to transforming your organization's Developer Experience (DevEx) from a disaster zone to a developer utopia. Join us for a session filled with humor and insights that will equip you with the tools to improve your team's productivity and satisfaction.

We'll delve into the what, why, and how of DevEx, exploring practical strategies that will empower you to make your developers' lives easier and more productive. We'll cover everything from tooling and automation to fostering a culture of collaboration and feedback. By the end of this talk, you'll be equipped with the knowledge and practical tips to become a DevEx champion in your organization, all while avoiding the wrath of your CTO (hopefully).

So get ready for an engaging journey, hold onto your favorite stress ball (you might need it), and prepare to discover how to turn your developer frowns into smiles of satisfaction!

DevRel needs to grow the f*#k up

Developer Relations has been around in one form or another for the last 20+ years, and yet not a Martian sol goes by without some bickering about which department DevRel should be in, or what they should do, or what the most important thing is, or what vegetable is the ideal mascot (broccoli ofc). DevRel needs to borrow a page from DevOps, and recognize that "it depends."

In this talk, Jeremy will meet these arguments head on, and seek to give us a way forward, in an effort to help DevRel grow the f*#k up.

Demystifying "Developer Experience", and why it matters for developers

A key factor in shaping the productivity and innovation of software developers is what has come to be called “Developer Experience.” We'll begin with an introduction to DevEx, exploring its definition and significance in the tech world. We will review the history of software development, highlighting how DevEx has evolved with technology, ooking also at areas in which you might not think about DevEx, like Accessibility, community, and even docs. Then we will discuss successful and problematic DevEx scenarios, offering strategies for improvement, and practical tips for enhancing DevEx, discussing better practices and common pitfalls. This talk is an essential journey through the world of DevEx, ideal for developers, team leaders, and tech enthusiasts keen on optimizing their development environments for better outcomes.

PowerPoint Karaoke

Powerpoint Karaoke is an improv game where participants give a presentation from a slide deck you’ve never seen. The slide deck is a randomly generated grouping of images which the participant will need to present, while the 20 slides autorotate every 15secs.

I could run this as an "end of day" activity with certain hand-picked participants or speakers.

Moving DevRel forward, in 2024 and beyond

One of the most common topics of conversation, or argument, over the last 5 years or more in the tech community is over what Developer Relations is and/or is not. We tend to spend too much time on 101-level formulas and arguments, while providing very little in the way of actionable steps or a framework to be applied. And do you know why? Because it’s really hard to put together a framework or flowchart for a discipline that varies wildly depending on many factors, which you often don't control. So with all of the variables at play here, how is DevRel supposed to prove its value to the Business?

In this talk, Jeremy will offer up the beginnings of a framework for how we move DevRel as a discipline forward in 2024, and beyond, as well as encouraging conversation.

Confessions of an ADHD-fueled technologi…. SQUIRREL!

Come along on this ADHD-fueled journey as Jeremy tells _some_ of his journey in tech, all while trying to stay on topic. He’ll dive into some of his early days “hunting squirrels” while also keeping the local librarians employed. He’ll also touch on his experiences through the early days of the internet (not ARPANET, but the “world wide web”) and how he learned to “cope” with this thing called ADHD, without _really_ coping with it, until he had to. You’ll hopefully laugh, probably cry, and that will just be from having to listen to him try to stay on topic, while also hopefully gaining a better feeling of how it’s ok to ask for help, and to also occasionally experiment with new ideas and being open about your journey through life.

This session really is more about sharing my journey through tech and mental health, and hopefully it will resonate with some people and encourage others to do the same. It is not a traditional technical talk, and fits more in a keynote or life skills or community category.

High-performing engineering teams and the Holy Grail

"High-performing engineering teams" are the Holy Grail for every CTO. But what are they, are they attainable, and if so, how? In this talk we'll look at CI/CD data from over 15mil anonymous workflows, and compare against the last few years on the CircleCI platform, and explore this rare specimen in its native habitat - right there in your organization, and how to activate them using some better DevOps practices. We'll also explore some of the benchmarks for CI/CD success, including the role of a Platform Team for your business!

Demystifying DevOps and CI/CD

While it seems that every week new terms appear to describe DevOps tools, segments, ideas, practices, etc., are they really new? And what is DevOps, anyways? Isn't it dead, and Platform Engineering is the new hotness?
In this talk Jeremy will first break down DevOps, its history, and why it matters, and what Platform Engineering actuall is. Then he’ll dive deeper into Continuous Integration and Continuous Deployment (CI/CD) concepts, and why it can be the key to becoming a high performing team.

Deploy, Release, CI/CD, oh my! Slicing and dicing DevOps word salads

While it seems that every week new terms appear to describe DevOps tools, segments, ideas, practices, etc., are they really new? CI/CD, Progressive Delivery, AIOps, GitOps, TreeOps (not real, but who knows, maybe it will be next week?) - are they all the same, or are they just reimagining last week’s buzz words? In this talk we will break down a few of these terms, what they mean, how they’re used, and why they may matter for you and your teams.

Introduction to Modern Identity

In this introductory talk about modern identity we will discuss the role that identity management plays in modern software development. Modern identity is a lot more than just the login screen and in this talk you'll be able to learn about the different concepts that make up modern identity. You'll have lots of opportunities to ask questions both technical and non-technical.

DevOps before there was DevOps, 20yr old style

The year is 1996. A bright, resourceful 20 yr old Network Administrator at an ISP is tasked with a mundane, tedious project. Said 20 yr old feels he has a better way, and takes it upon himself to get creative. What follows is a quick journey down memory lane to a time before DevOps was DevOps, through the eyes of a 43yo looking back on his 20yo self.

Some of the takeaways here would be that:

1- DevOps principles should be used for good
2- Jeremy should not be asked to build a deck
3- We’ve learned a lot since 1996, and yet we’ve forgotten a lot. Let’s get nostalgic.

Adventures in Community Building

Communities are unique and each have their own DNA. The challenge (aka adventure) for community managers is digging in and mapping out their community’s DNA. We’ll draw from almost 10 years of experience with one of the largest mobile communities, XDA-Developers, as well as work being done with Auth0, and learn new techniques.

Developer Experience is central to DevOps success

Developer Experience (DevEx) encompasses every aspect of the experience that your developers (both internal and external) have with your product, tooling, systems, etc. While platform engineering aims to reduce developer toil, DevEx goes beyond that. It covers deployment pipelines, Infrastructure as Code (IaC) practices, developer efficiencies, productivity, UI/UX, and APIs. In this presentation, we will focus on some of the principles of DevOps (collaboration, communication, shared responsibility), go into the history of DevEx and how it's changed over the years (remember Vim? CFEngine?), and how a strong DevEx mindset can bring together development and operations teams.

Community - what is it good for?

Communities - they’re all around us, right? You may say, “Why do I need a community with my software project?” or “What good is hand-holding users of my app or company’s service?” or “Who drank all the LaCroix?” Regardless of your question or where you stand on communities, we’re going to jump right in to our elbows on the subject of communities, what they are, how to build them, and how to keep them.

Passwords. Burn Them with Fire.

t seems that hardly a month goes back that we don't hear about a new data breach and seemingly billions of user passwords are being shared as we speak. How can we stop this? Simple. Stop using passwords. Forget them. Permanently.

Demystifying CI/CD

Continuous Integration and Continuous Delivery/Deployment (CI/CD) concepts are increasingly adopted by many technology organizations and teams. CI\CD enables teams to establish processes that increase velocity, collaboration and quality of their codebase. CI/CD enables developer & operations teams to break down unnecessary silos and gain a deeper knowledge of their respective arenas.

In this session the participants will be introduced to the basic fundamentals of Continuous Integration and Continuous Delivery/Deployment. Participants will learn the core principles of CI/CD, leaving with what will be a good understanding of what it takes to CI/CD.

Mentorship, or How to rebuild civilisation from scratch

How really important are mentorship and documentation to the survival of civilization? What would happen if we lost everything and had to start over, say, due to a global pandemic? We talk a lot about mentorship in the tech industry, but what do we really mean? Are we setting people up for success? In this talk, we'll explore my fascination with dystopian TV shows, and seek to answer these questions, and come to some action steps to do our part through mentorship, documentation, and more.

What a global pandemic can tell you about better DevOps practices

In early 2020 a global pandemic set in motion events which none of us could predict. With anonymous data collected from 900k+ devs, 50K orgs, and 60m+ builds/mo we found some interesting insights into better DevOps practices. Since then, we've seen even more interesting activities happen, which shed new light on high-performing engineering teams. In this session, we will seek to uncover what this unique dataset can tell us about high-performing engineering teams, and what trends stand out through the aggregated platform usage.

Streamlining Developer Experience: The Power of Standardizing Your Pipelines

In this talk, we delve into the core aspects of CI/CD which can significantly impact Developer Experience: Pipeline Standardization and Interoperability. We'll explore the pivotal role of standardized practices in CI/CD pipelines, fostering consistency and reducing friction in the development lifecycle. We will also look at how well-defined pipeline architecture and standardized configurations, can empower developers with a smoother and more efficient workflow.

We will also discuss the critical importance of interoperability in CI/CD systems. Enabling seamless collaboration across the diverse toolsets and environments that exist today is a core advantage of interoperability. This enhancing flexibility, and allows teams to leverage their preferred tools without compromising the overall development pipeline.

The attendees will walk away with a roadmap to creating a collaborative and efficient development culture which prioritizes Developer Experience through innovative CI/CD practices.

Unleashing API Innovation: How Developer Experience Drives Success

Forget just functionality - in today's API-driven world, Developer Experience (DevEx) is the key to unlocking true API innovation. We'll move beyond the traditional "DevOps" focus to explore how DevEx encompasses every aspect of the API lifecycle, from design and discovery to integration and ongoing support. By prioritizing clear documentation, intuitive tools, and a frictionless development flow, we can empower developers to build on top of your APIs with speed and efficiency. This talk will explore how a DevEx-centric approach, aligned with core DevOps principles like collaboration and shared responsibility, can foster a thriving ecosystem around your APIs.

From DevEx Nevermind to Smells Like Teen Spirit: How to Champion a Developer Experience Revolution

Are your developers feeling territorial and withdrawn, like an "Outcast" in their own codebase? Is the overall experience a "Lithium-fueled" mess, leading to bugs and slow time to market? Nevermind that! This talk takes inspiration from Nirvana's revolutionary sound to show how YOU can champion a DevEx revolution in your organization. Learn how to "Bleach the Data" and leverage metrics to showcase the impact of DevEx. We'll explore strategies to build a collaborative DevEx "Smells Like Teen Spirit" where information flows freely and everyone feels empowered to contribute. Discover how to navigate existing initiatives ("Something In The Way") and avoid "Territorial Pissings" by focusing on solutions. This talk will equip you to build a DevEx advocacy coalition and spread the DevEx gospel like a wildfire. Join us and learn how to cultivate a "Come As You Are" development environment that fosters creativity, keeps your devs "In Bloom," and gets your product out the door faster.

Navigating the Nebulas: A Deep Dive into Modern Cloud Practices

Dive into the rapidly transforming landscape of cloud technology, where hybrid architectures and serverless computing are just the tip of the iceberg. This presentation will navigate through current trends, challenges, and the integration of AI, IoT, and big data analytics into cloud ecosystems. Discover how businesses are leveraging cloud capabilities for scalability, security, and innovation, and gain insights into the strategies that are setting the benchmarks for operational efficiency and future readiness.