Kaitlyn Concilio
Software Engineering Leader
Phoenix, Arizona, United States
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Kaitlyn Concilio has been playing with computers since she first telnetted into the library to reserve books in first grade. With deep experience in design and writing, she’s programmed her way through stints in journalism, nonprofits, higher education and healthcare, both as an internal team member and through consultancy. She’s passionate about building vibrant, cross-functional teams and helping other developers grow.
Area of Expertise
Topics
Using Data Transfer Objects to keep your applications coherent, lean and bug-free
Backend developers only want to name our variables_like_this, while frontenders are all about that camelCaseLife. But you’re not doomed as aCapulet to war with them forever, so don’t reach for that poison just yet.
Data Transfer Objects are here to save the day. Whether you’re looking to maintain naming convention consistency or convert between similar data types that don’t quite match up (without either sacrificing type safety or bloating the scope of your component), DTO is the way to go.
We will talk about the importance of maintaining metaphorical coherence in your application, and why it’s the secret sauce that will allow you develop applications faster and with fewer bugs.
We’ll talk about the conceptual underpinnings and share examples of when they can be best put to use.
The Imposter’s Advantage
Kaitlyn Concilio worked as a newspaper editor despite never having taken a journalism class; she’s taken on a senior Angular job despite having never used the framework before; and she’s made to principal software engineer with a BA in history as her sole official credential.
And while she feels the weight of Imposter’s Syndrome all the time, it’s not always a disadvantage to be an outsider. Having a unique perspective can make you valuable, and you can always learn the base-level skills.
We’ll discuss the upsides of what it means to approach things from a new angle; we’ll talk about some strategies you can use to shore up weaknesses. And we’ll go over some basic dev things that senior devs think everybody knows but no one does unless they actually have a CS degree.
That’s not “real” Scrum: Measuring and managing productivity for development teams
The first rule of Scrum is that everyone else is doing Scrum wrong. The first rule of Agile is that you’re actually just doing Waterfall with sprints.
We’re going to talk about the philosophies of Scrum and Agile, and what the hell you’re actually supposed to be using story points for. We’re gonna dig deep into how you should actually be measuring your dev team’s productivity. We’ll go over some common misconceptions and pitfalls, and finish up with some tips for practices you should be striving for as well some baby-step approaches to fixing your processes.
Minimal vs. functional: Beyond "clean" code
You cannot tell at a glance whether code is “clean” or not, yet most developers seem to attribute more value to code that’s pleasing to look at rather than code that is consistent, readable and understandable.
We’ll discuss some of the shortcomings with some commonly accepted indicators of “clean” code, as well as some principles to follow for truly cleaner (and maintainable!) codebases, regardless of language. Learn the specifiable traits of quality code, as well as some common assumptions you're making you're not even aware of.
Highlight: We'll solve tabs vs. spaces once and for all.
Intersectiona11y: Accessibility, AI and the future of work
Aspects of development work like accessibility are often treated by product teams as legal obligations, boxes to be checked off the list. As we widen the scope to the broader organization, we can see this mindset being applied to other areas, like DEIB or incorporating emerging technologies like AI. At best, each area is seen as one person’s job to take care of, with a limited scope of impact, and everyone else can wash their hands of it.
But making things better, easier and more equitable is the reason most people get started developing software - why wouldn’t we extend these goals and their benefits as broadly as possible? We’ll talk about responsible ways to implement AI (in your product and on your team), and how it - along with accessibility, DEIB and remote work - can combine to create the ideal workplace of the future.
Fairytale vs. Narrative: Telling stories and making decisions with data
Everyone wants to be data-driven: "We want to do things empirically correctly, so we just rely on the data to provide a value-neutral assessment of the best course forward."
Except for the most part, data-driven tends to be data-informed, at best. Because you can tell any story from a given set of data. We'll talk what data can actually tell you vs. what it can't, looking at specific case studies and examples.
We'll discover how to find the right data to help drive your decisions, and how you might actually be able to collect it. And at least once I will get so upset about someone using data incorrectly I'll start sputtering, which is pretty amusing for everyone else.
Cascadia PHP Upcoming
Intersectiona11y & Narrative vs. Fairytale
dev up 2024 Sessionize Event
php[tek] 2024 Sessionize Event
Michigan Technology Conference 2024 Sessionize Event
DeveloperWeek 2024 Sessionize Event
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