Keith Elder
The hardest thing about programming is typing.
Hattiesburg, Mississippi, United States
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Keith Elder is the Senior Technology Evangelist at Quicken Loans, the nation’s largest online mortgage lender based in Detroit, MI. He is an experienced technologist, systems administrator, software engineer, speaker, trainer, professional storyteller, and all around geek. He has spoken throughout the United States at major technical conferences on topics ranging from various new technologies, software architectures and soft skills. For over 12 years he lead the Engineering Tools team as the Director of Software Engineering within Quicken Loans and was an eight-time Microsoft MVP award recipient. When not sitting in front of a computer he spends the majority of his time as captain of the vessel Sea Sharp navigating the waters in the Gulf of Mexico in search of giant pelagic fish.
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Productivity: How to get things done in this digital age
Pick the kids up after school, pay the electric bill on Friday, reviews for team members are due tomorrow, oh and I have to remember to call a team member back about the question they asked yesterday. These are just a few of the things that run through our heads constantly. While some of us have work tasks that are tracked in kanban boards or Jira or TFS or maybe even pencil and paper, there is so much more we have to keep track of. Ugh-- an email just came in, crap, I have to take a survey now. Ok, I’m back...what was I saying...oh yeah, staying productive... getting things done. It is something many information workers struggle with every day. For many, actually being productive doesn’t come naturally. It didn’t come naturally to me, so I set out on a journey to hack myself and change my habits. In this session, we are going to look at some science, psychology, tools, and methods to help us process, track, and ultimately get more things done at work and in our personal lives. Join me as I lay out my own personal struggles and how I hacked myself into being more productive.
Building A Highly Scalable Service that Survived A Super Bowl
Would you bet your career and your company's reputation on a technology you've never used in front of 110 million people tuned into a Super Bowl commercial? Well, I did. And I was a nervous wreck! We were launching a new product during a commercial at the Super Bowl 302 days away, and I was betting everything on a technology we had never used in production. I spent countless nights wavering back and forth thinking about the millions of dollars and hundreds of thousands of person hours that were on the line. Everything was resting on the shoulders of this one web service that had to handle the excessive load placed upon it when our commercial aired. The technology chosen was Erlang, a mystical, functional, dynamically compiled language that was very foreign to this eight-time Microsoft MVP. This is a story about picking the right tool for the right job, exploring other possibilities, and the difference between playing with technology and putting it into production. As a noted storyteller, I'll take you on the journey of:
*how we stumbled upon Erlang during our dedicated innovation time
*what made it so special that we were willing to take such a risk
*what we learned along the way
*how it performed
*and would we do it again
If you love a great technology story, I hope you'll join me for this tale of how this web service, built in unproven technology to us, survived Super Bowl Sunday.
REST Better with gRPC
Are you tired of discussing the REST standard with other developers? Oh, wait... I meant the architecture guidelines of REST with other developers. Oh, wait... I meant the emotionally charged and exhausting semantic discussions that the API you just created isn't RESTFul? Let's be real, it probably isn't and it's because you don't want REST, you want networked computing that's easy, quick, and lightning fast on the wire.
What if we never write another REST service ever? What if you never had to write another REST client again? What if you could deliver more faster? What if more developers were excited to use your API's because they're naturally documented and they have all the tools to use them? Enter gRPC. gRPC is a modern open-source high-performance remote procedure call (RPC) framework that can run in any environment. It enables client and server applications to communicate transparently and makes it easy to build connected systems. By the way, did we mention all of that is easier than REST? Well, it is. Join us for this restful and calming session where you can learn how to write services that won't keep you up at night. It's practically yoga.
Throw Away Your Resume
I threw away my resume 13 years ago, and haven't looked back. Why? I'm all-in on my workplace culture. What would it take for you to plant your roots and be all-in? Research shows, for most technologists, the key is an outstanding workplace environment and a culture that helps them thrive and promotes work-life balance. Join me for a story-filled keynote about the importance of culture and why you (and your company) should place more emphasis on it, so your team members can throw away their resume and be all-in.
DogFoodCon 2019 Sessionize Event
Code PaLOUsa 2019 Sessionize Event
CodeMash 2019 Sessionize Event
Music City Tech 2018 Sessionize Event
Keith Elder
The hardest thing about programming is typing.
Hattiesburg, Mississippi, United States
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