Liam McLennan
Principal Software Engineer
Brisbane, Australia
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Liam is a developer working on Seq - the best structured logging observability tool. Previously, he was Chief Technology Officer of an online media and travel company with 300,000 members.
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Turning great individuals into a great team
A great technology organisation starts with great people, but that is not enough. They need help to unite under a common vision, and a framework for deciding what to do, and what not to do. This presentation explains how to transform a group of smart, talented individuals into a high-performance team.
January 2017 I became the Chief Technology Officer of an online media and travel company and was immediately confronted by an impossible situation. The product team was being bombarded with initiatives to deliver, all of which needed to be delivered immediately. A team ten times the size could not have done it. The required set of initiatives changed on a weekly basis, compounding the problem. The product team had been doing their best to meet the demands of the organisation, thus they had accumulated a portfolio of poorly thought out, half-executed solutions
This presentation is about how to create a technology strategy, map the strategy to execution, and release successful products. It includes topics such as: the importance of having a technology strategy, how to work with your CEO or stakeholders to define a product strategy and prioritize initiatives, and how to manage a product delivery team to focus on creating value over being busy.
Structured logging for software system observability and diagnostics
Participants will start with a simple application and learn how to add structured logs to capture errors, business level events and internal system state.
Once structured logging is in place the group will investigate the possibilities for analysis of the log data being collected.
Finally, the workshop will introduce errors into the system. The group will use the structured logging they have setup to diagnose and resolve the problem.
Making a career in technology
We will all get older. As we do, will there still be a place for us in tech? Must we transition to management? Is it worth it? Will it make us happy?
These questions have been on my mind as someone who has followed a traditional career path, from individual contributor programmer to management, then to CTO, and recently back to individual contributor programmer.
This presentation reveals what worked out for me and what didn't. What I'd keep and what I'd change and finally how I now think about managing a rewarding career in technology.
Getting Back Into Computer Science
What does a former enterprise software developer and engineering manager do when approaching middle age?
My answer was to pursue my passion and join a deeply technical company working on a sophisticated database product. Not because it is easy, but because it is hard. And hard is fun!
This session is me sharing my passion for technology, life-long learning, mathematics and computer science.
There is hi-jinks and hash tables, a different way of looking at the theory of types, distributed consensus - why it is hard and a clever trick to make it work, database indexes - why you might want them and some different ways to implement them.
Debugging distributed systems with structured logging and observability
This presentation will demonstrate simplified versions of some classic distributed systems problems and how they can be debugged using structured logging and observability. The demonstrations are based on a real distributed system with real bugs.
Structured logging has been around for a while now, but it’s rarely implemented and often poorly understood. This presentation is designed to show that getting started with structured logging is easy and how terrifically helpful it is when things go wrong. Many professional software developers are implementing systems that write text logs to local files, but there is a much better way, and it is not hard.
Debugging distributed systems with structured logging and observability
This presentation will demonstrate simplified versions of some classic distributed systems problems and how they can be debugged using structured logging and observability. The demonstrations are based on a real distributed system with real bugs.
Structured logging has been around for a while now, but it’s rarely implemented and often poorly understood. This presentation is designed to show how easy it can be to get started and how terrifically helpful it is when things go wrong. Many professional software developers are implementing systems that write text logs to local files, and I want to show that there is a much better way, and it is not hard.
Databases Are Amazing
This session demonstrates a bunch of great ideas that make databases work, with examples from a small database written in TypeScript.
Most of us use databases regularly, but have you ever wondered how they work? Despite being the foundation of fifty years of technological progress databases are a black box to most people who use them, and that's sad, because they are awesome. Non-stop academic and industrial progress, from System R to Clickhouse, has made database systems outstanding monuments to the engineering excellence our field is capable of, but rarely achieves.
As the magical school bus shrunk us down for strange and wonderful journeys through the human body, so this presentation will be an action-packed, day-in-the-life blast through database query execution, including simplified, but real demonstrations of query parsing, planning and execution.
Ever wanted to know how an index actually works? What's the difference between row-oriented and column-oriented storage? How does schema vs schema-less affect database performance? Come learn why databases deserve your love and respect.
Databases Are Amazing
This session demonstrates a bunch of great ideas that make databases work, with examples from a small database written in TypeScript.
Most of us use databases regularly, but have you ever wondered how they work? Despite being the foundation of fifty years of technological progress databases are a black box to most people who use them, and that's sad, because they are awesome. Non-stop academic and industrial progress, from System R to Clickhouse, has made database systems outstanding monuments to the engineering excellence our field is capable of, but rarely achieves.
As the magical school bus shrunk us down for strange and wonderful journeys through the human body, so this presentation will be an action-packed, day-in-the-life blast through database query execution, including simplified, but real demonstrations of query parsing, planning and execution.
Ever wanted to know how an index actually works? What's the difference between row-oriented and column-oriented storage? How does schema vs schema-less affect database performance? Come learn why databases deserve your love and respect.
Databases Are Amazing
This session demonstrates a bunch of great ideas that make databases work, with examples from a small database written in TypeScript.
Most of us use databases regularly, but have you ever wondered how they work? Despite being the foundation of fifty years of technological progress databases are a black box to most people who use them, and that's sad, because they are awesome. Non-stop academic and industrial progress, from System R to Clickhouse, has made database systems outstanding monuments to the engineering excellence our field is capable of, but rarely achieves.
As the magical school bus shrunk us down for strange and wonderful journeys through the human body, so this presentation will be an action-packed, day-in-the-life blast through database query execution, including simplified, but real demonstrations of query parsing, planning and execution.
Ever wanted to know how an index actually works? What's the difference between row-oriented and column-oriented storage? How does schema vs schema-less affect database performance? Come learn why databases deserve your love and respect.
Centralized Observability for Distributed System Diagnostics
We build applications so that someone will use them. When your new application takes off you will find that operating a software system is a skill too. You will need a solid observability foundation to be able to quickly and confidently investigate and diagnose problems. Fortunately, we have mature telemetry and analysis technology for production diagnostics, and it is not difficult to add instrumentation to applications.
This presentation is a practical demonstration of how to instrument a typical, modern, distributed application and how to make sense of all that data.
Liam McLennan
Principal Software Engineer
Brisbane, Australia
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