Speaker

Maciej Konkolowicz

Maciej Konkolowicz

Site Reliability... Quality...kind of my thing.

Detroit, Michigan, United States

Maciek is a Tech Lead Manager. He works at Keebo.ai, a data learning platform. He’s spent more than 10 years focused on driving quality in software and increasing delivery of quality at speed. Maciek lives and breathes SRE and quality by continuously learning about best practices and then spreading them across our industry.

When he’s not thinking about quality, Maciek is busy finding expensive ways to improve the velocity of his sailboat, or searching the great outdoors for encounters with wildlife...while hiding the costs of his adventures from his wife.

Maciek shares his ideas and expertise at conferences and meetups across the Midwest and on his blog at https://www.mkonk.com and Twitter @MKonkolowicz.

Area of Expertise

  • Information & Communications Technology

Topics

  • Quality
  • Test Automation
  • Quality Architecture

I For One Welcome Our Robot Overlords: How To Build Trust In Test Automation

Nowadays, creating test automation is table stakes for ensuring a minimal level of quality during the software development life cycle. Software geeks all across the world understand that creating automated tests is almost a non negotiable. But what happens after the tests are created? How do we know they actually help? How do we ensure the juice is carefully squeezed, creating a trusted, respected and ever evolving safety net? If any of these questions seem familiar conundrums, come join me as I share how my team was able to create a test automation mindset, which helps us prevent bugs and encourages collaboration in a cross functional, distributed, always changing space. This cross-role talk will focus on how to engage cross functional teams to build a cross team testing suite, and is suited to all technical levels. Attendees will walk away with a repeatable process aimed at constantly improving trust and impact of test automation, leading to quicker defect detection.

Morse Code: The Original Digital Messenger

Have you ever wondered how you would text your friends if there was no such thing as the internet? Or how people sent urgent signals from ships on the high seas before there was such a thing as satellites? If so, this is the class for you. Come learn about Morse Code! A way to send messages using dots and dashes through sound or light! Students in this workshop will learn about the invention and history of Morse Code, and get their hands dirty through a Morse Code-driven scavenger hunt! At the end of the class, the students will walk away with an appreciation for the timeless art of Morse coding, and maybe even how to spell their own -. .- -- .

My First Year At A Startup: No Ragrets, Not Even A Single Letter

A year ago, I decided to take a leap of faith. I left my perfectly fine, thousands of team members company, and joined a startup of approximately thirty people. "Why would you do this?", "But you have children!", "You will burn out", were some of the phrases I heard. Was I scared? Yes. Was it risky? Yes. Would I do it again? Absolutely. This story is for you if you are in a portion of your career, where you find yourself tempted by the perspective of leaving the comfort of your current established role and joining a potential unicorn company that could provide you with a challenge, and a reward, big enough to buy a jet fighter. This talk is for you if you have recruiters calling you, or friends enticing you to join their teams at companies in early stages of funding. You will acquire a playbook filled with questions about burn rate, communication style, culture, and stock vesting. You will hear the cold hard truth about why working for a startup is awesome, but also extremely challenging, no bull, no sugar coating, no recruiting. At the end of the day, the decision and the risks are yours, but the experience and potential may just be worth the grey hairs. At least that is my current hope.

Maciej Konkolowicz

Site Reliability... Quality...kind of my thing.

Detroit, Michigan, United States