For a full year, I held two full-time jobs: playing as a section violinist in the Kansas City Symphony, while also building applications as a software developer at a consulting company. Now, as a full-time developer at Georgetown University, I still find time to play as a substitute with the Baltimore Symphony Orchestra (thanks to my super flexible team!).

I have played the violin since I was three years old and I can't even remember a time when I wasn’t playing music. The years of musical training, collaboration with fellow musicians, and lessons with world-class teachers have shaped how I approach music and how I approach problem-solving as a developer. In this talk, I’ll explore the unexpected parallels between these two worlds and how my experiences as a professional musician have positively influenced the way I develop.

We'll discuss:

- How collaboration in an orchestra, where every musician must listen, adapt, and communicate, directly translates to teamwork in tech.
- The discipline of hours (read: hours) of practice and how it taught me resilience, iteration, and the importance of stepping away when stuck.
- The beauty of interpretation; just as no two performances of the same piece are identical, no two developers solve a problem in the exact same way.
- How a high-trust, high-stakes environment like an orchestra mirrors the dynamics of software teams working toward a shared vision.
- Creativity should not be confined to the arts; it has its place in development, too!

Whether you have a background in the arts or not, this talk will provide insight into how creative disciplines shape problem-solving, collaboration, and continuous growth in tech. You will walk away from this session learning something valuable about the way musicians lead, collaborate, adapt, and perform under pressure.