Speaker

Seth Petry-Johnson

Seth Petry-Johnson

Pointy-haired boss by day, coder by night

Columbus, Ohio, United States

Seth spent 21 years as a professional developer/architect before finally joining the dark side of management. He now spends his days as a pointy-haired boss leading a small-but-mighty product development team in the search for elegant solutions to complex problems. He is passionate about clean architecture, testable systems, and bringing order to chaos. Seth lives in Columbus, OH and is an active participant in the Midwest developer community. He'll write TPS reports when he has to, but still enjoys writing, reviewing, and talking about code.

Area of Expertise

  • Information & Communications Technology

Topics

  • Home Automation
  • automated testing
  • Test Automation
  • Unit testing
  • Management
  • Software Development
  • Software Engineering
  • Software Engineering Management
  • Computer Security
  • Agile software development
  • Agile Leadership

Burnout - More than just a bad day

Burnout is more than just being tired, irritable, or beat down. It's a specific psychological condition that develops in response to different types of stress, and it can be measured and analyzed in systematic ways.

This session will explain the science behind burnout, introduce tools for measuring it, and explore ways to address it. We will cover both an organizational approach (for managers and leaders) and a more personal approach (for individual contributors).

You will leave with some practical suggestions for assessing and addressing burnout BEFORE it leads to turnover, low morale, and a loss of productivity.

I delivered this session at CodeMash 2023, focused primarily on addressing burnout from an organizational perspective; it was written for managers and leaders, but a lot of ICs showed up.

I'm retooling it going forward to address both managers and ICs.

The content is primarily driven by research that I did in 2021 as part of an initiative to avoid turnover and retain staff through COVID. I intend to summarize the research I conducted, how we rolled out this program to our staff, the lessons we learned in doing so, and the outcomes we've observed as a result.

Practical Auth(entication|orization) for Developers

It's never been easier to launch a website or expose services over HTTP. It's also never been easier to make rookie mistakes in the authentication of those services.

This session is designed for the average developer/architect that's struggling to make sense of modern authentication options. You'll learn the differences between OAuth, API Keys, HMAC, JSON Web Tokens (JWT), SAML, OpenID Connect, and passkeys.

Don't worry if those things sound foreign; they'll be explained in a clear, practical way so that you can choose the appropriate tool for your needs without making rookie mistakes.

This is a re-tooled and re-written version of my "Securing Your API Endpoints". I've probably delivered it 10 times across all the iterations, but this version is dramatically improved.

I always get a few people each conference telling me that the talk was _exactly_ what they needed, and I'm quite confident that I can make it a good use of attendee time.

The most recent version includes an updated section on passwordless.

Hiring and Inspiring an Exceptional Team

Management gets a bad rap in technical circles, and for good reason: many managers are terrible, and it shows!

Rising above the pointy-haired-boss stereotypes is easier than you might think. By grounding your leadership style in management science, and adding a touch of emotional intelligence, you can help your team meet its individual and collective goals, improve morale and engagement, and reduce turnover.

This session will show early-career managers how to find team players aligned with their core values, how to "design the alliance" with new hires, how to get the most out of 1:1s, and how to use personality-typing tools like DISC to motivate and communicate effectively.

This was delivered for the first time at CodeMash 2020 with good results. It fit the timeframe perfectly and generated good discussion afterwards.

Slides are here: https://github.com/spetryjohnson/Talk---Hiring--Firing--and-Inspiring

Automating your smarthome without the cloud

Modern "smart" homes are dumb; your lights shouldn't stop working because your Internet is down, and your new doorbell shouldn't compromise your network security.

A smarter and more secure home doesn't depend on cloud services or a disparate array of apps to function, and it's easier than you might think to achieve total local control. A dash of technical knowledge, a dab of DIY elbow grease, and this session are all you need to get started.

In this session you'll learn how to choose and install a local hub (Home Assistant vs Hubitat vs HomeKit), which devices work best (Zigbee vs Z-Wave vs Wifi), and how to integrate lights, plugs, sensors, and switches without the cloud. You'll also learn how to add smart features like remote control and push notifications to your existing "dumb" appliances.

Come take a tour through the land of smart, local home automation and stop being dependent on someone else's computers!

This talk grew out of a ton of research I did during quarantine when I adopted a new hobby and started playing around with Raspberry Pi and home automation.

My goal is to give attendees all of the basic knowledge they need to get started in an accessible and entertaining way. I cover the different types of device protocols people need to know about and how to do some cool things, such as adding notifications to legacy appliances.

I first presented this at StirTrek in 2022 received a lot of positive feedback. Slides are available at https://github.com/spetryjohnson/AutomatingSmarthomeWithoutCloud

Thank you for your consideration!

Stir Trek 2023 Sessionize Event

May 2023 Columbus, Ohio, United States

CodeMash 2023 Sessionize Event

January 2023 Sandusky, Ohio, United States

Stir Trek 2022 Sessionize Event

May 2022 Columbus, Ohio, United States

CodeMash 2020 Sessionize Event

January 2020 Sandusky, Ohio, United States

CodeMash 2019 Sessionize Event

January 2019 Sandusky, Ohio, United States

KCDC 2018 Sessionize Event

July 2018

Stir Trek 2018 Sessionize Event

May 2018 Columbus, Ohio, United States

Seth Petry-Johnson

Pointy-haired boss by day, coder by night

Columbus, Ohio, United States