Talks

level up the whole party, not just the hero
decision-making and "experience point" allocation as engineering leadership. delivered at Lead Dev Berlin 2024
generous, high-fidelity communication
why intra-team communication might be your most impactful investment as a leader/manager. part of the "Just Engineering Culture" track at QCon SF 2022
level up your team's code review
lightning talk (actually an homage to Turning Red) at The Lead Developer NYC 2022
how to get more out of 1:1s with your manager
delivered at internal day of learning event at GitHub
the path to becoming a Senior Engineering Manager
unscripted chat with Jiaqi Liu for GOTO 2021
crochet patterns & programming paradigms
rambling meditation on programming and fibre arts, Wavelength Conf 2021
the power of visual narrative
storytelling by having fun with art, RailsConf 2021
learning to succeed on large software projects
keynote talk for student audience at SINFO 28
sketch together online
online sketching & doodling workshop!
why are distributed systems so hard?
primer on distsys foibles and fallacies, with emphasis on human factors

editions: DevOpsDays LDN 2018 | SRECon 2019 keynote | self.conf | LISA 2019 keynote | QCon 2020
tech talk proposal drafting kit
worksheet for step-by-step proposal crafting
global diversity CFP day deck
workshop deck for GDCFP Day in Toronto, January 2020
how to build more secure service brokers
security best practices for service broker implementation. delivered at SpringOne Platform 2019
SRE for cats
cats are relentless agents of chaos, which makes them highly relevant to SRE. delivered at PromptConf 2019
telling stories with doodles: WSC edition
lengthened version of "Let's Sketch Tech" workshop for leveling up at sketching and doodling, with a view towards technical stories
let's build sustainable & empathetic cross-functional teams
how principles from the Balanced Team pattern can make your team more aligned and empowered on strategy. delivered at Agile on the Beach 2019
developer portfolios
lightning talk for IntersectTO career workshop
intro to TDD in go
delivered at the inaugural GoCon Canada 2019
feedback week
ignite talk on a self-regulating process for gathering peer feedback. delivered at DevOpsDays Toronto 2019
mentorship vs. sponsorship
overview on differences between mentorship and sponsorship, and effective usages of each tool. delivered at Diversity Luncheon at Cloud Foundry Summit North America 2019.
it's dangerous to go alone! lessons learnt from onboarding new Cloud Foundry contributors
reflections on designing and iterating towards an empathetic, collaborative engineering onboarding program. co-delivered with Andrew Su at Cloud Foundry Summit North America 2019.
telling stories with doodles
hands-on workshop for leveling up at sketching and doodling, with a view towards technical stories
sketchnoting introduction
unconference session at DevOpsDaysLDN 2018 on getting started with sketchnoting
intro to BOSH-deployed services
the on-demand service broker SDK pattern for cloud foundry services, co-delivered with Zoe Vance at Cloud Foundry Summit Europe 2018. slides & video coming later
how to tech talk: a meta-discussion
lightning talk on tips for getting started with technical speaking, from Cloud Foundry Summit Europe 2018 Unconference.
data-driven decision making
how to apply product management skills to other aspects of working on agile teams, co-delivered with Zoe Vance at SpringOne Platform 2018.
competitive debate, gendered speech patterns & the tech industry
reflections about gender-biased evaluation of communication styles. closing keynote on Speak day of Write/Speak/Code Conference 2018
what if you treat your pipeline like a product?
product thinking as applied to continuous integration infrastructure. co-delivered with Mark Hender at PipelineConf 2018. [video]
building empowered teams at scale
empirical study of a growing engineering organisation, told in the style of a lean startup manual, SwanseaCon 2017
why would anyone build a concourse resource?
intro to concourse CI resource concept and design, London Concourse User Group, 2017
how to tech talk
a workshop for generating technical talk ideas and surfacing shared interests
intro to COBOL
COBOL overview and "hello world" tutorial, for SoCraTes UK 2018
intro to fp for Shanghai.js
functional programming overview, slides in Chinese. delivered at ShanghaiJS in august 2016
functional reactive programming
functional reactive programming lightning talk, various London meetups
just containerise it!
intro to container technology, focused on Docker
domain design deep-dive
hands-on domain modeling workshop, /dev/summer 2016
integration testing
for makers alumni talks night, mid-2015
dysfunctional programming
functional programming intro for makers alumni talks night, mid-2015, co-delivered with @gypsydave5