YOW! Tech Leaders Summit wrap up

I recently had the priviledge of being a track host for the Brisbane YOW! Tech Leaders Summit. I always love YOW! Conferences for the mix of speakers, “hallway track” discussions and community involvement, and this one was no different. I got to catch up with old friends and make some new ones, and came away energised.

Some highlights for me were:

• Brigid O’Brien and Heiko Gerin from Thoughtworks talking about their experiences “Debugging” development organisations. It almost made me want to go back to big company consulting. Almost.

• Anton Ball speaking about the async first principles they live by at Doist. I’m a huge fan of Doist and their products, and Anton put together a fantastic talk.

• Meeting Maia Miller and listening to her outlining a great way to frame the business case for including accessibility in your products. While it shouldn’t really be necessary to have to sell this, it often is.

• Troy Mcilvena talked about a huge program of work at Seek unifiying multiple platforms into one over years. We all got some second hand PTSD listening to this one.

• Lastly, some talks from old friends. Bec Scott talking about her concepts of a “Minimum Viable Programmer”, which she uses in mentoring more junior developers and consultants, and Reshma Venugopal talking about some scenarios and strategies in managing conflict in technical teams.

This was a fantastic event, a re-imagining of the old CTO Summit, and definitely worth putting on your list for next year. Thanks to the YOW! team for the opportunity to be involved, and a great day.