Nathaniel Schutta

You're an Architect...Now What?

Many software developers point their career towards ascending to the gilded rank of Architect…but what does it mean to actually be one? While many of us labor under false pretense of abject technical decision making, the reality is often very different. You'll code less, spending more time on activities that lack an objective green/red bar. But you'll also an opportunity to impact far more than one project.

In this talk, I'll speak to my own journey. We'll touch on influencing coworkers, the importance of communication and the importance of cup of coffee.

Mind the Gap: Architecting UIs in the Era of Diverse Devices

Architecting and developing user interfaces used to be relatively easy, pick a server side framework, define a standard monitor resolution and spend your days dealing with browser quirks. But today, the landscape presents us with a plethora of screen sizes and resolutions covering everything from a phone to a tablet to a TV. How does a team embrace this brave new world knowing that the future will introduce even more volatility to the client space?

Building a Mobile Competency Center

By now, the importance of having a mobile solution is obvious to just about every seat in the organization…but how do develop expertise? How do we work through the inevitable politics and organizational issues? What about the technical questions about hybrid vs. web vs. native?

Agile in the Large

Almost every example of an agile project involves a single team and while many successful projects are delivered that way, most enterprise software requires the interaction of several teams. But how do we scale agile beyond a single team? What practices translate and which ones don't? In this talk we'll discuss some of the issues you'll encounter as you move agile beyond a single group and how you can keep multiple stakeholders happy. While it isn't as simple as having a “scrum of scrums” it isn't as hard as replacing every line of COBOL.

Leading Technical Change

Technology changes, it's a fact of life. And while many developers are attracted to the challenge of change, many organizations do a particularly poor job of adapting. We've all worked on projects with, ahem, less than new technologies even though newer approaches would better serve the business. But how do we convince those holding the purse strings to pony up the cash when things are “working” today? At a personal, how do we keep up with the change in our industry?

The JavaScript Developer's Toolchain Workshop

Back in the day, web developers had to rely on their wits and a plethora of alert statements - to say our toolkit was spartan would be an understatement. But with the increased importance of web front ends and the rise of JavaScript MVC frameworks, a modern web developer toolkit is finally emerging. We've evolved from text editors to full fledged IDE's with code completion and refactoring tools but our toolchain doesn't end there. With multiple testing libraries, mocking frameworks, test drivers and even code coverage tools, today's web developer gets to walk downhill on a sunny day.

In this workshop, we'll discuss the various tools that you can assemble into your own full fledged JavaScript development pipeline from code to deployment and more importantly, get them up and running on your machine.

The JavaScript Developer's Toolchain Workshop

Back in the day, web developers had to rely on their wits and a plethora of alert statements - to say our toolkit was spartan would be an understatement. But with the increased importance of web front ends and the rise of JavaScript MVC frameworks, a modern web developer toolkit is finally emerging. We've evolved from text editors to full fledged IDE's with code completion and refactoring tools but our toolchain doesn't end there. With multiple testing libraries, mocking frameworks, test drivers and even code coverage tools, today's web developer gets to walk downhill on a sunny day.

In this workshop, we'll discuss the various tools that you can assemble into your own full fledged JavaScript development pipeline from code to deployment and more importantly, get them up and running on your machine.

Hacking Your Body for Fun and Profit

Beyond our typing skills, physical prowess is rarely part of our job qualifications but recent studies prove exercise is a key to a healthy brain. While we don't need to train like an Olympic athlete we can't be the stereotypical sedentary heliophobic programmer and expect to excel at our jobs. In this talk, we'll discuss the implications of research connecting exercise and brain health. We'll look at ways to weave activity into your day, see how technology can help us “geek out on our workouts” and touch on how diet fits into the picture. The impact a mere 20 minute walk can have our our abilities can be astounding; don't worry, the Internet will still be there when you get back!