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.

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?

Before you think about a mid life career change, spend some time listening to what we did in one large company. We may not have had all the right answers, but we learned a few things along the way.

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?

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 Who and What of Agile - Personas and Story Maps

Successful projects require any number of practices but if you don't know who you're building it for or what you're supposed to build, failure is a distinct possibility. How do we capture the who and what? Personas and story maps are two effective techniques that you can leverage. After discussing the basics, we'll break into small groups and you'll have a chance to actually try building a set of personas as well as a story map.

The JavaScript Developer's Toolchain

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.

JavaScript Framework Face off

Developers are flocking to client side frameworks and, as a result, there are more and more JavaScript libraries attempting to solve the rich internet application problem. In a space where new libraries seem to spring up weekly, what framework should you choose for your next project? While there is consensus around basic ideas like Model View Whatever, there are some strong philosophical differences amongst the various libraries. In this talk, we'll look at the similarities and the differences of some emerging JavaScript libraries discussing why you need to be aware of this rapidly evolving aspect of software development.