Neal Ford
ÜberConf
Denver · July 21 - 24, 2015
Director / Software Architect / Meme Wrangler
Neal is Director, Software Architect, and Meme Wrangler at ThoughtWorks, a global IT consultancy with an exclusive focus on end-to-end software development and delivery.
Before joining ThoughtWorks, Neal was the Chief Technology Officer at The DSW Group, Ltd., a nationally recognized training and development firm. Neal has a degree in Computer Science from Georgia State University specializing in languages and compilers and a minor in mathematics specializing in statistical analysis.
He is also the designer and developer of applications, instructional materials, magazine articles, video presentations, and author of 6 books, including the most recent The Productive Programmer. His language proficiencies include Java, C#/.NET, Ruby, Groovy, functional languages, Scheme, Object Pascal, C++, and C. His primary consulting focus is the design and construction of large-scale enterprise applications. Neal has taught on-site classes nationally and internationally to all phases of the military and to many Fortune 500 companies. He is also an internationally acclaimed speaker, having spoken at over 100 developer conferences worldwide, delivering more than 600 talks. If you have an insatiable curiosity about Neal, visit his web site at http://www.nealford.com. He welcomes feedback and can be reached at nford@thoughtworks.com.
Presentations
Continuous Delivery Workshop, part 1 of 3: Deployment Pipelines
The first part of the Continuous Delivery workshop covers the differences between continuous integration, continuous deployment, and continuous delivery). It also introduces the deployment pipeline_, along with usage, patterns, and anti-patterns. This part concludes with some applied engineering principles.
Continuous Delivery Workshop, part 2 of 3: Testing, Synergistic Practices, and Deployment
Continuous Delivery relies on a variety of interlocking engineering practices to work efficiently; this session covers three related topics. First, I cover the role of testing and the testing quadrant. Second, I specifically cover version control usage and offer alternatives to feature branching like toggle and branch by abstraction. Third, I describe some incremental release strategies, along with their impact on other stages of project lifecycle.
Continuous Delivery Workshop, part 3 of 3: Infrastructure and Data
Two big stumbling blocks for Continuous Delivery adaptation are interactions with operations and the keepers of data. First in this session, I cover operations, DevOps, and programmatic control of infrastructure. Second, I discuss how to incorporate databases and DBA's into the Continuous Integration and Continuous Delivery process.
Continuous Delivery for Architects Workshop
Architecture doesn't exist in a vacuum, a painful lesson developers who built logically sound but operationally cumbersome architectures learned. Continuous Delivery is a process for automating the production readiness of your application every time a change occurs–to code, infrastructure, or configuration. Some architectures and practices yield code that works better in this environment. This session takes a deep dive into the intersection of the architect role and the engineering practices in Continuous Delivery.
Continuous Delivery for Architects Workshop
Architecture doesn't exist in a vacuum, a painful lesson developers who built logically sound but operationally cumbersome architectures learned. Continuous Delivery is a process for automating the production readiness of your application every time a change occurs–to code, infrastructure, or configuration. Some architectures and practices yield code that works better in this environment. This session takes a deep dive into the intersection of the architect role and the engineering practices in Continuous Delivery.
Software Architecture Fundamentals
The job Software Architect places in the top ten of most annual surveys of best jobs, yet no clear path exists from Developer to Architect. Why aren’t there more books and training materials to fill this demand? First, software architecture is a massive multidisciplinary subject, covering many roles and responsibilities, making it difficult to teach because so much context is required for the interesting subjects. Second, it’s a fast moving discipline, where entire suites of best practices become obsolete overnight. This workshop provides the fundamentals to transition from developer to architect, or to help “accidental” architects.
Clojure Workshop
In an increasingly crowded field of languages, Clojure stands alone. It is a dynamic, functional, high performance dialect of Lisp that runs on both the JVM and CLR. The creator cast aside assumptions from both the Lisp and Java communities to create a remarkable language implementation.
Clojure Workshop
In an increasingly crowded field of languages, Clojure stands alone. It is a dynamic, functional, high performance dialect of Lisp that runs on both the JVM and CLR. The creator cast aside assumptions from both the Lisp and Java communities to create a remarkable language implementation.
Build Your Own Technology Radar Workshop for Architects
A Technology Radar is a tool that forces you to organize and think about near term future technology decisions, both for you and your company. This talk discusses using the radar for personal breadth development, architectural guidance, and governance.
Building Microservice Architectures
Inspired by success stories from companies such as Amazon and Netflix, many organizations are moving towards microservice architectures at a brisk pace. This session provides a thorough overview of the pros and cons for microservice architectures, when it is applicable, and some nascent best practices.