Kenneth Kousen
Gateway Software Symposium
St. Louis · April 6 - 7, 2018
President, Kousen IT, Inc.
Ken Kousen is a Java Champion, several time JavaOne Rock Star, and a Grails Rock Star. He is the author of the Pragmatic Library books “Mockito Made Clear” and “Help Your Boss Help You,” the O'Reilly books “Kotlin Cookbook”, “Modern Java Recipes”, and “Gradle Recipes for Android”, and the Manning book “Making Java Groovy”. He also has recorded over a dozen video courses for the O'Reilly Learning Platform, covering topics related to Android, Spring, Java, Groovy, Grails, and Gradle.
His academic background include BS degrees in Mechanical Engineering and Mathematics from M.I.T., an MA and Ph.D. in Aerospace Engineering from Princeton, and an MS in Computer Science from R.P.I. He is currently President of Kousen IT, Inc., based in Connecticut.
Presentations
Mental Bookmarks and the Fractal Nature of Success
Good discussions are supposed to diverge from their intended path. Free association is a feature, not a bug, and helps you see new connections between ideas. Without structure, however, it can be difficult to add context to new ideas and understand how they relate to more immediate problems. This talk discusses the technique of mental bookmarks – how to remember where you were when a discussion diverged. In addition to giving you a reputation for having an amazing memory, the skill also helps with personal awareness in general.
Beyond Managing Your Manager
This is a revised and updated version of the previous talk, with current thinking from practice and the literature. The talk presents why conflicts with your manager are inevitable based on differences in priorities and perspectives, and how to plan for them. The goal is to show you how to build the loyalty relationship that allows you to get what you need when you need it.
Latest Features In Java
Java is now on a six-month release schedule, with new features being added all the time. This talk summarizes the features that have been added to Java, including collection factory methods, private methods in interfaces, records, the enhanced switch statement, and more. The goal is to show not only what has been added, but why and where to use them.
Gradle In Depth
Gradle is the build tool of choice in the open source world, and rapidly becoming the standard in industry as well. Anyone who works with Gradle on a Java project knows the basics of the Java plugin and how to write simple tasks in Groovy. Gradle can do much more, however. This talk will demonstrate how to write your own custom task classes and how to create Gradle plugins from them. Other Gradle features will be demonstrated as well, including file manipulation, incremental builds, generating the Grade wrapper, and resolving conflicts in dependencies.