Neal Ford
Pacific Northwest Software Symposium
Seattle · September 15 - 17, 2006
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
Real-world Agile Development
Lots of developers want to use Agile development technique but don't know where to start. This session discusses how to get started with Agility, the key benefits you can expect, and the pitfalls to avoid.
SOA: Next Wave of Enterprise Development or Return of the Son of CORBA?
Is Service Oriented Architecture the next wave of distributed computing or just the same old crap in a shiny new package? This session provides an overview of what most people agree is the definition of SOA. I talk about SOA, ESB, CORBA, your MOM, and a bunch of other acronyms.
Testing with Selenium
This session describes the use and workings of Selenium, the open source web user interface testing tool.
Web Application Security Vulnerabilities
This session highlights common mistakes made by web programmers, stating the problems and avoidance techniques.
The Productive Programmer
This session shows you how to become a more productive programmer every day by using tools that you didn't know you already had.
Pragmatic Extreme Programming Part 1: Planning & Design
This session begins a detailed discussion about how to actually get XP done in the real world (and what to tell your boss). This session includes artifacts (project tracking sheets, code coverage reports, etc.) from real XP projects.