LunchConf

A few weeks ago I read about LunchConf via https://twitter.com/pwnela and through her tweets managed to track back to a sensational presentation (http://kwugirl.blogspot.co.uk/2015/10/continuing-education-at-work-talk.html) on continuing education given by kwugirl(https://twitter.com/kwugirl).

This is a topic I'm a bit in love with. I joined my current company as a very junior engineer and I couldn't believe my luck when my work started having Design Patterns classes every other week. These were patterns I had been reading about but now I got to talk to peers about them and talk to people who had used them. I was blown away and from that day have really been a fan of making your place of work a place of learning too.

I'm hoping to use this post to talk a little about how we try and have this peer learning in place to supplement both formal training and individual guided training via Pluralsight.

After a long running series of talks attempted to bridge the geographical and timezone divide between the offices (Boston and Belfast) faded away, one of our architects decided to try and do something about it and started tech talks over lunch. It would be easy to understate the amount of effort it took to get it off the ground and for that we'll always be grateful to the originator in Belfast Mark Ingram. The idea of the brown bag sessions was you didn't have to be an expert in the topic just that you wanted to learn about it and wanted to share what you had found. There's only 1 rule which is you have to start off the session with a joke and my god we've had some terribles ones :p

The talks were very sucessful but one thing we struggled with a bit was cadence. On average we had 6 a year for the first two years. It was great but we wanted more and weirdly the longer the time between talks I think the more hesitant people were to sign up due to 'heightened expectations' so we tried a reboot this year. Myself and another manager decided to take the onus to prepare a bit of a backlog of talks so we could step in as needed. The idea originally was to have a bi-weekly cadence for these talks because we're not a huge workplace (65ish) and so finding more than 20/25 volunteers for talks each year is a bit tricky. So I guess I would like to talk about some of the things we've done to increase the rate of talks

- Find a theme : Being able to talk about anythign and everything is a gift but also it can be really hard for inexperienced speakers to know if they have a topic people would want to hear (real talk - yeah you do so go for it!) so we have tried to have series of talks. Initially it was a Data Structure and Algorithm set of talks but now we seem to have had a an organic IOT theme start up and capture the imagination.

- Ask people to talk about what their currently working on. There's a fair amount of change in technology in our work, long may it continue!, so sharing the battle learned lessons with each other is a great way of sharing institutional knowledge and briding the organizational gap that can come about from having many autonomous teams.

- Mix it up. So our talks are normally lunchtime and have a pretty consistent format which is why we jumped at the chance when we heard about Google HashCode to get together and form some teams. Not only was it a different format, in being hands on, but also was at a different time so was accessible to different people. This was the instigator for us starting some group Kata sessions.

- Bleed by example. I think putting yourself out there to talk about something you're not an expert on helps. It shows that there's no need to be worried about not having all the answers

Having a fixed block of related talks was really useful with attendance as well. What we found was this has caused us to move closer to a weekly cadence which was at the start unthinkable (disclaimer - we're only 3 months in with this but yep we've just had our 10th session of the year). We've had two of our co-ops/intern students give talks which was brilliant (they both did a brilliant job!) and lots of diverse topics from blockchain to testing web components and lots in between.

We've also as a pre-cursor to a bookclub started a technical library in the office. I think in terms of logistics that's going to have to be converted to an electronic format (we previously had access to safari online and it was excellent) but that's something we're definitely looking at currently and it's great getting some tips from people who have done it and have the t-shirt.

That's what we've done so far this year but what's next. Well this week we are having our first Kata session over lunch and our next special run (after 5 Kata sessions) is now going to be based on LunchConf and watching the experts giving some conference talks. This should also reduce our need to find and harass volunteers too :)

The other goal is to start using our lunchtime sessions as launchpad sessions to start encouraging talks at local meetups etc. We're a friendly audience which can act as a warm-up or incubator for talks and ideas and allow for feedback.

I could ramble on about this for a long time but for now I'll shut up!

edX - Leadership for Engineers

Leadership is hard right. It's really hard for software engineers as well because you move from a tangible output each day (in terms of LOC or user stories or whatever metric you love yourself) to something a lot less tangible. Have I coached well today? Have I lead people down the right path? Is everyone happy and are they growing/developing?

You know what else is hard Leadership training that actually resonates or hits home hard. It can feel like a lot of fluff and buzzwords and lack anything that you feel is directly applicable to your day to day challenges and that's probably because your day to day challenges are now a bit more abstract or 'softer' than they were before and there's no 1 size fits all approach for that. The training normally ends up being focused on trying to draw out your empathy and patience for the most part.

I've done some leadership training before in the company I work for and whilst it was useful (and the guys running the course were very good) it probably didn't lead to that community of people getting together to discuss the challenges and successes they have. I wonder if that was because we all worked together and most of the things we would be talking about may have been directly or indirectly linked to each other

I also was on a course here in Ireland called Fusion which was graduates working on high value projects in conjunction with academia. That was great because it had a residential element and people were from all over. Unfortunately my involvement ended prematurely because the company I was with closed down!

So I was really interested when EdX emailed out their newsletter and included in it was a course by

Delft University of Technology on Leadership for Engineers. So self-paced remote leadership training, god they really are making this hard for themselves! You cannot accuse them of not investing time and effort into the networking aspect. There is an Interactive Map and Teams and Facebook groups etc. It's an interesting concept and I guess they are maybe indicating that the networking quotient of leadership training is as important as the content itself.

This probably sounds weird but I think there's a lot of parallels to be drawn between leadership training and ante-natal classes. You will get an overview of things that are going on but really it's about trying to centre you and give you the confidence to trust your own instincts and get on with it as much as possible.

Possibly naive thing to say but it feels like your own personality and traits will come out in the leadership role so the best thing to do is be self-aware and know what your own bias and what you're good and particularly bad at. That's something they touch a little on here.

In terms of this training itself - it is pretty good. They use case studies such as a mayor who is having issues, it's interesting but maybe a bit cheesy as well. It's a scenario in which a 'analytical' argument is being undermined by political games and how to get around it. I think that's something that will scare a lot of people coming to management/leadership so it is an interesting area to talk about. It then tries to tackle the analytical mind of engineers and how situational management is and how the two may not be compatible often.

They also try to cover some of the traditional coaching/management training that normally happens face to face. They talk a little about it in week 2. You get the impression this is also partly a research project for the university to see if this type of leadership training is possible. It's clear with all the effort they've made to get engagement and interaction between participants that they really are trying something.

A lot is made of the multi-game option. I still find the logic of muddying the waters to be confusing but I'm a bit simple so that's ok.

There is a focus on engineers and the mindset a lot of engineers typically have and how that may impact their leadership abilities. All in all the course is a useful step for people wanting exposure to some leadership training but aren't willing or ready to go all out for a MBA etc. This will never replace or rival that MBA but I think people will find it of some use.

There's a good section on personal management in terms of looking for stress, being optimistic and choosing your response wisely. It's an interesting point and the course evolves from there into being about managing your career and goals.

This course is free to Audit or you can pursue a certificate for $50. Take a look and see, I would definitely recommend checking it out

Pluralsight - Getting Started with Polymer

I manage a UI team who are undergoing an upgrade to use Polymer. I've read up on the topic a bit and read about web components in all their magical goodness but wanted to spend a little time doing something hands on as well as scoping out potentially good training resources for people in other teams and that's when I stumbled upon  Bill Stavroulakis and his Getting Started with Polymer course on pluralsight.

It's a really fun course. It is for beginners, which I feel I am, and skims the service but it really does cover all the important stuff in a pretty fast paced way. Bill is a great tutor on it because he gives off a really gentle and relaxed vibe. I think it's exactly what you want when you're new to a technology and some of the concepts.

Lots of great examples. Explanations always forthcoming and introduced me to Plunker which is a really interesting site.

The only downside I would say is the course isn't really < 2hrs. There's a lot of 50 second videos with links. It's great though so it's not really a complaint but budget a little longer to get through it.


Being the great bunch of lads that he is, Bill has already got a follow up course that builds on this introduction. I'll be hopefully giving that a go very shortly.

If you have a pluralsight account and want to take a look at the leading web component library I think this is a fantastic place to start.

Quick Book Reviewd : IOS Build and Release and Release It!

Quick Book reviews. I have read a few but keep ending up starting another one before I post a review so attempting to put that right

Essential IOS Build and Release

So I've never built and IOS application or used XCode but was interested in the build/release cycle for apps so decided to read this book.

I know then I'm not really the intended audience of this book.

It's a pretty solid introduction. Was hoping for a little more insight on CI/CD and testing and whilst it does touch on some of it, it doesn't feel like it ever really gets going in that regard. Much more a hands on tutorial for walking through the process

Release It! by Michael Nygard

Not much to say that hasn't already been said. This is the bible of resilience and avoiding failure. It details patterns to follow and has real tangible advice. If you haven't read this and you're interested in how to build distributed complex systems that aren't going come crashing down around you... you probably should

BelfastGophers Meetup

So of my Resolutions the one I've been worst at is going out and getting involved in the community via meetups etc. I've been to a couple so far this year and a conference (Agile in the City) but I know it's something I need to do a bit more of.

I've been tinkering with Go a little bit in my own time and really enjoyed it so I was really excited about the chance to go and talk to people who are using it as part of their day jobs as part of the Belfast Go Meetup.

I mentioned to one of the organizers that what I love about Go is that it feels like a dynamic language and in a lot of ways it reminds me of Ruby (I know! I'm a heretic). He told me that everyone he talks to identifies or associates go with their favourite or most used language. Not long after one of the speakers mentioned how easy Go was to pickup from Python and he felt there was a lot of similarities...These guys know their stuff.

So the actual meetup was an introduction to Go including setting up and installing. We covered the hello world before moving on to an echo application dealing with user input and then using the standard library to build a web server and lastly a putty like client. The progress over the night was great and the explanations were sound.

I had done a few of those things before myself but it was still nice to touch on them again and hear the explanations for some things. One of the reasons I enjoy getting to these events is the sometimes tangential topics that come up. Some of the ones that came up and will send me off looking for

Glide - Was mentioned as offering a dependency management solution for Go but it's something that's a little fractured in the community
Podge -  Seems like a scaffolder like yeoman but maybe a little lighter on function
Club-Mate Cola - I'm a weirdo who is very very into his soft drinks. The hosts of the evening, Farset Labs, had a number of drinks from Club Mate. Whilst I didn't quite get near them or the pizza they are on my list for next time :)

So long story short, if you're like me and normally a little wary of actually going to these events don't be. Everyone is friendly and there for the same reason. If you're in Belfast there's another Go Meetup next month and I'll hopefully see you there! If you're not in Belfast make a beeline for your local go meetup and experience a language that's an absolute joy to play with

A/B Testing

A/B Testing

What an introduction to this book. It starts with reference to the Obama campaign an how A/B testing was used to help drive results there. Wow. Got my attention. Then we get hit with a reference to the Optimizely product that the author helped create to try and offer A/B testing as a product as a lot of companies build something bespoke to manage it. You very quickly get the feeling that the author knows this subject very well

So I came in to this book with some background knowledge on what A/B testing is. For those who don't have that it's when you experiment with a few variations to a random sample of your user base. There has been an explosion on blog posts on this from many sources, one of the most telling for me has been LinkedIn who have put up a number. It seemed like A/B testing was one of the biggest tech buzzes of 2015 with a lot of companies really starting to share information about their proprietary implementations

A/B Testing is something that has really appealed to me in recent times since I started managing the UI Library team in work. I think the flexibility that comes with A/B testing sounds almost too good to be true and I would love to put that into the hands of our team. I also would love for us to be a little more metric driven, that makes me sound like a jerk manager... the fact still remains I would like a little more metrics in the day to day to help guide decisions and reflect on previous decisions.

When mentioning A/B testing before I was told by some colleagues that as we are an administrative website changing customer behaviour wasn't necessarily the most important thing to us. Our users NEED us  day to day to acheive something they have to do, this isn't a social media thing when the behaviour is optional and we're looking to encourage it. Our application suite is moving away from these administrative automation workflows and more into collaborative value add interactions. This changes the way we interact with our customer in some ways and as such I feel like A/B Testing
offers us something we NEED now.

This book offers a lot of insight in terms of getting organisational buy in and applying correct analysis of the data.My takeaway from this book was that if you want to do A/B testing then it's incredible important that you  know what you are looking to improve. What do you do? What are you looking to do? If you don't know that how can you create tests that will help you to that goal


Have you had any experience of A/B testing? I would love to hear from you on twitter or right here in the comments section!

Book Reviews - Lean from the Trenches and Managing Oneself

Lean from the trenches

This is an excellent book by someone who is a fantastic advocate of lean. Henrik Kniberg has been involved with Spotify, were he introduced the team health check concept, and Lego amonst many others. This book deals with a government project for the police force and he talks through real examples and real experience about how they managed to deliver it on time and on budget. Catch him talking about the topic on vimeo

I cannot recommend this book highly enough. Go read it and the many other excellent pieces of information he's given out.

Links to some of the excellent things he's produced with Spotify

• https://labs.spotify.com/2014/03/27/spotify-engineering-culture-part-1/
• http://blog.crisp.se/2012/11/14/henrikkniberg/scaling-agile-at-spotify 
• http://blog.crisp.se/2016/06/08/henrikkniberg/spotify-rhythm
• http://blog.crisp.se/2016/01/25/henrikkniberg/making-sense-of-mvp

Managing Oneself

This Harvard Business Review essay is on taking responsibility to manage your own career as the workplace has evolved a lot since people would stay at one company for 40 years. Short read but with some resonating questions which can be summed up as being very open with self evaluation and knowing what it is that motivates you and what you can bring to the table.

Definitely worth a read for anyone who is feeling a little aimless