Friday, December 23, 2016

Teach your kids to code

Last week I gave a talk at Alliance Data on teaching your kids to code.  I basically walked through various applications, websites and robots that I have tried together with my kids (age 12, 9 and 6) and shared what we have enjoyed and what not.  Using these tools we have created together multiple stories and games, to our mutual enjoyment.  If you are a software developer who has a kid, I definitely recommend trying some of these tools out.  Here are the slides from my talk:



 

Friday, January 29, 2016

Interview for QA or the Highway

I will be taking my Web Services Testing talk to the QA or the Highway conference next month.  I am excited to speak at this QA focused conference for the first time.  I have heard a lot of good things about the conference.  Alliance Data, my new employer will be sending their entire testing team to the conference, so hopefully I'll have some friendly faces in the audience during my session :)  To promote the event and generate buzz, the Testing Curator is interviewing some of the speakers in what they call the Speaker Series.  I was recently interviewed.  Below is a link to the results.


QA or the Highway 2016 – Speaker Series – Featuring Stan Jónsson

Our sixth featured speaker who will be at QA or the Highway is Stan Jónsson.
1. What attracted you to speaking at QA or the Highway this year? I saw a...

blog.testingcurator.com

Saturday, January 9, 2016

CodeMash 2016 - Program some health into your life

Another awesome CodeMash is coming to an end, with a lot of great sessions and a bunch of fun activities throughout the conference.  I attended the full 4 days and was joined by my family for the last 2.  For the first time my kids attended KidzMash, where they had a great time learning game development, how robots work, building an Altoid-flashlight and learning how to count to F! In the CodeMash spirit I attended mostly sessions outside my immediate comfort zone; including pre-compiler on 7 languages, front-end talks, UX-talks, softskill-talks and a few pertaining to what I am currently working on; microservices and modularity.

 I was honored to be presenting at CodeMash for the third time.  This time on a non-technical subject dear to my heart.  My talk was titled Program some health into your life; where I walked developers through what it takes to stay healthy at a desk job, the basics of nutrition and exercising, and offered various tips on loosing weight and getting the most out of your effort.  It went very well and I was not even booed when I suggested bacon was not the cornerstone of a healthy meal plan! :)  Apparently there was a free candy buffet going on at the same time I gave my talk, so I was pleased to see a room full of programmers giving up sweets for health advice :)  Below are the slides from my talk. 

As in years past, hats off to the CodeMash organizers for putting on a great conference.  I am already looking forward to CodeMash 2017!  Now off to the water park with the family!