Dec
09
2014
2014 Christmas Lightning Talks Competition
Tue (06:30 PM - 09:00 PM)
Line up
Grant Crofton
Solving Life's Problems with Programming
Ioanna-Kyriaki Toufexi
How cars work
Jonathan Fulton
Help Your Teams Run Like Clockwork
Paul Henshaw
Scrum -> Scrumban
Joe Simmonds
How to write bad code
Matt Russell
Handling Flaky Tests
Mathew McLoughlin
C# without Visual Studio
Tim Brown
Write it once with IronPython
Ivor Tymchak
Success in business is short-sighted
Summary
Every year Agile Yorkshire holds its Lightning Talk Competition. It's meant to be a fun evening where those who have come forward can wow the rest of us with ten minutes of insight, wisdom and dazzling presentation style. We keep on trying to improve things and this year we have a fantastic line up with more speakers than ever before and some amazing (and significant) prizes to give away. The Lightning Talk format is simple. Stand up for ten minutes and talk about pretty much anything that's likely to be of geeky or agile interest to the rest of us. We're going to hand out score cards to everyone and tot up the numbers at the end for a grand prize giving before dashing to the Midnight Bell to unwind. This year we've had an amazing response to our call for speakers, resulting in the top class final line up below. To get through the evening efficiently strict time keeping will be enforced. The ten minute limit will be marked with some kind of loud, hopefully gong based, noise. Also audience participation in the form of a countdown, wolf whistling or raucous shouts of "git orf" will doubtless be encouraged!
Programme
Solving Life's Problems with Programming
A story about a real-life problem I had, and how I solved it with programming.
How cars work
The core functionality of a car - from the engine to the gear box through the clutch and to the wheels through the differential. I started driving lessons recently and was very curious to understand WHY I did what I needed to do, so I searched and read about it! I find it exciting to manage to share this knowledge in 10 minutes.
Help Your Teams Run Like Clockwork
I have worked within organisations that believed traditional management techniques would allow projects to run like clockwork. I will argue that to run like clockwork is a better analogy for an Agile project that you might think, and explain how at Legend we have used, customised and tweaked Scrum to enable to us to be Agile, and run like clockwork.
Jonathan Fulton
I have worked in various .Net development roles across Yorkshire since 2002, progressing from junior to lead. In recent years I have played a lead role in Agile transitions, having become a Scrum Master in 2012. In 2013 I joined legend, where we are successfully delivering leisure software projects, such as the system used within the London Olympic park.
Scrum -> Scrumban
Stop starting and start finishing! A (very!) brief case study on how bringing kanban techniques into your Scrum delivery team can address some of Scrum's weaknesses - and why it may help you with your own challenges.
@immediasolution
Paul Henshaw
Paul is a Director at immedia - a startup organisation offering coaching and consultancy in Organisational setup and efficiency, and Project and Programme Delivery. Previously Head of Technology at Sky Bet, Paul has held a number of roles in technology delivery - starting out as a software engineer and development manager at BT. immedia consult and support the implementation of technology-focused software and service delivery to organisations that are keen to understand and improve their existing capabilities, with an emphasis on the introduction and maturity of Agile Project Delivery.
How to write bad code
It's well known that when the pressure is on code quality will suffer. Developers still have some control over what impact this will have on the released software and future development. Hopefully I will be able to give you in these ten minutes some guidance that will help you make these choices for your project.
Handling Flaky Tests
It's a common problem for automated end-to-end tests to suffer from intermittent failures. There are a number of approaches for eliminating (or at least mitigating) flaky tests. This lightning talk will outline an additional strategy for differentiating occasional failures from genuine regressions. This has been implemented as part of a new open source test reporting tool.
C# without Visual Studio
As great as Visual Studio is, it does have its problems. It can be cumbersome and a bit too heavyweigh. It's not cross platform and it may not be your editor of choice. Omnisharp is a project that intends to solve this problems by bringing you a collection of editor extensions that will allow you to write C# outside the confines of Visual studio. In this lighting talk I'll attempt to tell you a little about the project and demonstrate some of the extensions to show you that Visual Studio isn't the only option.
Write it once with IronPython
Rumours of Iron Python’s death have been greatly exaggerated. With the release of IronPython tools for Visual Studio it doesn't even have a minor head cold. A quick talk on how we have been using it to help with validation and make sure we only have one version of the validation truth in our product.
Tim Brown
Senior developer at Medisoft working on ophthalmology software. Previously worked for a number of healthcare IT providers, a digital agency, e-learning company and a long time ago as a secondary school teacher. When not working can be found in Leeds museum looking at the stuffed animals with his 4 year old daughter.
Success in business is short-sighted
Why is 'success in business' seen as one of the most important goals you can aim for? This talk explores some of the assumptions behind the idea and de-constructs the myths underpinning it.
Ivor Tymchak
Freethinker, professional artist and maverick. Throughout my life I've been suspicious of the easy answers and so I've learned to ask more difficult questions, usually hidden inside the Trojan horse of comedy. The co-founding and compering of Bettakultcha changed my life: I discovered that I'm happiest when performing and that presentation skills are a necessary requirement for effectively communicating ideas. I am now communicating this message via a presentation skills workshop that I run in universities and colleges. I'd like to be a teacher when I grow up.
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