Sessions and Speakers

2011 SCNA Keynotes

Chad Fowler, VP of engineering at LivingSocial (and former CTO of InfoEther), is a globally recognized thought leader and a renowned technologist and Ruby enthusiast. Chad has worked for some of the world’s largest corporations in the U.S. and India and authored five books including “The Passionate Programmer.”

Corey Haines spent much of his career in the Microsoft ecosystem before transitioning from the corporate world into contracting work using Ruby on Rails. He is known for his Code Retreats, all-day training events on software fundamentals he leads in cities around the world. Corey is an active participant in the software craftsmanship movement and in 2009 spent a year on the road, pair programming with developers and expanding and defining the message of the software craftsmanship movement: professionalism in career development as well as skills development.

Speakers

Stephen Anderson

Steve has been pursuing software quality and value since 1992. This has lead him to Ruby, Rails, Behavior Driven Development, Extreme Programming, Software Craftsmanship, mentoring and teaching. His current focus in this pursuit is on growing the best damned development team at Bendyworks through selection, care and feeding, as well as providing an environment for success.

Talk: We're Not Hiring (or: How to Solve the Developer Labor Shortage)

Aaron Bedra

Aaron Bedra is a member of Clojure/core and a developer at Relevance, Inc. where he spends his time as a tech lead, speaker and author. He is a frequent contributor to the Clojure language and its supporting libraries as well as an active member of the Clojure community. He has led the development of several commercial Clojure projects. Aaron is the co-author with Stuart Halloway of Programming Clojure, 2nd Edition.

Talk: Simplicity, Power, Focus

Gary Bernhardt

Gary Bernhardt is a creator and destroyer of software compelled to understand both sides of heated software debates: Vim and Emacs; Python and Ruby; Git and Mercurial. He runs Destroy All Software, which publishes advanced screencasts for serious developers.

Talk: Expansion & Contraction

David Chelimsky

David Chelimsky has been the lead developer/maintainer of RSpec since August of 2006, and has contributed to several other open source projects including Cucumber, Aruba, and Rails. He has been developing software for over a decade, including three years training and mentoring agile teams at Object Mentor. These days he writes software at DRW Trading Group in Chicago, IL. In his spare time, David likes to play guitar, travel, and speak something resembling Portuguese.

Carl Erickson

Carl Erickson is the president and co-founder of Atomic Object, a 30-person software design and development consultancy based in Grand Rapids, Michigan. Atomic Object builds web, mobile and embedded software products for clients ranging from lean startups to huge multinationals.

Before founding Atomic in 2001, Carl was a professor of Computer Science at Grand Valley State University. Ten years later Carl has returned to his love of teaching through his new blogging venture, Great Not Big (greatnotbig.com). Great Not Big is a platform for Carl to share his experiences building and running a company worthy of software craftsmen.

Carl holds a PhD in Computer Engineering from Michigan State University.

Talk: Great Not Big

Michael Feathers

Michael Feathers is member of the technical staff at Groupon. Over the past 15 years he has consulted with hundreds of organizations, helping them general software design issues, process change, and code revitalization. Michael is also the author of the book Working Effectively with Legacy Code (Prentice Hall, 2004).

Fred George

Fred George is a consultant with over 43 years experience in the industry including over twenty years doing object programming and over a dozen years doing Agile/XP. He counts at least 70 languages with which he has written code. A veteran of the IBM-Microsoft wars, Fred did early work in computer networking, LAN's, GUI's and objects for IBM. As an independent consultant from 1991-2003, he counted HP, Morgan-Stanley, American Express, IBM, and USAA among his clients. He gave the first Agile/XP experience report at OOPSLA in 1999 about an embedded system done in Java, and has mentored many clients in use of objects in Java under an XP process. He has shared the stage at JavaOne with Martin Fowler, acting as his foil, and assisted in XP Immersion sessions with Kent Beck, Ron Jeffries, and Robert Martin. Fred spent a year as a visiting lecturer at N.C. State University teaching Java programming to over 800 undergraduates, with a generous dose of object design, patterns, and XP practices thrown in. Fred joined ThoughtWorks in 2003, delivering yet more projects using agile processes. He has worked with clients in four countries since then, including a ten-month assignment in India (where he founded ThoughtWorks University), four months of projects in China, and a post in the London office. In 2007, he joined the London Internet advertising firm, Forward, bringing Agile practices to all aspects of the business. He has been writing about the post-agile work at Forward under the moniker of Programmer Anarchy. He believes in objects, Lean processes, fun in programming, and the client's successes. He holds a bachelors degree from N. C. State University in Computer Science, and a masters degree from MIT in the Management of Technology. Oh, and he still writes code!

Talk: Programmer Anarchy

Bradley Grzesiak

A lot can be said about Brad by looking at one of his admitted pet peeves: comparing random activities to rocket science. Brad's prior professional life was spent as an aerospace engineer designing space station life support and moon mining equipment. At one point he led the design of a prototype rocket engine. So although it only comes up when comparing extremely complex tasks to other extremely complex tasks, Brad actually knows rocket science.

He also knows web development. His expertise in Ruby on Rails is nationally known, most recently putting him on the speaker list for RubyConf 2011.

When he isn't spending his waking hours running Bendyworks, Brad is either hacking on open source or playing ultimate Frisbee. And in proper Wisconsin tradition, he has a weak spot for aged cheddar and a good oatmeal stout.

Talk: We're Not Hiring (or: How to Solve the Developer Labor Shortage)

Pat Maddox

Pat Maddox writes computer programs for fun, spiritual growth, and the ladies. He lives in Los Angeles with his two dogs and macbook.

Talk: The Total Craftsperson

"Uncle Bob" Martin

Robert Martin (Uncle Bob) has been a programmer since 1970. He is an acclaimed speaker at conferences worldwide. He is the author of many books including: Clean Code, Agile Software Development: Principles, Patterns, and Practices, and UML for Java Programmers. He is a prolific writer and has published hundreds of articles, papers, and blogs. He served as the Editor-in-chief of the C++ Report, and as the first chairman of the Agile Alliance.

Talk: Architecture: The Lost Years

Jen Myers

Jen Myers is a web designer and developer in Columbus, Ohio, where she organizes the education program Girl Develop It Columbus. Her particular areas of interest are user experience design, teaching innovation and creating technical solutions for social causes. She spends the rest of her time writing, watching good movies and raising a future geek girl.

Talk: Unlocking the Clubhouse: Developing Software Education and Practices for Diverse Beginners

Michael "Doc" Norton

Michael "Doc" Norton is Chief Craftsman for LeanDog in Cleveland, OH. In that role, he oversees operations of LeanDog's studio and apprenticeship program. A frequent speaker, Michael is passionate about helping others become better developers, working with teams to improve delivery, and Software Craftsmanship.

Talk: Apprenticeship Leaders Panel

Chris Parsons

Chris Parsons has been crafting software professionally for 12 years, and working primarily with Ruby for the last 5. He built from scratch and until recently ran Eden Development, a top Ruby/Rails software agency, and is now a freewheeling thinker, agilist, coder and trainer.

Talk: University: who needs it?

Todd Sedano

Todd Sedano is the Director of the Software Engineering programs for Carnegie Mellon University's Silicon Valley campus. In addition to managing the day-to-day operations of the Software Engineering program, he teaches the craft of software development, agile methodologies, entrepreneurship, and improv to his graduate students.

He actively develops software using Ruby on Rails and Objective C. He is the co-organizer for the Silicon Valley Ruby Meetup and Ruby on Rails Meetup.

He runs "Improv for Engineers" workshops that allow engineers to develop skills in public speaking, active listening, idea building, confidence, and team formation.

Developing on the Commodore PET was his first paid programming experience.

Talk: Teaching the craft of software development

Zed Shaw

Zed A. Shaw is the creator of the greatest software development methodology ever: Programming, Motherfucker. He also writes books that teach people to code, including "Learn Python The Hard Way", "Learn Ruby The Hard Way", and soon to be released "Learn C The Hard Way". He plays a lot of guitar, and builds them too.

Talk: Propaganda, Indoctrination, Fanbois, and Education

Glenn Vanderburg

Glenn Vanderburg is an engineer at LivingSocial. For the past 15 years he's been exploring both the craft and engineering aspects of software development.

Talk: Three Views of a Secret

Jim Weirich

Jim Weirich first learned about computers when his college adviser suggested he take a computer science course: "It will be useful, and you might enjoy it." With those prophetic words, Jim has been developing now for over 25 years, working with everything from crunching rocket launch data on supercomputers to wiring up servos and LEDs on micro-controllers. Currently he loves working in Ruby and Rails as the Chief Scientist at EdgeCase, but you can also find him strumming on his ukulele as time permits.

Talk: Code Kata and Analysis

Billy Whited

Billy is responsible for managing design, front-end development and content strategy at 8th Light, Inc. He's a web design generalist, but likes the perspective it grants him. He is passionate about typography, web standards and the future of CSS3 and HTML5. When not in front of a computer, Billy enjoys reading, making soap, building model airplanes, gardening and taking hikes with his wife Aemelia and a scruffy little dog named George.

Talk: Front End Craftsmanship

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