SchEduLe

Strong cross-functional collaboration — when designers, developers, PMs, and other disciplines align to work together — is often the key to amazing product work. But sometimes in bringing these varied perspectives onto a team, tension and conflict can threaten to put that work at risk. In this session, we’ll talk about what cross-functional collaboration really means, examine the pitfalls many teams face, and explore tried-and-tested solutions for establishing healthy and successful collaboration.

A delightful exploration of how JavaScript web apps, serverless APIs, the static-site renaissance, and Git-centric workflows are enabling a whole new architecture, from a fellow skeptic wary of marketing acronyms.

If microservice falls down in the middle of a server farm, does my pager make a sound? Hopefully, the answer is “yes!”. But all too often, services can become partially degraded in ways that are difficult to predict - and therefore difficult to monitor proactively. How can we develop the confidence that the services we develop are instrumented for observability in the right places - the parts which actually matter - so that we're alerted quickly to problems that arise and have enough information to resolve those problems?

We'll look at a framework for modeling interdependent systems so we can understand how to identify the areas of our code that need to be instrumented. By isolating these key components, we'll ensure that we are writing software designed for resiliency.

Let’s face it: design systems are tools to largely help developers to create well-designed products. And that’s great! Consistency, headstarts, and shared standards are good for everyone. But where does that leave designers? How do we exercise the advantages of gorgeous art direction and intuitive interaction design? Why does it feel like the job we’ve been successfully doing for years is quickly fading away? Dan Mall has been coaching and working with in-house teams on their design systems for a few years. In this talk, he’ll share what he’s learned about each team member’s role, where to be efficient vs. where to be experimental, and how we can all better collaborate to benefit from everyone’s knowledge and skills.

We've all heard about the blockchain and cryptocurrencies. Maybe we've even made some investments in one of the popular cryptocurrencies, like bitcoin and ethereum? However, the blockchain is bigger than riding the ups and downs of cryptocurrency investments. In this talk we’ll discuss the process some startups are using to create specialty funds on the blockchain, what this means for millennial investors, and how is the blockchain is democratizing our ability to invest in traditionally large asset classes.

Americans are experiencing the highest levels of stress in a decade. And if you are someone from a marginalized community, or working in the tech industry, you likely experience other stressors from concerns around your personal safety, professional growth, and self-esteem. All of which have huge impact on our physical and mental well-being. So how do we instrument ourselves to learn from past crashes so we can detect and manage or mitigate the effects on our health and happiness? In this talk, I hope to share my own journey in self-care and self-acceptance. And use the #HugOps analogy to explore how we as a community can move from self-care, to self-less care, where we share stories and create support networks that help us all survive, and thrive, in challenging times.

How confident are you in your prod servers staying up without your help? Too often in tech we mistakenly interchange three important concepts when describing our socio-technical systems: how resilient they are, the reliability they exhibit in day to day work, and how robust they are under duress. Though interrelated, they are not equivalent.

How can we successfully gain insights in post incident reviews, execute chaos engineering experiments, and build scalable infrastructure if we're misinterpreting our approaches? By separating out these core concepts, we can isolate better approaches in adapting to unforeseen circumstances. We'll look at common misconceptions when describing our systems as resilient and focus on proven methods to help us improve our understanding of our systems.

At work, we’re often encouraged to tackle Big Hairy Audacious Goals for the good of the business — to take big risks and shoot for the moon. We’re told that growth happens when you push yourself to the edge of your abilities. And more often than not, we’re operating in an environment of high uncertainty, whether it’s a startup, a team with unclear goals or a project with a volatile roadmap. Unfortunately, this combination of huge challenge and high uncertainty is a recipe for burnout and team dysfunction, especially if leaders are not prepared to manage through such situations. The good news is that there has recently been a surge of research into organizational psychology in order to provide tools and frameworks for teams navigating these waters. By focusing on establishing trust, vulnerability, and productive conflict — the foundation of psychological safety — teams can perform at their best, even in the face of chaos.