PromptWorks Senior Leader & Developer Day: Afternoon Sessions

Join us for Senior Dev Day at PromptWorks! We'll be holding interesting talks, panels, and other sessions suitable for senior engineers, architects, directors, and more.

Come for the whole day, part of the day, or for individual sessions.

Talks and panels include:

• 12:15pm - Lunch
• 1:00pm - The Soft Side of Software Development with Craig Monson
  • What is software development? What does that really entail, and how do we enable ourselves and our coworkers to be our best? In the IT community, there's a strong focus on the skills and technology aspect of the craft, but the other side… the human side… is often ignored, or considered unimportant. I want to change the way we ALL look at our craft by exploring what it means to develop software, from writing lines of code, to leading groups of creative craftsmen, while focusing on the humanistic aspect that is so often overlooked. My hope is that we'll all come away from this with a new appreciation that the soft side of software development is just (if not more) important than the hard side of software development.
• 1:30pm - Pair programming like a bauss with Joseph Moore, Pam Selle, and Olivia Haas, moderated by Jason Garber
  • A panel of pair programming veterans discuss this software development practice, its impact on their work and their teams. Get your pairing questions answered by developers with years of pairing experience.
• 2:15pm - Behind the Closed Door - What is a Project Inception and Why It Matters to Senior Engineers with Olivia Haas and Yvonne Chen
  • Whether we’re senior engineers, managing an engineering team, or consulting for clients, it’s important to discover early on what success for your project looks like and confirm that all team members share on a common vision. During this session, we’ll look at the different exercises you’d commonly encounter in a strategy workshop and explain how you can apply these approaches to make engineering decisions. You’ll walk away with new tools and best practices to inspire, motivate, and guide your engineering team.
• 3:15pm - Rethinking "Soft" Skills: What makes them so hard? with Helene Speer
  • We've seen increasing awareness of the importance of interpersonal, communication and critical thinking skills to career success. As developers, do we neglect these "soft" skills in our focus on the technical? We'll explore the origins of the "soft vs hard" skill dichotomy, its manifestations, and its implications for our field.
• 3:45pm - What to do with your data in 2016 with Vicki Boykis
  • It's easy to get overwhelmed with so many tools out there for working with big data. We'll walk through an evaluation process for finding your way through the landscape: Does your company even have big data? What do you want to do with your data? What kind of people are working with the data? This talk is targeted both towards managers and practitioners who want to learn more about today's new data landscape.
• 4:15pm - What good technical leaders do differently with Kimberly Blessing, Rob Di Marco, Matt Rogish, Arpit Mathur, Chip Childers, moderated by Grant Ammons.
  • Hear from a panel of Philly tech leaders on what separates the leaders of effective, happy teams from the rest.

Make sure to RSVP to PromptWorks Happy Hour!