Talks

Hiring Is Not Hazing

Hiring is not hazing

DevRelCon 2021

How I Learned to Love Serverless

Serverless is kind of a silly buzzword. After all, you can’t have websites without servers. Also, a lot of the messaging around serverless tries to make it sounds like you won’t need DevOps anymore and we all know that isn’t true. I’ll talk about the ways folks in DevOps roles can use serverless products to reduce toil and focus on the types of activities they enjoy.

Seattle DevOps July 2019

4 Programming Paradigms in 45 Minutes

One of the most important lessons I’ve learned is that programming languages are tools and not all tools are good for all jobs. Some tasks are easier to solve functionally. Some are clearly suited for OO. Others get simpler when you use constraint solving or pattern matching.

RubyHACK 2018

Testing in Production

Test All the F***ing Time is one of the values of the Ruby community. But how many of us test in production in addition to running our test suites as part of CI? This talk will discuss a variety of approaches to testing in prod including canaries, blue-green deployment, beta and A/B tests, and general functional tests. I’ll share a few times these techniques have found bugs before our users did and how you can use them today with your Rails Application.

Rails Conf 2018

What Is DevRel

What is Developer Relations? This talk covers on Googler’s thoughts on DevRel as an emerging field in technology including the job titles that are part of DevRel and also the skills that make someone successful in DevRel.

Ada Developers Academy Info Session

Syntax Isn't Everything: NLP For Rubyists

Natural Language Processing is an interesting field of computing. The way humans use language is nuanced and deeply context sensitive. For example, the word work can be both a noun and a verb. This talk will give an introduction to the field of NLP using Ruby. There will be demonstrations of how computers fail and succeed at human language. You’ll leave the presentation with an understanding of both the challenges and the possibilities of NLP and some tools for getting started with it.

ConFoo Vancouver 2017

4 Programming Paradigms in 45 Minutes

One of the most important lessons I’ve learned is that programming languages are tools and not all tools are good for all jobs. Some tasks are easier to solve functionally. Some are clearly suited for OO. Others get simpler when you use constraint solving or pattern matching.

Ruby Conf 2017

Syntax Isn't Everything: NLP For Rubyists

Natural Language Processing is an interesting field of computing. The way humans use language is nuanced and deeply context sensitive. For example, the word work can be both a noun and a verb. This talk will give an introduction to the field of NLP using Ruby. There will be demonstrations of how computers fail and succeed at human language. You’ll leave the presentation with an understanding of both the challenges and the possibilities of NLP and some tools for getting started with it.

Rails Conf 2017

Stackdriver: monitor, diagnose, fix

As a developer, you know that the possibility of encountering an unexpected problem, big or small, is ever looming. Sometimes these problems are obvious and easy to fix. Other times though they take some work to track down and even more work to verify that you’ve actually fixed the bug. In this session, we’ll use Stackdriver to find and fix some subtle errors in an example app, and you’ll learn how to use Stackdriver on your own projects.

Google Cloud Next 2017

Datacenter Fires and Other 'Minor' Disasters

Most of us have a “that day I broke the internet” story. Some are amusing and some are disastrous but all of these stories change how we operate going forward. I’ll share the amusing stories behind why I always take a database backup, why feature flags are important, the importance of automation, and how having a team with varied backgrounds can save the day. Along the way I’ll talk about a data center fire, deleting a production database, and accidentally setting up a DDOS attack against our own site. I hope that by learning from my mistakes you won’t have to make them yourself.

Ruby Conf Australia 2017

Datacenter Fires and Other 'Minor' Disasters

Most of us have a “that day I broke the internet” story. Some are amusing and some are disastrous but all of these stories change how we operate going forward. I’ll share the amusing stories behind why I always take a database backup, why feature flags are important, the importance of automation, and how having a team with varied backgrounds can save the day. Along the way I’ll talk about a data center fire, deleting a production database, and accidentally setting up a DDOS attack against our own site. I hope that by learning from my mistakes you won’t have to make them yourself.

Ruby Conf 2016

Big Data with Rubygems.org Download Data

Many people strive to be armchair data scientists. Google BigQuery provides an easy way for anyone with basic SQL knowledge to dig into large data sets and just explore. Using the rubygems.org download data we’ll see how the Ruby and SQL you already know can help you parse, upload, and analyze multiple gigabytes of data quickly and easily without any previous Big Data experience.

Ruby Kaigi 2016

Exploring Big Data with rubygems.org Download Data

Many people strive to be armchair data scientists. Google BigQuery provides an easy way for anyone with basic SQL knowledge to dig into large data sets and just explore. Using the rubygems.org download data we’ll see how the Ruby and SQL you already know can help you parse, upload, and analyze multiple gigabytes of data quickly and easily without any previous Big Data experience.

Gotham Ruby Conf 2016

Postcards From Gorby Puff

GorbyPuff is setting off on a grand world tour and leaving us clues so we can follow him. Using Google Cloud tools such as Cloud Vision, BigQuery, Google Translate we’ll track down Gorby at all his stops. While we’re at it we’ll learn some tools you can use to add awesome functionality to your web applications.

Rails Conf 2016

Sharpening the Axe: Self Teaching for Developers

Many of us get a few years into our career and get stuck in a rut. Maybe we stop reading about the latest and greatest in tech. Maybe we start managing and do less coding than we’d like. Maybe life gets in the way and coding becomes drudgery. One way to combat this feeling is to focus on learning. I’ll share what I’ve learned about juggling self improvement with being a professional programmer. I’ll talk about the courses, tools, books, and other resources I’ve found most useful. You’ll leave this talk with several ideas for breaking out of your own developer rut.

Ruby on Ales 2016

Sharpening the Axe: Self Teaching for Developers

Many of us get a few years into our career and get stuck in a rut. Maybe we stop reading about the latest and greatest in tech. Maybe we start managing and do less coding than we’d like. Maybe life gets in the way and coding becomes drudgery. One way to combat this feeling is to focus on learning. I’ll share what I’ve learned about juggling self improvement with being a professional programmer. I’ll talk about the courses, tools, books, and other resources I’ve found most useful. You’ll leave this talk with several ideas for breaking out of your own developer rut.

Mountain West Ruby Conf 2016

Keynote: Stupid Ideas For Many Computers

There are plenty of useful things you can do with Ruby and a bunch of servers. This talk isn’t about useful things. This talk will show off asinine, amusing, and useless things you can do with Ruby and access to cloud computing.

Ruby Conf 2015

Stupid Ideas For Many Computers

There are plenty of useful things you can do with Ruby and a bunch of servers. This talk isn’t about useful things. This talk will show off asinine, amusing, and useless things you can do with Ruby and access to cloud computing.

Kube Con 2015

Stupid Ideas For Many Computers

There are plenty of useful things you can do with Ruby and a bunch of servers. This talk isn’t about useful things. This talk will show off asinine, amusing, and useless things you can do with Ruby and access to cloud computing.

LA Ruby Conf 2015

Forensic Log Analysis with Big Query

It is a fact of life: When you are running a website stuff goes wrong. Someone puts a dictionary on the keyboard and reloads your site a million times. Your mobile app hits an error state and sends messages that cause 500s on your server. An external service takes 5 times as long as normal to respond to a request.

Collision Conf 2015

DevOps for the Lazy

Like most programmers I am lazy. I don’t want to do something by hand if I can automate it. I also think DevOps can be dreadfully dull. Luckily there are now tools that support lazy DevOps. I’ll demonstrate how using Docker containers and Kubernetes allows you to be lazy and get back to building cool features (or watching cat videos). I’ll go over some of the pros and cons to the “lazy” way and I’ll show how these tools can be used by both simple and complex apps.

Rails Conf 2015

Forensic Log Analysis with BigQuery

It is a fact of life: When you are running a website stuff goes wrong. Someone puts a dictionary on the keyboard and reloads your site a million times. Your mobile app hits an error state and sends messages that cause 500s on your server. An external service takes 5 times as long as normal to respond to a request.

Mountain West Ruby Conf 2015

Storytime with Auntie Aja

I’ve been fortunate to receive some great advice during my career. Some of it is pithy, some of it is practical, and some is the little things you learn when working at semi-functional organizations. By the flickering light of a projector, I’ll pass along the my favorite pieces of wisdom and tell stories about when I applied those lessons. New folks will learn some tried and true tricks for success in the software industry. Experienced developers can nod along and be comforted by the fact that everyone has had the same bad experiences at one point or another. So pull up a chair (and a beverage) and gather around for storytime.

Ruby on Ales 2015

A World Without Assignment

In Ruby, assignment is our primary tool. By contrast, functional programming makes much less use of assignment and mutation. Instead techniques like function composition, recursion, and anonymous functions are used.

Ruby Conf 2014

What Do I Do With This Giant Pile of Data?

Storage gets cheaper every year and as a result many folks are turning into data hoaders. Maybe your current project has gigabytes or even terrabytes of data sitting in storage. Perhaps some has used the words “big data”, “data mining”, or “personalized experience” as an excuse to keep paying the storage bills.

Golden Gate Ruby Conf 2014

N Design Patterns You Might Actually Use (Where N is < 10)

Imagine a chef who doesn’t know what the words braise, julienne, or sauté mean. Even if he is a good chef, and uses these techniques daily, he’s not going to be able to work effectively with others. He won’t be able to use published recipes. He may struggle to improve his craft since he lacks the vocabulary to ask succinct questions and likely won’t understand instruction from other chefs.

Cascadia Ruby Conf 2014

May Coding Challenge

I’d like more participants and fewer audience members at Seattle.rb’s monthly meeetings. To remedy this I’m putting my money where my mouth is and offering up $100 to be split between two winners of a Coding Challenge during May 2014.

Seattle.rb May 2014

A World Without Assignment

In OO, assignment is one of our main tools. Most developers learn how to store values in variables shortly after learning “Hello World”. By contrast, functional programming makes much less use of assignment and mutation. Instead techniques like function composition, recursion, and anonymous functions are used to produce the same results that OO programmers produce with side effects.

Mountain West Ruby Conf 2014

We're sorry, but something went wrong

"but in this world nothing can be said to be certain, except death and taxes" -- Ben Franklin

Cascadia Ruby Conf 2013

Seeing the Big Picture: Quick and Dirty Data Visualization with Ruby

Data is a hot buzz word in the industry. Every day there are more startups with “Big Data” somewhere in their elevator pitch. There are dozens of devices to record how we sleep, what we eat, how much we exercise, even how often we breathe. Every action we take online generates data that is stored and analyzed.

Golden Gate Ruby Conf 2013

Seeing the Big Picture: Quick and Dirty Data Visualization with Ruby

Data is a hot buzz word in the industry. Every day there are more startups with “Big Data” somewhere in their elevator pitch. There are dozens of devices to record how we sleep, what we eat, how much we exercise, even how often we breathe. Every action we take online generates data that is stored and analyzed.

Windy City Rails 2013

A Testing Anti-Pattern Safari

Wild test suites often contain inefficient or ineffective tests. Working with a code base full of these beasts is frustrating and time consuming. This safari will help you identify and hunt down common testing anti-patterns. Afterwards you’ll know how to approach a test suite full of beasts without losing your mind or your life.

Mountain West Ruby Conf 2013

A Taste of Prolog

When I talk about Prolog people seem to have one of three reactions: love it, hate it, or huh? Prolog is different enough from Ruby that it can be difficult to grok at first. When you get over that initial hump though you’ll see where it shines.

Cascadia Ruby Conf 2012

Powerful (but Easy) Data Visualization with the Graph Gem (Extended Edition)

Many projects involve large datasets. While humans are master pattern matchers, trying to find patterns and issues by looking at reams of text is hard. Sometimes you just need the 30,000 foot view but creating diagrams by hand is time consuming and prone to error. The graph gem makes it quick and easy to create visualizations of your data. In this talk, we’ll learn how to use nokogiri and graph to get data out of an XML file and into a format where you can see relationships and patterns. We’ll also see how color coding and clustering can emphasize the patterns in your data. Many of the examples will come from my work with adaptive education apps.

Ruby Conf 2011

Powerful (but Easy) Data Visualization with the Graph Gem

Many projects involve large datasets. While humans have evolved to be master pattern matchers, trying to find patterns and potential issues by looking at database rows and xml is hard. Creating diagrams is helpful but manually creating them is time consuming and prone to error.

Cascadia Ruby Conf 2011