TableXI is offering training for developers and product teams! For more info, email [email protected].

Presenting a technical talk can be an important part of a developer's career.

Saron Yitbarek: Web, Podcaster: CodeNewbie, Base.cs Podcast, Command Line Heroes.

01:46 - Saron’s Public Speaking Experience Prior to RailsConf 2014

03:02 - The Performance of a Technical Talk

06:50 - Should you memorize or wing your talk?

11:58 - Knowing Your Audience

21:20 - Designing Slides

28:17 - Talk Beginnings and Endings

37:11 - Practicing and Delivering Your Talk

40:43 - Moving Physicality and Talking Speed

46:45 - Giving The Talk No One Else Can Give

Special Guest: Saron Yitbarek.

TableXI is offering training for developers and products teams! For more info, email [email protected].

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What is an apprenticeship program, how is it different from an internship, and how can your company benefit from having one? In this episode, we’re talking about technical apprenticeships with Megan Tiu of Women Who Code. Megan and I have both run apprenticeships at various companies. We’re also joined by Table XI’s current apprentice cohort, Kara Carrell and Alyssa Ramsey.

02:18 - Apprenticeship: Defined

04:38 - Finding and Hiring People for Apprenticeships

05:21 - Interviewing For Apprenticeships

08:35 - Organizing Apprenticeships

14:13 - Making Use of Unstructured Time and Other Opportunities for Apprentices

17:39 - Career-Growth Support

20:40 - Having a Sponsor and Getting Support

24:20 - Evaluating Apprentices

27:59 - Benefits For Companies That Have Apprenticeship Programs

Special Guests: Alyssa Ramsey, Kara Carrell, and Megan Tiu.

TableXI is now offering training for developers and products teams! For more info, email [email protected].

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What can a small company do to improve its diversity and inclusion practices when your company just isn't changing personnel quickly enough to improve via hiring? Here to discuss this are Meara Charnetzki from Table XI, Michael Donnelly from the FWD Collective and Elena Valentine from Skill Scout. We'll all about company values, supporting a wider community, using internal feedback, and what to do to encourage improvement at your company.

02:56 - Advice For Small Companies Interested in Being More Diverse

09:08 - Vetting Companies for Diversity & Inclusion Values

13:59 - Having a Healthy Company Feedback System

17:02 - Building Relationships as a Company Leader

20:09 - Diversity and Inclusion Benefits Everyone

23:31 - Encouraging Companies to Start D&I Initiatives as an Employee

30:45 - Company Exit Interviews

32:26 - Salary Transparency

35:51 - Flexible Working Structures

Special Guests: Elena Valentine, Meara Charnetzki, and Michael Donnelly.

TableXI is now offering training for developers and products teams! For more info, go to http://tablexi.com/workshops.

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I've been attending technical conferences for years, and I've always wondered about the hidden challenges involved in putting a conference together. In this show, four of the best conference organizers I know join me to share their secrets and stories. Marty Haught, organizer of many conferences including RubyConf and RailsConf, Jen Remsik and Jim Remsik, who organize the Madison+ family of conferences, and Leah Silber, who organizes EmberConf and RustConf. Learn about budgets, picking talks, and managing facilities and vendors.

03:12 - Getting Things Right and Having Empathy for Attendees

11:16 - Budgetary Aspects

14:53 - Planning Conferences in Other Cities

18:22 - Putting the Program Together and Selection Processes

29:25 - Crafting a Conference Proposal

31:12 - Encouraging and Enabling Attendee Interaction

40:03 - Conference Mentorship

41:26 - Words of Advice

Special Guests: Jen Remsik, Jim Resmsik, Leah Silber, and Marty Haught.

TableXI is now offering training for developers and products teams! For more info, email [email protected].

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How do common Agile practices like pair programming and retrospectives work when you have diverse teams? How can you make sure that underrepresented team members have their voices heard, and how does doing so improve the way that your team delivers software? Besty Haibel, Jennifer Tu, and Marlena Compton discuss ways in which Agile practices can better serve your team in the real world. For more discussion, be sure to check out PearConf.

02:05 - Pairing and Agile Development on Diverse Teams

04:31 - Implicit Agreement, Teaching Vs Exploring, and Power Differentials in Pairing

08:52 - Understanding and Improving Team Dynamics: Building a Library of Smells

17:57 - Good Agile Pair Programming Techniques + Retrospective Roles

22:14 - Making People Comfortable When Speaking Up and Making Agile Healthier

32:30 - Agile As An Institution

38:34 - Backing Away From The Idea of Perfection

42:42 - PearConf Details

43:55 - Bonus Conversation: The Practices Not Being the Manifesto

Special Guests: Betsy Haibel, Jennifer Tu, and Marlena Compton.

TableXI is now offering training for developers and products teams! For more info, email [email protected].

Get your FREE career growth strategy information and techniques!

Tech Done Right is looking at onboarding from both sides. In this episode we talk with Shay Howe and John Gore about onboarding from the company side. We talk about what a new company can do to set a new employee up to be successful and how best to structure that support. How can you best give feedback? What are common onboarding mistakes?

Episode 36: Your First 100 Days At A New Company

02:21 - Integrating a New Employee

04:36 - Balancing Technical and Cultural Needs

11:57 - Company Responsibility for Employee Integration: Feedback and Praise

15:34 - Sharing Expectations

18:15 - Soliciting Feedback and Making Connections

25:44 - Common Mistakes Made When Onboarding

27:24 - When It’s Not a Good Fit / Warning Signs

30:42 - Onboarding for Culture and Diversity

34:19 - Communicating Culture to New Employees

Special Guests: John Gore and Shay Howe.

TableXI is now offering training for developers and products teams! For more info, email [email protected].

Get your FREE career growth strategy information and techniques!

Tech Done Right is looking at onboarding from both sides. In this episode we talk with Katie Gore and Elizabeth Trepkowski Hodos about onboarding from the employee side. What can you do as a new employee to navigate the culture and environment of a new workplace? What are useful strategies? And what are some problems to watch out for?

Episode 37: Your First 100 Days Onboarding A New Employee

02:27 - Group Integration: Observe First & Take Your Own Data

08:50 - Picking Up on Shared Context Between Coworkers

11:51 - Themes of Culture and Communication

16:43 - Presenting Yourself in a New Environment

24:11 - Building Credibility

30:49 - Red Flag Situations

Special Guests: Elizabeth Trepkowski Hodos and Katie Gore.

TableXI is now offering training for developers and products teams! For more info, email [email protected].

Get your FREE career growth strategy information and techniques!

Rails 5 Test Prescriptions is updated, available, and shipping!

What does AI mean for the future of design, development? Can I be replaced by an AI algorithm? Today, we talk to Zach Pousman, from the consultancy Helpfully. Zach thinks a lot about artificial intelligence and how it might impact the future of different knowledge work. It's impossible to talk about AI without talking about the ethics of AI projects and how AI might affect the larger society. We'll talk about why AI started with chess and moved to facial recognition, what AI might and might not be able to do in the future, how we might deal with it, and how that will change the way you work.

Zach Pousman: Principal at Helpfully.

02:28 - What is AI?

05:18 - AI Potentially Changing the Way Designers and Developers Work

11:40 - Development Biases and Algorithmic Failures

16:12 - Taking Novice Performance to Expert Levels

18:56 - Susceptible Knowledge Work at Risk Due to AI and Ethics; AI as “Parlor Tricks”

33:06 - AI Vs. Humans and Legislation

43:09 - Human Skills That Aren’t Replaceable (4C’s: Critical Thinking, Communication, Collaboration, and Creativity)

Special Guest: Zach Pousman.

TableXI is now offering training for developers and products teams! For more info, email [email protected].

Get your FREE career growth strategy information and techniques!

Rails 5 Test Prescriptions is updated, available, and shipping!

Kerri Miller: Senior Developer at TravisCI and Ruby Community Member. Co-Organizer of the Open Source and Feelings Conference. Blog.

Why is Smalltalk the Elizabethan English of programming languages? Why has it been so influential, and how does the programming language you use affect the way you think about programming. On this episode, Kerri Miller and I talk about programming languages and communication, and what we've learned from our most recent programming language adventures.

01:56 - Introduction

06:18 - SmallTalk is to Ruby as Elizabethan English is to Modern Day

08:11 - SmallTalk’s History

17:55 - Thinking About Programming and Software Projects in a Flexible Way

22:01 - Object-Oriented Programming, Thinking, and Design

28:37 - Learning New Programming Languages, Concepts, and Techniques

Special Guest: Kerri Miller.

TableXI is now offering training for developers and products teams! For more info, email [email protected].

Get your FREE career growth strategy information and techniques!

Rails 5 Test Prescriptions is updated, available, and shipping!

I'm back in the testing weeds with Sam Phippen, lead maintainer for RSpec-Rails, and Justin Searls, co-founder of Test Double and author of testdouble.js. We talk about long-running test suites: are they bad, or just misunderstood? Does parallel CI solve all testing speed problems, or just some of them? Then we move to a wider view, what does it mean to test your library as part of a larger ecosystem. And, how can we leverage coverage or CI information to make for more useful testing tools over the lifetime of a project.

02:32 - Dealing with Longer and Longer Test Suites

09:43 - What causes people to get into this trouble?

12:46 - If you had a fast test suite, would you still parallelize it in the CI?

15:12 - What does it mean for your library to still be functional?

21:35 - Bugs found via the dont-break style of testing

24:06 - Inferring which tests are run from a production code diff

29:31 - Coverage, what's it good for?

33:53 - What kind of features would you expect out of a CI-aware testing suite?

Part I: Episode 004: In The Testing Weeds

Special Guests: Justin Searls and Penelope Phippen.