Web Perspectives

What role do PMs (project managers) play in software projects, and what techniques do they use to create successful software releases? Mark Dodd, long-time PM at Koncept, walks us through his process of managing project scope, meeting best practices, and how to involve key stakeholders into software projects.

Connect with Mark Dodd on LinkedIn.

What are Verifiable Credentials (VC) and how can web developers leverage the new W3C specification to build out future-proof authentication solutions?  How do Verifiable Credentials differ from traditional OAuth providers like with Google, Meta, or Microsoft, and how can we reclaim our independence with technologies with VCs?  What's the future of Blockchain and Web3 applications?

What's causing all the layoffs in the tech industry? How can we use AI and ChatGPT to supercharge our resumes and cater them to job postings? How important are job postings anyway? Stephen Wensley, from Acuspire shares with us his insights from parsing 1000s of resumes using AI on what you can do right now to simplify your job search.

"One more thing".  We always have one more thing to do in software development -- whether our customer asks us for one more feature, or we task ourselves with going beyond the requirements, the challenge remains: how much is enough?

What is overengineering?  How do we know when our software is ready to launch?  When customers can always come back to us with more work -- one more thing -- when do we know when to stop adding more features?  How can we reduce scope creep in our projects while still overdelivering?  Does it even make sense to overdeliver?  What "one more thing"s make sense as developers, and what does overengineering even look like?

What is technical debt in software development, and how do we manage it?  Does it make sense to try to avoid technical debt or to accept it with open arms and consider it a core part of software development?  How do we approach adding more tools to our front-end stacks?

What strategies work best for debugging websites and web applications?  What tools and processes do we use to find the sources of bugs?  Topics include:

Men's coach Mike Cameron discusses how to engage with ourselves emotionally. What does emotional intelligence mean, and how we leverage it to communicate more effectively in the workplace? With web development technologies changing so rapidly, how can we ground ourselves and feel confident in our modern web development practices? What makes an emotionally grounded web developer? Do emotions even matter in a logical, error-driven industry? And most importantly, what can we do right now to communicate our desires to co-workers and to inspire them?

What is a state manager? Does it make web development more complicated, or are they worth the pain? Mike and Sean take a look at state managers like VueX, Redux, Redux Saga, MobX, and ember data to find out how much more cruft and configuration they add to existing projects. If we choose to not use state managers, what can we do to future-proof our careers? What is the future of web development? Is web web development essential work?

Join us, as we interview Al Degan on post-pandemic networking for new and existing entrepreneurs in the tech industry.  Al Degan gives us the rundown of the Calgary entrepreneurship and incubator/accelerator space in post-panemic Alberta.  He also talks about Rainforest Alberta, and how they work with Platform Calgary to promote and build Calgary's emerging entrepreneurship tech scene.

What goes on behind the scenes in web development bootcamps?  How do instructors keep up-to-date with the latest technologies and request updates to the curriculum?  How do web development bootcamps pack everything students need to know into 3-month programs?  Join us as we interview Andy Lindsay, lead instructor at Lighthouse Labs.