Codestock Retrospective

Well, that went well. I gave my first major conference talk last week at @Codestock, and I think it actually went pretty well. If you want to check out my demo slides or code, you can find it here.

Other than my talk, there were dozens of other quality topics happening, and several first timers as well. It was the old problem of having too many good presentations to go see, and not enough time to go see them. I ended up catching:

• The 7 Pillar Developer: Lifestyle Systems for the Exceptional Developer by: Cory House

  • The gist of this was do less, but do it better. I got several great book suggestions (which I almost immediately went ahead and ordered. Now I just have to figure out what to read first), some great quotes (“I am who I think you think I am”), and left feeling pumped about becoming a specialist in… something, rather than a “Jack of all Trades”.

• 20x Test Efficiency by: Spencer Farley

  • Great talk about test automation and how to increase productivity and extensibility by structuring your test code and abstracting where possible.

• Goodbye REST APIs. Hello GraphQL! by: Cory House

  • Having had no prior knowledge of GraphQL, this kind of blew my mind. Now having stepped back for a few days, I recognize that it’s essentially a query language for the front end. That said, there’s a lot of good functionality here, so learning how it can be tested is definitely beneficial.

• Drawing: How to be a Superhuman Communicator by: David Neal

  • First time seeing a David Neal presentation, and seeing the passion he has for drawing was infectious. I’m going to go find a tablet to get started on. Expect my next presentation to be a lot more colorful.

• What Do Your Test Cases DO for You? by: Jameson McGhee

  • Answered the age old question “Why do I need to write this down?!” Jameson is a very knowledgeable tester and brings a lot of common sense to the field.

And that’s just the first day!

I ran into a problem, though: After hearing Mr. House’s talk on GraphQL, I realized I needed to add some technological cherries to my presentation sundae, if you follow. I went home that night, and ended up adding some scenarios around testing GraphQL APIs, and just generally tidied up my presentation.

That’s when you know your presentation went well: When you get other presenters to change what they were going to do the next day.

So, I gave my talk first thing on Saturday, feeling fresh and highly caffienated. I ended up having a great audience and, if you’re reading this and were there, I really appreciate you attending. I hope it was beneficial to you. (Some take aways: Make sure you have your presntation tools turned on before you start, and practice using ZoomIt a lot before hand. Could have avoided some awkwardness there, I think.)

I can’t wait for next year’s Codestock.