Codezillas: The Universal Truths of Building Trust

Room 1
16:20 - 17:20
(UTC+02

Talk (60 min)

Wednesday 
Despite our best efforts, many software projects don’t end with champagne and cake. While some blame a bad technology choice, more often than not, the issues boil down to people problems.

Traditional computer science education focuses on algorithms and languages while largely ignoring the human aspect of software and the sociology of organizations. Fear not friends, there are patterns and approaches that can help you win trust quickly, create allies, set expectations and effectively communicate during the ups and downs of project life!

Dodging the pitfalls of software implementation can be taxing. How do we navigate the existing social complexity and interpersonal dynamics found in every organization? How do we earn trust, maintain rapport and turn clients into advocates? This talk will explore the challenges of building and maintaining software using examples from within and beyond the software industry to help give you the tools to chart a path to more than just a successful launch but a team that speaks highly of the journey.

Nathaniel Schutta

Nathaniel T. Schutta is a software architect focused on cloud computing and building usable applications. A proponent of polyglot programming, Nate has written multiple books and appeared in various videos. Nate is a seasoned speaker regularly presenting at conferences worldwide, No Fluff Just Stuff symposia, meetups, universities, and user groups. In addition to his day job, Nate is an adjunct professor at the University of Minnesota where he teaches students to embrace (and evaluate) technical change. Driven to rid the world of bad presentations, Nate coauthored the book Presentation Patterns with Neal Ford and Matthew McCullough. Nate recently published Thinking Architecturally and Responsible Microservices both available as free downloads from VMware.

Whitney Lee

Whitney traveled the scenic route but is absolutely chuffed to have found her way to Kubernetes and cloud technologies. She began her professional career as a fine artist before owning her own photography business for over a decade. Then, after a year-long tour playing keys and singing harmonies in the band Mutual Benefit, Whitney went back to school to learn full-stack web development. Shortly after graduation Whitney was employed by IBM as a cloud developer, using none of the skills she had just learned at school. However Whitney quickly developed an insatiable appetite for all things cloud, and a passion for teaching others as she acquired knowledge herself. She has made many light board videos for IBM Cloud, from topics ranging from creating a Pod in Kubernetes, to event-driven architecture, to cloud-native API solutions. At VMware Whitney’s contagious excitement drives her to continue to explore, collaborate, teach, and play!