Track Overview
Becoming a Better Developer
Software development is a craft that asks us to engage in continuous learning and improvement. We quickly discover that it is not just about writing code. If we want to do well in our career and feel proud of our work, we need to learn many other skills. We need to find ways to communicate better, expand our skillset and think strategically.
In this track, experienced developers will share with you specific tips and guidance to help you become a better developer, improving your value as a team member, and helping you feel more confident in your skills and your contributions.
From this track
Analyzing Codebases for Fun and Profit
Tuesday Nov 2 / 12:10PM EDT
One problem existing for many developers today is ramping up quickly complex and sometimes messy codebases. Analyzing domains is an important skill when we need to solve complex problems, take ownership, contribute to open source, break down monoliths, or even perform code reviews in unknown...

Jordan Bragg
Architect @CastlightHealth
Creating an Atmosphere of Psychological Safety
Tuesday Nov 2 / 01:10PM EDT
Psychological safety is being able to show and employ one’s self without fear of negative consequences of self-image, status, or career. Psychological safety can be defined as a shared belief that the team is safe for interpersonal risk-taking. In psychologically safe teams, team members...

Tim Berglund
Senior Director of Developer Experience @Confluent
Talk Like a Suit: Making a Business Case for Engineering Work
Tuesday Nov 2 / 02:10PM EDT
We all know the feeling. We see these scary problems in our code and architecture, we raise our concerns, leadership nods their head encouragingly, but every planning session and backlog grooming, only features show up on the list. You think, well, I guess we'll have to wait for something...

David Van Couvering
Senior Principal Architect @eBay
Becoming a Better Developer Panel
Tuesday Nov 2 / 03:10PM EDT
In this panel, we'll discuss ways to improve as developers. Are better tools the solution or can simple changes in mindset help be a more effective developer as well as a better team player? And what practices are already here but not yet universally adopted?

Jordan Bragg
Architect @CastlightHealth

David Van Couvering
Senior Principal Architect @eBay

Dave Copeland
CTO @mood_health
Speakers from this track

Jordan Bragg
Architect @CastlightHealth
Jordan Bragg is a generalist who started his career in QA at Lockheed Martin. Creating automated test frameworks, performance testing, and dealing with software developers laid an excellent foundation for improved quality and empathy. Jordan has since worked full-stack, focusing on back-end...
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Tim Berglund
Senior Director of Developer Experience @Confluent
Tim is a teacher, author, and technology leader with Confluent, where he serves as the Senior Director of Developer Advocacy. He can frequently be found at speaking at conferences in the United States and all over the world. He is the co-presenter of various training videos on topics...
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David Van Couvering
Senior Principal Architect @eBay
David Van Couvering has been designing, building and delivering enterprise software since he first started at Sybase in 1988, converting tests from C to COBOL. His checkered past includes architecting one of the first Java application servers at Sybase, working on a series of explosively failing...
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Dave Copeland
CTO @mood_health
David Copeland is a programmer and author. He's the author of “Sustainable Web Development with Ruby on Rails”, "The Senior Software Engineer", and "Agile Web Development with Ruby on Rails". He has over 24 years of professional development experience from...
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Track Host

David Van Couvering
Senior Principal Architect @eBay
David Van Couvering has been designing, building and delivering enterprise software since he first started at Sybase in 1988, converting tests from C to COBOL. His checkered past includes architecting one of the first Java application servers at Sybase, working on a series of explosively failing...
Read more