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The last week or so I’ve spent a lot of time focused on finalising the program for our Code and Code Leaders conferences. Our CFPs closed a couple of weeks back, and there were hundreds of proposals, this is both gratifying, and daunting as it also leads to the inevitable consequence, that some will miss out (many in fact). Having to communicate that is like delivering any less than desirable news, never a lot of fun.

And then there’s the not infrequent relatively late notice cancellation by a confirmed speaker to deal with–things happen, and it’s entirely understandable, but always a challenge as invited speakers are important tentpoles for an event program–at least ones like ours where we pay a lot of attention to the overall shape and balance of the program, both in terms of the content, and in terms of the speakers.

Talk proposals are something of a barometer of where the industry’s focus is–although a slightly lagging indicator. Emerging topics we feel are important to cover in a given year, which will likely involve us seeking out someone to speak on that topic, will become a deluge of proposals the following year or two later. It’s not to say there isn’t still something interesting to say about the topic, it’s more that it will need to be increasingly actionable and specific. 

I keep meaning to expand on just what it is we look for when programming our events, but it’s probably best summed up by a phrase we hear surprisingly often around our events, and that we keep in mind when choosing presentations–”I can’t wait to get back to work to put this into practice”.

There’s a lot more to it than that, but if  every person who attends has one or to things that meet that need, then we’ve gone a long way to meeting our goal.

Things I’ve been reading (or otherwise found interesting)

Technically speaking

Compared with many other areas of endeavour, there’s surprisingly few really good resources to help folks develop as speakers and presenters.
There’s the venerable Toastmasters, and more locally, our good friends at Public Speaking for Life, (they have a great free ebook you can get from their site). But for such a valuable, and eminently learnable skill (yes, you can learn to speak publicly, however terrifying or otherwise negatively you perceive it) there are very few things available, I find, to help folks develop.

Technically True, a podcast with a number of episodes under their belt aims to cover a range of topics around speaking particularly at technically focussed conferences. From starting out, to how conferences decide on which presentations to select, talk delivery and more, cue this up for your commute.

Hiring is Hard

There are very few things that every single company and every single employee experiences, that are vital to both. There’s almost nothing more fundamental to the success or failure of an enterprise, or happiness and health of an individual, than employment. This begins with recruitment.
About which, in Wiliam Goldman’s famous expression about what will be successful in Hollywood almost “no one knows anything“.

Whiteboard exercises, take home tests, portfolios, design challenges, pseudo code, meet the CTO/team/whomever, culture fit–the list of practices, principles, beliefs and for the most part unsubstantiated nonsense is long, and not very distinguished.

So, I’m in the process of collecting articles, tweetstorms, and other thoughts and reflections on recruitment processes, candidate experience, and the whole hiring process.

I feel this is something that really needs to be far more considered, and more evidence based.

I came across this article, What our Cofounder learnt from interviewing 1500 Engineers, Designers & Product Managers, this week. This is not necessarily an endorsement of everything in this article, but what I found useful about it is it’s a reflection based on experience, with some things learned.

What I am more broadly interested in though is measurable outcomes–how long did someone who was selected stay in the organisation? How did they progress though their career there?  Is it possible to track the career progression of candidates who weren’tsuccessful (a lot of that data is available–even simply tracking unsuccessful candidates via linkedin could provide some interesting if not scientific data).

We’ll be starting to address this whole area in more depth at our Code Leaders conference (and other conferences into the future), so if it’s of interest to you, or you have thoughts you’d like to contribute, let me know!

Ethical Litmus Test–A follow up
A couple of weeks back we talked about Laura Summer’s Ethical Litmus Test ‘game’ to help develop the ethical intuitions of your team. Laura will be running a session at Code Leaders to help our attendees hone their intuitions to hep their teams hone theirs. 

Laura’s followed up her original announcement with a detailed look at the project from every angle.

How to think about solving problemsMany of our readers will have or will continue to use ESLint, developed by Nicholas Zakas, who’s been writing professional grade JavaScript longer than almost anyone. He’s written a lot of code.  But he recently wrote about how over time

“I slowly came to see myself less as a coder and more as a problem solver. Sometimes the problem could be solved by writing code while other times the solution didn’t involve code at all.”

Nicholas detailed 5 questions he asks to help solve a problem, starting with “Is this really a problem?”