Web Directions Year round learning for product, design and engineering professionals

You spend years developing you capabilities as a developer program and architect, and so one day, you’re asked to do something entirely unrelated–manage people. To interview and hire, mentor and lead. To influence decision makers in your organisation.

And yet few companies and organisations help people prepare for and grow within these roles.

So, last year we launched a new conference, Code Leaders, focussing on the challenges that more senior engineering professionals in our industry face. The focus in 2017 was around two thirds engineering, and one third leadership and management, but after feedback from attendees (which was overwhelmingly positive), we’ve changed up that focus to be more on the latter, and less on the former.

The day begins with a session on the current front end landscape, with presentations by Sara Soueidan on the current state of CSS and SVG, and Marcos Caceres on the Web Platform–browser APIs and more.

Our second session focusses on hiring and building world class teams, with Ryan Biggs looking at the challenge of hiring juniors, Stefano Fratini outlining how they’ve built a world class engineering team at SiteMinder. We wrap the hiring session with Emma Jones focussing on unconscious bias, and techniques for overcoming its influence on team building.

After a fantastic lunch, we’ll return to focus on leadership and management techniques, including insights into leadership from data with Jo Cranford, a deep dive into the ‘Team of Teams‘ model as developed by US General Stanley McChrystal with Kevin Yank, and rounded out by a frequently requested session on managing remote teams (and managing remotely) by former DTO CTO Lindsay Holmwood.

The final session of the day focusses on you–developing your capacities and capabilities, the ethics of what you work on and who you work for–your “why” in Simon Sinek’s terms. Karolina Szczur will consider more ethical tech innovation, Jeremy Nagel argues that being a missionary, rather than a mercenary might be in your best interest (as well as the right thing to do), and the day finishes with the inspirational Isabel Nyo who’ll help you Survive & Thrive as an Engineering Leader.

Throughout the day participants are seated at round tables with 7 others, and a facilitator to help make sure great conversations and connections take place. It’s as much about sharing experiences ideas and connections as it is about the (amazing) content.

If you lead and manage teams, or aspire to doing so, Code Leaders is for you, and we’d love to see you there!