NorDevCon: Winter Is Coming (Part 1)

One week from now tickets for the Norfolk Developer's conference () go on sale. NorDevCon is a one day Agile and tech conference in the heart of Norfolk, in the heart of winter. Details of the keynote presentations and speakers, as well as some other highlights from NorDevCon can be found below.



From 1st November you can buy your ticket here:




OPENING KEYNOTE: SOFTWARE APPRENTICESHIPS: THIS TIME IT'S PERSONAL



There has been much talk about apprenticeships for software developers, but between employers, academia and practitioners we've struggled to find a model that works for proper long-term apprenticeships. After nearly a decade of personal research into the problem, I'm embarking on my first apprenticeship with Computer Science undergraduate Will Price, applying an experimental model where experienced practitioners like me coach and mentor young programmers directly. In this presentation, I'll outline our simple apprenticeship model and the experience we're having with it, as well as discuss the wider problems of long-term software apprenticeships, and how our model might let us finally have our cake and eat it.



Jason Gorman



Jason has worked with teams at the BBC, City Index, Electronic Arts, Higher Education Statistics Agency, BUPA,British Standards Institute, The Post Office, Merrill Lynch HSBC, Freshfields Bruckhaus Deringer, Orange, Lloyds TSB, AOL, Reed Business Information and Symbian, and many more.



Jason chairs the Software Craftsmanship conference in the UK, and is a contributor to other conferences including QCon, Software Practice Advancement, XPDay, Agile Finland, JAX London and CITCON Europe.



His web site, parlezuml.com, has been visited by more than a million software professionals since 2003, and his free tutorials on use cases, UML, OO design and Test-driven Development have had more than 500,000 downloads.



CLOSING KEYNOTE: BUILDING ON SOLID FOUNDATIONS



Why can't we just add a feature to our system without tearing the code apart or, worse, patching around it? It ought to take just a few lines. We know the code is supposed to be modular and coherent, but too often it just doesn't turn out that way.



We don't believe it should be this hard to change object-oriented systems. We've seen examples where it really is that easy to add a new feature. The difference seems to be in the intermediate level structure. The design principles that most programmers rely on don't address the middle ground where the complexity lies. We know about principles and patterns at the small scale, such as SOLID, and the large scale, such as REST. We're less familiar with the structures in the middle.



This talk is about design principles that we've learned help us develop mid-scale code structures that are easy to read and easy to change. At the lowest level, this means well-known patterns such as avoiding globals and following SOLID guidelines. At larger scales, this means assembling those SOLID objects to avoid hidden coupling so that the system as a whole is amenable to change. We focus on how objects fit together and communicate, and on being clear about how capabilities and information flow between objects in the running system.



Nat Pryce



Nat Pryce is a co-author of Growing Object-Oriented Software Guided by Tests. An early adopter of XP, he has written or contributed to several open source libraries and tools that support TDD and was one of the founding organisers of the London XP Day conference. He has worked as a programmer, architect, trainer, and consultant in a variety of industries, including sports reportage, marketing communications, retail, media, telecoms and finance. He has delivered systems ranging from embedded devices to large compute farms supporting global business.



Steve Freeman



Steve Freeman, author of Growing Object Oriented Software, Guided by Tests (Addison-Wesley), was a pioneer of Agile software development in the UK. He has developed software for a range of institutions, from small vendors to multinational investment banks. Steve trains and consults for software teams around the world. Previously, he has worked in research labs and software houses, earned a PhD (Cambridge), written shrink-wrap applications for IBM, and taught at University College London. Steve is a presenter and organiser at international industry conferences, and was chair of the first London XPDay.



10 YEARS OF DOING BEHAVIOUR-DRIVEN DEVELOPMENT ALL WRONG



10 years ago, Dan North first came up with the idea of BDD: using examples in conversation to explore the behaviour of systems, then carrying those examples into code. Since then, we've learnt a lot about how BDD works, how it works best, and how it can fail horribly! Even the most experienced BDD practitioners have learnt a lot from their failures... but what were they? And how are we failing now?



In this talk, Liz takes a look at things we said back then which we shouldn't have, ways in which we abused BDD more than we used it, and things that we're still doing all wrong today. Come along to see the mistakes, listen to the stories, and hear the apologies!



Liz Keogh



Liz is an experienced Lean and Agile consultant and well-known international speaker. Coming from a strong technical background, her work covers a wide variety of topics, from software development and architecture to psychology and complexity thinking. She is best known for her involvement in the BDD community, and was awarded the Gordon Pask award in 2010 for deepening existing ideas in the space and "coming up with some pretty crazy ones of her own".



CONTINUOUS DELIVERY AT 7DIGITAL - AN EXPERIENCE REPORT



An introduction to Continuous Delivery, it's purpose and benefits, and how we achieved it at 7digital.An overview of the technical and people changes we made, and the impact these had - both good and bad, followed by a "A Day in a Life of a Change at 7digital".



Chris O'Dell



Chris O'Dell is a Lead Developer at 7digital, one of London's premier digital download companies, where she heads up the API team. She has nearly ten years experience working on the back-ends of web based services, primarily in .Net, most recently focussing on Web APIs.



Chris has a keen interest in Test Driven Development, Continuous Delivery and Agile development practices. She lives in London and in her spare time has begun learning to play the Cello.



TICKETS



Ticket go on sale on 1st November at 9am. There are 50 Super Early Bird tickets at EUR50 + fees and 450 Early Bird tickets at EUR75 + fees. We are offering significant discounts for students and the unemployed. Please email for details. There are 80 places for the conference dinner (3 courses, 2 glasses of wine and speakers!) and tickets are EUR35 + fees. The Virgin Wines reception is free to attend for conference attendees and there are 80 places. You can buy your tickets here:



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