Be My Guest for DayCamp4Developers
This weekend I’m presenting at DayCamp4Developers, a virtual event comprising a full day of workshops for developers of all disciplines to improve their soft skills and move forward in their career. I get to attend since I’m speaking, but even after I’ve given my slot I know I’ll be online to watch the other talks and I know I’ll learn something myself! I believe that, however good your technical skills are, being able to communicate effectively means the different between being the bearded expert in the corner who knows everything but has been in the same job 10 years, and being the high flier that soft skills and technical skills combined could make you.
I have one guest ticket for this event, and I want to make sure that it goes to someone who will make good use of it. So, if you would like to be my guest for DayCamp4Developers, this weekend 6th November, then leave me a comment and tell me why you want to attend. In a couple of days (probably Wednesday evening, UK time) I’ll close the comments and pick a winner – put your email address in the comments box (it isn’t displayed) so I can reach you and let you know.
If you don’t win, and want to join us anyway, then you can still buy tickets. Check with your local user group if they have an affiliate code and if not – use this link to buy your tickets, using my affiliate code ;)
Looking forward to “seeing” everyone on Saturday!
Hi Lorna,
I’m coming to DC4D anyway but would like to suggest you pick someone fron Leeds Met. The vast majority of last years students weren’t able to get a work placement due to the current economic climate. They have little experience of ‘the community’, what its like to manage your own carrear and will definitely benefit from the ability to write a great developer resume!
I think anyone from the current final year would get a lot out of what an eclectic event like this could offer.
Ben: You know I’m up there later today to talk about tools for industry? I will be mentioning this little contest and some other resources (local groups, websites) while I’m there!
Yes I’ll be there, looking forward to it!
Hi Lorna, can I be your guest?
I work on a small PHP team. When I started the job some time ago, there was no sandbox environment for testing, no version control, nary a PHP class anywhere to be seen, the codebase was riddled with bad coding practice like woodworm. When making a new feature, my colleagues would make a copy of the affected PHP files with the suffix ‘_fred’, or ‘_new’, or ‘_new2’, and start hacking together a solution. On the live server. Using the live database.
It was quite alarming – would I have to reduce myself to such practices?? Then I remembered something you said at a conference, and I began to ~change~ the job.
Now we have a comprehensive test environment, coding standards and CI are in place, new code is built in PHP5 and OOP and is backed up with unit tests.
But last week, my boss – who has no computer training and taught himself PHP via copy-pasting from the interwebs over many years – has canned a new project at alpha release because it “didn’t have dynamic HTML”. It took a while to work out what he meant: he was referring to the fact that we’d kept the HTML and PHP code completely separate.
No amount of argument will persuade him of the whys and wherefores of clear code / presentation separation. I was feeling quite down about it, until I remembered what you said at that conference, and as I’ve now already tried changing my job without success, I must now change my job!
True story (mostly)
DC4D would help me brush up my skills for doing that :)
Well that was an astonishingly easy decision to make!! Rich – I would be delighted to have you as my guest, details coming by email.