In 2009 I did something that would shape my career for the next decade, I submitted to, then spoke at my first conference, DDD Melbourne.

Prior to this I didn't attend conferences or even user groups, but since my first one I've had opportunities to travel the country, and world, speaking at events. I even managed to land my dream job at a company I'd always hoped to work at.

Let's talk about DDD, and communities in general, and why they are such a valuable resource in how you can shape a career in tech.

Aaron Powell

A career built on DDD

In technology people dream of joining a big corporation and getting paid well. In doing so you sacrifice the freedom to work on your own on things you are interested in and often get embroiled in organisational politics. There is an alternative path in being an open-source technology specialist maintaining core projects vital to the global technology ecosystem and contracting back independently to technology companies. Often running your own consultancy shop, this talk explorers various options of career paths in open-source and the flexibility it provides. There will always be politics, but you get to choose who you work with.

Tisham Dhar

A professional career in open-source

You may have heard the acronym SOLID. It is one of the most widely-referenced sets of software design principles, appearing everywhere from architecture guidelines to job descriptions. It's also closely associated with the Object-Oriented Programming (OOP) paradigm.

This talk builds a critique of OOP through an exploration of the SOLID design principles. You may be thinking something along the lines of "overengineering" or "unnecessary complexity". But this talk makes a different point: that the simple, maintainable software engendered by SOLID principles may be best achieved by thinking outside of OOP.

Troy Gerwien

A SOLID takedown of OOP

Lessons learnt in burning everything to the ground, and what we can do to attempt to stop it happening again... and again

Ryan Craig

Architecting for Longevity

Women get asked all the time, how do I get more women into my team and company - well I’m here to answer that! There are a lot of factors that play into it from pipeline to company perception. And once women are onboard, there’s work to be done in retention and most importantly GROWTH.

   I’ve worked with companies all over Australia on how to be more inclusive for women. I’m also run free coding and workshop events for women, non-binary and trans folk as an organiser of Muses Code JS women. I’ve seen a lot of stuff go down. But I’ve also seen a lot of incredible wins.   

There is gap in how we support our technical women. And I’m keen to share how we as a community can progress and empower technical women.

Sammy Herbert

Attract, retain and grow technical women

Burnout isn’t just some hypothetical thing that happens when someone is working too much or too hard. There are very real changes that can happen in your brain, body and thought processes. Some of us have or will experience some sort of burnout at some point in our lives or careers. It may come on quickly, or it may be due to the accumulation of stress over a longer period of time. Either way, it can lead to serious problems with your mental health, personal relationships and ability to work.

While burnout may not be the same between any two people, during this I’ll cover some of the signs and symptoms of burnout:

- How can you recognise burnout in yourself or your staff / colleagues?
- What might be happening and how might you be able to help?

I’ll also talk through my own experiences having dealt with it myself, and seeing the signs in others. Hopefully you’ll come away with a better understanding of what may or may not be healthy work behaviours, and be able to recognise when things are going wrong before you burnout yourself.

Brendan Graham

Battling Burnout

Get a behind-the-scenes look at the UX methodologies employed in hit games. Learn how industry giants master the art of user experience to create chart-topping successes. 

Rachel Mesler

Breaking Down UX Wizardry in Best-Selling Games

Accessibility is usually measured and defined at the page level, but we often develop at a widget or module level. How can we work in a way which builds accessible chunks instead of waiting until the site is nearly done to test and fix accessibility issues? 

This is a walkthrough of a four step process you can use on the small tasks that build up to become our larger projects. Learn how to use the accessibility stack to make sure you've covered common use-cases for assistive technology, and add a little bit of delight for your users with impairments. 

You'll be able to use this process on any size task to meet your accessibility requirements faster and more easily than waiting for an audit or bug report. 

Julie Grundy

Building Accessible Components

It's well known that as developers we all cringe at the thought of documentation and often the biggest barrier to adding some documentation is the friction of getting started. In my work as an engineering manager and consultant I've collated a number of code-first approaches to documentation that are light-weight, and easy to maintain.
	
In this talk I will cover topics including: tooling for creating documentation-as-code, Architecture Decision Records (ADRs), the C4 Model, Plant UML, Markdown and how all of this can be used together to minimise the onboarding time for new developers to your projects. 
	
I've presented a version of this talk at DDD Brisbane and to several client teams and it has often resulted in developers and teams adopting new practices and becoming advocates of this approach to documentation and information sharing.

Shaw Innes

Documentation for Developers

At the beginning of anything "new" - a new project, a new client, a new company, a new chapter of your life - we can feel overwhelmed by our knowledge gaps - or the unknowns. In this session, I will show you how I use agile methodologies to get clarity on what I need to know, and how I can get that information, and what I can deprioritise in the backlog.

Amanda Pitcher

Getting Comfortable with the Unknown

We interviewed 6 Engineering leaders in Adelaide working across a range of industries. We asked them how they manage their teams, what they believe is important to an engineering team, and what engineering and product practices they find to be overrated. Here's an unbiased summary of their opinions (not mine). These are all true stories. Names have been changed to protect the guilty.

Ben Ernst

How Adelaide Builds Product

Tired of your boss telling you to get back into the office?

Want to have an amazing impact across the workplace in the comfort of your trackies?

What if I told you that you could lead impactful, supportive, and effective teams, without giving up the commute from your bedroom to your (home) office?

What if I told you that you could grow your own career and influence in your organisation, whilst still making time for growing those tomatoes out the back?

Come learn how to maximise your impact as a remote leader or team member. We'll take a walk through different techniques and tools to help you prove remote collaboration is just as productive, how to build strong cross-functional relationships remotely, and how to build empowered and productive teams.

Whilst you'll get the most out of this session if you already work remotely, or are interested in doing so, folks who prefer the office side of life will still come away with ideas, tips, and techniques that will not only help their remote colleagues, but themselves.



Tom Ridge

How to (remotely) win friends and influence people

Have you ever wondered what happens when llamas meet the Internet of Things? Neither had I, until I connected my llama farm to the Internet! Join me on this wild ride where we’ll venture into the less-trodden path of llama-friendly automation. We'll tackle pressing questions like 'Should my llama-cams run in the cloud, or would local control prevent a llama-lanche?' and 'What if my automatic gate is offline during a llama stampede?' It's like a tech-enabled Noah's Ark, only with more llamas and fewer pairs.

Lars Klint

I Connected My Farm To The Internet. Now What?

Click-Opsing your infrastructure is costing you time, money, and sanity. Join me in an exploration into Terraform and the principles of keeping your Infrastructure simple enough to call it Infrastructure as Text. We will work through an overview of what Terraform is, how to read and write Terraform, and some tricks from a full time Terraformer.

Ryan Royals

I Terra-formally Invite You to Start Using Terraform as Your Infrastructure as Code Tool!

There's a certain joy that I receive from automating a task. Knowing that it gets completed efficiently and precisely without the messy involvement of other humans, or myself. However, source generators have a variety of practical and tangible real-world applications that span far greater than self-satisfaction. 

In this talk we discuss what source generators are in the C# ecosystem, how they compare to other code generation approaches, tips on how to get started writing your first generator and why they are a valuable tool in your programming toolkit. 

Dive with me into a practical real-world example that is applicable to games programming inside the Godot game engine. Highlighting differences of working with this platform compared to more traditional .NET applications. 

Scott Cabot

Source Generators: Spending hours to automate what takes minutes to write

Often when I am given advice to succeed in my role, it comes from the perspective of those who have had long established careers in software. Of course, with all that experience, I’d be a fool not to listen and heed their word - right? Well, sometimes insights like these can be biased towards their own perceived success or may only be applicable to someone just like them. I’ve since learned I can’t listen to every single advice given to me regardless of their long running experience in software. Through this talk, I aim to bring in insights I have gathered through my own experience as a junior software engineer in conjunction with more or less helpful advice and mentoring from my fellow senior peers. By discussing my journey in landing my first developer role through to covering the successes and failures that have navigated my career as a junior software engineer, I hope to reach out to other juniors and help them in their own journey with software engineering.

Kate Yvonne Kearsley

Succeeding as a Junior Software Engineer

In this talk we'll take a trip far back in history and see how UX design is rooted in 16th century printing techniques. Some of our 'human-centered design strategies' to engage and retain a user's attention find their origins in Antiquity and it's fascinating to see how they translate in code.

Using typography as a study case, we'll look at the ebb and flow of technological progress vs return to origins, and understand how far we've come in this competition for our users' attention.

Monelle Trachez

They see me scrollin'

The year is 1860. 19 men set out to find a way across Australia from Melbourne to the Gulf of Carpentaria. 7 men died. 1 made the whole journey.

Although 160 years in the past, the key points of this failed expedition are directly relatable to software projects. Let’s dive into some history and learn from it.

I promise to wear a cowboy hat.

Chris Gilbert

What the failed Burke & Wills expedition can teach us about software projects

You can't do everything yourself, but when all of the common business models don't sit well with you, how do you get more people involved?

I turned away from a model that builds piles of gold for myself (and others) to sit on, and was only available to the most privileged of us in society. Instead, I engaged a like minded co-founder to start something equitable, available for all, and where those involved retained ownership of the business.  

Come and learn about our (very) early stage Developer Co-operative, about some existing successful Developer Co-operatives and absorb some of the philosophical, strategic and commercial challenges you face in giving away control and ownership.

2023 Agenda

Registration

Welcome and Housekeeping

Keynote: Aaron Powell

A career built on DDD

Changeover

Ben Ernst

How Adelaide Builds Product

Brendan Graham

Battling Burnout

Julie Grundy

Building Accessible Components

Morning Tea

Sammy Herbert

Attract, retain and grow technical women

Scott Cabot

Source Generators: Spending hours to automate what takes minutes to write

Ryan Royals

I Terra-formally Invite You to Start Using Terraform as Your Infrastructure as Code Tool!

Changeover

Monelle Trachez

They see me scrollin'

Tisham Dhar

A professional career in open-source

Ryan Craig

Architecting for Longevity

Lunch

Lars Klint

I Connected My Farm To The Internet. Now What?

Amanda Pitcher

Getting Comfortable with the Unknown

Joel Small

Why I started a developer co-operative

Changeover

Rachel Mesler

Breaking Down UX Wizardry in Best-Selling Games

Troy Gerwien

A SOLID takedown of OOP

Kate Yvonne Kearsley

Succeeding as a Junior Software Engineer

Afternoon Tea

Shaw Innes

Documentation for Developers

Tom Ridge

How to (remotely) win friends and influence people

Chris Gilbert

What the failed Burke & Wills expedition can teach us about software projects

Changeover

Prize Draw, Thank Yous, and Wrap Up

Sponsors

All Agendas