Chicago Roboto 2018 Recap + First Keynote!


Chicago Roboto was back again this year as a single track conference and there were a lot of excellent talks.  Last year I gave a talk with my co-worker and product designer extraordinaire Jess Moon about design and development workflows and this year I was back again but as a Keynote speaker.

Keynote

Giving a keynote was a stretch goal I set for myself in 2018 and I managed to achieve it early thanks to the Chicago Roboto review committee. The topic I chose was being an Android Advocate who brings teams and communities together. I will be writing a follow up blog post about my keynote process soon but before that, a quick shout out to Corey Latislaw and my coworkers at Warner Bros. Digital Labs who took a look at my first and second drafts and listened to all my half-baked thoughts and ideas.
The recording should be out very soon. Slides and resources are available at https://speakerdeck.com/yprabhu/keynote-being-more-than-an-android-developer.

Takeaways

Chicago Roboto was a conference with a lot of great talks and speakers. I've highlighted a few talks and resources below.

Android Architecture components by Phil Shadlyn

Phil started experimenting with Android Architecture Components on a reminder app that he built and shared his lessons learned with everyone else. The work-in-progress sample app is available at https://github.com/physphil/RemindMe and slides are available at https://speakerdeck.com/physphil/i-wrote-an-app-with-architecture-components.

Tips from the Time Machine by Nate Ebel 

Nate Ebel's talk on starting out as a Android developer was like stepping back in time and remembering the good and bad times of starting out in Android. Not knowing "all the things" was something Nate mentioned in his talk which coincidentally tied in with my keynote.



Who's afraid of Machine Learning? by Britt Barak

I loved Britt's machine learning talk with an introduction to neural networks and then trying to figure out if the given input was a strawberry or not by using TensorFlow.


Picasso 3.0 by Jake Wharton & John Rodriguez

Picasso - the popular Android image downloading and caching library is  undergoing some major changes. Slides are available at https://speakerdeck.com/jakewharton/rinsing-the-brush-picasso-3-dot-0-chicago-roboto-2018. 

ShapeShifter by Alex J Lockwood

ShapeShifter, the amazing tool by Alex helps us write path morphing animations without the use of design tools. Slides are available here.

The future of the community is You by Dan Kim

I had to leave midway through Dan Kim's talk but caught up with it on Twitter. His advice (which touched on some of the things that I mentioned in my keynote) is to contribute to the community through writing, speaking, mentoring and open source. Slides at https://speakerdeck.com/dankim/the-future-of-our-community-is-you.

Until next year...

Thank you Chicago Roboto for a wonderful time! I met a lot of wonderful people from all over the world and learned a lot from all of them.

And thank you for giving me the opportunity to be the Keynote speaker at your conference. 

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Communicating Paid Time Off and Coverage Plans

Image
As an engineering manager, I often ask people to take at least a week off every quarter depending on the PTO (Paid Time Off) policy at their workplace. This comes up to 4 weeks or 20 business days in a workplace with unlimited PTO which is pretty good for US-based companies, where the standard is usually 2 weeks or 10 business days of PTO.  It’s also important to me to communicate to my teammates and people across the organization that I will be out of office and they can reach out to others in that situation. “How we vacation” is a section that I like to add in my Team Charter which is a document that contains all the rules of engagement on a team - how we do retrospectives and team meetings, how often we meet, how we take time off, how we track metrics, our scope of work, and so on. 🌴 Paid Time Off Here are some of the places I update at my workplace if I am going to be out on vacation for a few days: Slack status Company Time Off calendar My work calendar My Google workspace o...
Read more

Team Charter and Norms: Working together

Image
In my previous blog post , I wrote about setting up a Team Charter and Team Norms on a team. In this post, I elaborate on some of the rules of engagement that teams I have worked on have generally used. Most software development teams that I have worked on have used some sort of Agile practices like the Scrum framework where cross-functional teams use iterative and incremental processes to improve their software delivery process. I have always used Agile in a way that works best for my team and the company’s culture at that time.  🧱 Team Structure I have had to occasionally run Scrum meetings as an Engineering leader since I have been on teams without dedicated Scrum Facilitators or Product Owners. Each Scrum team usually includes an Engineering Manager, Scrum Facilitator or Project Manager, Product Manager and Developers. In the absence of dedicated Project Managers or if there is leadership interest on the team, I make the Scrum lead role rotational so that every person on the t...
Read more

Team Charter and Norms

Image
A Team Charter in the context of a software engineering team is a team document that lists their goals, objectives, scope of work, and rules of engagement. This is a working agreement between all members of the team on how the team collaborates and communicates, and how they hold each other accountable while working towards common goals. Here are some areas I like to cover in a team’s Team Charter. This can be at the team level or the organization level.  Goals: This is a one-line sentence that explains the goal(s) of this team.  Objectives: This section links to the team or organization's objectives, key performance indicators (KPI) or Objectives and Key Results (OKR) which can be quarterly, semi-annual or annual. Organization Chart and Team Structure: This helps people know where they are in the organization and what teams and people they interact with regularly. Helpful Resources: This links to the team’s Request For Comment or Technical Design Documents, Slack channels, me...
Read more