Mark Williams

I could only get to day 3 of altconf (Wednesday, if you need time-space locality) but I’m really glad I made it happen.

Highlights:

The Art of the Sell by Jaimee Newberry (@jamieejaimee).

     Jaimee had some great suggestions in her “12 checkpoints”. Most of them were reminders, but it was a good list. Good reminders for me were:

1 & 10. Followup and don’t disappear (“silence will hurt you”) – even if you didn’t finish what you were supposed to do, followup anyway. Allows the person to react – if you go silent they don’t know what’s going on and cannot plan.

6 & 7. Check your word choices, and speak confidently specifically, don’t use “passive” voice. Not grammar technically passive voice, things like “just” (avoid), “find time” (“make time” is more generative), “I wanted to write to you…” (“I am writing…”), and “maybe” & “kinda” & “should” (avoid them all).

8. Accept the responsibility – she used the term “proactive opportunity” which I love.

As a followup, it turns out I was already following her blog on Medium and didn’t realize is. Found out about #tinychallenges, which seems like a great concept.

Become a better engineer through writing – Kristina Thai (@kristinathai)

Reminded me to write again. Thus this reflection. Also considering adding a development blog to No Hold Music both to help me remember why I made decisions and maybe to help others.

Links:

WordPress syntax highlighter: https://wordpress.org/plugins/syntaxhighlighter/

WordPress word fence security plugin: https://wordpress.org/plugins/wordfence/

Information from the talk: http://kristina.io/writing/

Futures and Promises, or how I learned to stop worrying and love the GCD – Michael Gray

Really great talk. I may look at futurekit for a future project. I can see how it might help, but adds some dependency and a different outlook. Need to study this more.

Surviving Silicon Valley – Kory Westerhold

I didn’t get as much out of this. It was good, but mostly I just kept agreeing with everything he said.

Building Periscope Sketches – Ben Sandofsky

Really enjoyed this talk in a “I’m swimming in some deep water” kind of way. I can’t imagine a scenario where I might need the things he was talking about, but it was a great overview.

Duty of Care – Brent Simmons

I’ve read Brent’s blog for years and it was fun to see him speak. It was almost a standup routine – a nice break.

A developer’s routine to stay focused and productive – Mike Spratt

This was the surprise of the day. I think it was my favorite. It was a great reminder about how to stay mentally healthy. I avoided picking up my phone when I woke up this morning based on his admonition. It was hard! Addicted much?

How (not) to write an iOS SDK – Conrad Kramer

This was probably the most presently germane topic of the day. Helped me thing through how to build out No Hold Music.