Build Stuff 2018

More than two decades of working in IT had taken Dennis to his physical limits. His collapse came unexpected but, in reality, he could easily have seen it coming.

It also was about time though! That way, Dennis was able to realize that he had failed to look after himself for the most part of his life. He had only focused on what he thought others expected of him.

Since his burnout, Dennis has been spending a lot of time finding out what's important to him. And one of these things is to share his experience with burnout and depression as a major issue in modern society. He talks about our obsession with performance and productivity, and about the negative self-image that troubles so many of us.

He shares his ideas on how we can clear our minds from time to time, how to be able to find our true selves. It seems like nowadays, everything and everyone needs to be faster, better, more perfect. Dennis will show you how you can find some time and space for yourself and what's important to you.

Over the last years in my job as CTO for various companies I talked and met a lot of developers; often these developers were good ones but only a few of them were actually really great.
My talk will explain that becoming a great developer is possible for everyone by learning some specific skills and behaviors. You will see that being a great developer has nothing to do with expertise or technology (language, framework, stack).

This is the story of our endless journey to achieve maintainable code, while working in a startup-like organization with a strong focus on culture.
This culture encourages and enables us to be more agile in creating production code and to react faster to uncertain business needs.
Naturally, this implies the need for highly maintainable code, which is a challenge in itself, especially in a rapid growth phase of our investment product – june.dk.
In addition, to make things more complicated… we are a cross-border team scattered between two countries, Denmark and Lithuania.
One could say that the last part is the most peculiar, as cultural and multi-site differences impact every minute of our job way more than anybody expected in the beginning.
So this is the story of what we’ve learned while trying to tackle the challenges of becoming a mature and efficient team while having fun along the way.

Being wrong is often seen as the WORSE THING THAT CAN HAPPEN(tm), especially when you’re build business critical applications and services. But the increased velocity of modern software development, plus the increased need for our systems to be resilient, reliable, and RIGHT has increased the pressure on developers exponentially. Never before have software owners had such an opportunity, or the power, to BE WRONG!

We need to get better at being wrong, and that’s what this keynote is all about.

In this keynote talk Russ Miles, CEO of ChaosIQ,, will share the tools and techniques he uses to turn inevitably BEING WRONG, into BEING SUCCESSFUL at BEING WRONG. BEING WRONG can be turned to our advantage, and in this talk Russ will share stories of how this has happened, and also the challenges to look out for.

The myth of always being right when you create and operate software is over! You’re going to BE WRONG most of the time’s time to get better at BEING WRONG, learning to turn “accidents” such as outages into opportunities…

Ever wonder how some technical people are recognized and promoted quicker than others with the same skillset? Yes, there is a formula to make it more likely. We will explore the habits of well known developers outside of their coding chops, to identify what additionally allowed them to become a trusted and known voice in their environment. This approach can be a benefit to you, no matter how junior or senior you are.

It’s half a century since the NATO Software Engineering conference in Garmisch. How are we doing? Are we nearly there yet? Or is there no there there?
The world of software development has changed so much and in so many ways since 1968 that it’s difficult to imagine what we could learn from the past, but it’s learning rather than imagination that’s the constraint. There was no shortage of imagination, insight and inspiration in the 1960s and 1970s, and in many ways the apple of 21st-century software development has fallen disappointingly close to the tree of the past.
So let’s turn back the clock to see what we could have learned from the past, what we can still learn from the past and what the future might hold in store for code and its development.

DevOps is the implementation of continuous delivery and agile concepts across the organization, focusing on pipelines as the main building blocks for delivery value internally and to the customer.
But getting to that state is complicated because it requires several facets of work: People, process and tools.
In large organizations ,we have the added complexity of :
" Multiple dependencies and sub systems
" Multiple teams, groups, business units with competing interests
" Varying degrees of agility, culture, tools, technologies and processes
" Security, compliance and policy gates

In this talk we will discuss main patterns and anti patterns for adopting and implementing DevOps pipelines throughout the organization.

We build software that changes the world. From optimizing small companies to connecting humans and businesses on a global scale, our work plays a hidden but major role. Software development is not about software, it is about understanding the customers domain and solving their problems. We need a culture, a way of thinking about the needs of the customers first and putting an emphasis on their language and human interactions. If we let the domain drive our design, we can tackle complexity in the heart of software. The pillars of Domain Driven Design are learning, language and empathy. With the right mindset it becomes simple to derive good models, keep them pure and aligned with the business.
Let's explore how to use Domain Driven Design to transform everything in your organisation: code, culture, agile and architecture.

When software teams grow across geographical boundaries, they face a new set of communication challenges. These challenges may arise from large time-zone differences, new communication channels or, in some cases, from disparities in cultural paradigms. During this talk, I will share my knowledge and experiences from working with various distributed development teams in an international organization. By reflecting on scientific research and various real-life stories, I wish to improve your experience working in a dispersed environment. 

Adversity. A necessary component of life. Inevitably, we all reach professional and personal moments that require us to take a deep breath and a giant step back. Moving forward again often feels difficult, even impossible. We suffer, immobilized by fear.

But fear is more than some pesky roadblock. It is a rational response to adversity. Whether facing a major code refactoring, the changing technology landscape, a new role, or even a fresh career, we can learn to leverage fear and uncertainty to move beyond our hurdles and get the job done! Key life skills exist that can be developed to conquer adversity. Learn to assess risks, build relationships, and recognize opportunities for growth.

Starting over may seem insurmountable. Armed with the right skills, perspective, and a little patience, nothing truly is.