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Andrew Turley edited this page Aug 23, 2019 · 128 revisions

This wiki page is for suggestions for Strange Loop 2016 "Unsessions". We work hard at Strange Loop to put on a great program but sometimes there are topics that just don't make it to the schedule. During the conference we'll have several rooms reserved for sessions planned by YOU.

  • When: Friday Sept 16th, 7-10 pm (in 60 min slots)
  • Where: Union Station DoubleTree
  • Equipment: A projector will be available in each of the provided rooms.

Schedule

PLEASE DO NOT CHANGE - email [email protected] for updates:

Time New York Central Illinois Central Missouri Pacific Frisco Burlington Regency A&B
7:00-8:00 pm This is Your Brain on Programming Weird GitHub Docker/Container Patterns and Practices Unit Testing JavaScript Board games / hanging out / bar
8:00-9:00 pm Engineering Culture Hacking from Inside Out Redux! Or: Unidirectional Data Flow for Humans Unit, Integration, and E2E Testing with Cypress Getting started with Machine Learning Board games / hanging out / bar
9:00-10:00 pm Converge: Apply Graphs to your Servers Elm in Production: Panel Q&A Game Developers Show and Tell Declarative language on nested structures Board games / hanging out / bar
  • 10:15 pm - there will be a one-time shuttle from Union Station to Hilton Ballpark leaving from the front entrance

Not scheduled:

Unsession proposals

Voice your interest by adding yourself to the Interest list for different unsessions below.

### Let's Get Physical! > A context switch from solving problems in the abstract world of programming to the physical world of rock climbing.

  • Hosted by: Pamela Ocampo (@pamo)

  • Description: Do programmers make good rock climbers? How can we apply the techniques we think about in our code to the act of conquering a bouldering problem? Traditional strength is not a big advantage in climbing until it's used effectively. Performance is about using your energy wisely and visualizing what moves will help overcome the steps to reach the top. Validation comes in the form of testing the hypothetical moves for a pass or fail. Let's embrace the collaborative spirit in open source and apply it to rock climbing for a session of sharing beta at a nearby climbing gym.*

We have two options

We can walk to either one (or Uber in groups to get to Climb So iLL). Meeting time around 7pm, location TBD. Check out the #climbing channel on Slack for day of details or tweet @pmocampo if you need to help finding the group.

  • Interest: @mariusbutuc, @lfittl, @gbramwell, @ivern, @yonet
### This is Your Brain on Programming
  • Hosted by: Wil Wade (@wilwade)
  • Description: How well do you understand the primary tool in programming: your brain? Join an introductory exploration of flow state, mental models, and burnout.
  • Interest: @sehqlr, @mariusbutuc, @ajitkoti, @rthadani, @VoltiSubito, @cdzombak, @lfittl, @jamieinfinity, @stellanor, @j_fultz, @yonet, @conniez, @BretFisher @markmandel @hillaryj @avilladsen, @mrosenberg
  • Slides: Google Slides
### Redux! Or: Unidirectional Data Flow for Humans
  • Hosted by: JC Montemayor Elosua (@jmont)
  • Description: Learn about Redux! We will walk through how this architecture works within an app and then if time permits we'll see real examples from my daily work as a web engineer at The New York Times. You should come to this talk if you have no idea what Unidirectional Data Flow is or would like to learn about Redux from a different perspective. Alternative titles for this talk via my coworkers: "Redux: Wut." and "Redux: Y?"
  • Interest: @aufrank, @cdzombak, @delambo, @lfittl, @martinkl, @mtiller, @carolinemarcks, @antigrl, @tinyels, @mrosenberg
### Converge: Apply Graphs to your Servers
  • Hosted by: Steven Borrelli @stevendborrelli
  • Description: Graphs are the core of tools like git and Apache Spark. In this talk we'll discuss using graphs in a next-generation configuration management tool called Converge. At the heart of Converge is a lazily-evaluated directed graph engine with a type system and built-in health checks.

You should come to this talk if you are interested in modern infrastructure (like Containers and Schedulers) or want to learn about how we built a graph execution engine. This will be the first public unveiling of Converge.

  • Interest: @stevendborrelli @BrianHicks @dspiteself @sehqlr @rthadani @ajitkoti @VoltiSubito @mtiller @capicue @tolmasky @quoll @conniez @carolinemarcks @BretFisher @markmandel @phunsberger @rebeccaskinner @dvillega @yanowitz @jsonheath @mrosenberg
### Engineering Culture Hacking from Inside Out #### Or, How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Start a Committee

  • Hosted by: Sam Stokes (@samstokes)

  • Slides (extract zip and open index.html)

  • Description: Wish you could use Elm at work? Are you still selling your manager on functional programming? Did you finally get your teammates writing unit tests, only to see them forgotten as the next deadline approached? Do you feel like you're surrounded by a culture that just doesn't care about the same things you do? And how can you change any of that, without giving up coding and switching to management?

    I'll talk about my experience of culture change in teams of 10, 100 and 1000 engineers, and how I accidentally started a committee and it wasn't terrible. After my (short) talk we'll have an open discussion about strategies to channel the frustration and actually make a lasting change to the culture of your workplace.

    You should come to this session if you are interested in the human factors involved in introducing new languages, tools and practices, particularly in large organisations prone to inertia. Bring horror stories and success stories alike!

Book recommendations:

Field Guide to Understanding Human Error - Sidney Dekker

Thinking in Systems: A Primer - Donella Meadows

Becoming a Technical Leader - Gerald Weinberg

Driving Technical Change - Terrence Ryan

The Phoenix Project - Gene Kim, Kevin Behr, George Spafford

  • https://smile.amazon.com/dp/0988262592
  • "Business novel" (basically an extended worked example) - fictionalised account of a dysfunctional company, and how the main character learns to fix things
  • Interest: @ckoster22 @jgorinsky @jmtuley @VoltiSubito @cdzombak @lfittl @martinkl @jamieinfinity @stellanor @jasondew @tinyels @j_fultz, @ivern @lgdean @carolinemarcks @antigrl @jcsims @sylphiae @hillaryj @avilladsen @dvillega, @mrosenberg
### Cross platform declarative embedded(IoT) development on ARM & Intel

  • Hosted by: Nathan Tippy @nathantippy

  • Description: Most maker frameworks stop once they get a blinking light. What if we take it further? How can we simplify the APIs using declarative approaches and encourage more makers to try out new ideas? What if we remove all the imperative code where we frequently find bugs? Can we encourage more students to go into the field of software engineering by making it less error prone and intimidating? We will review Pronghorn Embedded Toolkit a new Open Source Java 8 framework for cross platform development on both the RaspberryPi and Intel Edison. We will be sharing our progress (Demos) to date and looking for new ideas.

  • Interest: @VoltiSubito @gabejohnson @aturley

### Weird GitHub: Alternate titles: GitHub in the Wild, GitHub you're doing what?

  • Hosted by: Laura Webb @LRW3bb

  • Description: GitHub started as a way to work on code, but that's not the only use for it. As the platform continues to grow, the powerful tools of version control, forking, pull requests, changelogs, and platform communication are being used in an ever-increasing variety of projects. This Unsession will begin with showcasing examples of interesting use-cases and have a section at the end for 3-minute lightning-talks by those that are using GitHub in unusual ways. Keywords and terms: Museum data, thesis-writing, humor, bots, HR uses of GitHub, data visualization, remixing music, collaborative writing, recipes

  • Interest: @mariusbutuc, @cdzombak, @jamieinfinity, @smourapina, @mel_tar, @BretFisher, @andrewjl, @mrosenberg @tarebyte

### Elm in Production: Panel Q&A

  • Hosted by: Richard Feldman @rtfeldman and friends

  • Description: By popular demand (we did this last year and the room filled up), come ask NoRedInk employees about our experiences using Elm in production for over a year! We'll have several team members in town for elm-conf as well as Strange Loop, so we should have lots of perspectives available to answer whatever questions you may have. We're also super friendly, so please come say hi!

  • Interest: @rtfeldman @BrianHicks @scottcorgan @ckoster22 @lukewestby @antigrl @rohanorton, @mariusbutuc @stellanor @jasondew @mtiller @capicue, @ivern, @knewter, @adomoko

### Game Developers Show and Tell
  • Hosted by: Mark Mandel
  • Description: Games are fun! Game development is fun! Strangeloop people are super smart and interesting! Let's have an unsession to show any and all games that you are working/worked on, get feedback, chat about game development and combine all the things. If you aren't working on a game, but just want to come and see what is going on, ask questions and provide feedback, that sounds great as well. Maybe we'll see some great intersections of FP and Game development - who knows? 😄
  • Interest: @cemerick @rthadani @lfittl @mtiller @conniez @dead_lugosi @mel_tar @dkoontz @j_fultz @mrosenberg

Sorry if I'm misunderstanding the format: when I heard about this, I thought it would consist of five-minute talks to get feedback from the audience. Some of these other proposals sound more extensive. The following is just something I want to learn about from a room full of experts.

### Declarative language on nested structures
  • Hosted by: Jim Pivarski
  • Description: I'm designing a system for analyzing high energy physics data and would like to use a well-known declarative language as a user interface. I considered SQL, but it is far too cumbersome to handle typical queries on nested data structures. I feel like I'm forced to invent a new language to express the kinds of queries I have in mind, but I'd like to ask a room full of StrangeLoop attendees if there might be a better option I'm not aware of. I can present five-minute slides of the kinds of calculations that are common in high energy physics. Note also my StackOverflow question on the same topic.
  • Interest: @martinkl @cemerick @quoll @sehqlr @cdzombak @andrewjl
### Perl 6 / Rakudo Hacking
  • Hosted by: Brock Wilcox
  • Description: Perl 6 is a new language in the Perl and greater dynamic language family, but adopts tons from everyone. From Haskell/Elixir style typed multi-dispatch to Ruby style objects-all-the-way-down, you can pick a model that best fits your problem domain. Add to this some very practical innovations, such as a grammar engine and native stream/promise async/concurrency, and you have both a useful tool and an interesting experimentation platform. The production-ready Rakudo implementation of Perl 6 targets both its own MoarVM and the JVM, and a JS target is in progress! In this session we'll play with Rakudo Perl 6 and do some hacking on it -- a few regular contributors will at least attend and work on some projects (especially the REPL).
  • Interest: @hoelzro @mattnashbrowns
### Unit, Integration, and E2E Testing with Cypress

  • Hosted by: Brian Mann (@brian-mann)

  • Description: When we talk about writing end to end tests for the front-end, most developers immediately run into several challenges:

    • Testing environments take too long to set up.
    • Tests end up extremely brittle and randomly fail.
    • Error messages are indirect and increase the time it takes to debug.
    • There isn't an easy test-driven development (TDD) process available.
    • Testing through a console fails to give full visibility on why a test failed.

    I'll be giving a demo and talking about a new testing tool, Cypress.io. which solves the hardest challenges of testing modern, complex web applications.

  • Interest: @brian-mann, @kevinold, @daneezo, @jennifer-mann, @yonet, @antigrl, @mel_tar

### Unit Testing JavaScript

UI, Node, and everything in between.

  • Hosted by: Kent C. Dodds @kentcdodds
  • Description: There are a lot of opinions about unit testing JavaScript. Should I do test-driven development (TDD) or no? Do I need 100% code coverage? How do I test UI code?

This session will be more of a round table-type discussion than a presentation. I will come prepared with topics to discuss, not necessarily to present. You should come prepared to chat and give your take on unit testing JavaScript (or feel free to just listen as others do so) and we'll all walk away from the experience with things to think about hopefully.

  • Interest: @kentcdodds, @VoltiSubito, @jamieinfinity, @tinyels, you?
### Docker/Container Patterns and Practices

What are successful ways to adopt containers? How are others solving X with containers? Should I do things before I consider containers? What about pitfalls, rough edges, winning, do's/don'ts, etc.

  • Hosted by: Bret Fisher The GHubs The Twitters

  • Description: This unsession is more of birds-of-a-feather style where I'll start the conversation and based on who shows up, it could lead to some Q&A with me or other Docker-in-Production attendees, or us all sharing Docker stories to the group. What you learned 6 months ago is likely no longer current in this fast-paced ecosystem. I'm also teaching the pre-conf workshop, and build/run container systems daily, so hope we all learn something.

  • Interest: @BretFisher, @markmandel, @VoltiSubito, @phunsberger, @swaroopch, @dvillega, @jsonheath and?

### Getting started with Machine Learning

  • Hosted by: Andrew Donoho, A Machine Learning Beginner, I've deployed classifiers and scoring systems.

  • Description: There is a lot going on in the world of ML and AI. This beginner BoF is to discuss how to educate ourselves about machine learning techniques:

    • What is the difference between Machine Learning, Artificial Intelligence, and Deep Learning?
    • What are the prerequisites?
    • What resources are available?
    • Simplest way to get started? Keras? TensorFlow? A cloud platform?
    • Simplest way to get data?
    • What's the best way to learn? "Follow" Kaggle? Meetups? Online communities?

  • Interest: @swaroopch, @adonoho, @jamieinfinity, @sylphiae, @sehqlr, @cdzombak, @yanowitz, @andrewjl, @jpotisch, @jsonheath, @mrosenberg

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