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Nor(DEV):con 2017 Saturday Keynote Speaker: The Technologist’s Guide to Hitchhiking

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Nor(DEV):con keynote speaker, Saturday 25th Feb

 The Technologist’s Guide to Hitchhiking
Seb Rose

Are you assessed according to the professional development plan you submitted at last year’s appraisal? Where will you be in five year’s time? Have you ever been hitchhiking?

While it’s important to acquire relevant knowledge and skills to further your career, it’s also useful to occasionally reflect on the role that serendipity plays in all our lives. I’m not talking about loosely thought out escapist dreams or delegating your career to a higher power. The best professionals and business people are those that are able to take advantage of opportunities when they arise – something that observers often characterise as luck. If it is luck then, to some extent, we make our own luck.

You may be wondering where hitchhiking comes into this. In part, it’s through the long relationship that technologists have had with the work of Douglas Adams and the number 42. Hitchhiking is also a good metaphor for the development of a career in technology, incorporating all the elements of forecasting and preparation, but combining them with massive unpredictability.

I’ll draw on over 30 years of software development (and hitchhiking) to encourage you to both loosen up and apply yourself.

About Seb
Consultant, coach, designer, analyst and developer for over 30 years. Seb has been involved in the full development lifecycle with experience that ranges from Architecture to Support, from BASIC to Ruby. Recently he has been helping teams adopt and refine their agile practices, with a particular focus on collaboration and automated testing.

Seb is the lead author of “The Cucumber for Java Book” (Pragmatic Programmers) and a contributing author to “97 Things Every Programmer Should Know” (O’Reilly). He has written for many online journals, including Agile Connection, Simple Talk and the Prose Garden. He has spoken at dozens of UK and international conferences, including Software Architect (London), XP (Vienna & Rome), Agile 2014 (Orlando), Java One (San Francisco), NDC (Oslo), Agile Testing Days (Potsdam) and Eurostar (Maastricht).

RSVP: https://www.eventbrite.co.uk/e/nordevcon-2017-tickets-26029662421

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