Going from an IT guy to a sales guy is a not a road many have travelled. How do you become a good sales person? I followed courses, I read books, I watched videos, … I learned how to act, how to ask, how to listen, … It cost me time and money to become the sales person I wanted to be. During this period I also became a dad. And guess what. All the things I learned, my children already knew. They don’t sell products or services. They want candy, stay up late, stay out longer, a new sweater, a new phone, an iPhone, … And for that, they use the same tricks that I learned in trainings, videos and books. We are all natural born sales. So no more: “I can’t do sales, I’m not a sales person”. Everybody has the ability, and I’m going to prove it by showing how (my) children sell.
Focusing on actionable, tactical things to do on LinkedIn. This is not a "what is LinkedIn," nor is it a "here's how to do all the things on LinkedIn." Rather, it's a session on the things to do that bring the highest value to you (or, to your company). The focus is on individuals and career management (networking or personal branding).
Kimberly Blessing, a long-time web professional and change agent, has facilitated massive change in organizations of all sizes and in the web community at large. She'll explain why your efforts to change people may not be working, and she'll help you embrace your inner change agent by giving you the tools to lead the charge.
Kimberly Blessing is the vice president of technology at Think Brownstone, an experience design consultancy based in Philadelphia, USA. In her 20+ year career on the Web, Kimberly has evangelized design, code, and accessibility best practices while holding senior engineering and management... Read More →
The last few years several countries have passed new legislation mandating computational thinking be added to students’ core curriculum, but what are the best practices to use when teaching kids to code? By using a number of different delivery platforms and modern development practices including pair programming, mob programming and other techniques designed to teach computer programming in a social and collaborative environment, pioneering teachers and inspired curriculum are changing the demographics and the numbers of students pursuing STEM-related higher educations. We’ll explore what programmers and other tech leaders can do to support and change the educational opportunities in their own communities.
Jessica is a Director at TKP Labs, a non-profit that creates computational curriculum and events for teens. She is also a director at the Boys and Girls Clubs, the largest youth organization in the US. She has trained teachers and ran events all over the West Coast, NYC, and others... Read More →
I've been fortunate to work for a distributed team for the past 3 years. But for developers or teams who are considering this option, what does this actually involve? How can you maximise your chances of success? How can you actually be productive and happy no matter where you are?
And for companies who want to understand more about this sort of work, what are the tradeoffs?
In this talk I'll cover many topics which are near and dear to my heart, which are:
- Working From Home - how to be happy and productive
- Supporting Remote Work - tools, advice and guidance for making your workplace more flexible
- Distributed Teams - how teams scattered across different timezones can function and be productive
