Public Speaking

Hi! I'm Alan! And, this is who I am...

Passionate software engineer. (I ❤️ Ruby!)
Empathetic leader (@ Cisco Meraki). 
Fallible human. 
Storyteller. International speaker.
Environmentalist. Feminist. Ally. 
Swell photographer. Rusty drummer.
Loving twins dad and husband.
Man of several hats.
Goofball.

I'm also an experienced public speaker, willing and able to deliver presentations in public or private, to live or virtual audiences. I'm comfortable talking about most of the stuff above, but especially the following topics:

• Software development and testing (especially in Ruby)
• Leadership (especially vulnerability, trust, and psychological safety)
• Accepting your fallible self, moving past fear, and finding your why

Publicly available content

• Maintainable (podcast) with Robby Russel (host)
• The Ruby on Rails Podcast (podcast) with Elise Schaffer (host)
• A Gardener's Reward
• The Secret Ingredient: How to Understand and Resolve Just about Any Flaky Test
• Code and the Coding Coders Who Code It (podcast)
  with Drew Bragg (host) and Fito von Zastrow (co-guest)
• A Brewer's Guide to Filtering out Complexity and Churn
  with Fito von Zastrow
• Inside Out Development

Presentations I've given to private audiences that could be adapted

• Composite Architecture (about modularizing monoliths)
• Empowering Emotional Intelligence (continuation of When Persuasion Fails)
• When Persuasion Fails
• Always Be Planning
• Agile Retrospectives
• The Other Side of Fear

Talks that are under development

• A Not Entirely Made up Story about the Dangers of Coupling Code
• Recalculating: Leaning into the Curves in your Career
• Finding My Why...
• Come in, We're Hiring
• Extracting Services with a Façade

A Gardener's Reward

A very short talk about nourishing your garden and all the flowers in it.

Rocky Mountain Ruby 2024

SF Bay Area Ruby Meetup

RailsConf 2024

• Video with transcript and deck

The Secret Ingredient: How to Understand and Resolve Just about Any Flaky Test

Flaky tests are an inscrutable bane. Hard to understand. Annoying. And, so frustrating! My personal nemesis is Daylight Saving Time. I can’t tell you how many times I’ve tripped over it. Let’s just say I was well into the “shame on me” part of that relationship, until I discovered the secret ingredient that nearly all flaky tests have in common. Turns out they only seem inscrutable. It really is possible to understand and resolve just about any flaky test.

RubyConf 2023

• November, 2023, in San Diego, California, USA
  • Deck

Code and the Coding Coders who Code It (Episode 24)

Another double-guest episode! This time, I'm joined by Alan Ridlehoover and Fito von Zastrow from Cisco Meraki. There's almost too much great content in this episode to provide a proper summary. We discuss everything, from the modularization of massive Rails apps to building a toy framework. Alan and Fito have a ton of experience and are working on some awesome things.
~ Drew Bragg

• Code and the Coding Coders Who Code It (Episode 24) (July, 2023)
  with Drew Bragg (host) and Fito von Zastrow (co-guest)

A Brewer's Guide to Filtering out Complexity and Churn

Mechanical coffee machines are amazing! You drop in a coin, listen for the clink, make a selection, and the machine springs to life, hissing, clicking, and whirring. Then the complex mechanical ballet ends, splashing that glorious, aromatic liquid into the cup. Ah! C’est magnifique!

There’s just one problem. Our customers also want soup! And, our machine is not extensible. So, we have a choice: we can add to the complexity of our machine by jamming in a new dispenser with each new request; or, we can pause to make our machine more extensible before development slows to a halt.

Rocky Mountain Ruby 2024

• Octobder, 2024, in Boulder, Colorado, USA with Fito von Zastrow
  • Deck

Tropical.rb 2024

• April, 2024, in São Paulo, Brazil with Fito von Zastrow
  • Deck

RailsConf 2023

• April, 2023, in Atlanta, Georgia, USA with Fito von Zastrow
  • Video (extended talk recorded on an iPhone without microphones)
  • Extended Deck

RubyConf Mini (2022)

• November, 2022, in Providence, Rhode Island, USA with Fito von Zastrow
  • Video
  • Deck

Inside Out Development

A 5 minute RailsConf lightning talk about how > rails new is the biggest mistake you can make when starting a new project. Rails isn't the problem. The problem is starting with your least valuable code (the framework), rather than your most valuable code (your business logic).

RailsConf 2022

• May, 2022, in Portland, Oregon, USA
  • This was my first conference presentation. I could not see my speaker notes. That caused me to freak out a little bit. But the audience was great. And, I finished the talk just in the nick of time. Plus, the content was pretty good, even if I do say so myself.