I submitted an abstract to speak at Twin Cities Code Camp 15 in October. This event has over 300 people for a single day, free conference at the University of Minnesota. It happens twice a year, once in the spring and once in the fall. I spoke in the spring which was my first time speaking at a conference. It didn’t go as well as I hoped, but I learned a lot about what to do and what not to do.

I’ve applied to speak in the fall and submittied the following abstract:

Title

Practice Makes Perfect: Level up as a developer

Abstract

Malcolm Gladwell popularized the idea that it takes 10,000 hours of deliberate practice to become an expert in his book Outliers. Professional golfers put in hours every day on the driving range and football players watch endless amounts of film. How do software developers practice?

We’ll discuss katas, coding dojo and code retreats as ways to practice without timelines and other job pressure. These are short, repeatable tasks that will help you develop programming ‘muscle memory’. Bring a laptop. In this session, live coding means the attendee and not the presenter!

Bio

Kyle Boon is a Lead Developer for Bloom Health in Minneapolis, MN. He has been developing web applications professionally for 8 years including 2 in groovy. Kyle is passionate about building scalable, maintainable, robust software systems and having fun while doing so. When not programming he obsesses over Ohio State football, golfs poorly, and brews beer.