NorDevCon 2015 Edition

JON SKEET

NORDEVCON SPECIAL EDITION

MEET GRANT HARDY

CONTINUOUS INTEGRATION AND DEPLOYMENT WITH AWS

WTF IS DART

MEET LIQUID 11

ISSUE 08 FEBRUARY 2015

INTERVIEWS | SPEAKERS | ARTICLES | REVIEWS | NORDEVCON

S M E L LY R A B B I Tdesign, development, seo, digital,

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From the Editor

The idea of a conference came to me one morning in October 2012. Agile East Anglia had laid the foundations for the tech scene in Norwich, SyncNorwich was hugely successful at the time and we had fantastic speakers. The only problem was that there is only so much that you can cram into an evening session. I wanted to provide the local tech community with more without overdoing it.

A one day Agile conference with a couple of keynote speakers and three 90 minute Agile sessions felt about right. I took the idea to the rest of the SyncNorwich team and explained that I was going to put on a conference and asked if I could use the SyncNorwich name. They agreed and John Fagan kindly agreed to organise a tech track to go alongside the Agile track. We decided on the Open Venue and SyncConf was born.

My original expectations had been for about 40 people. We had 160 attend, at least 40 of whom came from Aviva, who were also one of

the sponsors of the event. It was an incredible experience for me and saw me realise one of my aspirations by having Kevlin Henney open a conference in Norwich. An ACCU style dinner with speakers staying seated and delegates moving around between courses followed and a good time was had by all.

I parted company with the SyncNorwich team the Christmas before SyncConf and the following July I formed Norfolk Developers with Ben Taylor and Dom Davis, both of whom now work at Rainbird. The winter conference was rebranded NorDevCon (Norfolk Developers Conference), expanded to 5 tracks and moved to the Kings Centre. 170 people came along on the 28th February 2014. Although this was only 10 more than the previous year, Aviva had been unable to send people and we made up the numbers with natural growth. NorDevCon also incorporated a free wine reception...

// PAUL GRENYER

THE TEAM

EDITORSCaroline Hargreaves

DESIGNERSShelley Burrows

COVERRobin Silcock

PRINT DESIGNsmellyrabbit

INTERVIEWERSCaroline HargreavesLauren YaxleyHuw SayerShelley Burrows

COLUMNISTSGavin PanellaVictoria HollandJoseph SpearPatrick Powers

PRODUCTION EDITORShelley Burrows

This issue:

Read the full article on page 2

3 From the Editor4 Meet: Liquid115 Meet the community: Grant Hardy7 WTF is Dart8 nor(DEV):con

9 nor(DEV):conSpeakerProfiles26 Our Sponsors32 Smelling the Money33 Speaker Interviews34 Review: Write your own Compiler

“Here we are in 2015 and NorDevCon is back. In these pages you can read about the tech track, the Agile track, the workshop track and the new business track and design sessions.”

// PAUL GRENYERFrom the Editor...continued from page 1

The idea of a conference came to me one morning in October 2012. Agile East Anglia had laid the foundations for the tech scene in Norwich, SyncNorwich was hugely successful at the time and

we had fantastic speakers. The only problem was that there is only so much that you can cram into an evening session. I wanted to provide the local tech community with more without overdoing it.

A one day Agile conference with a couple of keynote speakers and three 90 minute Agile sessions felt about right. I took the idea to the rest of the SyncNorwich team and explained that I was going to put on a conference and asked if I could use the SyncNorwich name. They agreed and John Fagan kindly agreed to organise a tech track to go alongside the Agile track. We decided on the Open Venue and SyncConf was born.

My original expectations had been for about 40 people. We had 160 attend, at least 40 of whom came from Aviva, who were also one of the sponsors of the event. It was an incredible experience for me and saw me realise one of my aspirations by having Kevlin Henney open a conference in Norwich. An ACCU style dinner with speakers staying seated and delegates moving around between courses followed and a good time was had by all.

I parted company with the SyncNorwich team the Christmas before SyncConf and the following July I formed Norfolk Developers with Ben Taylor and Dom Davis, both of whom now work at Rainbird. The winter conference was rebranded NorDevCon (Norfolk Developers Conference), expanded to 5 tracks and moved to the Kings Centre. 170 people came along on the 28th February 2014. Although this was only 10 more than the previous year, Aviva had been unable to send people and we made up the numbers with

natural growth. NorDevCon also incorporated a free wine reception, the same conference dinner and a pre-conference event and dinner the night before. It started to feel to me that it was getting closer to the real deal.

Here we are in 2015 and NorDevCon is back. In these pages you can read about the tech track, the Agile track, the workshop track and the new business track and design sessions. The business track is intended to both grow the conference in terms of attendance and to get developers and business types mixing in the same place. Who knows what could happen? The pre-conference event and dinner is back as well as the wine reception and main conference dinner.

The conference is a much larger operation now and there are so many people and organisations I couldn’t do it without. If your name is not included it doesn’t mean your contribution is not appreciated, it just means I’ve been rubbish. My sincere thanks go out to Caroline Hargreaves, Vickie Allen, Shelley Burrows, Lauren Yaxely, Emily Crittenden, Lauren Gwynn, Charlie Vince, Robin Silcock, Plain Speaking PR, James Duez, Sean Clark, Lynn and all the team at the Kings Centre. Of course you can’t have a conference without speakers, sponsors and delegates and my thanks go out to all of you as well.

ThisisthefirstNorfolktechJournalthatyoucould hold in your hand since NorDevCon 2014. InfactthisisthefirstNorfolkTechJournalthathas been compiled since April 2014. Not long after the 2014 conference the Norfolk Tech Journal reached the point where it was no longer financiallyviabletocontinue.Infactithadquitea bit of debt, so I stripped the debt and sold the operation to Sean Clark for £1. It has continued since then as a website only. Needless to say I am very pleased and excited that we have been able to resurrect it in its original form for NorDevCon 2015. Hopefully this is something we will be able to do every year. Let’s see.

ISSUE 08 February 2015

3

Liquid11 have gone from strength to strength, growing from a handful of founding members in a sharedofficeinLowestoftofferingasingleproduct-SwitchboardFREE, to a successful team of 30 people spreadacrossLowestoftandNorwichandnowofferawhole portfolio of services to call centres and SME’s, servicing over 45,000 businesses and homeworkers across the UK.

Building on the initial success of SwitchboardFREE, Liquid11soondiversifiedintootherserviceslargelyfocused around the call centre industry such as “Advanced Mobile Data Cleaning”, which enables call centres to check whether a mobile number is switched on and which network it belongs to before calling it. Liquid11’s Sally Harding explains “Over the years the company has grown steadily, keeping the idea of stayingdiversifiedsothatwecansustainwhatwecalla “side swipe” through regulation or whatever else may come along.”

Sallyreveals“OurofficesinOultonBroadhaveservedus well but it’s now time to expand again, this time into Norwich, right next to the train station with great links to Cambridge and London. This time we have renovated the building into multiple self-contained officessothatothertechnicalstart-upscanbenefitfrom all the lessons we have learnt over the years when it comes to infrastructure. Tenants all have space within a dedicated, air conditioned and secure co-loroom,theyallhavededicatedfibrebandwidthand they all have shared communal meeting spaces (kitchen, meeting room etc.) so that they can get to knowandbounceideasoffotherlikemindedtechnicalcompanies,we’vecalledournewtechnicalofficespace “New Patrick’s Yard”.

Discussing R&D Sally explains “keeping an eye on “the next thing” is very important however as with any SME it’s important to get the right balance of resources between R&D and taking advantage of opportunities right now. In my opinion the minimum level of R&D is one that allows you to see what’s coming up and provides enough new ideas for new projects for the following 12 to 18 months; at present we probably spend around 15% to 20% of our time on R&D.”

Delving further into the land of Liquid11 Sally explains “Our platforms are primarily Microsoft based, using SQL databases with windows servers running our

applications and are all written in-house using the latest .NET framework. Our team is currently made upofaround15%technicalstaffand85%otherstaffincludingsales,marketing,telemarketingandadministration.”

Moving from the past and present, we asked Sally what she feels the future holds for technology in their sector, “Convergence between voice and data has been and still is the biggest thing happening in the telecoms sector, the pace of which is faster now than ever. This convergence brings with it opportunities to add value to traditional voice services. Nowadays it’s much easier to do so much more than simply connect a phone call, chat and hang-up. You can integrate video, you can interact with the call (e.g. view full socialnetworkprofileofthepersoncallingyouinreal-time as you chat) and even have a video chat directly through your website with your customer. It’s also enabled a boom in OTT (Over The Top) providers offeringexcitingandinnovativeservicesoverexistingdata networks (WhatsApp, SnapChat, FaceTime etc.)”

We also asked Sally what her and her colleagues see as the advantages and disadvantages of working in East Anglia, “it’s a great place for technical companies toworkfromfortwomainreasons,firstlyinfrastructurecost is a fraction of what you’d pay in say London’s Silicon Roundabout although with good transport connections to London you’re not that far away and secondly there’s a number of technical “hubs” including Cambridge and Norwich (thanks in part to their universities) providing a rich mix of skilled and able technical and entrepreneurial people resulting in lots of exciting ideas and start-ups.”

She adds “Connectivity in East Anglia, although improved, is still an issue. Technology based companies require bandwidth and lots of it! The cost of getting this installed is often prohibitively expensive and with long term contracts. As a start-up we struggled with bandwidth for a couple of years trying to make do with initially a broadband connection, then multiple bonded connections until we eventually bitthebullettohaveadedicatedfibreconnectioninstalledandyouwouldn’tbelievethepositiveeffecthaving a fast and more importantly reliable connection to the internet has to a business which is why we’re providing this as standard in our new shared technical offices.”

Meet Liquid11

http://www.liquid11.co.uk

// interview by Lauren Yaxley, LY Copywriting

4

Meet the Community:Grant Hardy

Who do you work for?The Liquid11 Group

What do you do there?I’m MD, but I get involved in all sorts of activities and projects around the business

What experience, qualifications etc were important in getting the job?I founded the company 10 years ago. I wasn’t aboutformalqualificationsbutreallyallaboutperseverance, especially in the early days and innovations. Looking for products that companiesreallycouldfinduseful.

What do you like most about the job?The variety of things we are involved in and working with a really diverse group of talented people

What’s the most challenging thing you’ve had to do (eg complex coding; impossible deadline)?Marketing a product on-line is tough. There is so much ‘noise’ out there and so many productsandserviceonoffernottomentionsomanydifferentmarketingchannelsthatneed

tobeaddressed.It’sincreasinglydifficulttobenoticed.

How do you keep up to date with what’s new?We are always looking at what’s new, we also listen to our customers really carefully. We want tobeabletoservethemwellandoffervalueformoney, not just perceived value. To be able to do thiswehavetobeflexibleandadaptable.

If you could go back and do it again, would you still chose the same career path?Without question. Delivery of technical products is seriously hard, but very rewarding and stimulating. No other market is as fast paced or as interesting. No regrets here!

What is your platform of choice?Our Team programmes predominantly in .NET but we are involved in most platforms

What is the best ever platform?You would have to ask our Technical team and I’msuretheymightallgiveyouslightlydifferentanswers.


5

@grantvhardy

When you’re fixing a production problem, who goes on your iPod?LOL I’m not allowed to listen to Music, I’m on andoffthephonetoomuchtobeabletolistentomusicintheoffice.I’mmotivatedbyJayZ’s99problems!

What do your family think of what you do?I’m not entirely sure they understand what I do, if anyone asked them, they would tell them that dad’s in Telecoms. It’s a safe answer

How long have you been in technology?I started in mobile tech around 14 years ago.

Do you have any personal pet projects you’d like to tell us about?We had a tough start 10 years ago and found gettingtherightofficestoworkinarealproblem.WejustmadeasignificantinvestmentinNorwichtobeabletoofferpurposebuiltofficesinNorwich to technical companies and start-ups. It’s called New Patricks Yard. I really hope we can take some of the stress out for technical companies and start-ups over the next few years and help to make Norwich as an epicentre for technical inspiration and commerce.

How do you see your part of the industry changing in the next 5 or 10 years?We want to build on our foundation and continue toofferrealvaluetoourcustomersandwearelooking to be involved in new projects and meet some clever and committed people that perhaps we can work with on some exciting projects in the future.

PS/Xbox/PC/other?Sorry no games! Far too old and slow…. My son does like to show me up by killing me with his hand behind his back on his Xbox on COD He’s 11 years old.…..deep joy!

Favourite computer game?Being really old it was defender on the BBC. Are any of your readers old enough to have played that?

Are you in Norfolk by accident or design?Born and Bred. A Bungay boy.

What’s good/challenging about operating in Norfolk?It’sagreatplacetolive,Norwichreallyisafinecity! We are out of it a little but I think the quality of life might be worth it!

We want to build on our foundation and continue toofferrealvaluetoourcustomers...“

6

Internally, Google is reputed to use Java and C++ almost exclusively, with a little Python, but they’ve been developing the Go and Dart languages in the last few years. Go is interesting and revolutionary like celery is spicy, yet is burning brightly in the tech communitywithlotsofhighprofileadopters.Dart,whilst not revolutionary either, does do useful and novel things, and I think it deserves a little more attention than it gets.

Douglas Crockford’s book, Javascript: The Good Parts, is slim yet boasts two enlightening antiappendices — Awful Parts and Bad Parts — and the rest of the book is not massively compelling either. However, JavaScript does have two good parts: firstclassfunctions,andubiquity.

Node.js extends this ubiquity to the serverside, but ultimately you’re still writing JavaScript - well, ECMAScript 5, which brings all too familiar problems with it.

Now, some people love JavaScript, and I don’t mean to knock them. The development experience can be so quick to iterate that it feels massively productive, and browser competition has produced several good implementations. Those who immerse themselves in JavaScript can do wondrous things, but it can be a very potholed road for those of us who don’t do it full time.

I’ve personally found that building larger applications is hard work with JavaScript, and I’m not alone. Asanapplicationgrowsyoucanfindyourselfgetting uncomfortably intimate with the libraries and frameworks you’re using. Boilerplate and conventions can become the dominant forces in keeping the teetering stack up in the air, and the pleasures of programmingslowlyfileoutstageleft.

This is where Dart makes sense. It rides the ubiquity of JavaScript by compiling to JavaScript, and provides the convenience of Node.js by being available both clientside and serverside.

However, it bolts this onto a much cleaner language, with a modest but wellstructured standard library. The language itself has a greater range of data types thanJavaScript,functionsare(still)firstclassobjects,exception handling is richer, there are conveniences liketypedefs,reflection,andalibrary/modulesystem,language support for asynchronous IO, and even generics.

The standard set of tools from dartlang.org includes adecentIDE,profileranddebugger,documentationgenerator, and Dartium, which is a version of Chromium with native Dart support. This will eventually make it into stable Chrome builds, but it’s good for development right now. Production deployment via compilation to JavaScript is still the way to go on the client, but on the server you can run your code in the Dart VM.

Dart is thoughtfully constructed and well executed. There are the tools you need as a developer, including a unit test library, and commandline access to the compiler, static analyser, package manager, and others, meaning you’re not tied to Dart’s IDE either. It interoperates with JavaScript on the client, there are ports of Polymer and AngularJS to get started with, or you can interact with JavaScript directly via the dart:js library from the standard library, and code packages can be used for deployment and sharing.

If it sounds as if Dart is a mature and well designed languagethatfitsnicelyintothenode.jsniche,onlywithout legacy baggage... that’s because it is.

WTF is Dart?

Boilerplate and conventions can become the dominant forces in keeping the teetering stack up in the air, and the pleasures ofprogrammingslowlyfileoutstage left.

“ ARTICLEGAVIN PANELLA@ALLENAP

PHOTO: Graham Binns


7

Naked Element Ltd. is proud to present NorDevCon, the Norfolk Developers Agile and tech conference in the heart of Norfolk.

This year’s NorDevCon will take place on Friday 27th February 2015 at the Kings Centre in Norwich.

The winter conference is now in it’s third year and it’s evolving. We’re continuing with the hugely successful Agile and tech sessions plus adding sessions for the wider business community as well as some new design sessions.

The VenueThe King’s Centre was opened in 2003 and is owned and operated by King’s Community Church. It is staffedbymembersofthechurchandsupportedbymany volunteers.

At King’s our heart is to serve people; whether through hosting conference clients like yourselves or helping peopleinneed.Thisiswhy100%ofournetprofitfromourconferencecentreandcoffeeshopgoestowards empowering people to walk free from poverty.

The King’s Centre is a high quality conference venue inthecentreofNorwichwith14differentroomstosuitindividualrequirements.Thecentreoffersconferencerooms, meeting rooms, breakout rooms and a 650

seater auditorium.

The Conference DinnerAt the conference dinner you’ll have the chance to sit down and dine with all your favourite speakers in turn and pick the minds of those that are most relevant to you and your business. Places must be booked in advance and, like the drinks reception, invitations extend to those unable to attend the full conference as they also provide invaluable stand-alone networking opportunities.

The Kurasie Wine ReceptionMake the most of your time at NorDevCon and join us for a wine reception, also at The King’s Centre, generously sponsored by Kurasie. Discuss what you’ve learnt, raise any questions or introduce yourself to other delegates and share insights.

If you’re unable to attend the conference then you’re still very welcome to attend the drinks reception and mingle with conference delegates, speakers, organisers, Norfolk’s tech community and beyond.

Friday, 27th Feb 2015 King’s Centre, Norwich http://www.nordevcon.com

8

// speaker profiles

Opening Keynote

Few areas of business seem to provoke as much passion as technology. Many technologists seem to be perfectly happy taking their vacation time on a busman’s holiday of conferences and community events. Millions of hours of “spare” time are poured into open source projects, lovingly crafted and then used gratefully by industry. And then there are the arguments of course… to the outside world, the idea of arguing whether a brace should go at the end of one line or the start of another must seem incredible, let alone all the language, framework and operating system debates.

So in this world where passion certainly exists, how canwemakeitworkforus?Notcynicallyorselfishly,but for the betterment of all. How can we align our natural passions with our day to day work, without losing any chance of work-life balance? How can we inspire passion in others, and know when to step back, appreciating and learning from them? Where can too much passion become a problem?

Passion in technology can take many forms, many of them symbiotic. Find your passion; nurture and enjoy it. Help those around you to discover theirs, and we can inspire each other, making remarkable technological leaps while having a blast.

C# 6 – the future is (nearly) here!C# 6 is nearly upon us, and after doing the feature hokey-cokey for a little while, it’s all looking pretty stable. It’s a pretty special release, as along with the language changes themselves, there’s a whole new compiler to use – and poke at. The Roslyn compiler allows ordinary (at least, enthusiastic and persistent) developers to build their own warnings and refactorings, amongst other things.

In this talk, I’ll demonstrate all the new features, show how they’ve already made the Noda Time code base cleaner, and then take a look at how I’ve been using Roslyn to check my code more thoroughly… maybe it’ll give you some ideas about concepts you want to be able to express and check within your code, too.

About JonJon Skeet is a Java developer for Google in London, but he plays with C# (somewhat obsessively) in his free time. He loves writing and talking about C#, and the third edition of ‘C# in Depth’ was published in September 2013. Writing less formally, Jon spends alotoftimeonStackOverflow…where‘alot’isanunderstatement. Give him a puzzle about how C# behaves which gets him reaching for the language specification,andJonisahappybunny.JonlivesinReading with his wife and three children.

Jon Skeet

@jonskeet

9

Michael Porter said: “Organisations have two choices. You areeitherthecheapestoryouaredifferent.”

If we accept that only one organisation can be the cheapest, theneveryoneelsehastobedifferent.Yes?

Butsurelythereisnothing‘different’aboutaccountants?Is there really an opportunity in this historically staid, and stereotypicallydull,industryforfirmstobeunusual;totakeadifferentapproach?

FarnellClarkeisafirmofcharteredaccountantsandbusinessadvisorsthatdeliversitsdifferencethroughtheuseof technology.

In this sponsors presentation Will Farnell, the founder and managing director of Farnell Clarke, will discuss the evolution of technology in the accountancy profession and explore how technology providers are the single most important element of change in this, and almost every other, marketplace.

About Will FarnellFrom band management and record shops to public sector and a degree in business management: not the typical route for most chartered accountants. But then Will Farnell is far from a typical accountant.

After a varied career culminating in four years at PWC, Will Farnell launched Farnell Clarke in May 2007. His aim was alwaystocreateadifferentkindofaccountancyfirm.

Almost eight years on, Will has taken Farnell Clarke from a home-based business with 15 clients to a practice with officesinNorwichandLowestoft;employing21peopleandworking with around 700 clients.

Will is a passionate innovator and Farnell Clarke’s success is in no small part due to the way he has embraced cutting edge technology in order to make his clients’ lives simpler and keep accountancy charges down.

In 2009, before most of the large accounting software providers had even launched a cloud-based solution, Farnell ClarkewasoneofthefirstaccountancypracticesintheUK to fully adopt the cloud. 75% of Farnell Clarke clients now use the cloud and this approach has seen Farnell Clarke deliver an average 38% year on year growth. Will regularly presents to industry peers to encourage and drive a technological change in what is seen as a very stagnant and reactive industry.

Harry Harrold

@harryharrold@rupertredington

About RupertRupert ran away from the theatre to become a web developer at the turn of the century. Since then he’s been making mistakes at Norwich’s Neontribe as fast as he can; he learns from a reasonable percentage of them. Recently he’s been using Javascript to help teenagers talk to doctors, Americans to buy airline ticketsandeverybodytofindtheirwaytotheloo.

About HarryHarry remembers the last dot-com boom, and left the US technology company who bought his start-up out when they asked him to move to Texas. After a break, he started learning again on joining Neontribe in 2007 and is much happier for it. He believes in empathy as a key skill for developers and designers, and in the importance of documentation done last.

Closing Keynote

Harry and Rupert present a survey of the cults, sects and heresies they’ve encountered while working with peo-ple “doing agile”, culminating in their formulation of a new “ad-hoc” manifesto. Doctrinal purists are invited to be appalled.

Rupert Redington

Elite Sponsor

Farnell Clarke

10

11

// tech trackmain auditorium

Ruth John

@rumyra

Web vs Native: Where are we now? Ruth talks to us about the browser, it’s emerging technologies and how much mobile technology has changed the direction of the web. She asks the hard question of Web vs Native, where the arguments lie for and against in the current climate and which one is more suitable to your projects. You’ll start the daywithanenlightenedinsightintohowinfluentialmobile really is.

About RuthRuth works for The Lab at O2 (Telefonica). Where with over ten years in the industry she heads up UXing, designingandfrontendcoding.Youcanoftenfindher chatting about new mobile & web development techniques and getting excited about building apps.

Understanding Cloud, Big Data, Mobile and Security – do they play nicely together?The IT industry is undergoing the biggest change since commodity distributed computing almost killed thecentralisedmodeloflargesystems.Definitionsand labels describing this future state of computing change almost monthly, but the IT industry is largely inagreementthatCloud,BigData/Analytics,Mobileand Security are the key themes that are driving this change.

In this session, hear about the challenges companies large and small are facing with this paradigm shift, how they can take their business forward with the off-premisesmodel,andhowallfourthemescanwork together to achieve business value.

About ColinColin Mower is a software architect at IBM, specialis-ing in Enterprise systems, with many of his 17 years in IT working with or on IBM Mainframes. He has also spent many years designing and architecting solutionsacrossWindows,UnixandAS/400s.Heisachartered member of the BCS, and has had speaking roles in Large System working group conferences, Universities and at Norfolk Developers. In his spare time he is trying to get his 9 year old son interested in programming on his RPi, BBC Model B and Amstrad CPC 464!

Colin Mower

@colinmower

10:45 11:30

David Farley

@davefarley77

Kevlin Henney

@kevlinhenney

The Rationale for Continuous Delivery (or What does ‘Good’ look like?)Many people working in software development spend their careers working without seeing what good looks like.Ourhistoryislitteredwithinefficientprocessescreating poor quality output, too late to capitalise on the expected business value. How have we got to this state? How do we get past it? What does good really look like?.

About DavidDave Farley is co-author of the Jolt award winning book Continuous Delivery. He has been having fun with computers for over 30 years. Over that period he has worked on most types of software. He has a wide range of experience leading the development of complex software in teams, large and small. Dave was an early adopter of agile development techniques, employing iterative development, continuousintegrationandsignificantlevelsofautomated testing on commercial projects from the early 1990s. More recently Dave has worked in thefieldoflowlatencycomputingdevelopinghighperformancesoftwareforthefinanceindustry.

Seven Ineffective Coding Habits of Many ProgrammersHabits help you manage the complexity of code. You apply existing skill and knowledge automatically to the detail while focusing on the bigger picture. But because you acquire habits largely by imitation, and rarely question them, how do you know your habits areeffective?Manyofthehabitsthatprogrammershave for naming, formatting, commenting and unit testing do not stand up as rational and practical on closer inspection.

This talk examines seven coding habits that are not aseffectiveasprogrammersbelieve,andsuggestsalternatives.

About KevlinKevlin is an independent consultant and trainer based in the UK. His development interests are in patterns, programming, practice and process. He has been a columnist for various magazines and web sites, including Better Software, The Register Application DevelopmentAdvisor,JavaReportandtheC/C++Users Journal. Kevlin is co-author of A Pattern Language for Distributed Computing and On Patterns and Pattern Languages, two volumes in the Pattern-Oriented Software Architecture series. He is also editor of the 97 Things Every Programmer Should Know book.

15:15 16:00

13

How to get the best from developers when you haven’t got a clue.“If only I could code then…” went through my mind so many times since founding Liftshare.com. But sadly my brain just fuzzes over when I see just a couple of lines of code. Like many businesses Liftshare needs ongoing programming to survive and thrive. For people like me with code dyslexia it can be hard to a) findsomeonetohelpb)haveaclueiftheyaredoinga good job and c) to not get carried away by what is

possible instead of focussing on what is necessary.

About AliAli Clabburn,

• Founder Managing Director of liftshare• Social Entrepreneur• Possibilist

Ali has spent the last 16 years dedicated to helping communities to travel more sustainably. In 1998 whilst inhisfinalyearatUniversity,2weeksbeforeGooglewas born, he set up liftshare.com – a clever website whichhelpspeoplefindotherstravellingthesameway as them so they can share their journey.

What started in a university bedsit has grown steadily and now he and his team of 30 run the UK’s national network of over 600 liftshare schemes for communities and businesses. Membership hit 540,000 in 2012. Liftshare currently saves 120,000 car journeys a day.

He is sure that if we make better use of what we have by sharing then we can make huge reductions in the resources we need.

Ali and his team have been awarded the Queen’s Award for Innovation through Technology, The Ashden Award, Business Commitment to the Environment Award , Business in the Community National Award for Excellence, Essence of the Entrepreneur Award and the Young Entrepreneur of the Year Award.

Specialties: Innovative thinking, Social Enterprise & Making things happen.

// business trackconference room 1

Burkhard Kloss

@georgebernhard

Selling a promiseAn exploration of how how investment banks are structured and actually work, and how that impacts howfinancialsoftwareisbuiltinpractice.

About BurkhardSince coming to the UK 24 years ago, Burkhard has been primarily writing software and leading teams inthefrontofficeoffinancialservicesinstitutions,working closely with traders and quantitative analysts in C++, Python and a variety of other languages.

10:45

Ali Clabburn

@aliclabburn

13:30

Neil Garner

@proxama

Reinvigorating the High Street

About NeilNeil founded Proxama in 2005 (then called Glue4 Technologies). The business focused on creating services that link people and brands using consumer technologies. In 2008, the company was rebranded as Proxama with a focus on the applications of mobile, smartcard and NFC technologies. Neil passionately believes in using emerging technologies to create valuable services for people.

Prior to founding Proxama, Neil ran a division of a niche consultancy, Consult Hyperion, where he led the systems implementation teams for a number of ground breaking products including Vodafone’s m-Pesa, MasterCard’s PayPass, Sky and Barclaycard’s SkyCard and American Express Blue card.

Neil has a MEng and DPhil from York University and is a Chartered Engineer. Any precious time at home is split between renovating an old property and enjoying life with his wife and three young children.

Peter White

Connecting code with customersPeter White – as a commissioner of software and application development – will discuss the often extraordinarydifferencebetweendevelopers,both individuals and teams. He’ll speak about his experience of the wide range of commercial attitudes,oftheneedforbalancebetweeneffortand result, why developers must always show deep understanding of the user experience, and timeliness…

About PeterPeter has been commissioning applications since1998,includingthefirstautomaticwebsitegenerator in 2002, online marketing management for Dell in 2003, and OnMyMobile proximity marketing in 2005. He has just launched a major online learning platform, written in Ruby on Rails. He believes good ideas are everywhere, but great execution is rare.

14:15

15:15

How Raspberry Pi (an educational charity) funds itself without rattling a tinThe Raspberry Pi Foundation is a UK charity based in Cambridge. Named for its product, the Raspberry Pi - a single board computer you can use as a desktop replacement or as the brain of your next hardware project, developed primarily for the education of children - available to all for just £25. Like many charities, it has a side which brings money in, and a side which spends money (on its charitable goals) - in this case the Foundation earns money in the form of a royalty from the sale of all Raspberry Pi computers,

the hardware and software of which is designed and maintained by its own engineering team and manufactured by Sony in the UK. The Foundation uses this regular income to fund its charitable goals in education - producing free learning materials, providing free training for teachers, funding external education projects and open source software - as well as further developing its hardware and software stack.

About BenBen’s been doing development and outreach with the Raspberry Pi Foundation’s education team since late 2013. Previously Ben ran a Raspberry Jam, helped with CoderDojo and was involved within various local STEM network activities while working as a developer in Manchester. Now based in Cambridge he develops free educational resources and trains teachers in delivering the new computing curriculum, he travels the world engaging with people in the Raspberry Pi and open source communities and he advocates and contributes to free and open source software.

14

Ben Nuttall

@ben_nuttall

16:00

What is this Agile? – and why should I care? (I’m only the boss around here) Are you sick of your technical people telling you Agile, Agile, Agile?

Sick of them answering your every question with “Agile”?

This presentation could be your antidote.

We’ll explain why every question seems to be answered with “Agile” but pinning “Agile” seems to be impossible. We’ll take a look at what Agile can do for a business and why its important. And we’ll explainwhytheonlyflavourofAgilewhichisrightforyour business is the one you create yourself.

This talk isn’t for techies, its for people who employ and manage techies, who need to get the best from techies, who deliver a product or service which wouldn’t exist without software technology.

About AllanDuring his career Allan Kelly has held just about every job in the software world, from system admin to development manager by way of programmer and product manager. Today he works helping teams adopt and deepen Agile practices, advising companies of development generally and writing far too much. He specialises in working with software product companies and aligning products and processes with company strategy.

He is the author of three books: “Xanpan – team centricAgileSoftwareDevelopment”(https://leanpub.com/xanpan),“BusinessPatternsforSoftwareDevelopers” and “Changing Software Development: Learning to be Agile”; the originator of Retrospective DialogueSheets(http://www.dialoguesheets.com),aregular conference speaker and frequent contributor to journals.

Allan Kelly

@allankellynet

// agile trackconference room 2

Rachel Davies

@rachelcdavies

Building Learning into Team LifeWhen we make time and space for learning within teams,theproductsandserviceswebuildbenefitfrom new ideas and innovative solutions. Team membersalsotendtofindworkmoresatisfyingandenjoyable, which helps company recruitment and staffretention.Manymanagersandcoaches/scrummasters struggle when it comes to practical ways to encourage people to keep learning at work. It can help to build in time for learning, exploration and discoveryintoteam/organizationprocessbuthowcan you get started? Perhaps more challenging, how can you keep learning initiatives going without taking on the admin yourself?

About RachelRachel Davies, Unruly

Rachel Davies is co-author of “Agile Coaching” and has worked in software development since 1987. Sheisinterestedinfindingwaystohelpteamsworkmoreeffectivelytoachievetheirgoalsandspecializesin coaching teams in agile approaches to software development, such as XP and Kanban. Rachel currently works as a agile coach at Unruly in London.

10:4511:30

15

16

Letitia Feraon

@letitia_fearon

This is Agile?How many times have you been told that you will be working on an agile project but when you start this doesn’t seem to be the case? Sometimes all the scrum ceremonies are in place but it just doesn’t feel particularly agile.

In this talk we’ll take a look at what agile is, why you would want to run a project using it and the pros and cons of doing so.

Has agile lost its original meaning and just become a buzz word? Is it no longer possible to solve the problem it was intended to, due to the way people are trying to implement these techniques? If you are currently working on an agile project, we’ll look at what can you can do to improve things or change the way the team is working. I will demonstrate differentwaysofachievingthis.

About LetitiaI’m a Business Analyst based in London. I started out working in the pharmaceutical industry, shadowing scientists, observing both the time spent in the labs and the analysis phase and then working with them to optimise processes,

at times using an IT solution and at others a change in their practice. These improvements always focused on reducing the time required, without impacting the quality of the output. When I helped, for example, with the analysis of an experimentthattookfivedaystocompleteandreducedthetime it took down to a single day, it made me realise how much I liked enabling people to get back doing the part of their job they enjoy the most.

This realisation led me into the world of consultancy where I’ve helped a variety of companies (from start-ups to the more traditional organisations) over a range of industries (including pharmaceuticals, cosmetics, public sector, publishing,constructionandfinancialservices).Eachcompany may have similar issues but there is no single solution that will solve the problem in every case. There needs to be an understanding of the individual team and culture, so we can work together and tailor the approach.

My role as a Business Analyst focuses on helping individuals, teamsandorganisationsworkeffectivelywithAgiletechniques, using Scrum, Lean or Kanban. I don’t see Agile as a change management solution but rather a way to focus on optimising the way the team works together to deliver a solution. I am currently working at Lloyds of London with a teamofBusinessAnalystslookingatthedifferenttechniquesthat can be used.

Lily Dart

@lily_dart

The Ups and Downs of Agile as a Small AgencyLily will be talking about her agency’s experience as a small agile shop working for the public sector. So much best practice advice and good examples of agile in practice are geared towards product teams. When you’re actually working on the front lines with a client who has the drive to do things right, but is still limited by their timescale and budget, how can you make agile work?

About LilyLily is the Head of Service Design for dxw, an agency specialising in public sector digital. Her background is in front end development and user experience design, and she loves using her technical knowledge and design expertise to solve problems.

13:30

15:15

Seb Rose

@sebrose

So long, and thanks for all the testsDo unit tests make life better? Should we develop using test driven development (TDD)? What exactly are our customers paying for?

These questions, and others, will be answered definitivelyinthissession.

Software development is hard. Unit testing and Test Driven Development (TDD) can make it easier, but only if done well – and that takes time. In this session we will cover:

• HOW these practices can help your project,

• WHAT you can do to get better at them, and

• WHY your boss should care.

You’ll learn about project risk and how developer testing can improve the chances of a successful delivery. You’ll see how developer tests don’t just protect against regression, but also act as a primary source of documentation. And we’ll take a few hints from the ancient Egyptians!

You might have heard people say:

• “Tests make it hard to refactor.”

• “The customer doesn’t care how many tests there are.”

• “If we had to work the way the agile gurus tell us, nothing would ever get done.”

If you’ve ever struggled to respond to these challenges, then this session is for you.

A note about the title: In Douglas Adams’ Hitchhiker’s Guide To The Galaxy the dolphins leave planet earth before it gets destroyed, with their last enigmatic message“Solong,andthanksforallthefish”beingmisinterpreted. Is our software giving us the same message? After all, the software would still perform the same function without the tests, wouldn’t it?

Lies, damn lies and estimatesAre estimates an essential part of project planning and delivery or a waste of everybody’s time? As is so often the case the answer is neither and both. In this session we discover that there is more than one kind of estimate and examine how they are typically used in an agile context. We look at what some of the great minds have said on the subject, from Steve McConnell to Demarco and Lister. We’ll also consider the need for estimates from the viewpoint of the business people who have to decide whether a project proposal should receive budget. Picking up the ‘No Estimates’ discussion from Twitter, we’ll see if there’s a case to be made for always refusing to provide estimates or whether there are times that some sorts of estimation is valuable.

And we’ll end by considering what Disraeli might have said on the subject.

I may not change your mind, but I intend to widen your perspective.

About SebConsultant, 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 helpingteamsadoptandrefinetheirAgilepractices,with a particular focus on automated testing.

Regular speaker at conferences and occasional contributor to software journals. Contributing author to “97 Things Every Programmer Should Know” (O’Reilly). Currently writing The Cucumber-JVM Book for Pragmatic Programmers.


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14:45 16:00

18

What do you hope to gain from nor(DEV):con 2015?Norfolkisrapidlygrowingasasignificantandimportanttechand developer hub. The university’s focus, the academies, and the unquestionable talent in the area is attracting more and more creative minds. It is clear to anyone who looks that cities like Norwich, (and particularly Norwich), are beginning to challenge established tech hubs such as London and Cambridgeandarerapidlybecomingofequalsignificance.Wehope that by being an established technology business and supporting this community we can be a part of an even more creative and diverse environment of developer communities and startup businesses. And, of course, we are looking forward to meeting the brains and businesses that are the community here!

Why do you think nor(DEV):con offers such a unique opportunity for delegates and speakers alike and what are you most looking forward to?

As the community grows and the number of creative and busi-nesspeoplegrowwithit,thebenefitofbeingabletomeetandshare knowledge and experiences grows with it. Nor(DEV):con offersexactlythat–aninsightintothedevelopmentandcre-ation of businesses and technologies where participants can shareknowledge,exchangeideasandpotentiallyfindbusinesspartners. Being a 3 year old Norwich based business with a data centre that takes both apprentices from the local area and employssomeexcellenttechnicalstafflocally,wearekeentoengage with the local tech and development community and to support them. We believe in partnerships and we believe stronglyinNorwichandEastAngliaasaregion.Wearefirmlycommitted to doing what we can to support the tech and de-velopment community and are looking forward to meeting new people and getting a deeper insight into the exciting business and technical developments that are taking place right now. We anticipate learning a lot from both the speakers and the delegates.

Jacob Barreth

MigSolv

If you were to draw up a list of innovative and fast-moving professions, the chances are that accountancy wouldn’t be in your top ten. The stereotypical accountant is a boring number-cruncher and most practices are likely to be full of grey suits and mountains of paperwork. The speed, or lack of it, with which the UK accountancy profession has adopted cloud computing unfortunately reinforces this impression of an industry which is slow to embrace new technology and new ways of working.

Luckily, there are accountants in the UK who don’t fitthisstereotypeandarestreamliningtheirservicesthanks to innovative accounting technology. Will Farnell, of Norwich based accountants and business advisers Farnell Clarke, explains.

According to IRIS, a leading accounting technology company, there are around 30,000 accountancy practices (including sole traders) in the UK. Just think how many businesses they are supporting and influencing.ButresearchpublishedbyPracticeWebin 2013 suggests that more than a third (35%) of thesefirmsarenotusinganonlineaccountingsystem and have no plans to implement one. Quite a shocking statistic when you think how critical online connectivity is for the vast majority of UK businesses. To be honest, I’m not totally surprised by the PracticeWebdata.WhenFarnellClarkefirstinvestigated cloud computing in 2009 none of the big names in accounting software had even thought about a cloud-based solution: they had such a stronghold over the industry perhaps they didn’t need to. That’s how we came to partner with KashFlow.

Havinglauncheditsfirstsoftwarein2005KashFlowhas strived to stay ahead of the curve in the cloud accounting sector. This has included the development of a powerful API that allows users to integrate other business applications with the software for a streamlined and intuitive accounting and bookkeeping process. We like KashFlow because at the heart of the clever technology is a continued commitment to providing the best user experience for both business clients and accountant partners.

The most recent technological step forward at KashFlow is the introduction of intelligent bank reconciliation within the application. Using third party supported bank feed technology to guide the process, the feature uses auto-matching rules that pre-determine which transactions (imported using bank feeds) are matched to records within KashFlow.

For our clients, this cuts down the time previously spent manually matching transactions, while for usitimprovestheaccuracyofourclients’financialdata. Ultimately, the time we save on manual bank reconciliations is time we can spend helping our clients to make plans and grow their businesses.

Asafirmweareconstantlylookingforwaystosimplify accountancy and business compliance for our clients. Our aim is to help them succeed and we don’t believe that cumbersome, out of date and expensive processes are necessary. We want to encourage our clients to talk to us: to invite us into their businesses so we can add real value and be critical friends. We’d far rather spend our time helping our clients to capitalise on opportunities and tackle challenges, rather than spending hours on reams of accountancy admin that can be dealt with in a far simpler way.

Receipt Bank is another technology company thatwe’vepartneredwithinordertobenefitourclients. The company has developed clever receipt-processing software and a range of associated mobile tools that make book-keeping incredibly easy. Instead of having wallets full of receipts and in-boxes full of invoices, our clients can photograph or email documents to Receipt Bank which then drops the data straight into KashFlow.

We love the fact that Receipt Bank has always prized agility over everything else. In the early days, what Receipt Bank was good at doing was reiterating the technology incredibly quickly in response to clients’ requests.Forexample,oneofthecompany’sfirstaccountant clients fed back that while they loved the productivity gains they achieved through Receipt Bank, it would be substantially more valuable to them to be able to process invoices as well as receipts. Receipt Bank’s development team got to work and had invoice processing live within three weeks. It was this focus on building on the application to ensure marketfitthathasdrivenReceiptBank’ssuccesstodate and our ongoing partnership with them.

Farnell Clarke has grown rapidly over the past seven yearsandthisisdefinitelyduetoourcommitmentto investigating and embracing new technology. We may not fully understand all the ‘science part’ but we know that our relationships with specialist technology providers will be key to our sustainability and profitability.Critically,thetechnologythatwechooseto build into our business will help our clients to build their businesses too.

Farnell Clarke


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farnellclarke.co.uk facebook.com/FarnellClarke @farnellclarke

TAX MADE EASY

Proud sponsors of NorDevCon 2015

WITH TECH

SIMPLE CLOUD ACCOUNTING

and we’re the silver lining...Chartered Certified Accountants and Business Advisors

Continuous InspectionA critically overlooked aspect of Continuous Delivery is the need to maintain the internal quality of our software to enable us to sustain the pace of innovation. Experience teaches us that Continuous Delivery is not sustainable without Clean Code.

Traditional Agile approaches to maintaining code quality, like Pair Programming, have shown themselves to fall short of the level of rigour teams need to apply. While we place great emphasis on automated testing to ensure functional quality, we fall back on ad hoc and highly subjective approaches for non-functional quality, with predictable results.

Just as with functional bugs, code quality “bugs” are best caught early, and for this we fund we need some kind of Continuous Testing approach to raise the alarm as soon after code smells are introduced as possible.

Continuous Inspection is the missing discipline in Continuous Delivery. It is essentially continuous non-functional testing of our code to ensure that we will be able to change it later.

In this tutorial, participants will learn how to implement ContinuousInspectionusingreadilyavailableoff-the-shelftoolslikeCheckstyle,Simian,Emma,Java/NDependandSonar, as well as rigging up our own bespoke code quality testsusingmoreadvancedtechniqueswithreflectionandparser generators like ANTLR.

They will also learn about key Continuous Inspection practicesthatcanbeusedtomoreeffectivelymanagetheprocess and deliver more valuable results, like Non-functional Stories, Clean Code Check-ins, Build Inspections and Rising Tides (a practice that can be applied to incrementally improving the maintainability of legacy code).

About JasonJason has worked with teams at the BBC, City Index, Electronic Arts, Higher Education Statistics Agency, BUPA, BritishStandardsInstitute,ThePostOffice,MerrillLynchHSBC,FreshfieldsBruckhausDeringer,Orange,LloydsTSB,AOL, Reed Business Information and Symbian, any many more.

Jason chairs the Software Craftsmanship conference in the UK, and is a contributor to other conferences including QCon, Software Practice Advancement, XPDay, Agile Finland, JAX London and CITCON Europe.

His web site, parlezuml.com, has been visited by more than a million software professionals since 2003, and his free tutorials on use cases, UML, OO design and Test-driven Development have had more than 500,000 downloads.

Jason Gorman

@jasongorman

// workshop trackboardroom 1

10:45

Dom Davis

@idomdavis

Build Smarter Systems with RainbirdA hands on workshop where you’ll get to grips with the basics of Rainbird and building a knowledge map. No technical expertise beyond basic computer literacy is required for this workshop as it will focus mainly around Rainbird graphical editor andpublishingtoawebsite/wordpress.Foruserswanted to move onto more advanced subjects an understanding of XML would be useful.

Fun and games with DockerIt seems that everyone is talking about Docker recently, but what exactly is Docker and why do we need Linux Containers (LXC)? After all, we’ve already got virtualisation and can spin up an AWS instance in seconds for mere pence. In this talk we’ll look at using Docker to provide homogeneous, vendor agnostic environments, environments on demand – including local development environments, and we’ll investigate some deployment tactics that can be used with containers. All of this will be done from withinDockerinstancesconfiguredandspunupon a laptop during the talk. What could possibly go wrong?

About DomDom Davis is a veteran of The City and a casualty of The Financial Crisis. Not content with bringing the worldtoitskneeshethenwentofftohelpbreaktheinternet before winding up in Norfolk where he is now a technology evangelist for a small startup. Dom is an enthusiastic and impassioned speaker [read: he gabbles] who uses a blend of irreverent sarcasm and flippanthumourtobringcomplextechnicalsubjectsto a broad audience. Whether or not they understand him is up for debate, but he likes to believe they do.

Ian Massingham

@ianmmmm

Continuous Integration and Deployment with AWSJoin this hands on session with Amazon Web Services and learn why the AWS cloud is a good place to continuously integrate and deploy applications developed in a wide variety of programming languages and frameworks. The session will open with a discussion of existing AWS customersthatareusingtheAWScloudforCI/CDand move to a hands on demo where AWS will guide youthroughdeployingaCI/CDtoolandusingthiswith AWS deployment services to implement CD for a sample application.

You will need:• A pre-existing AWS account. If you do not have one, please sign up before this session.

AWS will provide:• AWS credits to enable you to work through buildingyourCI/CDenvironmentatnocosttoyou.

About IanIan Massingham is a Technical Evangelist at Amazon Web Services and has been working with cloud computing technologies since 2008. In his role works he works to increase the awareness of AWS cloud services and works with customers of all sizes, from start-upstolargeenterprises,tohelpthembenefitfrom the adoption of AWS.

Ian has more than 15 years’ experience in the IT industry, covering operations and engineering within hosting and cloud service providers. Most recently, prior to joining AWS, he led a systems engineering team focused on the creation of cloud computing services for a high technology product company across Europe, the Middle East and Africa.

13:30 10:45 15:15

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// design & tech tracktraining room 1

Richard Astbury

@richorama

Anders Fisher

@atleastimtrying

A Tale of Two CodesRichard Astbury and Anders Fisher attempt to create a live coded web app from front to back and back to front using javascript.

Richard Astbury and Anders Fisher will live code a web app fromstarttofinishusingJavaScript.Anderswillcreatetheuser interface and front-end code for the browser, while Richard writes the back end system using Node.js. In this interactive session you will learn tricks, tips and techniques as the duo attempt to build the app live on stage.

About AndersAnders Fisher is an overly enthusiastic developer from nearby Ipswich, he is heavily involved in the developer community organising and speaking at numerous events includinghisownFESuffolk.Hestartedoutworkasafrontend developer and still has a great deal of passion and expertise in that area, he works as a contractor on a variety ofdifferentprojectsincludingfrontandbackendjavascriptdevelopment as well as ruby on rails. Anders is a big fan of live coding as its like pairing with the crowd!

About RichardRichard Astbury helps software businesses around Europe migrate their applications to the cloud. He is a Microsoft MVP for Microsoft Azure, and consultant at two10degrees. Richard is often found developing open source software inC#andNode.js,andlivesinSuffolkwithhiswifeandtwo children. Live pair programming is something new for

John Skinner

Chucking it over the fence: Creative/designer/developer relationships in a device agnostic landscape.It often used to be the case that a creative would mock-up everypageforawebsiteinPhotoshop/Fireworks,workingclosely with the client to ensure that every word was spelt correctly, all images selected and every eventuality seeminglymappedout.Alltoooftenabloatedzipfileofpsds/pngswouldbe‘chuckedoverthefence’toadevteamto turn these into a functioning site. If they were lucky, there might be some hand-over notes!

More often than not, this ‘process’ would lead to problems: design elements that were a pain to implement, or were simplybetterresolvedinadifferentway;misunderstandingsabout functionality and messy user journeys.

Today’s device-agnostic web landscape has rendered such a relationship all the more inadequate in meeting the needs ofourclientsandtheirusers/customers

As web technology becomes increasingly agile, how are the traditionalroleswithinwebdesignaffected?Whoarethe‘designers’ who are the ‘developers’ and what are their new roles? It could well be argued that these terms are no longer sufficient,andthatitistimeforsomenewdefinitions.

About JohnJohn Skinner is a designer who leads projects in both the digital and traditional print worlds. His clients include the University of East Anglia, Animal Planet and organisations of all sizes in both the UK, Europe and Asia. As part of larger teams he has worked on projects for clients such as Deutsche Bank, BNP Paribas and The Economist.

A lover of typography and colour, John considers himself very fortunate to have a ‘job’ that allows him to explore theseatlengthfromtheconfinesofhisofficeshed.

23

Hannah Tometzki

@poppetdesigns

Being a designer can mean many things, so it rarely just involves the act of designing. Whether you are a freelancer, work for an agency or run your own agency there will always be unavoidable tasks that take you away from the core of your job description, as well as issues that seem to actively hinder you. Hannah willtalkabouttakingajobfromstarttofinishanddealing with the many hurdles along the way, such as clients dragging their heels, rekindling your waning enthusiasm, and handling distractions. All in the hope that her experience with these pitfalls will help someone else avoid them.

About HannahThere isn’t really one job title to describe what Hannah does.Officially,sheistheCreativeDirectorandCo-Founder of Tipsy & Tumbler. On any given day though she can be found designing a responsive website or a cross-platform app, writing extensive documentation, meeting with clients, mentoring juniors, developing branding packages, solving myriad problems, juggling budgets and schedules, getting distracted by nail polish, and every so often she can be found on her high horse.

InfoQ is a practitioner-driven global community serving the information needs of development managers, technical team leads, software architects, and project managers.

Every day we create and share content in 5 different languages by developers for developers.

With a With a readership base of over 1,000,000 unique visitors per month reading content from 100 locally-based editors across the globe, we continue to build localized communities.

Michele Ide-Smith

@micheleidesmith

Rapid Product Design in the WildHow do you know you’re developing the right product? In this in-depth case study Michele will share how she used Lean UX methods -such as rapid prototyping – to inform product design in the wild, at a trade show.

In August 2012 the Redgate Oracle team attended Kscope, a conference for Oracle developers. They turned their trade show stand into a live lab and took Agiledevelopmentprocessesoutoftheofficeandinfront of customers. Over 3 days they conducted 25 customer interviews, using a paper prototype to get feedback on designs. By the end of the conference theyhaddevelopedaninteractiveHTML/CSSprototype, which potential customers could evaluate. The team went through several rapid learning cycles to discover which customer problems to solve, how to solve them and to validate the market need for the product.

Michelewillcoverthebenefitsandpitfallsofdoinglive design and development in front of potential customers and competitors. Currently working at the University of Cambridge, Michele will also provide insights into the challenges she now faces using Lean UX techniques within a centuries-old institution.

Anyone directly involved in product design, development and marketing would get value from attending.

About MicheleMichele is a UX designer who loves solving complex problems: from re-designing government and educational services, to creating productivity tools for software teams. She is a Lean UX advocate and likes to work in highly collaborative teams. Michele is currently leading a design team at the University of Cambridge.

Jan Machacek

Distributed reactive systemsJan will show the motivation and architecture of reactiveCQRS/ESclusteredapplications.Thetalk will include a live demo using Scala and Akka demonstrating the crucial concepts, and showing a real application distributed over a cluster, including cluster sharding, rebalancing and recovery.

You do not need to be experts in the Scala language or the Akka toolkit, simply come to the talk to learn about the theoretical background and practical implementation of large-scale reactive systems.

About JanJan Machacek is a passionate technologist with hands-on experience with the practical aspects of software delivery (architecture, quality, CI, CD); the project management approaches (applying the principles of agile project management); mentoring and motivating the engineering & business teams. He shares his expertise and passion for software as the editor of the Open Source Journal, regularly contributes to open source projects and speaks at conferences in the UK and abroad. Jan is the author of many open source projects (various Typesafe Activators, Reactive Monitor, Akka Patterns, Akka Extras, Scalad, Specs2 Spring and others), books and articles.

@honzam399

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What do you hope to gain from nor(DEV):con 2015?The conference presents a great opportunity for our team to learn, share and be inspired. The agenda for 2015 includes a fantastic mix of topics and speakers. All of the tracks look certain to deliver incisive commentary and new ideas, as well as some small reassurance that we all face the same challenges when it comes to building and using tech. Allies is providing sponsorship this year, partly to contribute towards keeping this valuable event running but also to help invest in the exceptional developer community that we continue to recruit from.

The other reason is less noble – since we’re a tech company providing data validation web services and APIs, it’s a useful wayforustoraiseourprofile. Why do you think nor(DEV):con offers such a unique opportunity for delegates and speakers alike and what are you most looking forward to?It’s got to be the people and the location; it’s rare to see so many developers, architects, testers, UX experts, businesses owners, entrepreneurs and others in-between meeting together in Norfolk on this scale. Alongside meeting some familiar faces and a host of new ones, I’m looking forward to attending the Agile sessions and the suitably intriguing “ad-hoc manifesto” closing keynote too. For me, the day promises a lot and it’s a privilege to be a part of it.

// our sponsors

United Kingdom

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Still doing it like this?

We have an API for that

Dan Cooper

Allies

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What do you hope to gain from nor(DEV):con 2015? There’s a lot of good ideas being discussed. In particular the less technical ones sound of interest to me personally, but my team seem to want to go to it all....I’m looking forward to The Building Learning in Team Life, as the constant need to develop and learn is both rewarding and challenging. The team are interested in This is Agile as although a developer focused topic, it would be interesting to see if it thetechniqueshaveapplicationinthewiderprojectfield.Followed by What is Agile? Building on the previous sessions this one looks like it will give a good grounding in what agile isandhowitcouldbebeneficialtous.

Why do you think nor(DEV):con offers such a unique opportunity for delegates and speakers alike and what are you most looking forward to?Knowledge and inspiration, and a few new contacts would be nice. We were there as delegates last year and thought we’d get more involved.

Onebyte are into anything technical, creative and hell-bent on thinking outside the Norwich castle walls and this does the trick. We know the organisers are dedicated to making the conference world-class in terms of content and ideas. Therefore it’s the only event in East Anglia of its kind.

// Article by Caroline Hargreaves

Warren Pountain

OneByte

Wearing too many hats?Just because you can doesn’t mean it’s the best use of your time.

You get on with developing, we’ll support the IT.

Developer hat

London | Norwich

0203 189 2100 www.onebyte.net

IT Support hat

27


What do you hope to gain from nor(DEV):con 2015? We are delighted to be supporting nor(Dev):con 2015 for the firsttime,we’veknownPaulforyearsandit’sgreattoseehow this event has grown. In February it will be 2 years since we opened Bristow Holland and in that time we have become theestablishedexpertsforSDLCrecruitmentinSuffolkandnowistherighttimeforustoexpandouruniqueofferingintoNorfolk. We are hoping to gain a real insight into the people and businesses that are driving the Norfolk tech scene, catch up with some old acquaintances and hopefully make some new ones, whilst trying to show that not all recruiters are the same, in fact we are just like the rest of the delegates!


Nor(DEV):con brings together the tech community of Norfolk and beyond, supporting the event gives us a great opportunity to demonstrate our commitment to the area in a real and tangible way. In many ways the nor(DEV):con directly reflectsBristowHolland’sbusiness:it’sregionalspecific,it’sspecialist and it’s delivered by people with a passion for their subject matter and whether you are talking about a business or an event, that is a compelling recipe. We are really looking forward to meeting all the delegates and speakers and hearing about all the interesting projects that are underway and what trends we should be looking for in the future.

Andy Bristow

Bristow Holland

I.T. RECRUITMENT SPECIALISTS

NORFOLK | SUFFOLK | ESSEX

CALL: 01473 722944 [email protected]

www.bristowholland.com

C#, Java and Web Development

Projects and Business Analysis

Testing and Infrastructure Support

Permanent and Contract

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What do you hope to gain from nor(DEV):con 2015? “There are so many talented people working together to put Norwich on the map in terms of technology and how we can use this as a catalyst for both business growth and success. To feel like a part of that in some way is really special and the conference presents such a unique proposition for small business owners like myself, as well as the bigger businesses,tofindoutwhat’sgoingoninthetechspherewithout feeling bamboozled by tech speak. I hope to take away some really tangible and achievable pointers and an insight into the industry that can only help drive my business in the right direction”

Why do you think nor(DEV):con offers such a unique opportunity for delegates and speakers alike and what are you most looking forward to?Discussing the networking opportunity the conference presents, Lauren comments “The conference is unique within

the region and an incredible opportunity for local people to meet and mingle with representatives and speakers from some big name brands. Additionally it’s a means of connecting with others within the area who may be able to add merit to my business or help to spread the word furtherafieldtoletpeopleknowwhatvalueIcanaddtotheirbusiness.”

Laurenclosesbysaying,“whilstthisismyfirstNorDevCon,I’ve worked with conference hosts Naked Element and in particular Paul for a while now, and if even a quarter of his passionandcommitmenttowhathedoesrubsoffontotheconference I know it’s going to be a really worthwhile event”.

LY Copywriting, run by the company’s namesake and Managing Director Lauren Yaxley, has built up an impressive portfolio of clients in just 18 months. With a sheer determination to smash any glass ceiling she came across, Lauren has immersed herself in the local business community and is a keen associate sponsor of this year’s NorDevCon.

Lauren Yaxley

LY Copywriting

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What do you hope to gain from nor(DEV):con 2015?

Fugro are a C++ and C# development house who are using the Agile business processes. We are continuously trying to improve our processes and productivity. The session list has many topics of interest to us and as we feeling that learning is the key to improvement within our business, we are keen to jump right in and see what we can take away from the event.

Why do you think nor(DEV):con offers such a unique opportunity for delegates and speakers alike and what are you most looking forward to?Norfolk can be quite insular, so to see an active developer forum culminating in this conference is very refreshing. The opportunity to have such a strong list of speakers presenting just down the road is rare yet most welcome. It also presents developers from within a local community to network with other like-minded people. As a predominantly C# house, the C#6 presentation by Jon Skeet is of particular interest to us and we are really looking forward to what he has to say.

Rob Hayes

Fugro

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What do you hope to gain from nor(DEV):con 2015?We are involved with nor(Dev):con as we believe it’s a fantastic opportunity for the business and tech worlds to get together, learn from each other and, hopefully, develop partnerships which will help to cement Norfolk’s position as a truly innovative and ground-breaking business and tech community.

Technology is now absolutely fundamental to the way we run our business and we cannot hope to thrive and grow if we don’t embrace everythingithastooffertothePRandcommunicationsindustry.Webelieve that our involvement with NorDevCon will give us further insight into emerging technologies that will soon be fundamental to the work we do. The conference also provides us with a unique opportunity to forge links with the specialist tech sector and to identify ways that we can use our skills to help innovative businesses in Norfolk.


Nor(DEV):conisthefirsteventofitskindthathasacknowledgedtheneed to join the technology and the business worlds, demonstrating how imperative advances in technology skills are for the wider business economy. Dedicated business and technology streams with inspirational speakers and interactive sessions will ensure delegateshavecontentspecifictotheirindustrywhileprovidingtheopportunities to see how technology and business can work hand inhand.Wefeeltheconferencewillbethefirstofitskindthatwillhighlight and demonstrate how important technology is for a growing and thriving business economy, further cementing Norfolk as a county of technical excellence.

We are looking forward to Neil Garner’s talk on ‘Reinvigorating the high street’ when he will discuss how emerging technologies can create valuable services for brands and consumers. As a PR and communications business, we are continually adapting the way we engage with people: how they digest their information, how they make purchasing decisions and how they actually make the purchase. It will be interesting to hear more about this ever-changing landscape.

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Smelling the Money“Smell-o-vision” is back on the agenda but this time olfaction is going digital, as Patrick Powers reports.

Regular readers of NTJ who recall the now-infamous Google Nose BETA prank back in April 2013 will also appreciate just how hard innovators must work when actually attempting to make something digital out of olfaction – the sense of smell.

For years, the concept of so-called ‘smell-o-vision’ has been the object of verbal and practical jokes especially in and around the tech sector; it has remained a pipedream for numerous start-ups, including some very clever ones like Sensory Acumen and Scent Sciences. But be advised, the tideisturningonceagain.Smell,itseems,iscomingoffthesilly list and back onto the serious list.

Nesta,theinnovationobservatory,forthefirsttimeisincluding olfaction as one of their top “ten predictions for 2015”. You should expect others to catch on.

Coming ready or notJapanesefirmScentee and Harvard spin-out oPhone are recentexamplesoftwofirmsbettingtheirbusinessesonanew consumer devices that allow users to send a ‘smell-o-message’ to an iPhone add-on peripheral or to an remote device via a mobile app respectively.

They hope the ‘smell-o’ device market will prove lucrative, positioning their gadgets as the next big thing when it comestomonetisingthesenseofsmell.Sodotheirfinancialbackers. There appears to be serious money behind those start-ups but - beware - the path is littered with those who, despite an “awesome idea”, have fallen casualty to a consumer market not-quite-as-ready as their Silicon Valley paymasters imagined.

Acorns and oak treesYet, much closer to home than California, NTJ has spotted a new start-up inspired by tech communities local to East Anglia which has been quietly working away researching the same problem and looking for answers.

Originating as a bootstrapping project, 24-year old Oscar Spear has been collating the expertise of subject area specialists, ranging from leaders within the perfume industry (called “noses”) through to experts in quantum mechanics. His pursuit for solutions is leading him to rethink the digital olfactory problem from the ground up and this has given rise to Olfa Labs London (@OlfaLabs) a start-up he co-founded

in 2014.Oscar Spear said, “I tend to lean more on my background in the sciences to see if conventional wisdom can be done differently.I’vebeentotallyimpressedwiththepassionI’veseen from people at local tech meetups around East Anglia for digital innovation. It really got me thinking about how digitalfitsmanymarketsandwhereitmightapplytotheworld of olfaction.”

What you know and who you knowTech leaders based in Norwich John Fagan, co-founder of SyncNorwich (@johnbfagan) and Paul Grenyer, director at Naked Element (@pjgrenyer), are aware of the venture and providing a helping hand. For example, last November Paul used his business connections to arrange a pass to some sharedofficefacilitiesinLondoninconjunctionwithTechCity.

“Hitching-up at a one of the ‘ClubRooms’ with our TechCity pass is revolutionising the way our start-up is able to work. TheOfficeGroup has London covered as far as we’re concerned.” said Oscar. “The facilities in the West End, the City and in Shoreditch make us proximate to key specialists we need for the sub tasks we’re having to focus on. And the ClubRooms managers have been incredibly helpful. It means we’refreetoconcentrateonbreakthroughs,onbriefingpeople and on being as productive as possible.” he said.

Toinfinityandbeyond “We realise we have a long way to go to achieve a full production version,” said Oscar, “but based on our R&D effortsofar,we’reconfidentourexperimentwillgiveusalab-scale demonstrator in the near future.”

Olfa Labs wants to recreate a palette of scents that human physiological olfactory receptors will be able to recognise, but unlike others we want to do it using 100% digital tech. “Computer gamers, to use just one example, will be very familiar with how improvements in technologies are now able to engage their sense of sight, sound and touch. Advanced computer generated graphics, surround sound and vibrating hand-held controllers, steering wheels or seats have been developed to work together; signals embedded in the code of the game trigger each of these with the aim of delivering an immersive experience during game play. Why not try to append the sense of smell to deepen that experience in a personalised way?”Why not indeed. Watch this space.

Patrick Powers is a freelance writer on business computing and digital change.

#olfaction @OlfaLabs// Photo by Mitchell Joyce, Creative Commons

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http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/03/31/google-nose-april-fools_n_2990114.html

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/03/31/google-nose-april-fools_n_2990114.html

http://www.nesta.org.uk/news/2015-predictions

http://www.nesta.org.uk/news/2015-predictions

https://scentee.com/_device

http://www.onotes.com/

https://twitter.com/olfalabs

https://twitter.com/johnbfagan

https://twitter.com/pjgrenyer

http://www.theofficegroup.co.uk/

https://twitter.com/olfalabs

What are you looking forward to about speaking at NorDevCon 2015?IhavebeenadelegateatNorDevConsinceitfirststarted and I have always found the environment, people and topics covered really helpful and useful, so I am looking forward to being a speaker this time. It’s a great opportunity to talk about some of the things I have learnt and put into practice from hearing about them at the previous conferences. I want to share my experiences on projects with other people in the hope that I can help people avoid some of the pitfalls I have seen and give them some pointers to make delivering projects easier.

What do you hope to gain from NorDevCon 2015?There are a lot of great speakers and there are more tracks available this year, including hands on workshops on a variety of topics. It will be good to see how other people are using Agile, what problems they have seen and how they have managed to overcome them. We have started using more ATDD so it would be good to see how other companies are implementing this, what issues they have hit and how they managed to get their teams on board to try

this approach out on projects. An initial investment of time is required to get people up to speed on it so what are the best ways persuade business users that itisbeneficial?Ienjoyhearingaboutotherpeoplesexperiences and getting to catch up with them during the conference.

Why do you think NorDevCon offers such a unique opportunity for delegates and speakers alike?I have found from the previous NorDevCons that they are smaller, more personal conferences than others I’ve been to. The conference dinner and rotation of diners allows you to meet a lot more people and get talking to them. With most conferences, even if there’s a dinner, it’s just a very small group of people you end up sat with. NorDevCon is a really friendly conference that makes it easy for delegates and speakers to mix. Personally, I’m also looking forward to hearing from the start-up companies and seeing how they are getting on a year down the line. It is great to see the support they get from the local community. The variety of the numerous meet-ups and networking opportunities that have been made available through the tech community in Norwich really is incredible.

Letitia Fearon

Will FarnellWhat are you looking forward to about NorDevCon 2015?We already work with a lot of tech and creative companies, helping them to grow and build profitableandsustainablebusiness.Butwhilstwe

pride ourselves on great working relationships with our clients, I’m conscious that we don’t often see the entire picture. I’m looking forward to gaining a better understanding of what tech businesses and specialists in Norfolk are working on and how we can work with them.

// interview by Caroline Hargreaves

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// speaker interviews

What do you hope to gain from NorDevCon 2015?Sponsorship is new to us as a business, but the opportunity to reach out to hundreds of technical specialists and business innovators really appealed. Being part of the speaker programme gives us a platform to explain the ways in which we utilise technologydifferentlytomanyofourcompetitorsand,importantly,howthisbenefitsourclients.

Accountancy is traditionally a very risk averse profession and when we started using cloud accounting systems around six years ago we were oneofthefirstfirmsintheregiontodoso.Weareconstantly looking at using new ways secure our competitiveadvantageandtoenhancewhatweofferas accountants. We consider ourselves innovators in the way we embrace new technology and processes tofacilitatesmarterandmoreeffectiveworking.

We have been in business for over seven years now, and our interest in new and evolving technology is key to our growth. We’ve seen accounting technology change massively and have always taken a positive

approach to exploring and utilising new tools as they emerge.

Why do you think NorDevCon offers such a unique opportunity for delegates and speakers alike?There are not many occasions where you get to speak to large groups of like-minded people. NorDevCon is a great opportunity to speak to an audience who have a particular interest in the ideas and thoughts being shared.

The fact that this conference is in Norwich is also very appealing as we would usually travel to London for such prestigious and well thought out events. Our experience shows that there is a huge tech and creative community in Norfolk and this event is proof that it’s a great place to do business.The sharing of knowledge and experience amongst the tech communities and their willingness to collaborate is impressive. It’s good to see people pulling together to produce a good and successful conference of this kind.

We are delighted to welcome back Jon Skeet to NorDevCon – and this year he has agreed to be our keynote speaker. We asked him what he was looking forward to at NorDevCon 2015.

“I hope NorDevCon will have a good gender balance, as it did in 2014, because this is still unusual at many other conferences. It really made me want to return and support the event, as I am keen to encourage more women to join the industry. Last year’s conference was great in many ways but the gender balance was the most positive aspect – and a real credit to the Norwich tech community.

“It will also be fun giving the keynote speech – a firstforme.Thechallengewillbetomakeit“nottootechnical” as there will be a range of business people in the audience. This will take me a bit further out of my comfort zone – but that’s always a good thing.”

What do you hope to gain from NorDevCon 2015?“I never know what I’m going to get out of a conference – that’s one of the joys of them. There are always good conversations to have and interesting people to meet, as well as the fun of presenting. The

trick is to keep an open mind because you never know what you might learn.”

Do you think NorDevCon offers delegates and speakers anything special or different?“As well as the positive gender diversity, NorDevCon impressed me in 2014 with its subject range and its atmosphere. London may have the big names but NorDevCon was professional and personal at the same time. I really love the venue too because it’s great to see a church-operated building being used for a technical event.

“As a Methodist preacher, I sometimes feel the Christian world and the tech world are miles apart. Yet people in both worlds often share similar drives – particularly the desire to communicate ideas clearly and passionately without alienating audiences. How businesspeoplecanfindacommonlanguageratherthan talking past each other and build bridges rather thancreatingconflict,issomethingIintendtoexplorein my keynote, I hope you will join me and ask plenty of questions.”

Jon Skeet

// interview by Huw SayerBusiness Writers Ltd @HuwSayer

// interview by Caroline Hargreaves

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“I’m looking forward to hearing Stephen Flower talking about his MadLab youth engagement schemes in Manchester,” says Rupert. “It would be wonderful if we could start something similar in Norwich, so I hope othersfindhisideasstimulatingtoo.Neontribearecertainly keen to support such initiatives – if only by encouraging the team to get involved.”

Harry agrees: “It’s critical for the future of our local tech community that we encourage young people to get into coding and to learn software development disciplines. Norwich organisations such as Laboratory Media(http://www.laboratorymediaeducation.co.uk/)are working on this – and there are plans to set up aYoungRewiredState(https://hl.yrs.io/)hyperlocalgroup. But there is always room for more ideas.”

What do you hope to gain from NorDevCon 2015?“It’s all about the learning,” says Rupert, “part of the fun is not knowing what will spark your imagination untilyouhearit.I’matechnicalperson,soI’lldefinitelywatch Richard Astbury and Anders Fisher live coding a web app but I’ll also step into the business and agile tracksbecauseIfindthemfascinating.Infact,I’mstillabsorbing some of the lessons I learnt last year.”

“Exactly,” says Harry, “NorDevCon is great because you never know what nuggets of wisdom you’ll unearth. It will certainly be worth listening to the talks from Letitia Fearon and Lily Dart about how Agile works (or doesn’t) in the real world. While John Skinner’s talk, on relationships, should be both interesting and challenging.”

Do you think NorDevCon offers delegates and speakers anything special or different?

“Being local makes it special,” says Rupert. “It’s great to see it growing and bringing good speakers to Norwichwhilealsoraisingtheprofileoflocalbusinessleaders and developers. It’s also an excellent chance to catch up with interesting people you will see around the city.”

“Thatcommunityaspectisdefinitelyastrongpoint,”agrees Harry, “because it helps you build relationships in a relaxed way. Although taking part in stimulating discussions and sharing ideas is just the start. What really matters is the follow up – much like good ‘slow-food’ it takes time but it gives business in Norfolk an authenticflavour.”

What do you think is the biggest challenge facing the developer community?“We need to give bright young people a reason to stayinormovetoNorwich–ratherthanrushingofftoLondon,” says Rupert. “The pace of life here is more humane and that can improve productivity because it gives people space to think. Rather than copying other tech clusters, we should nurture a distinctive Norwich ‘school’ of development, conducive to creating great software.” “As part of that Norwich ‘school’, we’d love to be able toofferanapprenticeshipinwebdevelopment,”saysHarry. “Perhaps one that is more agile and uniquely Norwich in style: craft rather than industrial. There doesn’t seem to be a suitable college course near enough to Norwich at the moment but we’ll keep exploring this idea.”

Thank you Rupert and Harry, we look forward to exploring these ideas and more.

Rupert Redington & Harry HarroldWe have 30 excellent speakers at NorDevCon 2015, not least Rupert Redington and Harry Harrold from Neontribe who will present the closing keynote. Their ‘Agile apocrypha and an ad-hoc manifesto’ is sure to be stimulating, perhaps even revolu-tionary. We asked them which sessions had sparked their interest.



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“On one level, having spoken at the two previous Norwich events, I’m simply looking forward to scoring my hat trick! More fundamentally, my talk this year isalsoaprovocativeone:SevenIneffectiveCodingHabits of Many Programmers. As such, I will be interested to see how people respond when I question many basic code-level habits.”

What do you hope to gain from NorDevCon 2015?“My usual conference goals are simple: meet interesting people and learn something useful. Sometimes I learn something new directly from a talk – and it’s always instructive to listen to other speakers. However, more often than not, the real learning takes place in the spaces and conversations between the talks and at the conference dinner.”

Do you think NorDevCon offers delegates and speakers anything special or different?“The thing I like about NorDevCon and other small conferences run by enthusiasts, is that they aren’t trying to compete with the big commercial conferences,sotheyhavearefreshinglydifferentfeelto them. They have less of a conveyor-belt agenda,

which makes them a little more relaxed in attitude. As such, you tend to enjoy more conversations with new people.”

What do you think is the biggest challenge facing the developer community?“One of the biggest challenges is turning uncertainty into workable, sustainable software. This has always been the case and most likely always will be. Code iscodifiedknowledge:codifieddecisionsabouthowsomething should be.

“However, variability is inherent in what we know, what we want, how we do it and how to express it. This means developers risk being trapped between the decisions of the past, the uncertainties of the future and the deadlines of the present. How we avoid those traps is critical to creating successful software – and perhapssomethingworthdiscussinginthoseoff-agenda discussions.”

Thank you Kevlin – we look forward to rising to that challenge.

NorDevCon is delighted to welcome back Kevlin Henney – for his third visit. We must be doing something right. So what is he looking forward to at this year’s event?

Kevlin Henney


MultipleSclerosis(MS)affectsmorethan100,000peopleintheUK.TheMSSocietyis a national registered charity committed to improving treatment and care for people with MS and funds vital research to help beat the disease for good. WespoketoAnitaO’HaraCorporatePartnershipsManagerandpassionatecampaignerforpeopleaffectedbyMSaboutwhat attracted the charity to NorDevCon 2015. Anita explains “this conference presents a fantastic opportunity for us to raise awareness of MS and share with the conference the vital work that MS Society does and why it’s so important. The conferenceattractspeoplefromalloverthecountyandfurtherafieldsoit’sagreatwaytogenerateinterestaboutgettinginvolved with the MS Society to a large group of people.”

The conference is ripe with small to medium sized tech companies, both established and up-and-coming and as Anita points out the technology industry “is an area that is growing rapidly so we’d look to get involved with this industry in particular.”

As well as providing a fantastic fundraising opportunity Anita also reveals that they hope to gain and exchange knowledge from the 2015 conference. “NorDevCon will give us an insight into what’s happening in the tech world and the issues they’re facing, in particular looking at what Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) policies they have in place as there may be ways that we can help them develop them.” “We’ve got branches of the MS Society local to Norwich so there may be an opportunity to get in directly on the ground and link up our volunteers with local companies who have issues in-house” adds Anita. Asadiseasethataffectsthenervoussystem,MSbrings a unique range of disabilities and can have adifferenteffectondifferentpeople.Anitaexplainshow “we’re uniquely placed to help employers with information on accessibility and raise awareness of peopleaffectedbyMSintheworkplace.Researchshows that 70-80% of people with MS will be unemployed within 10 years so we can educate employers and help them to understand and tackle the issue. We can help people stay in work longer so that they’re contributing to the economy longer andeveryonebenefits.”

From speaking with Anita not only is her passion for helping people with MS clear but so is her appreciation of being part of NorDevCon 2015. “We’re a smaller charity and less well known than some of the bigger names out there so any opportunity to spread the word about the MS Society is brilliant and we’re just so grateful to Paul and the NorDevCon team for giving us this opportunity.”

The NorDevCon team approached the MS society after considering a list of worth-while causes, but with MS close to the heart of members of the NorDevCon team, this is a fantastic opportunity for both parties to do well by doing good.

The Multiple Sclerosis Society

// interview by Lauren Yaxley, LY Copywriting

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ForthefirstNorDevmeetupof2015,PhilTrelfordleda 2-hour session on how to write compilers using F#. Although I had no previous experience with F#, I was interested to learn more about the inner workings of compilers,soIbrieflyreadupaboutthelanguagetheday before the event.

F# was developed in 2005 at Microsoft Research and is part of the family of .NET languages. It is a functional programming language and started as a .NET port of OCaml. Functional programming is a paradigm that treats computation as the evaluation of mathematical functions and avoids changing-state and mutable data.

PhilusedtoworkinfinanceinLondon,andalsolikeswriting programming languages for games - he wrote hisfirstlanguagewhenhewasabout14or15yearsold. Phil’s talk had the lofty ambition of teaching attendees enough information to be able to write their own compiler in 24 hours, and covered abstract syntaxtrees,parsing,domainspecificlanguages,interpreters and code generation.

Phil started the session by introducing the 3 main techniques for designing a programming language: Ad hoc - creating a language from scratch (eg PHP, JavaScript and Scala), Copy & Delete - creating a new language based on an existing language, but removing some of the functionality (eg Java, J and Go). For example, Java was based on C and C++ but removed pointers and the goto statement. Copy & Add - creating a new language based on an existing language, but adding new functionality (eg C#, F# and Haskell). For example, Haskell added monads (astructurethatrepresentscomputationsdefinedassequences of steps) and type classes (a type system construct that supports ad hoc polymorphism).

Phil then talked about the Turtle language, based on Logo, which was commonly used in the 1970s to teach children to code. He demonstrated how to write an abstract syntax tree (AST) for Turtle. He created a minimal Logo implementation using FParsec with support for procedures.

Abstract syntax trees are data structures widely used in compilers to represent the structure of program code. An AST is the result of the syntax analysis phase of a compiler and it has a strong impact on

thefinaloutputofthecompiler.Asthelanguagegetsmore complex, more items are added to the AST, whichdefinesthecommandsandthevalididentifiers.In the Turtle program, Phil then loaded in the AST and the interpreter before running the code, which drew geometric shapes on the screen.

Next, Phil showed us how to create a Logo to JavaScript compiler. The aim was to draw a fractal tree on an HTML5 canvas using a recursive function. The compiler took the Logo code and converted it into JavaScript, which was then executed in the browser.

In the second half of the session, Phil demonstrated how to emit code (generate code at runtime). C# compiles to .NET IL (Intermediate Language) code. For example, Phil showed us how to emit program arguments, calls to methods which puts them one by one on the stack, and then emit all the commands in the block.

Towards the end of the evening, Phil showed us his own version of Small Basic, which is another language designed to help children learn to program. Phil joked that it is more advanced than JavaScript because it has integers! It can have literals, variables and goto statements. Phil demonstrated this using a version of the famous FizzBuzz program. C# and Visual Basic don’t have pattern matching, but Phil’s version of Small Basic does.

Phil also talked about how he had written an AST for C# in the past. It needed a large expression list (larger than for Small Basic). He parsed complex code via this compiler which took about 2 hours. Neil Danson (another F# programmer) wrote a C# parser and compiler in 3 weeks even though he had no prior compiler-writing experience.

To wrap up the session, Phil recommended some books for anyone who is interested in learning more about F# and functional programming, including his own title “F# Deep Dives”. Tryfsharp.org is a good website for learning F# from scratch. It lets you edit and run your code in the browser.

In summary, I enjoyed the talk even though I had no previous experience with F#. It was very informative, and I found it interesting to learn more about how compilers and interpreters work.

The Review: Write Your Own Compiler in 24 Hours

REVIEWVICTORIA HOLLAND@JAVADEVVICTORIA

http://www.victoria-holland.info// WITH PHIL TRELFORD

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nakedE L E M E N T

ne www.nakedelement.co.uk@nakedelement

t: 01603 383 458 e: [email protected]

Here at Naked Element we design and build made to measure enterprise software and cross platform mobile apps.

What’s more our entire business has been built upon the quality of the work we produce as well as our collaborative partnerships with clients. This means that our clients not only get what they want, but what they need and what’s truly best for their business.

What does made to measure, enterprise software and cross platform mobile apps really mean?

Made to Measure – everything we design and build is truly bespoke. The market has shown that the one-size-fits-all approach to software development can no longer provide a solution for many of today’s business needs.

Enterprise Software – is the term used to describe purpose-designed business orientated software solutions that are designed to satisfy the needs of a particular company as well as individual users. Our enterprise software can stand alone, or be integrated with your existing software so you don’t have to start from scratch.

Cross Platform – imagine Apple and Android as two different countries with two different languag-es. Most people (developers) from either country will speak the native language, or mother-tongue of that country. Naked Element live (create software) in a third country that has its own language that is understood by both the other countries, halving the effort of working in both countries at once.

Matthew Wells & Paul Grenyer

NorDevCon 2015 Edition

Documents

Transcript of NorDevCon 2015 Edition