CascadiaPHP 2024
24 - 26 Oct 2024 at University Place Hotel and Conference Center

Really valuable talk. The tail end turned into a bit of a round-table discussion, which I think is valuable, but also I think could've been better if either intentionally incorporated into the flow of the talk or intentionally side-stepped by expanding the talk with more anecdotes from personal experience. Regardless, great talk that provides solid benefit for tech teams.

Very much enjoyed this talk. The approach he demonstrated already aligns with my own coding tendencies, but the framing as "wishful thinking" driven development was delightful, succinct, and a great on-ramp for getting into TDD.

I always try to make it to Chris' talks when possible as he consistently provides solid, approachable, actionable advice for making projects more reliable and easier to maintain and/or encouragement that the efforts already being invested in are part of what he sees, from a wealth of experience-won wisdom, as the happy path. This talk was no exception.

I'm actually hesitant to review this talk because I am the opposite of an unbiased observer. I was practically vibrating throughout this presentation with the desire to jump up and down shouting "Yes! Yes! Yes! This is what I've been on about for literally YEARS!!!".

I'm so impressed by this speaker. Their knowledge of the subject matter, ability to deliver it persuasively, and the real world positive impacts they've already had in creating systemic changes with the potential to have cascading ripple effects throughout Open Source communities and the commercial interests which utilize our technology and employ our expertise are such a gift.

Historically the value of our community created software and our hard won skills and wisdom are worse than undervalued within for-profit organizations. Too often we are treated as disposable resource nodes, to be maximally extracted from and discarded when we become inconvenient. That's a recipe for traumatized engineers, broken technology, and bankrupted businesses; and it's far from the only or best way to go about creating and maintaining software.

Rain provided a great synopsis of key pillars to a better way of doing things, and although I might have been the choir they were preaching to, I have high hopes that they also hooked some converts. I definitely look forward to learning more from this outstanding human in future.

I am perpetually Oscar the Grouching about AIs these days. Too many folks calling every resource hungry automation toy AI and claiming that it will be smarter than all of us and solve the world's problems has been an exhausting fad in the tech industry.

I didn't attend this talk to troll the speaker, but rather because I enjoy and respect Josh very much. I expected him to pleasantly surprise me with his talk on AI, and wasn't disappointed.

Rather than grandstanding or magical thinking, Josh treated us to the technical basics of an actually useful subset of the currently kitchen-sink category of AI: machine learning. He even used a real world use case that makes sense and could theoretically compensate for the resource cost of utilizing this technique for positive real world benefit through the analysis of the data output of the fleets of sensors that cover solar farm installations.

I would have probably enjoyed a whole additional hour of deep diving that use-case but also understand that was outside the scope of this talk, which probably has a broader audience appeal than my personal preferences would have.

This talk was outstanding!

It just also ran short, which I suspect was due to some technical difficulties resulting in the last minute loss of speaker notes based on accidental eavesdropping from the front row. So, less than perfect rating due to wanting more outstanding content from the time, but almost perfect rating because Kait did such an amazing job adapting and delivering their content from memory.

I really loved the framing of this talk; the distinction between narratives and fairytales and relating the stories we live our lives through to data and our emotional attachment to all of the above was such a succinct explanation of magical thinking and its pervasive tragic impact. That framing is immediately part of my internal vocabulary. I'll try to remember to cite my source ;)

Steve gave a great introduction to Value Objects, making their benefit and implementation easy to understand. I look forward to adding them to my conceptual toolkit!

This was a very fun talk which reminded me that PWA are a thing and sparked my curiosity to dig into them as a potential option for future projects, which I really appreciated! Very much the kind of, "hey look at this cool thing", energy I'm after from tech conferences.

Andreas opened this talk by calling out his personal context of existing within the intersection of demographics most privileged by currently dominant cultural norms, and how that might seem incongruous with his giving a diversity talk, but that was actually one of the things I most appreciated about this presentation. Andreas calling out how important, powerful, and complex the idea of diverse teams can be, and how worthwhile tackling the challenges to achieve equitable diverse teams is from that privileged perspective, I think has the ability to influence folks that might not even realize they're discounting the value of the perspectives he's championing.

This was the first talk I got to sit in at the first conference I've attended in years, and it was exactly what I would've hoped for -- reassurance that the heart of the community I'd been missing is still out here, working to make our collective experience better, including perpetually holding the door open to invite folks to join those efforts. Thank you, Matt!