You're the Tech Lead! Now what?

FANTASTIC talk. Lots of great information to think over!!! One of top seminar's I attended. The time flew by and the content was very engaging.

Great No-Nonsense explanation of tech leadership and honestly, the transition of a technical person to management.

Great talk! This really explains what the job is all about. Good to know for people considering if they want to be a team lead.

Probably one of my favorite talks. Very down to earth, no-nonsense, to the point. The real-world analogies really helped me to understand the job.

Good talk about the transition from dev -> management with plenty of dandy one-liners and advice. The delivery was smooth, informal, and enjoyable.

The only caveat is that (as Eryn pointed out near the beginning) every company handles the tech lead differently. Much of her talk was more relevant to (the companies I've had experience with) managers/owners, not technical leads. So the usefulness was a bit limited. I'd be curious to know if Eryn's description is the 'norm' or the 'ideal' for a tech lead in most other companies.

All weekend I've been telling anyone who would listen that the secret to a great talk is to have one overarching message with several key points, and I think Eryn's presentation fit the spirit of my preaching very well. I'll need to reference her slides again later to remember all of the miscellaneous details, but "Facilitate > Advocate > Motivate" is in my brain even a few hours later.

Like Jacob said above (and Eryn said in her talk), every company is different, so it's interesting to apply Eryn's talk to my own situation, where I am the only other developer at my company beside my boss. Essentially, I am the tech lead because I manage all of my own projects and communication with the clients, including issues related to project deadlines, scope changes, etc. So, I've definitely experienced many of the issues that Eryn touched upon firsthand, and how I am left to handle them is a bit different since I don't have a team who is working on the actual code (because hey, I'm doing that too!).

All that said, I really appreciated having some perspective from the non-technical site of managing projects and making sure the final product gets delivered, and Eryn's presentation was packed with information that I need to process and distill into my own workflow. Great job.

Fantastic talk Eryn! You had great insights throughout your talk - wonderful!

Well done, great pace, good organization. It's hard to describe a talk succinctly and interestingly and then deliver on what you've said in an engaging way, and this talk did that very well. Something tells me we'll be seeing a lot more of Eryn on the conference circuit moving forward…

Really helped me understand a different side of the Tech Lead role, I had not considered a lot of the things in this talk and it really opened my eyes to some great ways that the role can be focused. I especially liked that she mentioned the amount of coding time would dwindle, probably not a popular idea for people at a programming conference, but it was a point I was really hoping would be made and was glad it was. I though the delivery of the talk was exceptional. The talk was full of great information and passion and the delivery was confident, delivered at an excellent rate of speech and clear. The timing was nearly perfect and allowed for plenty of discussion afterwards. Fantastic job all around, looking forward to seeing you talk again in the near future!

Very informative and practical presentation. Well presented with great real-world examples.

Great, well organized talk that sparked quite a bit of discussion during and after the presentation. Definitely one of the best talks at the conference. Even though my work environment/management structure is incredibly different than Eryn's, ALL of the talk's points were still relevant and helpful.

Excellent talk. As a single developer, I never realized there are more hats than meet the eye!

Thanks for the info.

Very good talk. Good content that EVERY IT manager/Team Lead should be exposed to.

=C=

PRO:

- Really solid overview of tech lead role
--- ranging from technical to organizational to psychological
- Very valuable for me as a freelance dev/strategist/consultant looking to grow my business by hiring and managing additional devs. Gave me a strong vision / example for me, and has increased the likelihood that I will successfully hire and manage devs other than me. :-)
-- slides were pretty (go Clockwork!)

Highlights:
-- "advocate to devs for users, to mgmt for devs, to client for project."
-- "give devs a whiteboard marker and let them discover on their own that they're never gonna make the deadlines"
-- "be positive to everyone. the stress-buck stops at you; don't stress clients/mgmt with scary details, don't poison devs with complaining"

RFI:

-- Sometimes you would repeat yourself as filler.
-- Seemed a bit nervous / adrenaline-d; I imagine this will fade with additional speaking.
-- Is it just my failed memory or did Q&A not really happy much?

CONCLUSION:

I would give this a 6 (epicness) and 4 (rooms for improvement) at the same time; I will average them to 5. Thanks for helping all along in our journeys!

(Okay, so it totally was my memory failing me; there was indeed lively Q&A discussion. (I'd have just edited my previous comment to say this but my edit-window was up by the time I fact-checked.))