15 talks in 4 years. 2018, 2019 and beyond… speaking edition!
January 2, 2022 Category: Events 1 Comment »
Like Inbox Zero, I'm trying to play catch up before the year starts! I like to keep a record of when I speak at places, as a nice reminder for me to look back on, and to promote events before they come up. I'm really working to stay more up to date, but honestly - over the last couple of years, I find that I've mostly been posting to LinkedIn and have been neglecting my own space. I often think about these walled gardens, as my friend Scott has said "Blog is the engine of your community" and "Why you need your own blog". If you're following along and are already caught up on jobs - then let's jump into speaking events!
I spoke at QL Tech Con 2018 in Detroit in person
I’ve spoken about the Detroit Tech Con in the past. It’s a massive internal conference that Quicken Loans hosts every year., They take over Detroit’s largest convention center, bring in external speakers – it’s always a great event. If you ever get a chance to present or attend, I highly recommend it. This was my second time presenting. This time I was on an “agile panel” with a number of other technologists – both internal and external. It was a great time.
I spent 3 years commuting to Detroit – not just for Tech Con, check out rest of the photos!
IT Dev Connections in Dallas – Oct 15-18, 2018 in person
I spoke on “Code to DI For” and patterns for “Scaling Scrum to the Enterprise“. One of the highlights of this conference was that we were in downtown Dallas, and my second oldest daughter got to come hang out with me for the week. We discovered the electric scooters that we
Dallas DNUG – June 13th, 2019 in person
The Dallas DNUG is one of the longest running .NET User groups in the country! Even during the pandemic, they continued to be active – moving their meetings to an online format. I spoke on 10 Reasons your software sucks.. I’m grateful to their leadership team, friends I’ve known since 2005! They continue to invest and grow this critical group.
DFW QA Association – June 16th, 2020 – on line
One of the QA people at Solera connected me with the DFW QA Association, and I was able to present (online) at one of their sessions. I covered 10 Reasons your software sucks – a focus on 10 engineering practices every professional development team should grow in. I love finding pockets of communities and areas that I hadn’t connected with before!
Capital One’s Beyond DFW Conference – Nov 18th, 2019 in person
The awesome Marty Cagan gave a great keynote. It was great meeting him and I loved his way of thinking about product design and innovation. It’s definitely worth checking out his book. I was also able to bring my oldest daughter to attend the sessions – what a great experience for her! I’m grateful for my friend Stephen P. Anderson for inviting me to speak and letting me talk about 10 Power Ups for Scrum. Additional photos from that day.
DBU’s Tech Talks and DBU guest lecturer (twice), in person & on-line
I’m a big fan of the dual Master’s (MSITM) degree program that Sharon and his team have put together over at DBU. He frequently brings in external speakers from the industry so that his students leave with a solid foundation of the world they are stepping in to … not just academic theory.
Over the summer (pre-covid… in the before times) Sharon hosted a number of TechTalks at their Plano campus, open to the public. This was one of my last in person events (Feb 20th, 2020) before everything was shut down due to COVID. The two guest lectures I gave were both over Zoom. For the in person session, I gave 10 Power Ups for Scrum, my two online (July 29, 2020 & April 14th, 2021) talks focused on the same topic “Process Wont Save You” – that is, while various agile processes (Scrum, SAFe, Kanban, etc) each have their own strengths and purposes – to really get the agile benefits, they work best with agile engineering practices … TDD/BDD, CI/CD, SOLID Principles etc.. they all work synergistically together! Photos from the DBU TechTalk
Unlimited Agile Conference – Nov 4th, 2021 on-line
I was honored to be included as one of the presenters at the first annual Unlimited Agility Conferences. I was able to cover 10 Power Ups for Scrum. Organized by my friends Derek Lane and David Koontz are putting together quite a community (free to join) and regular on-line events to help grow your agility. Go check it out!
Wow.. that’s a lot of talks that I missed, here are 5 more that I’ve already blogged on:
- 2019 – 2 talks at the Tulsa TechFest (Scaling Scrum + Scrum Power Ups!)
- 2018 – Ft. Worth DNUG (Scrum Power Ups!)
- 2018 – 2 talks at Codemash (Coding Naked + Prototype, Collaborate & Innovate)
I’ll be at Code Stock in April 2020
Code Stock was canceled that year – a casualty of the pandemic. I had planned on speaking on Scrum, and was also scheduled to speak on an agile “debate” panel. This was going to be my first time at Code Stock – my wife and I were really looking forward to being there and exploring Knoxville, TN!
Here’s to 2022 being even brighter than the last two years!
Speaking at DFW Beyond – 10 Scrum Power Ups that Work!
November 17, 2019 Category: Events 1 Comment »
I’ll be presenting on “Scrum from the trenches – 10 Power Ups that work!” – this is a fun talk that digs into some areas that aren’t always obvious right away. Scrum is incomplete *by design* – these of some of the Scrum practices that I’ve found helpful over and over again in the last many years. As a technology leader, consultant and agile coach.
Slides
DFW Beyond is one of the Summit conferences that Capital One in Plano has been organizing. I’m really excited to attend and participate in a full day of great speakers. Like many conferences I speak at – one of the hardest parts is all of the great sessions and speakers that are on at the same time as me. Check out the schedule, register – and hope to see you there!
2 Talks at the Tulsa Tech Fest – Making Scrum Work!
July 17, 2018 Category: Events 1 Comment »
What are you doing this Friday? Nope. Change your plans and come hang out in Tulsa. It’s time for the 13th Annual Tulsa Tech Fest. That’s right 13 years in a row! (not that I’ve been there every year – but a lot of them). Honestly, where else can you 17 tracks and 68 different sessions all for the price of a can of food (Every Year the Tulsa Tech Fest Community does a food drive as a part of the event… literally, bring a can of food, get in for free – it’s awesome!)
This year I’m opening and closing the Agile Track
I’ll be kicking things off with an overview of Scrum and talk about some practical patterns and strategies to scale Scrum to larger Enterprises companies. We’ll also touch on frameworks like LeSS and SAFe.
(slides)
Later in the day I’ll be giving a brand new talk that I recently debuted in Ft. Worth. It’s a lot of the tips and tricks that I’ve used through out the years to really make Scrum work.
This talk is a lot of fun, and if you’re in the area – I think you’re really going to enjoy it. (slides coming soon)
Here’s the official description:
Scrum is the most popular Agile framework in the world for effective team collaboration on complex projects. Scrum provides a small set of rules that create just enough struterehcture for teams to be able to focus their innovation. By design Scrum is incomplete, come learn some of the tips and tricks (Power Moves) that have helped accelerate teams all over the world. 10 key moves that have been consistently helpful as Caleb has lead, consulted and coached Scrum teams world wide.
We’ll dive in to areas like, key ways to improve stand up, how to forecast and effectively communicate progress to the business, protect your quality and make the most of your Scrum team and the Scrum framework.
Though, as my friend Dave put it…
Yeah.. he’s probably right about that.. See you there, and expect to see more than 10 Power Moves.
I’m really looking forward to presenting, meeting new people, seeing old friends, and all of the conversations that tend to surround these events.
Hope you can make it!
Scrum from the Trenches–10 Scrum Power Ups–Speaking in Ft. Worth Tonight
June 19, 2018 Category: Events 2 Comments »
I’ll be presenting tonight on a topic that is near and dear to my heart: getting the most out of Scrum.
Official description:
Scrum is the most popular Agile framework in the world for effective team collaboration on complex projects. Scrum provides a small set of rules that create just enough struterehcture for teams to be able to focus their innovation. By design Scrum is incomplete, come learn some of the tips and tricks (Power Moves) that have helped accelerate teams all over the world. 10 key moves that have been consistently helpful as Caleb has lead, consulted and coached Scrum teams world wide.
We’ll dive in to areas like, key ways to improve stand up, how to forecast and effectively communicate progress to the business, protect your quality and make the most of your Scrum team and the Scrum framework.
I’m really excited to dig in to some real tangible tips that people can start using right away, also – if you’re never been to the Ft. Worth .NET User Group – they have a great venue! We’re meeting tonight at Chimy’s in Ft. Worth – big thanks to Tek Systems for sponsoring tonight and buying us all dinner. Awesome!
Note: I’ll be updating a link to my slides here later this week.
Hope to see you there!
Detroit Code – 3 Days of Awesome.
July 7, 2017 Category: Blog, Events 1 Comment »
TL;DR:
Detroit.Code() is a 3 Day conference I’ll be giving two talks at in Detroit next week. You can register now and save 10% by using code CalebJenkins10
The rest..
Earlier this year I spoke twice at our internal Software Craftsmanship Community at Quicken Loans. Next week, I’ll be giving two more talks in Detroit. Coding Naked and Scaling Scrum.
I’m really looking forward to this “local” conference. It’s local for me since I started working in Detroit every day. Well, “in Detroit” is relative, my commute involves walking to my standing desk in Texas – more on that in a future post! OK, I really am excited to experience this conference. The speaker line up is amazing. The hardest part will be some of the time slots where there are way too many good speakers and topics I want to hear at the same time. Where else can you go spend a whole day learning about ASP.NET CORE directly from Microsoft’s Jeffrey Fritz or Do Architecture Kata’s with Ted Neward or spend a day learning directly from Ted X Speaker Christina Aldan? Seriously, here’s me trying to decide which session to attend in one slot
Too many good talks to decide.
The only thing that made this one easy to pick, is that one of them I have to be at..
You get the idea.. so much great content, learning, growing – mind stretching will be going on next week.
I’m also looking forward to seeing how the people from Amegala run a conference. They do a number of conferences that I’ve never been at before.
This feels like a notch up from a TechFest, but not quite at the VS Live sort of level. In other words: just perfect.
Quicken Loans
I should also mention how awesome it is to work for a company that not only gives time off for attending a speaking at conferences.. but actively encourages broader community participation. Not only is Quicken Loans officially sponsoring Detroit Code, 6 of the speakers are from QL, many of us are from out of town, and QL is paying for our travel and hotel for the week. Awesome!
- Keith Elder – will be flying up from Mississippi, and is talking about the highly scalable encryption platform that we built and use at Quicken Loans
- Mike Eaton – is giving two talks, one on Becoming a Remote Worker Pro, and other on making the transition from individual contributor to Team Leader (Manager outside of QL)
- Peter Ritchie – 2 talks: Introduction to Microsoft Service Fabric, and Moving Towards Elastic Scalability
- Jason Follas - 2 talks: Bit Coin: What makes it secure, and Lightweight Pub/Sub for Web Applications using MQTT
- Eric Helin – Adventures with TDD and Paired Programming
I’ll be giving two talks:
Coding Naked – Unit Testing those hard to reach places.
This is an updated version of this talk that I’ve given many times. The new version (updated slides coming soon) is much more focused on code examples and working through various scenarios that people run in to while at the same time delivering on the principles behind those examples to really help people get better at navigating the world of automated unit testing. Original slides: https://www.slideshare.net/calebjenkins/coding-naked
Scaling Scrum to the Enterprise
Scrum is awesome.. just incomplete. (by design) – this talk goes through some of the patterns and practices that we used to scale scrum at Sabre to help people increase their over all agility and deliver better software.
There’s still time to register.
The full day workshops are on Monday with the rest of the conference taking place Tuesday and Wednesday. If you use the discount code CalebJenkins10, you’ll save 10% off of your registration.
Hope to see you there!
Tulsa Tech Fest: Opening and Closing Keynotes!
August 13, 2015 Category: Events 2 Comments »
Last Friday I had the privilege of attending and speaking at the 10th annual Tulsa Tech Fest. #ttf2015
Here are my slides to the closing keynote: Get Your Hero Groove On. This is where I try to inspire people to take advantage of the super powers that we have as developers to shape our world, influence our culture and chose the practices and processes to make that happen!
This was a fun talk – I hope I get the chance to do this again and really dig in to some of these concepts.
I’m glad people seemed to have a good time!
This was Tulsa’s 10th TechFest… I presented at the 1st one 10 years ago, at the following one and at least 3 other Tech Fests.. including doing the lunch time keynote 3 years ago.
Morning Keynote: 10 Reasons Your Software Sucks
I was originally only going to do the closing keynote, but 2 weeks ago, the morning keynote presenter had to drop out. I was bummed about that (since he’s a friend of mine, and I was looking forward to catch up). When David asked if I could cover the morning session, I was glad to had this talk ready to go!
Things have changed a lot in 10 years.. twitter was a lot of fun to follow through out the day!
Although the hashtag was being used by another event in Europe at the same time.. so this came up right after the closing keynote.. I have to admit, this is about how I felt.
Extra huge thanks goes out to David for organizing this great event 10 years in a row.. and to the whole Tulsa community for making it happen!
Tulsa Tech Fest 2014 – Scaling Scrum, Modern Web, Prototyping UX
July 24, 2014 Category: Events 1 Comment »
Two years ago I gave the key note at the Tulsa Tech Fest – it was a lot of fun and I’m excited to be presenting there again this year!
This year I’ll be giving 3 talks.
Scaling Scrum with UX and other Key Players
Scrum is the most popular Agile framework in the world for effective team collaboration on complex projects. Scrum provides a small set of rules that create just enough structure for teams to be able to focus their innovation. Scrum is optimized for teams for teams of 5 to 9 people. Making Scrum work with larger teams or in large enterprise environments brings its own set of challenges. This talk presents 3 patterns used on enterprise teams to scale Scrum effectively with global teams.
Update: The Slides are now on slide share.
Modern Web Development: Testable WebForms with Model View Presenter Pattern (MVP)
The world is moving towards ASP.NET MVC.. but what about your legacy WebForms development. What are the things you can do today to make your WebForms more testable, reliable and even increase the SEO and usability of your WebForms. This talk will walk through applying the Model View Presenter pattern to your ASP.NET WebForm applications and introduce you to some additional enhancements that Microsoft has made to WebForms recently to make your site and life that much better!
Update: The slides are now on slideshare.
Prototype, Collaborate, Innovate
A UX Story from the worlds most used white labeled travel site. How we use Sketches, Prototyping and Innovation Games to collaborate with our customers and experience innovation breakthroughs.
Update: The slides are on slideshare!
Hope to see you there!
Speaking at Dallas Day of .NET
February 7, 2013 Category: Events No Comments »
Tomorrow, I’ll be presenting at the 3rd annual Dallas Day of .NET.
You can see my talk at 3:45 in the “Executive Track” – I really have no idea what that title title implies. My talk will be on Scaling Scrum to the Enterprise. If this is a challenge that you have ever faced, you should swing by!
Here’s a picture from one of my slides:
It’s going to be a lot of fun!
The line up of presenters is impressive! (for some reason, I ‘m not listed on the site )
Scott Hunter – who leads the Microsoft ASP.NET Product team that Scott Hanselman, Damian Edwards and Steven Sanders work on.
Richard Campbell and Carl Franklin, of .NET Rocks! fame.
Nick Landry, friend and fellow Microsoft MVP is a Senior Product Manager at the helm of Infragistics mobile and data visualization developer tools across multiple technologies and platforms.
Plus Chris Love, Daniel Egan, Jimmy Bogard, Jeff Palermo, Shawn Weisfeld, Ryan Lowdermilk, Atley Hunter.. and those are just the guys that I know! This is going to be an amazing two days in Dallas with this wild group of presenters. Unfortunately, I won’t be able to stay for Saturday.. I’ve just got too much on my plate with my new job and traveling for 2 weeks this month!
Hope to see you there, and I’m looking forward to meeting the rest of the presenters and attendees.. be sure to say hi!
Workshop Agile + UX
November 12, 2011 Category: Events No Comments »
Big Design Week starts Monday, and we’re thrilled to announce that our own Caleb Jenkins has been asked to help present on Wednesday’s workshop! He’ll be digging in to the dicey topic of UX and Agile with Brian Sullivan and Jim Carlsen-Landy. We’re looking forward to hearing how these three present together. They all come at Agile and UX teams from slightly different angles. Jim has managed UX teams for a couple of years at a company that was an early adopter of agile practices, and Brian will be walking through hands on techniques to get scrappy with your UX research, design and deliverables.
Caleb will be focusing in on some of the misconceptions that exists between the agile and UX worlds and specifically how teams can scale Scrum with UX teams. It’s going to be awesome! Check out the full week’s schedule, and if you haven’t done so yet, there is still time to register.
See you there!
UX + Agile
May 13, 2011 Category: Blog No Comments »
Jared Spool published a great article yesterday titled “Essential UX Layers for Agile and Lean Design Teams”.
Jared talks briefly about proliferation of agile approaches in software design and user experience (UX) design and contrasts that to the Big Design Up Front approaches of the past, he then goes further in describing, not only User Stories, but several other layers of UX design and how each layer differs in scope and purpose from the other layers.
we frequently saw the successful teams talking about these other layers all through development. When a team member would produce a deliverable or design sketch that wasn’t quite matching the direction that the other team members imagined, the team would step back and talk about the other layers, trying to figure out where the disconnect came from. Because the team established the layers together, based on research they jointly conducted, they found it easy to collaborate on creating coherent experiences that regularly delighted their users.
It’s a great read, and I highly recommend heading over to the UIE site and reading the full article. You might also consider subscribing to the UIE podcast BrainSparks.
If you’ve never heard Jared Spool speak live, he’s a great presenter and is always thought provoking and memorable, our chief mentor will be presenting at the same conference as Jared in July, The Big (D)esign Conference is July 14th – 16th – Hope to see you there!