While the list in the talks section of my blog covers past presentations, this page should list my confirmed upcoming events.

Yeah… I’m not planning to travel anywhere for 2020 at this time.

This is a selection of talks and their abstracts. For conferences that are interested in having me present, these are generally the talks I’m available to give.

I’ve spoken at JavaOne (2011, 2012, 2013, 2014, 2016) and have received the JavaOne Rock Star award several times. I’ve presented many times at QCon London, and other notable conferences include QCon New York, Devoxx BE and UK, JavaZone, CraftConf OSCON and various GOTO conferences. I also regularly present to user groups around the world, and am a leader of the Sevilla Java User Group. See my full list of past presentations here (includes links to videos).

Now I’ve been speaking at (mostly Java) conferences for a while (six years now), I get asked to present at a lot of conferences. Obviously all these conferences are mostly interested in my terribly educational talks, but it’s also because I’m a technical woman and there aren’t very many technical women speaking at conferences.

In my experience, conferences want to do the right thing - they want a diverse line up of speakers, they want to attract diverse attendees. Often this is not as easy as it may seem, and frequently conferences are Twitter-shamed for not having enough women speakers. When it gets to this point (and often before), conferences frequently ask me for advice on speakers they could invite, and how to attract more women.

Since publishing yesterday’s post, I’ve had a lot of great comments, so I thought I’d write yet another post to answer them.

Last month at Devoxx I was in a session discussing what we can do to encourage more diversity in our speakers (specifically, although not limited to, increasing the number of women speakers). I’m going to outline the things I remember being discussed, although as usual we did not find the answer to the problem, only identify some issues and explore some options. This is a very chaotic blog post, because if I don’t post it now I’ll never post it, and it’s better if my thoughts are scrawled down and posted than if this all goes to die in my drafts folder.

TL;DR MongoDB London, 6th November, 50% off with discount code 50Trisha.

YOW recorded me, yet again, talking about the adventure that is the design of the new Java Driver for MongoDB. This is the same talk I gave at GeeCON and DevoxxUK, with some updates based on our Journey So Far. In it, I cover the architecture of the new driver and some of our current thoughts around where we want the API to go.

It’s been a while since I updated you on my travel plans, so now I’ve had some more conferences confirmed, I thought I would pass the information on.

Wow. My 4th QCon London. That’s not bad. And every time, it’s a different experience (if you must, see my blogs for 2013, 2012, and even 2007 (part 1 & part 2 - how cute was I? “agile seems like a jolly good idea; automated testing appears to be important”)). I can’t even tell you what I did on the first day, I was mostly panicking about my presentation - I was inspired after my trip to New York last month to change my talk at the last (responsible?

I’m on a plane (there’s a surprise) on my way back from The Joy of Coding. It’s the title that attracted me to this conference, and it was a great little one day event with awesome people like Dan North, Erik Meijer and Dick Wall presenting. What I liked about the themes is they were broadly technology agnostic, pulling back to a level which made me remember why I’m a developer. It inspired me to do more research and more thinking, and less panicking and trying to write code. That might seem odd, as someone who goes to as many conferences as I do should get loads more research and thinking time than most developers living under the whip, but I seem to spend so much time bouncing from thing to thing I don’t get space to just sit and think, or to read things in any depth.

So, following on from my observations of being an outsider at FOSDEM because I’m not an open source developer, I do have another story to tell where my female-ness is actually relevant.

So, FOSDEM.

I’ve heard great things about this conference, so I was pretty exited to go

Now I know people talk about impostor syndrome whenever they mention the woeful lack of diversity at tech conferences. Interestingly, I felt like an impostor at FOSDEM - not because I’m a woman (there were quite a few techy women around at FOSDEM, more than I expected) but because I’m not an open source person.

December disappeared in a rush of vacation and a fleeting tour of Australia. It’s hard to believe that it’s the eve of Christmas Eve already, it’s almost impossible to feel Christmassy when you’re getting sunburnt on a boat and seeing people in swim-suits wearing santa hats. A mid-winter festival (complete with trees and fake snow) just feels very odd in summer.

In previous years, JAX London would have been an easy, local conference to go to. This time it took me most of Sunday to get there, and not because of the Super Storm. Still, that gave me the day to finish off the tutorial I was running there on Monday morning. Not that I would be so unprofessional as to leave preparing things until the last minute, oh no….

So, I thought a few months ago that my blog would become more of a travel blog than a tech blog because of the amount of conferences I was going to. Turned out that I was so busy writing / updating / practicing talks and workshops and, er, travelling, that I never got around to doing retrospectives on the events I’d been to.

InfoQ has posted the video of Dan North and I opining on the subject of hiring. Most of the talk is spent on how to be a good interviewer, and touches on how to market your company to prospective hires. We spend less time on how to do well as an interviewee, but in theory if you know what’s going through the interviewer’s mind, you should be in a much better position to take control of the interview and shine.

So, I was in China last week. It’s not really what I expected, but then my knowledge of China comes almost entirely from visiting various Chinatowns and watching martial arts movies, so I guess I wasn’t all that well prepared for a modern Asian city like Shanghai.

Quick update on my scheduled events this year. Please feel free to suggest your MUG or JUG or other tech group as somewhere for me to visit on this Grand World Tour if I’m in your city. 17-21st June - In New York - woohoo! Getting to know Justin Lee, the newest member of the Java team, doing some pair programming (hopefully) and meeting people at the MongoDB Masters' Summit on Thursday.

Last week I was in Krakow, Poland for GeeCON. Which was excellent! I find it really interesting that conferences all have their own personalities, that they are not all the same.

So, despite promising myself that I would only do one event a month for the rest of this year, looks like I’m going to be a bit busier than that.

Last week was the first Devoxx UK, bringing the brand from Belgium and, more recently, France. And I think it was a HUGE success.

I like QCon London, I really do. Not only is it on home turf, but, as I’ve said before, it doesn’t just focus on technology, or a set of technologies.

As well as talking about, you know, actual work-type-stuff, I was encouraged to give my “Technical Approach to Women” presentation at Devoxx. This went so well at JavaOne that I thought it would be difficult to top. Also, I wasn’t convinced it would work at Devoxx, because the theatres are not well suited to audience participation - the seats are warm and comfy, the room is dark, the speaker is on stage in front of a massive screen….

Saturday I had the pleasure of being part of the 5th London Java Community Open Conference. This is a great event to end the conference season on - it made me feel good about being part of the LJC, and got me excited about the prospects for 2013. The fantastic thing about an open conference is that a) you don’t have to prepare like mad for it and b) the short sessions and wide variety of subjects mean that you learn stuff you didn’t expect to.

Devoxx 2012 from Roy van Rijn on Vimeo.

Devoxx topped off a crazy two months of conferences. I’ve heard people talk about the conference season in the past, and been slightly (OK, very) jealous of all that jet-setting. I’ll admit, however, to a slight feeling of relief that my focus until Christmas is pretty much going to be coding. I hope.

Seemed like a quiet conference this year. Not really sure why, maybe it was the layout of the massive (and extremely dark) main room; maybe it was the awkward L-shape of the communal space; or maybe this year people were more interested in listening to the (really very good) sessions rather than participating or meeting other people. Whatever the reason, it felt quiet and almost low-key.

Performance seemed pretty high on the agenda, as you’d expect from a London conference, with a number of things on offer:

So, JavaOne.

Taylor Street Cafe

I’m going to be controversial. I think this was my favourite conference of this year. I know that’s not trendy, and that Oracle-bashing is still a popular pastime. And I know I’ve also made a big deal about how much fun it is to meet people who program in different languages. But there is something very special about being surrounded by thousands of people from all around the world who use the same technology as you, some facing the same problems, some solving very different issues.

Yesterday dawned, with a sense of foreboding (actually it dawned with me coughing my lungs out, but we’ve heard enough about the sub-optimal state of my respiratory system this week). On this day, I was giving the talk I was dreading when I got asked to do it. It’s the talk I actually put more work into than any of the other sessions I was presenting at this JavaOne. It was the Women In IT talk.

…or, tips-for-Trisha-because-she-has-the-memory-of-a-goldfish. Do not drink too much coffee beforehand. Do not replace coffee with Diet Coke, it is not better… Do not drink too much coffee and drink diet coke and forget to eat. Check skirt length before prancing around on stage. Check desktop background for public-display-appropriateness. Close down applications that have popup notifications. Do you really want hundreds of people seeing that tweet…? Plug in your laptop power. Re-typing your password every time the screen powers down is boring.

Well this is exciting! JavaOne 2011 is the first conference I spoke at, so this the first time I’ve covered the same conference two years running. I think. It’s very nice to be back at JavaOne. Last year it was my first opportunity to meet so many people - the guys at Oracle who work really hard to make sure Java has its own identity; the JUG Leaders and Duchess folk; the JCP EC committee members; and loads of people who live and work in the area who I wouldn’t normally get a chance to speak to in person.

Last week (was it only last week?) I was at Strange Loop, presenting a workshop on the Disruptor.

I didn’t really have any expectations from the conference, I’ve never been before and, if I’m honest, hadn’t heard of it before. So everything was a pleasant surprise.

It’s a very geeky conference. I mean that as a compliment, of course. Lots of very smart people talking about stuff that’s waaaay more advanced than you frequently get in the conferences employers would be happy to pay for. The themes I mostly saw were functional programming and the (insert horribly abused term) Big Data space.

So yeah… in keeping with this year’s theme of basically only blogging about the exciting conferences I’ve been to, I’m going to blog about the exciting conferences I am attending in the future. I haven’t been great at doing that, the disconnect between the time I submit a presentation and the actual announcement means that I often forget I haven’t told anyone about what I’m up to. Firstly, I’m back in the States this month to present my very first workshop - An Introduction to the Disruptor at Strangeloop.

So, my first day at my very first OSCON. I have to say that when Ben and Martijn told me I had to do OSCON, that it was one of the conferences to go to, I was sceptical - not because I thought it would be rubbish, but because I have enjoyed all the conferences I’ve been to for different reasons.

But I’m really impressed so far.

I’ve been challenged to do a session at a very large conference around women in programming. Which leads to two reactions from me 1) wow, what an honour! and 2) sigh.

The “User’s Guide to the Disruptor” presentation I gave at QCon London is now available on the InfoQ site. This is the same presentation as the one I gave at Skillsmatter in March, but the questions are different. Plus since I’m winging it every time, I probably cover slightly different things or explain some stuff better / worse.

Three airports and three hotels in a week, and I don’t know whether I’m coming or going. Add to that a mere four hours sleep last night, and this might resemble the ramblings of a mad woman (more than usual that is).

GOTO Amsterdam was a different affair to GOTO Copenhagen, which is not necessarily a bad thing - it’s great that the events have their own personalities and aren’t cookie cutter versions of the same thing.

So, before everything gets pushed out of my head, GOTO Copenhagen.

It was my first conference “alone”, in that I didn’t have friends and colleagues from LMAX or the London Java Community there with me. And certainly at the start of the conference, I wasn’t the only one who was standing around, hoping someone would talk to me (in all honesty some of the photos above are a little unfair - the schedule was a very nice, simple phone app so most people spent a lot of time playing with their phones).

Here’s a video of my Open Conference session on the business benefits of open sourcing your software. Given that the conference was at a weekend and had a very intimate feel, I think I was a teeny bit more honest than I usually am. Enjoy.

Just a quick note to say I was interviewed for another podcast (Update 2020: apparently no longer available), again to talk about all-female events. It’s only a short one and there’s probably not much in there that I haven’t said before, either on here or in person. From the 21st May, I’m at GOTO, both Copenhagen and Amsterdam. I’ll be talking about code & the Disruptor, thank goodness, and will be trying not to rant about the subject of women in technology.

This week’s BBC Outriders podcast features yours truly venting about The Subject That Won’t Go Away, Women in Technology. I was interviewed at Sunday’s Girl Geek conference, and got a chance to voice my opinions once again. For those who can’t be bothered to listen, they can probably be summarised as: There are genuine problems that face people in our industry, let’s talk about those that you have actually faced, not ones that you imagine exist.

Today I was at the Girl Geek Meetup conference. I didn’t advertise it much because I’ve said in the past I don’t really agree with women-only events, and actually I felt quite uncomfortable telling you guys I was going to be there, knowing the majority of my readers weren’t allowed to attend.

It’s probably worth explaining why I went, so a) I can give you guys and excuse but b) conference organisers can see what people like me are looking for in a conference.

I’m late with my write-up of QCon, and what’s worse, it will be partial - “sadly” I was in Lanzarote on a training week with the running club from the Thursday (8th) so I missed most of it. A sacrifice I had to make for 7 days in the sunshine…

In theory, I am busy writing material for my upcoming speaking events, rather than writing terribly illuminating posts on my blog (see what I did there?). In actuality I am being lazy and have pretty much taken January off for a recharge.

In the spirit of doing something which ticks both the event-speaking and blogging boxes, this is a quick update on the conferences I’m confirmed for so far. Put the following dates in your diary - these are my first international solo speaking events:

If you have a Parleys subscription, you can watch the whole “Why we shouldn’t target women” panel from Devoxx 2011 a month or so ago. Watch me attempt to monopolise the whole panel as if it was my idea or something…

At JAX London Mike and I presented “Understanding the Disruptor - A Beginner’s Guide to Hardcore Concurrency”. This is the session we initially previewed to the London Java Community a few weeks earlier. The content is the same, but the feel of the presentation was quite different to us - the venue for the LJC event was more intimate, and it was easier to interact with the audience. At JAX, we were up on stage, which was pretty cool actually, but meant that it felt more like a lecture and it was less easy to connect with the audience.

Saturday was, hopefully, my last conference of the year. My lucky readers should start to see some posts which are not simply me gushing about another opportunity to hang out with awesome people and learn about interesting “stuff”.

Panel with: Martijn Verburg; Regina ten Bruggencate; Trisha Gee; Antonio Goncalves; Claude Falguière; Kim Ross

I’m back from Devoxx, having had lots of food for thought. In particular, my panel on Why We Shouldn’t Target Women generated a lot of discussion and I’m still trying to process it all.

The panel went really well, we got decent interaction from the audience, and of course my fellow panel members were awesome. I managed to restrain myself from using the opportunity as my own personal soap box and allowed other people to speak occasionally. Sadly the only male on the panel stole the show somewhat, so Antonio won’t be invited in future… Actually in seriousness, it was great to have a guy on the panel to present his point of view. It was interesting that he’s a father, highlighting that parenting issues are not the same as women’s issues, and conflating those two concerns hurts both genders. But Antonio’s hair is far too shiny and pretty and he’s funnier than I am, so I’m not standing next to him again.

Stephan wearing the Brazilian flag at the opening keynote European conferences are different (and cool) because you get to hear even more languages spoken than you usually do in London (apparently the most diverse city in the world for spoken languages). I think the idea of a Paris Devoxx with 75% of the talks in French is brilliant - I’m always banging on about diversity, we shouldn’t expect developers to learn in English only.

A couple of weeks ago, I was at JAX London along with a number of the London Java Community regulars (Martijn/Ben/John/Sandro/Simon/Zoe I’m looking at you….)

My purpose for attending was largely to present the Hardcore Concurrency for Beginners talk that Mike and I debuted at an LJC event a few weeks back. Almost as important was catching up with the aforementioned LJCers and meeting with as many people as would talk to me. After the disappointment of the sessions at Java One, sitting in a room being talked at was quite low down on my list of priorities. Sometimes it’s nice to be wrong.

“What… exactly… were you guys looking to get out of today’s event? Because…” “Because we’re girls?” “Um… yes…” Kim impetuously opts for The Truth: “We’re here to meet men.” Our interrogator looks round dubiously. “No, really, why are you here?” Phew. My reputation is intact1 Kim eloquently describes what her situation is as Product Manager and the criteria she’s measuring third party products against. I explain how LMAX aims to be the fastest retail exchange in the world, and therefore low latency is a tiny bit important to us.

It must be time for me to move on from talking about Java One, it has dominated my blog of late. But also I want to talk about JAX London from this week. But before I move on, it’s probably worth rounding off with the last two resources from the conference. 1) Martin Thompson and I are interviewed about the Disruptor winning the Duke Award (we come in halfway through):

I discovered, through the power of the search words that lead to my blog, that there was an incident at JavaOne that once again opens the can of worms that is Sexism In IT.

This Makes Me Sad. I had a really positive experience at JavaOne. In fact, I would say it was the one conference I’ve been to in the last 12 months where I felt like my gender wasn’t a problem - I even got away with wearing hotpants (tweed is business-casual, right??) without being mistaken for anything other than a developer.

Having been back in London for a few days I’ve had some time to digest the madness that was last week.

My lasting impression of JavaOne is almost entirely positive. Granted, it was my first major conference, so maybe I’m just not jaded yet. But let me tell you what I loved about it (yes, I did cover some of these in my last post):

Here’s a photo of me representing LMAX as I pick up the Duke Award we won for the Disruptor (Thanks to Martijn for taking the photo)

So I’ve been at JavaOne for the better part of three days, it’s time to record some of my observations so far:

So, I’m off to JavaOne next week! This is an unexpected and very pleasant surprise. I’ll be there with Martin (of the Disruptor fame), and Martijn (that’s not going to get confusing at all). Martin will be talking about the Disruptor on Thursday, and Martijn is busy talking about… everything. Most importantly for the LJC he’s representing us in our shiny new JCP Executive Committee role. I’m really looking forward to meeting pretty much anyone and everyone who’ll talk to me.

On Wednesday I tagged along to the STAC London Summit to provide backup for Mike, who was on the “The Future of Messaging Middleware” panel.

The panel consisted of two messaging providers, one hardware (Solace Systems) and one software (29West/Informatica), and two “users”, Citihub and LMAX. Obviously both providers were arguing that theirs was the best solution. But what I found interesting is that I came away with the impression that everyone was really on the same side - everyone wants to use or to provide the best system, but there are different approaches. Which one you adopt is likely to be influenced by how your team work and the hardware you have (or can obtain).

I attended TradeTech last week, an annual event about Equities and Derivatives trading. I assumed from the title that there would be a reasonable focus on technology, but I found it was more “Trade” and less “Tech”.

Last Thursday I was fortunate enough to get a place on the FogBugz and Kiln World Tour. I booked it before I moved jobs, and I’ll be honest I had no real interest in the software. I’ve been reading Joel’s books and blogs since my friend Brent bought me Joel on Software and made me read it (he had the foresight to know I’d want to hang on to his copy if he’d lent it to me!). I wanted to see the man in the flesh and hear what he had to say about his software. Because really, do we honestly need yet another bug-tracking / project-management tool?

This is just a summary of the points I took from the Lean conference at Bletchley. They all need expanding, this is just the stuff that struck me that I want to record.