Speaking

Contact me for speaking opportunities.

Looking for a public speaker? Don’t delay, contact me to discuss your needs.

Why?

Speaking is a GREAT excuse to interact with fellow developers. To learn. To share.

There is nothing more fulfilling in life than to help others learn. To see that spark of understanding in their eyes. Although I’ve mentored numerous students over the years into becoming successful developers, I’m only able to change one life at a time. Public speaking opens a new audience and allows me to reach a wider audience simultaneously. It’s the fulfillment of a lifetime dream.

Past Engagements

The following is a brief sampling of past presentations:

  • That!Conference 2012 – C# for Android: An Introduction…

    Want to develop for Android but don’t want to learn yet another language? Need to do native development for multiple platforms? Leverage your existing knowledge of the .Net environment using Xamarin Mono for Android. Pair it with MonoTouch and share application code and target the two leading mobile platforms, Android and iOS, with a common shared code base.

    This session will give a brief introduction to Mono for Android and walk through the creation of a simple application.

  • Central Wisconsin Developers Group June 2013 – Web APIs: Microsoft ASP.Net WebAPI vs. Node.js… FIGHT!

    In this corner, we have Microsoft ASP.Net WebAPI and in the other corner we have Node.js… are you ready to rumble? In this talk, we’ll define a common JSON based API and then implement that API using Microsoft’s ASP.NET WebAPI as well as Node.js. During the process of writing the API for each platform, we’ll compare their strengths and weaknesses. Who will walk away the champion? Walk away with the knowledge to make the right technology choice for your next project!

    Live coding / examples: JavaScript, C#

  • That!Conference 2014 – Linux for Windows Developers

    Do you feel left out from the cutting edge technology and development environments because you’re stuck on a Windows only platform? Or perhaps you’re looking for a cheaper or more stable solution for your web accelerators, load balancers or other high performance network applications? In this session, we’ll take a quick tour around a Linux operating system. What’s in the /usr partition? How do I compile an application? What is the XWindows system? We won’t waste time talking about how distributionX is better or worse than distributionY! I’ll share with you how I got started administering and learning Linux systems and fell in love with the command line all over again. Lets do some hacking together…

  • Central Wisconsin Developers Group January 2015 – Intro To Game Development Series (Part 1): The Game Loop

    If you’re like me, you probably got interested in an IT career because of video games. At some point, you probably thought about making your own game but then managed to convince yourself it was too hard, you didn’t have enough time or you weren’t good enough. But, no more excuses! I’ll be your guide on this journey as we start writing our first game together.

    In this presentation, we’ll focus on the core of all games, the game loop. We’ll discuss a little game theory before we dive into a live coding session. Together, we’ll write some “bad” code, some “good” code, probably make a few mistakes… but most importantly have FUN exploring the Android 2D canvas library using the latest Android Studio IDE from Google. Although we’ll be coding on the Android platform during this session, the concepts we’ll learn are language and platform agnostic. Pending interest, this session will serve as a foundation for future presentations, where we’ll continue to explore additional game components including sound, input and physics. Once we have the basics mastered, we’ll jump into exploring one or more of the leading game development frameworks like libGDX, AndEngine, PlayN, XNA, Cocos2D or Sprite Kit.

    Are you excited yet? I am, so let’s get started!

  • JavaScript: You Don’t Know Jack

    When interviewing potential job candidates and students, my experience has shown that the most often overrated skill that today’s developer claims is experience and expertise in JavaScript. Let me start by debunking a common and widespread misconception: jQuery !== JavaScript. Please don’t be that guy in the interview or on your development team.

    In this presentation, we’ll unlearn some bad habits and take a fresh look and perspective at the JavaScript language. In particular, we’ll demonstrate different scoping issues, look at prototypical inheritance and discuss different techniques to make your code more succinct, expressive, flexible and less error prone.

    Learn the JavaScript language fundamentals and apply that knowledge to jQuery (or the framework of your choice) and take not only your skills, but also your code, to the next level.