Gary Bernhardt is organizing a conference!

Deconstruct is a software development conference with an unusually personal lineup. I’ve chosen sixteen of my favorite speakers.

There I was, in Seattle on April 20th and 21st attending what in my view is the beginning of an experiment for a very personal (to Gary) conference.

To say the 16 speakers didn’t disappoint is an understatement.

Warning: fanboy gush!

David Nolen

The main attraction going into the conference for me was David Nolen. Although, never having programmed in clojure / clojurescript, I liked watching his talks online, he makes complex concepts very approachable and he always strikes me as yoda.

And boy, his talk Idée Fixe was

Suz Hinton

After the 2nd day was over, I was reminiscing over the talks about how it is so much of a performance art, and the poster child was the brilliantly done talk by Suz Hinton. The down to earth, honest personality and her message really helped me get out of my funk, thank you Suz!

Jenn Schiffer

And as far as personalities go, I also had the pleasure of seeing and meeting “TrollMother” Jenn Schiffer. She reminds me so much of my friend, Janet, who can dish out some of the most funniest jokes in any situation and at the same time is also one of the warmest person you would meet. Jenn’s talk was rip roaringly funny, while having a lot of heart. She talked about an underlying issue in our industry which is very personal to me and for which I try to fight for and champion in my own little way.

Stephanie Hurlburt

Talking about having a lot of heart, the work that Stephanie is doing helping out the younger generation of programmers is exemplary. I do try to mentor and help younger / junior developers as much as I can. But, to take that to the next level as Stephanie has, I hope I can follow her footsteps one day and try to do the same.

Michael Bernstein

Michael Bernstein’s talk was also a talk that stood out for me, The parallels between the art documentary and software development perceptions and reality was an outstanding take.

Joe Damato

Joe’s talk was straight up in your face, loved it, the conversations after the talk were amusing (to me) as some people were a little miffed, which made me think of his masterful slide:

Zach Tellman

I was really impressed by Zach, the kind of written works that he can refer to in his talks is mind boggling. To say he is well read seems an understatement.

Kevin Lynagh

On similar lines as Zach, Kevin’s talk was awesome, just brilliant all around. I made a mental note to back any kickstarter he is personally part of.

Evan Czaplicki

Whoa! The creator of Elm. A language I only had heard about. After listening to Evan talk about it, the empathy factor really resonated with me and the more I learn about it, the more I like it. Would love to see it gain mainstream popularity as the language matures.

Caitie McCaffrey

To say Caitie is a powerhouse is an understatement, the feral concurrency control model was a revelation of sorts. Distributed systems are hard yo!

Aaron Patterson

Aaron trolled everyone for 30 minutes just like Aaron could and it was a wonderful ride! Making shit scale is hard!

Justin Searls

Another talk I was looking forward to, and it was awesome, but weirdly what I loved most about it was the typography. Teach me obi-wan!

Arlo Belshee

Arlo’s talk wonderfully demonstrated the way we should be reasoning with code to refactor it / break it apart confidently, understand it clearly. Yaay for bug zero!

Brian Marick

Brian’s vast knowledge of software development helped with the perspective of looking at the GOF patterns in a different way. I loved the examples he brought in from the pattern language book.

Chelsea Voss

Chelsea’s talk was a torrent of functional programming knowledge; her command and energy is just whoa!

Dan Grossman

I have longed struggled to see the classic education system aligning with the software development world, I always thought there is a big disconnect in the approach. Dan’s talk was a ray of hope, I hope it gets better and spreads to other places. I still can’t shake the feeling about where have I seen him before.

Saying goodbye

Finally, I would like to thank Gary, Brent and all the people that made deconstruct conference possible. I was lucky enough to be a part of it. I probably would not change anything about the conference from my personal experience, well except maybe for the panels to be longer.

Other people might have experienced differently and if things could get better for them, it will be better for everyone attending.

I am sure there would be things that people want addressed like diversity, etc. but I felt this was a very personal conference for Gary and he wanted to experiment on organizing a conference and he wanted to do it with people he liked to hear and would want others to experience them too. Maybe when this becomes an avenue and no longer an experiment, we can challenge Gary to tackle issues like these.

For now, I am looking forward to deconstruct 2018 / GaryConf.