Logo is so important for your community: JavaOne2013 report 1 #JavaOne #UGF10588

Now, I'm participating JavaOne2013.

My first session was "Organizing Your Local Community" by Mr. Ryan Cuprak.
I was interested in how bay area's guys organize their community because here is hometown of technical meet up.

Mr. Cuprak has organized a JUG (Java User Group) named CTJAVA since 2002. In this session, he talked about what he has learned, what was difficulty, and how he improved his community. He mainly talked about JUG, but I think those way is commonly useful to other kind of community.

To wrap up, I felt wherever difficult things is almost same. We need spent our time for organizing community, in addition it's required management skill, which is different from coding skill. At that, gathering people is so hard.
On the other hand, he could get that important skill, knowledge of current technical trend, and connection out of his work.

Well, he spoke the one of important stuff of community is "Logo". A log of community can illustrate a visual images of the community, and left that to other persons.

I strong agree that. I organize "10% rule" in my company. One day, I asked to design that's logo to my colleague. After that, I have been able to use it to presentation slides, sticker, and my desktop's back ground. I sometimes show my PC's screen as "advertisement" at meeting.

However, creating logo is difficult.
If you don't have good colleague, how can you get nice logo? Mr. Cuprak said (also, it's said generally) almost coder is not good designer.
He recommended 2 ways.

1. Asked to professional
Logo by professional has value than $2000.

2. Online logo services.
CT Java's log was created by this site.
http://www.logodesignteam.com/

As he said, both way can provide "iterative ideas" to you.

So, the logo is very important for your community.

“Demand Technical Excellence” by James Grenning Agile Japan 2013 #agilejapan

(This blog is English version of this Japanese blog)

I heard keynote speech of Agile Japan 2013, by James Grenning. He is a programer of embedded program. Recently, his book
has been translated in Japanese, and published.

Test-Driven Development for Embedded C [ James W. Grenning ] 価格：3,424円（税込、送料込） テスト駆動開発による組み込みプログラミング C言語とオブジェクト指向で... 価格：3,780円（税込、送料別）

And another thing he is the person who invented "Planning Porker"!

Today's speach's theme was "Demand Technical Excellence". We, developer needs to learn new things continuously. He explained us that by using TDD case as an example.

Bad Case

According to his speach, "someone still uses development method which was used in 1979". When James started programing in 1979, developer did "printf debug". It means, when they tried to debug, they wrote many printf statement, and checked each lines. And unfortunately, currently some developers still has been doing "printf debug". According an investigation, there are guys who spend much longer time to debugging than coding. Although coding is only phase to make value for customers. James called such development style DLP, "Debug Later Programing".

Let's TDD

So, what should we do?
We need to try TDD, which is much better than DLP. We can prevent from spending long time to debugging by repeating cycle of writing unit test and production code.

Even if TDD is difficult, we must write unit test because it's critical.
Because the more we proceed development, the more test cases of our product are increasing. By automated test, we don't have to spent long time to testing and debugging.

Technical Excellence

I think he wanted to tell us that  we need to learn new practice like TDD.

There is a practice, "retrospective" in scrum. We should consider about our issues (e.g.  many bugs, never finished test, and so on) by retrospective. And then, it is very important to learning new "technical excellence" for resolving those issues.

Todo of Developers and Scurm Masters

James introduced us todo of developers, scrum masters, and manager. (Since I'm not a manager, let me omit it)

Developers are required to make transparent their tasks. They are also required to learn and try new things. In addition, not only learning, also they should to be "adviser" of the new technology.

Scrum masters are required to help team members to get knowledge of new practices. I got advice from him that the first step is talking with team members how we solve an issue. For example, if our team don't have automation test, we will talk about what kind of technology we should learn.

Actually, currently, I think our team have to improve our team's automated test more and more. Fortunately, I've heard TDD boot camp will be carried out. So I'm going to attend it WITH my team members.

I could had session at RakutenTechnologyConference2012 #rakutentech

I got chance of giving speech titled "10% Rule - Challenge for Making Innovative Team -" at Rakuten Tecnology Conference 2012.

[Here is my slide deck]
http://www.slideshare.net/TaichiWatanabe/10rulerakutentechnologyconference2012
[Movie]
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q2U3xhPdCxs

It was first time for me having my session at such big conference.
Also,

I spoke in English!

It was so big challenge for me, and I could get big experience.
I appreciate everyone who gave me such chance.

So, I reviewed what I felt and wrote down them.

[I could make German laugh]
It was one of my success!

I used my picture which were taken at Oktober Fest, Tokyo for my introduction slide.
(Originaly, Oktober-Fest is a German festival.
 But recently, it takes place in Japan too)

When I showed the photo, a man suddenly laughed.
It seemed He was from Europe or North American continent.

So, I asked to attendee.
"Is anyone from Germany?"
Then, the man raised his hand.

I had never imagined that my photo given me a chance for making German laugh!

[About English]
There were both good things and bad things.
For me, it was not first time giving session in English.
But I had never given speach to attendees outside of my company.
Of course, they were not familiar with my company's internal situation.
I needed explain to such guys in English. It was big challenge for me.

Fortunately, attendee could make sense my presentation.
But, at question and answer time, I felt how my English was poor.
Actually, I couldn't hear someone's question.
I'm so sorry to those attendees.

I need to improve my hearing skill more and more.

[About Question & Answer]
Not only English, also my Q&A skill was not so good.
I sometimes spoke too much as answer.
It was not clear.

[T-shirt]
Because I want for attendee of my presentation to notice me at beer bash,
I made original T-shirt.

And actually, some guys called to me at beer bash.
Not only Japanese, also in English.
It's my success.

Anyway,
I've gotten grate experience by my presentation.

Thank you!

I felt "Agile is strong to change"

Last year, I was given training of Agile at San Francisco.
After that, I have been trying to use some method of scrum to small project that 1 or 2 people are assigned, for preparing big project it will start at April.

Last week, I progressed a project with my colleague.
This project was estimated it needs 2 month.
We devided this project to each 2 weeks sprint and this week was end of 1st sprint.

But suddenly, by some reason, both of us had been assinged to other project,
and it was decided other guys will progress this project.

The project was finished only quarter of whole.
If such things happend in past days, I couldn't take over remain tasks to other member easily.
Because it was middle of development, the program was incomplete and other guys would feel hard to read it.

But this time was difference.
Since we divided our project to each sprint, our project would be "completed" at the end of week.
It was not enough as service. But it was "perfect" as system.
So we could take over our code to other guys easily.

That time, I felt "Agile is strong to change".

Developers Summit 2012 #devsumi Mr. Yusuke YAMAMOTO [7 secrets for Engineer to service in the future by difference] (【差別化で未来を生き抜くエンジニアの7つの秘訣】 山本 裕介 氏)

I attended Developers Summit for the first time.

Now, I wrote feedback of this session.

Yusuke YAMAMOTO [7 secrets for Engineer to service in the future by difference]   (【差別化で未来を生き抜くエンジニアの7つの秘訣】)

In this session, Mr. Yamamoto said "7 secrets".
I agreed especially these 3 secrets.

• Transmission of Information
• Open Contribution
• Language

Actually, my basic attitude is "Transmit our information openly!".

Transmission of Information

Gathering Information is surely important.
But "Transmission of Information" make "Gathering Information"
because if we transmit something, the expert may find it and teach us more things.

Open Contribution

I think this is related to previous thing.
The more we contribute openly, the more we can make difference.
So, contributing to group is better than doing to only own project.
Doing to whole company is much better than them.
And, doing to whole country is better, and further more, whole world is the best.

Language

For contribution all over the world, English as common language is so important.
Because of this reason, I'm trying to write this blog in English.


I have believed that Engineer's Growing need Output.
I could trust my opinion by this session.