Best of DevCon 2014

Fig. 1: A dissection and percentage of topics discussed on DevCon 2014 (http://bit.ly/DevCon2014chart)

Opportunities

• Hiring talks
• Freelancer opportunities
• How to get noticed on E-lance and Odesk
• Freelancing vs Full-time employment

Promotions

• Brand promotions
• What they do
• Projects their mostly proud of
• Perks
• More hiring talks

(Not applicable if you are employed and currently happy with your work...)

Otherwise, a good reference on how other companies get reach to and hire developers.
 

Notes on Opportunities and Promotions:

Tips to reach and hire developers:

• Participate on developer communities like DevCon. It is useful that we reach developers on their nest. Most developers attend conferences like DevCon to:
  • ​Look for opportunities
  • Learn from the masters
  • Meet fellow developers
  • Learn something new
• Minimize self-promotion. When speaking to hundreds of developers, it is important to not only showcase who you are, what you do, but mostly how you can help them and give value to their career and learning. Some speakers obviously bore the audience due to overloaded self-promotion talks.

(continued on the next slide)

Notes on Opportunities and Promotions:

Tips to reach and hire developers (continued):

• Prepare a mindblowing reference of your company. Your company image on print, online and personal reach should not indicate any signs of unprofessional touch. Developer conferences also reach designers. We should consider that the good and the best developers and designers have very keen eyes for details. If we want to hire the best, we should show them that we are the best. Your business cards should be mindblowing, your website should be decent, and the person appointed to reach the developers should also talk well. There's a case on DevCon where the speaker can't properly construct a sentence, doesn't know how to use grammatically correct words, and spoke Taglish. And you can hear the audience mumbling and correcting him. Not a good face for a brand.
• Show them what to expect on their work environment. Developers are not just looking for a decent salary, they prefer that they can comfortably do their job so they need to know what to expect on the environment they're going into. Cubicles? Work from home? Free lunch? Name it. 

Technical (Development, Best Practices)

• Android by Evan Dale Aromin, Philippine Android Developers Community
• iOS by Allen Tan, White Widget
• Windows Phone by Joben Rara, Microsoft Philippines
• Bluemix for the Web by Alexis Pantola, IBM Philippines
• The "What" and "Why" of NoSQL by Matias Cascallares, MongoDB
• Introducing FB Mobile BUILD solutions and FbStart by Calvin Kim, Facebook
• Automated Testing by JV Cuevas, Deltek
• Git & GitHub Best Practices by Sim Domingo, GitHub

Topics:

Highlights on Technical (Development, Best Practices)

On Android, iOS, and Windows Phone

The audience were asked to raise their hands if they are developing for the web, and if they are developing for mobile. Almost all of the developers who raised their hands are developing for the web, and only a few raised that they are developing for mobile. The speaker was surprised to know this and disclosed that almost all countries he has spoken to are on the mobile development track. This raised a concern that the Philippine developer communities are still behind on the mobile-first movement.

On Automated Testing

The speaker shared the advantages of using automated testing on the development cycle. He also shared the best automation tools to use: MS CodeUI (Microsoft), Quick Test Professional (HP), Selenium (Open Source), JUnit / NUnit (Unit Testing), eggPlant (Test Plan), SoapUI (Web Services)

Highlights on Technical (Development, Best Practices)

On Git and Github Best Practices

Although we internally use Subversion (SVN) as our version control management, the highlight of the talk is applicable not just for Git but also for managing source codes versions in general. Here are the tips from Sim Domingo, Github:

• Commit often.
• Commit messages should be as specific as possible.
  • Bad examples: "Final css", "Edit layout",  "this is a new feature"
  • Good examples: "Fix defect #124", "Adjust height of slider on home", "Implement autofocus on contact form"
• Update (SVN) or Pull (Git) often. It is important to make sure that the developer's local or individual copy/repository is updated to prevent conflicts

Business Strategies (cross-over) Technical

• How Technical Debt Can Ruin A Business by Calen Legaspi, Orange and Bronze Softare Labs, Inc.

Notes 

This keynote is probably the best of DevCon 2014 Summit. It highlights how bad code quality and neglected unit tests can affect your business. The talk served as an eye-opener to most of the developers, including me, that code quality isn't just so other developers can understand your code - but the costs of maintaining the code and it's great impact onto saving or wasting your business resources.

Blog post: http://calenlegaspi.blogspot.com/2014/12/my-technical-debt-presentation-at.html
Slides: http://techdebt.appspot.com/

How to not let Technical Debt ruin your business:

• Refactor Mercilessly

• Practice Test-Driven Development

• Obsess on Readability

• Practice Domain-Driven Design

• Be a Scholar of Coding Practices & Design

Source: How Technical Debt Can Ruin A Business by Calen Legaspi, Orange and Bronze Software Labs, Inc. http://techdebt.appspot.com/

Community Participation

• PHP User Group Philippines (PHPUGP)
• Philippine Ruby User Group (PHRUG)
• Drupal Pilipinas
• PythonPH
• Philippine .NET User Group (PHINUG)
• International Game Developers Association (IGDA)
• Philippine Web Design Organization (PWDO)
• Philippine Aerospace Development Corp. (PADC)
• Google Developers Group (GDG)
• MozillaPH

Trends / New Technologies

Also, one of my favorite talks is Bluemix for the Web by Alexis Pantola, IBM Philippines where IBM Watson was introduced. 
Link: http://www.ibm.com/smarterplanet/us/en/ibmwatson/

This is a very powerful tool for research and community-powered statistical knowledge-base.

Internet of Things (IoT)

Although already being familiar with the term, this is still a new player in the development industry.