I am excited to share the ins and outs of negotiating salary from the first job offer, to one you’ve had for some time, and will cover both consulting gigs and full time employment. This is a subject that I, and other women in tech, feel very passionately about. We may be savvy developers, but we don’t always know how to approach a negotiating table. We aren’t sure what we should ask for or how we should ask for it- and overwhelmingly, we just don’t ask for more than we’re offered. We see the effect this has on women from their first job- if women don’t negotiate the first job offer, we make less on subsequent raises, and then our next employer bases the next offer on our salary history, and we’re beat.

Takeaways:
I want all of my session attendees to walk away with tools to understand their value in the marketplace, have some techniques to get what they deserve, and the guts to go do it!

Attendee skill level: Ideally, this talk is for people at the beginning or middle of their careers.

If you haven’t explored Web Components yet, you’re missing out on a powerful tool that can greatly enhance reusability of common web elements throughout your websites and web applications. As Comcast has been updating our web properties to unify under a single UX, using Web Components with Polymer has helped make that process much more efficient.

This session will introduce you to what exactly Web Components are and how to use them. We’ll also cover building Web Components with Polymer, the most popular Web Component library. You’ll get to hear how Comcast is using the web platform to build its next generation single page apps & websites using the latest browser APIs.

You’ll also learn about how easy it is to onboard a team to using Polymer, tips for sharing components with other websites & across teams, and best practices Comcast has established for efficient development & deployment of Web Components.

Attendee skill level: This talk assumes an understanding of HTML, CSS & JavaScript. No prior experience with Web Components, Polymer, or any library or framework (Web Components or otherwise) is required.

We can all pretend that we’re helping others by making web sites and software accessible, but we are really making them better for our future selves. Learn some fundamentals of accessibility and how it can benefit you (whether future you from aging or you after something else limits your abilities). We’ll review simple testing techniques, basic features and enhancements, coming trends, and where to get help. This isn’t intended to be a deep dive, but more of an overall primer for those who aren’t sure where to start nor how it helps them.

Takeaways:

• Broader context for how all users are or will be disabled, whether temporarily or permanently.
• Basic tests and best practices that can be integrated into development team workflows to make interfaces accessible.
• Introduction to standards and tools already available.

Attendee skill level: Minimal and some skill level in accessibility

Before the mind reads your message, it has already gathered information based on the visual clues from your type alone. Type is an extremely powerful design element that can literally transform the way people perceive your content. Type influences perceptions, emotions, and feelings of trust in the messages you are sending.

Harnessing this power goes beyond simply selecting a typeface. It requires an understanding of typographic elements, theory, history, pairing, and application. Websites are just a jumping off point for applying these lessons. By the end of this session, you will be able to use type thoughtfully to communicate more clearly, visually differentiate yourself, and even control the way your message is received.

Takeaways:
By the end of this session, attendees will be able to use type thoughtfully to communicate more clearly, visually differentiate themselves, and even control the way their message is received regardless of medium.

Attendee skill level: Beginner to Intermediate

It may seem like a person setting up their first website has very little in common with a seasoned developer who’s built custom sites, WordPress themes, complex data architecture or even committed to an open source project. However, we are all here because we agree there is value in using a tool we have not written ourselvesSadly, we forget about this common ground once we start talking about code.

You rarely see more passionate opinions than why people use (or don’t use) a particular codebase. But as I’ve progressed from WordPress User, to Designer, to Implementor, to Front-End Developer, I realized it’s never just about the code!

Much like playing an open world game, each of us approaches a new challenge with different skill levels, knowledge, and philosophies. We’ll discuss how we, as players of this game, choose from the tools available based on their strengths (value) and weaknesses (risk) relative to our skills. We’ll explore how these decisions change as players level up, or face different challenges. By discussing skill, value, and risk instead of code, we can gain empathy and understanding for the decisions of our fellow players.

Takeaways:
I want people to walk away better equipped to select third-party code based on their unique skill level, project needs, and other circumstances. I also want them to have more empathy for other people making the same decisions with possibly different results, and enable us to have more open conversations about the code we use.

Attendee Skill Level: Beginner, Intermediate, Advanced, and all levels in between: the talk is more about decision-making and empathy than code, aka “why do people make the decisions they make, and how can we support and understand that while empowering each other to make good choices that fit their our unique skill levels?”

To craft well-designed websites, you have to know 50 names for “blue” and the difference between a font and a typeface. You probably have a degree in illustration or graphic design, or maybe you attended some hip code school in Oakland and call yourself a User Experience Architect.

Right?

Nope! In fact, there are numerous small, simple and practical ways to vastly improve the look and usability of a website, no matter how creative you are(n’t). In this talk, we’ll explore ten of them together, and see how the impact as a whole for both clients and users is greater than the sum of its parts. Make your websites more attractive, easier to use and better designed without feeling like you’re wasting your time or effort.

Takeaways:

Attendees should leave this talk with concrete, research-based tips on how to improve the look and usability of websites they build. They’ll add basic, easy-to-implement guidelines to their arsenal that require zero design background.

Attendee skill level: This is appropriate for all skill levels; the languages involved are primarily CSS and HTML, but even a cursory knowledge of both is all that would be required to implement the tips I’ll be discussing.

You’ve done the interviews, and you’ve rallied the team, and now you have a dream. Here’s the thing: Your dream isn’t going to work. No dream ever does. Instead, your dream is going to cause disappointment and frustration, because it hasn’t been paired with the content management robots that will eventually serve and store your future website.

How do we prepare our dreams so they can function within the cold world of web programming? How do we take what we want and translate it into something usable? How do we take someone’s ideas and turn them into a usable web implementation, navigating the constraints and pitfalls of project dreams, organizational bias, and unrealistic expectations?

It’s called “reification,” and it’s the act of making something real. We’re not talking code. We’re not talking CMS selection. We’re simply talking about helping those we work with understand the content management landscape though a common language and practical questions. Let’s take the best case scenario and get it closer to a real life scenario. Let’s make things real.

Attendee skill level: Minimal to some – it’s about filling a gap, more than technical skill.

The only way to avoid crippling issues and resolve critical outages is with complete system and application visibility. But how do you ensure 100% observability and identify potential blind spots? With the growing number of monitoring projects and hundreds of monitoring services vying for your attention and business, how do you balance full coverage with limited budgets?

In this session I’ll break down the expansive monitoring landscape into 5 categories and provide a framework to ensure full coverage.. I’ll also touch on why these categories are important to your business and share the top criteria to consider when evaluating your options.

Takeaways:

I intend for attendees to walk away with a more holistic knowledge of monitoring and the ability to gain full visibility into their applications and systems.

I’ve spoken at and attended dozens of conferences over the past year and I encounter far too many developers who don’t understand the monitoring products they’re paying for and exposing themselves to risks by assuming their implemented monitoring solution is covering something that it’s not.

Attendee skill level: This session will be accessible and applicable to attendees of all skill levels. I’ll cover the importance of each category of monitoring from both a business and technical perspective.

Everyone wants their website to rank at #1 in a Google search but after writing their site’s content they don’t know the next steps for competing with the other 1 billion+ websites on the world wide web.

Did you know that Google has a Keyword Planner tool that tells you how much or how little competition a certain search phrase will yield? Do you use a standard naming convention for files and media that you upload or embed? Are you ensuring that your CMS is generating the right HTML tags for your content? There are several simple steps you may be missing when it comes to optimizing your website for search engines.

Instead of immediately shelling out hundreds of dollars for an SEO strategist, take a deep breath and then implement these often under-utilized tricks for improving your organic search engine ranking. With time, you’ll find the traffic you’re looking for.

Takeaways:

I want attendees to take home 5-10 new ideas for boosting their website’s search engine ranking. I’m hoping to keep these ideas accessible to non-tech/non-HTML workers but hopefully I can inspire some web programmers to rethink some of their own processes when working on their company’s or clients’ websites.

Attendee skill level: either some experience with content strategy writing or project management; a newcomer to web development or design

Often, organizations like to compare the way their creative teams function to that of an improv group. They tout their ability to work with each other and generate ideas and come together to create something great. The thing is, these organizations never actually work like improv groups do in practice. In reality, they work like a well-curated stand up comedy show. In this talk I will discuss my experiences in with software development, advertising and branding and my experiences with comedy to discuss why comparing your team to improv is a bucket of lies and what lessons from stand up comedy your organization can learn. Note: the speaker doesn’t have any beef with improv even though she is a stand up comedian.

Takeaways:
I want organizations to understand how difficult managing creative people and the creative process really is. Also, I want organizations and individuals to understand how important proper idea curation is and learn how to do it correctly.

Attendee skill level: All levels