MenderCon is back in 2024 for our fifth annual conference!
You'll fit right in if you:
Any topic is fair game, so don't be shy! Please host a session in the open track. This is a great way to get some practice and feedback from others. Your subject could include (but definitely is not limited to) legacy code, cloud/Kubernetes, dependency freshness, bug hunting, etc. Whether it's totally trending or you're one of the only people to have heard of it, we want to hear you talk about it!
MenderCon is sponsored by Legacy Code Rocks! and Corgibytes. Legacy Code Rocks! is an online community and podcast dedicated to software menders, people who get excited to work with legacy code and want to know that they aren't weird or bad developers for doing so. The Legacy Code Rocks! community of software menders is a great place to connect with other folks who are working on making software a little bit better, one unit test at a time.
Corgibytes helps companies make their existing custom software systems more stable, scalable and secure. Corgibytes specializes in upgrades, bug fixes, performance enhancements and other maintenance activities designed to help tech companies generate revenue, lower operating costs, and reduce risk.
If you are interested in a sponsorship opportunity please email us at sales at corgibytes dot com.
Learn what to expect, what the rules are, etc.
A with the end of any project, let’s come together to talk about what went well, what could’ve been better, and what should change for next time.
M. Scott Ford Co-Founder and Chief Code Whisperer, Corgibytes
M. Scott Ford is the Co-Founder and Chief Code Whisperer at Corgibytes, a software consultancy dedicated to modernizing existing codebases. Scott, who has been called the “Bob Vila of the internet”, is a polyglot developer who, at last count, is fluent in over twenty programming languages. Scott’s love of software restoration and remodeling began in college where he and his team were responsible for retrofiting the testing tools for the X-31 jet fighter. Since then, Scott has maintained a test-focused approach to his work and found the most joy in projects where an existing codebase needed to be improved. Scott is also a guest lecturer on Continuous Delivery practices at Harvard University.
Haim Cohen Software Engineering Team Leader, Bloomberg
Haim Cohen has worked in various software engineering roles at Bloomberg during the past 18 years. Today, he manages an engineering team within a core area of Bloomberg’s market data technology infrastructure that is responsible for a host of systems and APIs that govern the behavior of Bloomberg’s central market data database - the Ticker Plant. Before joining Bloomberg, he worked for Analog Devices and Intel, developing Electronic Design Automation software. He holds a bachelor’s degree in computers and software engineering from the Technion - Israel Institute of Technology, as well as a master’s degree in computer science from Columbia University. He lives in New York City with his wife, two kids, and a cat.
Lainey Hall Software Engineer, Bloomberg
Lainey Hall has been a member of the Ticker Plant engineering team at Bloomberg for several years. Before joining Bloomberg, she worked as a program coordinator at AI4All, a non-profit that provides high school students from underrepresented groups with early exposure to AI for social good, where she taught programming and AI fundamentals to high school women. She is passionate about advancing the cause of women and people with disabilities in tech both within Bloomberg and the engineering world at large. She is the co-lead of the Bloomberg Women in Technology (BWIT) community’s Recruiting Committee, as well as of B-Able in Tech, a group of Bloomberg employees dedicated to increasing the representation of people with disabilities working in tech roles. She holds a bachelor’s degree in mathematics and computer science from Boston University. She lives in Massachusetts with her fiancé and two cats, Drake and Josh.
Adrien Joly Tech Coach, SHODO
Based in Paris, France, Adrien Joly (he/him) started as a Software engineer in 2006. Ten years after writing his first Node.js-based full-stack web application (openwhyd.org), he's still maintaining it in production and using it to practice legacy code refactoring techniques. In March, 2020, Adrien joined the consulting agency SHODO to grow with a community of like-minded professionals and practice his skills as a Software Crafter and Tech Coach. You can follow Adrien and/or contact him on Twitter: @adrienjoly.
John Athayde Owner, Meticulous
John Athayde is a design leader and developer who spends a lot of time fighting bad coding practices in the Rails view layer and building cross-functional design teams to ship brands and products. He’s run Meticulous (a design consultancy) since 1997. In previous times he was the Head of Design & UX at PowerFleet, and VP of Design at CargoSense, both Logistics/IoT focused companies, and Lead for UI/UX and Front-end Development–Internal Apps at LivingSocial. He's a nut for well put-together design systems. He lives on a small permaculture farm outside of Charlottesville where he can garden and play in the dirt with his wife and four children. In his free time, he plays guitar and keyboards for the DC-based band, Juniper Lane, and works on his solo music project, Rotoscope. He co-authored “The Rails View” with Bruce Williams. He holds his Masters in Architecture from Catholic University of America.
A technical talk in which Clare will show you how to add tests to legacy code that has none, as a precursor to refactoring.
Clare Sudbery Technical Coach, Independent
Clare Sudbery is an independent technical coach with 24 years of software engineering experience. She specialises in TDD, refactoring, pair programming, continuous integration and other eXtreme Programming (XP) practices. Clare taught the Coding Black Females’ Return to Tech programme and co-ran Made Tech’s academy – coaching inexperienced engineers to learn on the job. She has a passion for helping under-represented groups to flourish in tech. Clare hosted Season One of the acclaimed Making Tech Better podcast and publishes content on Medium (“A Woman in Technology”) and her own site (“In Simple Terms”). She is the author of the Stupidity Manifesto, has written about trunk-based development and refactoring for O’Reilly and for Martin Fowler’s site, and regularly presents workshops and keynotes at events all over the world.
It can be overwhelming to take a legacy monolith and split it into microservices, especially if the code seems messy. However, conversations with techies and non-techies over policies and process through an exercise called Event Storming can help ease your migration from a monolith to microservices. In this session, you will learn about Event Storming in the context of breaking down a legacy monolith eCommerce system into microservices.
Sarah Dutkiewicz Senior Trainer, NimblePros
Sarah Dutkiewicz is a native Clevelander, Microsoft MVP in Developer Technologies, published technical author of a PowerShell book, podcast/live coding guest, conference organizer, hackathon lead organizer, speaker, community advocate, software developer, wife, and mom. She speaks on topics such as software architecture, domain-driven design, Azure DevOps for varied audiences, database development, web development, and user experience guidance for developers. With her varied career, Sarah brings developer, DBA, and server admin perspectives to technical and non-technical teams, bridging communication gaps, and helping them grow.
The future of software is the future of software maintenance. A year since the release of GPT-4, millions of developers have tried AI language models in their workflow - with wildly varying results! New prototypes sometimes come easily, while updating existing codebases (without breaking them) is much harder. As menders, we must understand how this fits into a sustainable and high-quality process. What really works? What challenges remain? How can we solve them? Let's explore.
Ray Myers Chaos Engineer | Tech Lead, Indeed.com
Ray Myers is a legacy code expert and skeptical enthusiast for AI. With 16 years in software engineering across multiple industries, he urges a focus on our collective lessons learned to improve our systems and organizations. He publishes guidance on Craft vs Cruft and Mender.AI, with influences from DevOps to Taoism.
Nearly a decade ago, a small group of menders (and one maker) found community with each other at a conference and Legacy Code Rocks was born. Since then, the Legacy Code Rocks community has grown to over 1000 people, 150 podcast episodes, a weekly meetup and of course, MenderCon.
In this talk, Andrea Goulet, the maker who kindled the spark, will take us back to those early days and reflect on how the bedrock of the Legacy Code Rocks community has always been creating a sense of belonging. Compassion and empathy are at the core of being a mender. Mending is caring deeply, seeing potential, and being willing to work through the frustration of making things better one small step at a time. This commitment to helping others feel seen instead of shame is why the Legacy Code Rocks community is so special — and it’s exactly why having the heart of the mender is what our world needs now more than ever.
Andrea Goulet Co-Founder & Chief Vision Officer, Corgibytes
Andrea Goulet is on a mission to embed empathy into the software industry. She is a sought-after international keynote speaker, experienced software entrepreneur, and award-winning industry leader. Her expertise centers on using empathy and effective communication to modernize legacy and mission-critical software systems.
Through her online courses, Andrea has taught over 50,000 students how to level up their empathy and communication skills to create better software. She is the author of the forthcoming book, Empathy-Driven Software Development, and the founder of Empathy in Tech and Legacy Code Rocks, two an online communities where code and compassion connect.