Our Philly Emerging Technologies for the Enterprise Conference (Philly ETE) returns for its 12th year after taking a year off. The conference itself started after the Chariot team had nine speakers at Java One, which at that time in 2003 many companies had cut back on travel due to the economic downturn. Technology changes very quickly, which is one of the reasons continuous learning is so important to our consultants. We felt it was important to share what we had learned; and as one of our teams members pointed out, tech cities had strong tech conferences, and so Philly ETE was created.
That first ETE was mostly Chariot speakers and some of our friends in the open source world. The next years we became more ambitious because we saw that the Philadelphia developer community desired more, so we grew the number of speakers and tracks. It was important to our committee to have speakers and talks from those who were using the technologies and tools. We have been very fortunate to have had participation from so many leaders in the field who have helped push the boundaries of how software and technology is developed.
Over the last 12 years, software development and platforms have changed faster than expected and have fragmented. In some ways, this change has made it more challenging for our committee to curate and program for ETE. As tech changes, so does how the committee organizes the conference. But what doesn’t change is, is their excitement and passion for bringing these ideas and people to Philadelphia.
Here’s a look at what some of the Chariot crew is looking forward to at our 2019 conference:
Mike Bell (iOS Lead): “We’re both interested in learning more about Generics in Swift, so we’re looking forward to Rob Napier’s talk Generic Swift: It Isn’t Supposed to Hurt. We’ve also both wanted to try Go, so we’ll be attending Jay McGavern’s talk The Go Language: What Makes it Different?”
Andrea Wright (Consultant): “I’m really looking forward to hearing about the future of Java from Java language architect Brian Goetz. I’m especially looking forward to the Q&A after the talk, when Java developers will have an opportunity to give Brian feedback.
I am also looking forward to hearing about the zig programming language from Andrew Kelley, because as the language creator, he is uniquely qualified to talk about the roadmap for Zig. Also, I’m excited about Jessica Kerr’s talks because she always makes me think about the work that I do every day but in a different way.”
Don Coleman (CIO): “I’m eager to hear Brian Leroux’s talk on Cloud Functions. Brian is a great speaker and always thinking about to apply technologies in a pragmatic way. I want to hear his philosophy on how to use the cloud functions to build apps while avoiding complex infrastructure.”
Steve Smith (Mobile Practice Lead): “There are many interesting topics for this year’s ETE sessions, but there are four that are the most interesting to me. The first is Ifeoma Okereke’s Flutter + MLKit: Building Smart Cross Platform Apps because I’m interested in seeing some good examples on what the flutter framework can do along with getting exposure to MLKit.
I too am also excited about Rob Napier’s Generic Swift session, because I’m always looking to improve my swift skills and learn new and interesting approaches in software design. Chariot’s own Peter Fleming is doing a workshop called Less Code, More Impact, which is a no-brainer since I always like to improve my knowledge around UX and design. I also want to attend Maggie Bosak’s In the world of IoT, wireless transports are not created equal session to get a better understanding of what LoRa is.
Ken Rimple (Director of Training & Mentoring Services): “This year’s conference has so much great content. Like many others, I’m excited for the talk on Generic Swift, mainly because I haven’t tracked Swift much and I want to learn the language enough to be dangerous. And what do we spend most our time doing with programming languages? Holding things in collections, which end up being managed in a generic-ish way. Jessica Kerr’s keynote will be great because she’s always got a fresh take on things and her Collective Problem Solving talk should prove to be thought provoking.
Brian Goetz’ keynote, FP vs OOP: Choose Two appeals to me because everything is function-based these days, with Lambdas in the cloud, JavaScript, Redux, you name it. But hey, OOP was cool too, so let’s talk about the tension. I love his talks!
I want to learn Kubernetes, so I feel like I should focus some energy on Burr Sutter’s Kubernetes talk while I’m there. Carol Nichol’s Rust: A Language for the Next 40 Years is interesting as well. 40 years? Well yeah. If you consider LISP a > 40 year old language, then Clojure developers are just riffing on the 1950’s, and C has been around since the 70’s. Let’s see why her passion is in Rust, and you can also listen to her interview on the Chariot TechCast.
I’m also giving a talk called Making SPA smarter with GraphQL, so I’m likely to view some of the talks later because I need my demos to work. Oh boy, the fun!
Dan Kyle (Business Development): “I’m really looking forward to Jessica Kerr’s keynote speech. As someone who works in tech and has a passion for music, and art in general, I am excited to see how she compares creating art to creating software. If she is anything like previous ETE keynote speakers, this is going to an excellent talk not to be missed!”
Matt Swartley (Consultant): “I am looking forward to the From Rails to Elm and Haskell session with Richard Feldman. I’m trying to get more into front-end technologies after spending the past 8 years working almost exclusively on the back-end, primarily with Java and Go. I’ve spent some time becoming familiar with Angular, React and Vue, and I am curious to see how Elm compares. I hope that this session will help me decide if Elm is a technology that I should dedicate time to this year.”
Rod Biresch (Mobile Consultant): “I’m interested in learning more about LoRa and its application in the IoT world, so Maggie Bosak’s In the World of IoT, Wireless Transports Are Not Created Equal session is something I will be attending. We (Chariot) have had a number of projects involving IoT devices and the de facto standard has been 802.11 WiFi. I’m curious about when to consider LoRa over other wireless protocols.”
Michael Geise (Sr. UI/UX Designer): “I want to see Pete Fleming because user experience is so important yet poorly understood by many in the tech industry. According to uxmastery.com ‘For every dollar invested in UX design, a company can expect 100 dollars in return’. Every developer will benefit from a better understanding of how UX design impacts their software.”
Will Vuong (Consultant): “I think 2019 is going to be an interesting year for Java as it accelerates to more frequent releases and Kubernetes as it becomes the de facto platform to run everything on. I’m looking forward to Brian Goetz’s talk to get an idea of where Java is going. And, I’m also looking forward to Burr Sutter’s demo on how to get started with and leverage Kubernetes.”
Rich Issacs (Consultant): “The obvious speaker I’m excited about is Brian Goetz. I’ve seen him speak before and it’s always entertaining and informative. I’m curious what Keith Gregory is going to speak about as I’ve enjoyed his talks over the years. I’m sure there will be a few more speakers with interesting talks as well.”
You can also find more details about all of our sessions here.