Developer on Fire

Episode 275 | Ken Versaw - Doing What Is Needed

Oct 5 '17

Guest:

Ken Versaw talks with Dave Rael about life-improving experiences at conferences, automation, solving problems, and taking action

Ken Versaw is a co-founder and CEO of Amegala, an organization dedicated to creating high-quality, community-focused training and networking opportunities for software development professionals.

Chapters:

2:38 - Dave introduces the show and Ken Versaw
6:10 - Staring with Nebraska CodeCamp and growing to an organization with multiple multi-day events
9:15 - The life-altering experiences of developer conferences
13:24 - Ken's experiences hearing from conference attendees about benefits
15:28 - Social experiences for developers
17:48 - Ken's current software interest and projects
20:58 - How Ken stays current with what he needs to know
22:11 - How Ken got started in software
23:57 - How Ken and Adam Barney became connected and started working together
25:02 - Identifying things that need to be done and doing them
27:58 - Ken's story of failure - Facing hostile criticism of Nebraska CodeCamp inclusivity
35:08 - Ken's success story - becoming a software developer by taking a shot on scripting a task rather than manual execution
38:01 - Ken's book recommendation
40:09 - The things that have Ken most excited
41:55 - Ken's causes of pain and suffering
42:24 - Ken's top 3 tips for delivering more value
44:00 - Keeping up with Ken

Resources:

Ken's book recommendation:

The Punch Escrow - Tal M. Klein

Ken's top 3 tips for delivering more value:

Break a problem down into small pieces and get the small pieces of software in front of users as quickly as possible
Listen to feedback
Change your beliefs quickly when you encounter conflicting evidence

Episode source

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