Hear from these 15+ expert technologists at the (free, virtual) Technical.ly Developers Conference

If virtual conferences lack in human connection, many gain in efficient learning. It’s professional development without the commute.

At the annual Technical.ly Developers Conference, we’re trying for both on Tuesday, May 11, as part of the 11th annual Philly Tech Week presented by Comcast.

Like years past, the day features a cross-section of case studies on technical deployments in real world environments, in both big corporate settings and at growth-stage. Differently, the day is all virtual and — as part of the Most Diverse Tech Hub Initiative — all free, making it all the easier to pop in to pick up something that might spark an idea for your work. Expect presentations following three main themes: Experimentation, Growth and At Scale.

The day is geared for a range of professionals working with software. This is no beginner’s course but a place for those curious to see what it looks like under the hood elsewhere to see what you can bring in house.

After a year in which professional networking has been trickier, this year we’re adding a midday career fair. Always though, the main show is peer-to-peer learning. Last year’s conference featured dives into chaos engineering, microservices and “ancient” web protocols.

Here’s a look at the day’s presenters:

Your Engineering Career: Individual Contributor or Management (9:30 a.m. ET)

Every great developer will eventually confront a familiar fork in their career road: to remain an individual contributor writing code, or preferring a management track to oversee a team. Hear from both sides of the decision.

• Jocelyn Harper, PayPal senior software engineer and author of “A Software Engineer’s Guide to Seniority”
• Eliot Pearson, Catalyte COO
• Courtney Wilburn, Elastic engineering manager

Demystify AI: How TD Derives Value from AI (10 a.m. ET)

Artificial intelligence is complex but not mysterious. AI or machine learning is not new, but the data that is accessible today is. TD Bank aims to simplify the definitions, establish a common understanding, and then target business outcomes. Join the TD crew as its hones in on the bank’s approach to deriving value from machine learning and what they’ve learned from the hurdles along the way.

• Ankana Carpenter, VP, technology owner/delivery partner for consumer banking
• Smita Tiwari, VP, technology owner/delivery partner for customer assistance

Zombie Code — Hidden Wisdom From a Dead Language on a Journey to Automate the Impossible (10:40 a.m. ET)

This talk explores the hidden wisdom discovered through the journey of delivering a business-critical project and how those lessons can help us become better engineers, leaders and innovators. The only catch? It required implementing a dead programming language to automate a software that was designed specifically to prevent automation.

• Daisy Kid Henderson, Comcast software engineer

The Retail App That Brought Together Product and Engineering (11:10 a.m. ET)

How URBN’s decision to transition to Android devices in their stores became an opportunity to showcase the value of research and helped to build a new relationship between product and engineering.

• Alex Hasselberger, product manager
• Bueno McCartney
• Debbie Lopez
• Matt Thomas
• Carolina Fojo
• Rui Wu

Technical.ly Developers Conference Career Fair (11:30 a.m. to 1 p.m. ET)

Featuring these hiring companies:

• Burlington
• Cerner
• Comcast
• FORT Robotics
• Greenphire
• Inspire
• Listrak
• Odessa
• Penn Interactive
• Perpay
• Pinnacle 21
• SIG
• TD Bank
• URBN
• Vanguard

The GIS Framework That Connects Policies to Racial Disparities (1 p.m. ET)

A team at ESRI, a global location intelligence platform provider, leveraged a suite of GIS tools to demonstrate how disparities in communities lead to disparities in health outcomes — and what policies can affect change. Look inside how the various components were built and work together, and what the impact has been.

• Clinton Johnson, ESRI racial equity unified team lead

Real Technical Solutions From This High School Dev Shop (1:30 p.m. ET)

• Contributors from Code Differently

Reinventing Retirement Planning Using Machine Learning (2 p.m. ET)

• Lindsey Press, Vanguard product manager for retirement income
• Samy Movassaghi, Vanguard principal AI scientist for financial planning
• Christine Meehan, Vanguard chief engineer for financial planning

Spooky Orchestration at a Distance: How Prefect Powers Data Workflows Without Accessing Any Data (2:40 p.m. ET)

• Chris White, CTO

Why We Bet Our Startup on Clojure (3:10 p.m. ET)

You may have never heard of this functional programming language, but at Crossbeam it’s our not-so-secret sauce. In this session, you’ll learn why we picked Clojure, how we run our business on top of it, and why it’s helped us recruit top developer talent.

• Nick McAvoy, engineering manager
• Yiannis Nicolaou, staff software engineer

NFTs: The Technical, Business and Cultural Impact (3:40 to 4:10 p.m. ET)

Nonfungible tokens became an icon of the disruption of 2020. Much of the technology is years in the making, but we’ll discuss whether the moment means something for engineering teams building in today’s climate.

• Jarrod Dicker, The Washington Post VP of commercial
• Aaron Ricketts, visual artist
• Julie Zeglen, Technical.ly managing editor

We’ll see you at the Technical.ly Developers Conference 2021 on Tuesday, May 11, from 9 a.m. to 5 p.m.

P.S. Want your company to be represented at the hiring fair? Get in touch: