A New Day

I've just returned from my first trip to Fluttercon. It's the third time in as many years that I've travelled overseas for a professional conference and each time has been a pretty emotional experience. The presentations are always at a high standard and the content informative, but really it is so much more about finding and making real connections with my peers. I feel really fortunate to have found a very strong community that, among other things, are a tremendous source of energy and inspiration.

All of that being said, like every amazing experience, it eventually comes to an end. So what now? This time last year I took that energy, the jet-lag I brought home with me and I hit the gym - hard - and within weeks I was healthier than I had been in years.

This time around I have something different in mind. I've been challenged by some and encouraged by others to be more publicly visible in the development community and I will pursue that with the same level of commitment that served me well last year.

At the moment I think the crown jewel in this effort is going to be a communication project about software that I have been working on for months now and I expect that together we are soon going to explore an interesting perspective to pretty big questions about software like "why doesn't it work" and "why does it take so long", "what do software developers actually do" which I believe will only become increasingly relevant in the face of technologies that appear to deliver immediate results.

These questions are as connected to "how can we more effectively deliver business value" as they are to broader questions of identity and anxiety about the future. We have a lot to talk about!

Auf wiedersehen,
Mark