Date: Wednesday, 21 February, 6:30 PM
Location: Hewlett Packard (see directions),
Pruneridge and Wolfe, Cupertino, Bldg. 48, Oak Room.
Cost: Free and open to all who wish to attend, but membership is
only $10/year.
Topic
Managing software development projects can benefit from some approaches
that are rather different from most traditional management techniques.
Software developers operate with their own particular mindset, culture
and reward system. To motivate and inspire a top programming team, one
type of ideal manager is a technical peer who can jump into the code and
work hands-on, together with the developers, to solve thorny problems.
Such technical involvement can keep a project moving forward and help the
manager build credibility and trust within the team.
In this talk, Alex Martelli discusses some common management myths, and
shares some immediately useful advice for anyone involved in managing software
development projects.
For those who want to read ahead (or listen ahead) an early version of
this talk can be found at http://osc.gigavox.com/shows/detail1372.html.
This talk will have plenty of new material: quoting Alex "I have changed
the talk itself quite a bit since that podcast was recorded in July".
About the Speaker
Alex Martelli is Über Technical Lead at Google, Inc. Alex holds a laurea
in Ingegneria Elettronica from Bologna University. He wrote Python in a
Nutshell, and also co-edited the Python Cookbook. He's a member of the
Python Software Foundation, and won the 2002 Activators' Choice Award and
the 2006 Frank Willison Memorial Award.
Alex spent 8 years with IBM Research (earning three Outstanding Technical
Achievement Awards), 12 years as senior consultant (Win32, Fortran, C,
C++, Java, etc) at Think3 inc, and 3 years as a Python freelance consultant
(mostly for AB Strakt). He has taught Programming, Numerical Computing,
and Object Oriented Design at Ferrara University and other venues.
Presentation Slides
[PDF]