TDD workshop and Modeling retail products tech-talk

In this meetup we're hosting two amazing speakers - Dr. Joshua Fox and (Sir) Gil Zilberfeld.

Schedule
17:45-18:00 - Beer and Snacks
18:00-18:45 - Modeling retail products
18:45-19:00 - Break
19:00-20:00 - TDD workshop

Your software can increase ecommerce sales by modeling retail products

About the speaker

Dr. Joshua Fox, principal architect at Twiggle, has served as architect, technical evangelist, and manager at IBM, HP, and VC-backed startups. Joshua holds a PhD from Harvard University, and his articles have appeared at leading publications including Datanami, InfoSecurity, and the front page of Hacker News. More at joshuafox.com.

About the talk

Why do products on ecommerce sites have ridiculous titles like Samsung Galaxy S4 SCH-I545 16GB Verizon AT&T T-Mobile GSM UNLOCKED Cell Phone? It’s because the specs of the retail products come from multiple vendors without standardized structure and meaning -- and so don’t deliver the value prop to the customer.

I’ll explain how your ecommerce solutions can boost the value they deliver by modeling the retail products in a flexible way suited to the requirements of Big Data, NoSQL data storage, and a clean, easy-to-use customer-facing presentation layer.

The Empire Tests First – Making a Star Wars Movie

About the speaker

Gil Zilberfeld has been in software since childhood, writing BASIC programs on his trusty Sinclair ZX81. With more than twenty years of developing commercial software, he has vast experience in software methodology and practices.

Gil is a lean consultant, applying agile principles for more than a decade. From automated testing to exploratory testing, design practices to team collaboration, scrum to kanban, and lean startup methods – he’s done it all. He is still learning from his successes and failures.

Gil speaks frequently in international conferences about unit testing, TDD, agile practices and communication. He is the author of "Everyday Unit Testing (http://www.everydayunittesting.com/)", blogs at http://www.gilzilberfeld.com and in his spare time he shoots zombies, for fun.

About the talk

"To truly appreciate great victory, you must first experience defeat."

Obviously, we test after the code has been written. However, specifying requirements using tests, before the code is written has some advantages. Developers use Test Driven Development for better code, design and focus. There’s no reason why testers won’t use that as well.
Test-First is a great tool. It creates better understanding and productivity in the team. The result is high quality code - both in terms of early
success in finding bugs and implementing features correctly. It just takes a little practice.

In this workshop, we’ll create our own Star Wars movie using Test First principles. We’ll start from requirements, identify pass/fail criteria, create the movie and refactor it. On the way, we’ll discuss what we’re doing, refine our specs, as well as see what changes in the design tell us.
No need to know how to code. Star Wars knowledge is preferable. The key thing is to understand better what the other side lives. Neither of us is on the Dark Side.
May the Force be with us!