Two Talks - One Night -- Sara Ford and Heather Downing

Tuesday June 23rd, 2020
6:30 pm | (UTC-05:00) Central Time (US & Canada)

** There will be an after-party so you're welcome to stick around after the meeting. Last time I was able to get some special guests to drop into the party. **

1st Presentation:
Mastering the Git porcelain commands

When you get stuck, do you delete your .git folder and start over? Do you panic when you get into a detached head state? Do you commit only on master or consider branching an advanced topic? Have you thrown a coffee mug across the room when `git log` doesn't show your full history? (If not, you're doing better than I did when I was learning git!) Develop your git skills by applying the appropriate git commands to solve specific scenarios. Compare and contrast similar git commands using a Git Visualization tool created by the GitHub Electron team. Walk away with the ability to apply the following porcelain commands: branching, rebase vs merge, revert vs reset, reflog, interactive rebase, bisect, and more! (maybe we'll cover git rerere.) No prior knowledge of git is needed for this workshop; however, you need to be comfortable using the command line / terminal and have git installed.

Bio:
Sara Ford

Sara Ford decided to take a year off to try academia, because hey, it's just a 1-year contract, "What's the worst that can happen?" 🤷‍♀️ Sara is teaching software engineering at Cal Poly in San Luis Obispo. She is a former employee of Microsoft and GitHub and is a Distinguished Engineering Fellow at Mississippi State University. It's quite likely that Sara is the only person in the world to help start an open source project hosting site (CodePlex) at one company and help shut it down at another company (GitHub). She received her Masters degree in UX / Human Factors at San Jose State University to focus on improving the usability in developer tools. She is the author of two books on Visual Studio and has delivered numerous talks all over the world on programming technologies. Her life-long dream is to be a 97-year old weightlifter, so she can be featured on the local news.

2nd Presentation:
IMPOSTOR SYNDROME: OVERCOMING SELF-DOUBT IN SUCCESS

Impostor Syndrome is the domain of the high achiever. Those who set the bar low are rarely it’s victim. What matters most is not whether we fear failing, looking foolish or not being enough; it’s whether we give those fears the power to keep us from taking the actions needed to achieve our goals and highest aspirations. In this session we will bring this sensitive subject to light by exploring:

• ​Why having this mindset is detrimental to your career
• Identifying the differences between healthy concern and illogical doubt
• What it actually means to ‘fake it till you make it’
• How believing something negative about yourself can make it really happen
• Ways to cope once you experience a sincere failure
• Learning to graciously express confidence

Bio:
Heather Downing

Heather is a passionate coder and entrepreneur. She has experience working with Fortune 500 companies building enterprise-level voice, mobile and C#/.Net applications. She focuses on external thought leadership, encouraging fellow programmers to present on topics outside of the office and in the community. She is an international technical speaker and co-host of the YouTube channel "The Hello World Show" -- a weekly video series that interviews software masters and teaches the audience something valuable in less than 10 minutes.

​Heather encourages those with nontraditional backgrounds to enter the world of software development, as she changed careers at 27 and does not have a degree - yet has built a reputation as an early adapter of new tech. She is an advocate of women in tech, and part of Kansas City Women in Technology. When not coding, Heather spends her time as a competitive equestrian and learning the art of mounted archery.

Meeting number (access code): 205 833 976
Meeting password: cKJkyYPx263 (25559979 from phones)