#30: Diana Montalion & Romeu Moura & David Anderson

Hello DDDers,

It's time to get back to school! On the first meetup of this season (the 30th in our history) we'll have the pleasure to host not one or two, but three amazing speakers, for 3X the fun: Diana Montalion, Romeu Moura, and David Anderson.
All these wonderful people will be in Athens to speak at the Better Ways conference on Friday. We highly encourage everyone to attend for a day full of inspiring speakers and fresh, mind-opening content.
Afterwards we will do a raffle for some tickets to the upcoming Build Stuff conference. If you are not one of the lucky ones, use DDDGREECE_20 to claim a 20% discount.
We will wrap up with a networking session at the rooftop of Orfium.

Diana Montalion - Don’t Hit The Iceberg

A decade ago, developers built information-sharing software by writing a lot of custom code in a single code base, then adding layers of caching. Now we build information systems: interdependent software and services, data platforms, and event streams. In systems thinking circles, a common model is The Iceberg. At the top, visible above the waterline, are the things that happen. Events (like bugs and outages) and patterns that reinforce them. At the bottom, down deep, are our mental models -- the concepts we draw from when we build software systems.
I've seen many software-to-systems (aka "digital transformation") initiatives fail. They hit this Iceberg and sink spectacularly. What do we do when that happens? We double down on our traditional approaches.
Real transformation can only happen when we go deep into the structures of our collective thinking. Architecture, in the systems age, is not just Kubernetes. It is engaging our mental models and working together to transform them. Our thinking designs our architecture. Scaling up our linear thinking cannot resolve systems challenges. We need to shift to systems thinking.

Romeu Moura - Rinseless Brushing: A tale of practices

Every adoption of every practice runs in similar patterns of problems of fetichisation, dogmatism, mechanical application, silver bullets and nihilism.
Let's explore the common thread of those with a narrative on toothbrushing.

David Anderson - Thinking about Wardley Mapping

An informal session on how Dave has used mapping in his career and as an influence for The Value Flywheel Effect. We will walk through a few maps used in transformation and technology strategy when trying to bring in techniques like DDD and EDA. Dave will also share some important principles and tips for getting started with your mapping journey.

Speaker bios

Diana Montalion
If you’ve read The Economist, donated to Wikipedia, or contributed to The World Monuments Fund, you’ve interacted with systems that Diana helped to architect.
She has 18+ years experience delivering initiatives, independently or as part of a professional services group, to clients including Stanford, The Gates Foundation and Teach For All.
She is founder of Mentrix, a consultancy providing enterprise systems architecture and diverse workshops on systems-thinking approaches.
She is the author of Writing as Thinking and the upcoming O'Reilly book, Learn Systems Thinking: Essential Nonlinear Skills & Practices for Software Professionals.

Romeu Moura
Endless conversation — with friends, compilers — on art, equivocacy, Symmathesy, methods, absurdism, dialectic, paradigm jumps, serendipity.

David Anderson
David is a seasoned Cloud Architect currently associated with Globalisation Partners. He is a distinguished technical leader, deeply passionate about driving technical strategy and aiding others in their digital transformation journey.
Known for his talks on value, serverless, wardley mapping, technical leadership, and engineering excellence, he brings a serverless-first mindset to the table that serves as a key driver in his approach to technology.
With a rich background in the telecom industry, including roles at Three, Nokia, and Ericsson, David's expertise spans from fintech/insurtech strategies and cloud adoption to enterprise/organizational transformation.

Sponsors

Orfium is kindly hosting the event on their premises, as well as sponsoring the networking session.
Orfium is the global technology company solving the entertainment industry’s biggest challenges around digital music & broadcast rights management, cue sheets, data and reporting. Orfium's solutions are built by industry experts on state-of-the-art technology, underpinned by proven AI/ML models, with a first-in-class track record for efficiency and effectiveness.

All the best,
DDDGreece meetup team.