Nathaniel Schutta
Architect as a Service
Nathaniel T. Schutta is a software architect and Java Champion focused on cloud computing, developer happiness and building usable applications. A proponent of polyglot programming, Nate has written multiple books, appeared in countless videos and many podcasts. He’s also a seasoned speaker who regularly presents at worldwide conferences, No Fluff Just Stuff symposia, meetups, universities, and user groups. In addition to his day job, Nate is an adjunct professor at the University of Minnesota, where he teaches students to embrace (and evaluate) technical change. Driven to rid the world of bad presentations, he coauthored the book Presentation Patterns with Neal Ford and Matthew McCullough, and he also published Thinking Architecturally and Responsible Microservices available from O’Reilly. His latest book, Fundamentals of Software Engineering, is currently available in early release.
Presentations
Succeeding With Microservices
Monday, 9:00 AM EST
These days, you can’t swing a dry erase marker without hitting someone talking about microservices. Developers are studying Eric Evan’s prescient book Domain Driven Design. Teams are refactoring monolithic apps, looking for bounded contexts and defining a ubiquitous language. And while there have been countless articles, videos, and talks to help you convert to microservices, few have spent any appreciable time asking if a given application should be a microservice. In this talk, I will show you a set of factors you can apply to help you decide if something deserves to be a microservice or not. We’ll also look at what we need to do to maintain a healthy micro(services)biome.
Microservices demand more than just a new architecture, they require a cultural shift. In this workshop, we'll cover:
- A set of principles that will help you decide if microservices are the best choice for your applications
- How to build production-hardened services
- How to empower your teams while ensuring they make good decisions
- How to develop a cloud native culture
- The challenges and pitfalls of microservice architectures and how to manage them
Paved Roads - Architecting for Distributed Teams
Tuesday, 8:30 AM EST
As we migrate towards distributed applications, it is more than just our architectures that are changing, so too are the structures of our teams. The Inverse Conway Maneuver tells us small, autonomous teams are needed to produce small, autonomous services. Architects are spread thin and can’t be involved with every decision. Today, we must empower our teams but we need to ensure our teams are making good choices. How do we do that? How do you put together a cohesive architecture around distributed teams?
This talk will discuss creating “paved roads”, well worn paths that we know works and we can support. We will also explore the importance of fitness functions to help our teams adopt appropriate designs.
Developer To Architect
Tuesday, 1:00 PM EST
Becoming a software architect is a longed-for career upgrade for many software developers. While the job title suggests a work day focused on technical decision-making, the reality is quite different. In this workshop, software architect Nathaniel Schutta constructs a real world job description in which communication trumps coding.
Discover the skill sets needed to juggle multiple priorities, meetings, and time demandsLearn why your best team leadership tool is not a hammer, but a shared cup of coffeeHear the best ways to give and take criticismUnderstand the necessity of writing effective email and formal architecture documentsGet tips for delivering confident career-building presentations to any audienceReview essential techniques for stakeholder management and relationship buildingExplore the critical needs for architecture reviews and an effective process for conducting themThrough lecture and small group exercises, Nathaniel will help you understand what it means to be a successful architect. Working through various problems, attendees will have opportunities to think through architectural decisions and patterns, discuss the importance of non functional requirements and why architects cannot afford to practice resume driven design.
Developer To Architect
Tuesday, 3:00 PM EST
Becoming a software architect is a longed-for career upgrade for many software developers. While the job title suggests a work day focused on technical decision-making, the reality is quite different. In this workshop, software architect Nathaniel Schutta constructs a real world job description in which communication trumps coding.
Discover the skill sets needed to juggle multiple priorities, meetings, and time demandsLearn why your best team leadership tool is not a hammer, but a shared cup of coffeeHear the best ways to give and take criticismUnderstand the necessity of writing effective email and formal architecture documentsGet tips for delivering confident career-building presentations to any audienceReview essential techniques for stakeholder management and relationship buildingExplore the critical needs for architecture reviews and an effective process for conducting themThrough lecture and small group exercises, Nathaniel will help you understand what it means to be a successful architect. Working through various problems, attendees will have opportunities to think through architectural decisions and patterns, discuss the importance of non functional requirements and why architects cannot afford to practice resume driven design.
Production Hardened Services
Tuesday, 5:00 PM EST
By now I bet your company has hundreds, maybe thousands of services, heck you might even consider some of them micro is stature! And while many organizations have plowed headlong down this particular architectural path, your spidey sense might be tingling…how do we keep this ecosystem healthy?
In this talk, I will go beyond the buzzwords into the nitty gritty of actually succeeding with a service based architecture. We will cover the principles and practices that will make sure your systems are stable and resilient while allowing you to get a decent night's sleep!
Spring For Architects
Wednesday, 9:00 AM EST
With globally distributed applications (and teams!) the job of software architect isn’t getting any easier; applications are growing increasingly complex and architects are spread thin. You can’t be involved with every decision, you must empower your teams while ensuring they are making good choices. How do you do that? How can frameworks like Spring not only make your life easier but help your teams deliver robust applications to production? Spring Cloud has a veritable plethora of sub projects from circuit breakers to functions simplifying the task of building cloud native applications while making it easy for developers to adhere to best practices. At the same time it can be overwhelming to get your head wrapped around all the features Spring offers. This talk will show how Spring allows architects to focus on the critical design decisions they need to make while ensuring developers are empowered to implement critical business use cases. Today’s cloud native applications have similar pitfalls, luckily Spring is here to help you resolve them!
This talk will show how Spring allows architects to focus on the critical design decisions they need to make while ensuring developers are empowered to implement critical business use cases. Today’s cloud native applications have similar pitfalls, luckily Spring is here to help you resolve them!
Architecting Cloud Native Applications
Wednesday, 1:30 PM EST
By now your organization has planted a flag in “the Cloud” and it up to you to figure out just what that means to your application portfolio. Should everything be a microservice? Wait, what is a microservices anyway? How do you deal with massively distributed applications? How can event storming fix the gap between your business problems and domain model?
In this workshop, you will take a kata from event storming through to an initial design stopping along the way to discuss:
- Cloud native culture
- Domain driven design
- The importance of paved roads
- Chaos engineering
- Production Hardened Services
Architecting Cloud Native Applications
Wednesday, 3:15 PM EST
By now your organization has planted a flag in “the Cloud” and it up to you to figure out just what that means to your application portfolio. Should everything be a microservice? Wait, what is a microservices anyway? How do you deal with massively distributed applications? How can event storming fix the gap between your business problems and domain model?
In this workshop, you will take a kata from event storming through to an initial design stopping along the way to discuss:
- Cloud native culture
- Domain driven design
- The importance of paved roads
- Chaos engineering
- Production Hardened Services
Analyzing and Critiquing Architectures
Wednesday, 5:00 PM EST
Software architecture is having a moment, from best selling books to packed classes, the software industry acknowledges the importance of the parts of software resistant to internet searches. Ample pixels have been spilt talking about patterns, decomposition, styles, diagrams and more and all to good ends!
When it is time to review an architecture, what should you do? What factors should you consider? How do provide constructive feedback? We won’t just talk theory, we’ll work through real world examples, providing you chance to practice this vital skill.
Books
Presentation Patterns: Techniques for Crafting Better Presentations
by Neal Ford, Matthew McCullough, and Nathaniel Schutta
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Presentation Patterns is the first book on presentations that categorizes and organizes the building blocks (or patterns) that you’ll need to communicate effectively using presentation tools like Keynote and PowerPoint.
Patterns are like the lower-level steps found inside recipes; they are the techniques you must master to be considered a master chef or master presenter. You can use the patterns in this book to construct your own recipes for different contexts, such as business meetings, technical demonstrations, scientific expositions, and keynotes, just to name a few.
Although there are no such things as antirecipes, this book shows you lots of antipatterns—things you should avoid doing in presentations. Modern presentation tools often encourage ineffective presentation techniques, but this book shows you how to avoid them.
Each pattern is introduced with a memorable name, a definition, and a brief explanation of motivation. Readers learn where the pattern applies, the consequences of applying it, and how to apply it. The authors also identify critical antipatterns: clichés, fallacies, and design mistakes that cause presentations to disappoint. These problems are easy to avoid—once you know how.
Presentation Patterns will help you
- Plan what you’ll say, who you’ll say it to, how long you’ll talk, and where you’ll present
- Perfectly calibrate your presentation to your audience
- Use the storyteller’s “narrative arc” to full advantage
- Strengthen your credibility—and avoid mistakes that hurt it
- Hone your message before you ever touch presentation software
- Incorporate visuals that support your message instead of hindering it
- Create highly effective “infodecks” that work when you’re not able to deliver a talk in person
- Construct slides that really communicate and avoid “Ant Fonts,” “Floodmarks,” “Alienating Artifacts,” and other errors
- Master 13 powerful techniques for delivering your presentation with power, authority, and clarity
Whether you use this book as a handy reference or read it from start to finish, it will be a revelation: an entirely new language for systematically planning, creating, and delivering more powerful presentations. You’ll quickly find it indispensable—no matter what you’re presenting, who your audiences are, or what message you’re driving home.
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Pro Ajax and Java Frameworks
by Nathaniel Schutta and Ryan Asleson
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Ajax (Asynchronous JavaScript and XML) is the ultimate web programming methodology for producing dynamic, rich web experiences. Java developers are crying out for guides showing how to add Ajax functionality to web applications, and this book meets their needs with Pro Ajax and Java. This is the book every Java developer needs to become expert in Ajax. The authors provide the reader with the perfect Java/Ajax toolkit to get started quickly, exploring Ajax development in detail using the 4 most popular Java web application frameworks: Struts, Spring, JSF, and Tapestry.
Foundations of Ajax
by Nathaniel Schutta and Ryan Asleson
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* Ajax is one of the hottest topics in the developer community right now! and this will be the first Ajax book that offers detailed explanation of how Ajax works and how to use it to best effect. Theory and practice covered immediately in one volume.
* Ajax works across many platforms and different groups of developers – this book is designed to be suitable for all those developers across all those platforms, who are interested in the hot new topic of Ajax.
* Demand for Ajax knowledge will be strong. Leading technology companies like Google, Yahoo, Adaptive Path, and Amazon are adopting Ajax techniques, and many other companies are doing the same in order to compete with Ajax. This book connect the developer community to the new Ajax functionality.
Extreme UI Design: The User is Always Right
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You know about Extreme Programming, Agile cooperation, and continuous improvement, but did you know you can apply these to UI design? I'll show you how to make your end users happy all the time by applying what you already know about software development to the design and implementation of user interfaces. More and more, developers are being called upon to create user interfaces without designers. Extreme UI Design: The User is Always Right will show you how to use your well-honed programming skills to build measurably effective front ends.
It's all about usability, the software equivalent of flossing; you know you should do it, yet sometimes there just isn't time. For developers, there often isn't money to hire a designer. In tough times, developers who can design become essential, but most software engineers are schooled in algorithms and compilers and rarely in the intricacies of user interaction. This book is for all of you who find yourselves working on the front lines of software development and want to create an application that respects the maxim that all users are right.
- Discover best UI design practices for software engineers.
- Maximize usability right in your code with a few simple tools.
- Write software that works for the user!
What you'll learn
- Distinguish usability myth from reality
- Give users both what they want and what they need (these aren't the same)
- Use your application prototypes as test beds for usability
- Apply rigorous heuristics to measuring UI effectiveness
- See why CRAP is important to creating good interfaces
- Identify and avoid common UI anti-patterns
Who is this book for?
Looking to get an edge in today's workplace? Worried about being downsized? As companies look to cut expenses, the developer who can do more has a better chance of survival. If the UI team gets the axe, can you step in and help run a usability test or whack out a paper-based prototype? After reading this book, you'll be more valuable to your software development organization, you'll have a more complete toolbox, and you'll create applications that don't make your users yack .
This book is primarily aimed at software developers who are tasked with front-end development. Considering that almost all software has some kind of interface, it should appeal to a large audience. Depending on how the book is slanted, it should also interest the agile community.