BitLab - Do IT Yourself

My talk at the semester kickoff at BitLab entitled "Do IT Yourself".

Transcript

1. BitLab - Do IT Yourself A talk by Kasper Tidemann to kick the semester off right!
2. Kasper Tidemann. That is my name.
3. My company from which my world unfolds.
4. I am a software developer. 00010101100101010010 01110001010010100010 11010101000001010011 00001001100101001001 00010101110101010110 10100101000010111100
5. I have worked with Facebook in Menlo Park.
6. This is about you. I am not that much into talking about myself. I’d like to talk about you instead.
7. Why am I here? There are three things I would like to tell you.
8. Learn how to develop software. Software development is an art form. Master it and you can create almost everything.
9. Practice how to express yourselves. Tech is not about bits and bytes. It’s about conveying messages and making sense of things.
10. Follow your dreams. The foundation - and illusion - of becoming a better person.
11. Story time!
12. 2005. The year I started at CBS.
13. Remember when Skype didn’t suck?
14. I was inspired by a lot of things, including Ruby on Rails by David Heinemeier Hansson.
15. I had no idea what I wanted to accomplish with my life. But I loved software. So, where to go from there?
17. Business software, yay!
18. Some of you might know a competitor from back then.
19. Logging in.
20. An overview of all the projects.
21. Some client info, their address, location etc.
22. This was designed more than 8 years ago.
23. This was designed more than 8 years ago.
24. Then we signed the first big client. Hooray!
25. Unilever Danmark A/S signed up for Meeho!™ for their online ordering platform.
26. A custom-designed version of our CRM.
28. Many nifty design features.
29. The setup at Unilever Danmark A/S brought about heaps of integrations and enterprise work.
30. … but we got a yearly supply of free ice cream! Hooray! Seriously, that was a lot of ice cream.
31. We ended up working a lot as consultants and very little as a startup. … and that scales poorly. So, time for something else?
32. Let’s relocate to the United States of America!
34. I attended BNI meetings at Park Avenue.
35. I bought a newspaper for Mr. Big from Sex & The City at the local Starbucks on Park Avenue. My biggest New York takeaway?
36. So, where to go next? New York was fine, but not so tech.
38. – Either you continue having a broad perspective or you focus on becoming amazing at developing software. I told myself this in San Francisco.
39. So I spent most of my time from 2012 to 2014 on software development. Namely taking part in the Ember.js community.
40. It was terribly expensive. I loved off of a bank loan.
41. Thank you, Nordea!
42. Then Facebook happened.
46. I was tasked to create an app and a dashboard for executive protection. For Mark Zuckerberg and Sheryl Sandberg.
50. Seriously, I was nervous like never before when demoing the software. Just me vs. eight people from Facebook.
51. It was a wonderful period of my life. Exploring the world!
59. What then? Well, I wanted to go home.
60. My take on the difference between the US and Denmark. Taxes, people, possibilities and more.
61. I’ve worked a whole lot with Danske Spil lately.
62. This is some of my work.
63. Working as a consultant is like a gold rush these days. I’m serious, it is.
64. I’m a co-owner of Alefarm Brewing, the most popular Danish brewery.
69. My story goes to show that IT can take you anywhere. It’s an adventure!
70. kt@tdmn.co Thank you!