Beyond Inspiration: Turning Learning into Action

You're here because you're curious, eager to grow, and ready to explore new ideas. Over the next few days, you'll gain fresh insights, discover cutting-edge technologies, and connect with an incredible community. But have you considered what you're going to do with everything you learn?

Learning doesn't stop when the conference ends—it's what you do next that matters. Will your new knowledge spark meaningful change in your work? Will you find ways to experiment, collaborate, and apply what you've learned? How will you bring your team and leadership along for the ride?

In this keynote, we'll explore how to turn inspiration into action. We'll discuss the power of continuous learning—not just for your own growth, but for your team and your company. We'll tackle the real challenges: overcoming barriers, securing buy-in, and embedding a learning culture that lasts.

Let's set the stage for a conference experience that doesn't just inspire you—it equips you to make a real impact.

Transcript

1. Trisha Gee Developer Productivity Advocate, Gradle Beyond Inspiration: Turning Learning into Action What do you do with what you’re learning?
2. Person With Opinions Trisha Gee
3. Person With Opinions Trisha Gee …and Author
4. Three days at a conference learning interesting things!
8. What are you going to do with everything you’ve learnt?
9. “In the modern office context, [knowledge workers] tend to rely on stress as a default heuristic for moderation.” Slow Productivity: The Lost Art of Accomplishment Without Burnout Cal Newport
10. This means that you are, by default, ALWAYS TOO BUSY
11. This means that you are, by default, ALWAYS TOO BUSY
12. Your management is pretty happy with this
13. Your management is pretty happy with this
14. Your management is pretty happy with this
15. “Research indicates that when organizations overload employees, base their incentives primarily on the amount of time they work, and excessively monitor their activities, productivity and efficiency actually drop.” https://hbr .org/2023/03/beware-a-culture-of-busyness
16. By Amy (Trisha’s daughter)
17. AND you’re too busy to make the changes that will make you less busy
18. “[Knowledge workers] exist at that point of… having too much to do, but… just manageable enough to avoid reform.” Slow Productivity: The Lost Art of Accomplishment Without Burnout Cal Newport
19. To make the most of what you learn here, you will need to make some changes
21. Start Small
22. Do not try to re-write the whole application in Rust
23. How to grow a Culture of Continuous Learning Brown Bags Hack days and Hackathons 20% Time Experimentation Sprints
24. How to grow a Culture of Continuous Learning Brown Bags Hack days and Hackathons 20% Time Experimentation Sprints
25. How to grow a Culture of Continuous Learning Brown Bags Hack days and Hackathons 20% Time Experimentation Sprints
26. How to grow a Culture of Continuous Learning Brown Bags Hack days and Hackathons 20% Time Experimentation Sprints
27. How to grow a Culture of Continuous Learning Brown Bags Hack days and Hackathons 20% Time Experimentation Sprints
28. Choose where to spend your energy
29. I will make those work requirements easier
30. I will make the team more efficient or more effective
31. Everyone else has been going on about how cool or interesting I am
32. You want to learn about this
33. Why are you doing this?
35. Focusing on the WHY will help you pick the WHAT
36. …and help you sell it to the boss
37. Talk the language of the business
38. The business doesn’t care about the HOW
39. "I want time to learn the latest Java features."
40. The business cares about outcomes
41. "Using virtual threads could let us handle more requests with the same hardware. This would improve the app’s performance and cut our cloud costs"
42. What are the business goals? Increase revenue Improve customer satisfaction Beat the competition Decrease costs
43. What are the business goals? Increase revenue Improve customer satisfaction Beat the competition Decrease costs
44. What are the business goals? Increase revenue Improve customer satisfaction Beat the competition Decrease costs
45. What are the business goals? Increase revenue Improve customer satisfaction Beat the competition Decrease costs
46. What are the business goals? Increase revenue Improve customer satisfaction Beat the competition Decrease costs
48. The ability to experiment is a critical part of innovation and creating business value.” Accelerate: The Science of Lean Software and DevOps Nicole Forsgren, Jez Humble, Gene Kim
49. “The team will spend [x time] [prototyping/ researching] [some thing]. Our hypothesis is that using [technology/tool/approach] will result in [faster time to market/higher quality code/better performance benchmarks].”
50. An experiment has:
51. A hypothesis
52. “We can ship code more quickly if…”
53. A method
54. Where to experiment? Pet projects Prototypes Build system / deployment tools / CD pipeline Automated tests Internal tools New project or service
55. Where to experiment? Pet projects Prototypes Build system / deployment tools / CD pipeline Automated tests Internal tools New project or service
56. Where to experiment? Pet projects Prototypes Build system / deployment tools / CD pipeline Automated tests Internal tools New project or service
57. Where to experiment? Pet projects Prototypes Build system / deployment tools / CD pipeline Automated tests Internal tools New project or service
58. Where to experiment? Pet projects Prototypes Build system / deployment tools / CD pipeline Automated tests Internal tools New project or service
59. Where to experiment? Pet projects Prototypes Build system / deployment tools / CD pipeline Automated tests Internal tools New project or service
60. Where to experiment? Pet projects Prototypes Build system / deployment tools / CD pipeline Automated tests Internal tools New project or service
61. Success criteria
62. “25% fewer exceptions in the logs”
63. An outcome
64. Success!
65. Fail
66. …and this is OK!
67. Optimism is an occupational hazard of programming: feedback is the treatment.” Test-Driven Development: By Example Kent Beck
68. The value is what you learnt
69. Timebox your experiments
70. “We spent 6 months on this and didn’t get anywhere” == “This experiment failed to deliver business value”
71. “The team will spend one day a sprint working with different AI coding assistants on their own pet projects. We’ll record our experiences once a month, and at the end of the quarter we’ll use the results to decide which, if any, we should standardise on.”
73. Paying the cost of learning speeds you up in the long run
74. Learning drains cognitive resources, but after you’ve learned it, using the now-automatic knowledge and skill is fast and effortless. Knowledge in the head trades slower learning time now for faster using time later.” Badass: Making Users Awesome Kathy Sierra
75. Learning stuff makes you better at learning stuff
76. Adapting to an ever-accelerating sequence of new technologies also trains the mind to explore and master complex systems.” Everything Bad is Good for You: How Popular Culture is Making Us Smarter Steven Johnson
77. Learning and trying new things is FUN
78. Research shows: Fun is good for business
79. Research shows: Fun is good for business
80. Trying new things should benefit your organisation
81. This is your cheat sheet Increase revenue Improve customer satisfaction Beat the competition Decrease costs
82. Use experiments to set boundaries and goals
83. Organizing our work into a series of small, informal experiments and gathering feedback to inform our learning allows us to proceed more deliberately and to explore the problem and solution spaces that we inhabit.” Modern Software Engineering: Doing What Works to Build Better Software Faster David Farley
84. The only way to win is to learn faster than anyone else.” The Lean Startup: How Constant Innovation Creates Radically Successful Businesses Eric Ries
85. Thank You! tinyurl.com/bynd-insp