Ignite OSCON (sponsored by Indeed)

Ignite OSCON is back and will be held Tuesday evening, July 16, following the day’s tutorials. Join us for a fun, high-energy evening of speed talks—all aspiring to live up to the Ignite motto: Enlighten us, but make it quick.

If you had five minutes on stage, what would you say? What if you only got 20 slides, and they rotated automatically after 15 seconds?

Ignite is free and open to the public.

Presentation lineup

How to be a terrible hiring manager
Dawn Foster

Bad hiring managers refer to massive lists of nice-to-haves as requirements, which encourages incompetent blowhards to apply. They hire ninjas who sneak around and rock stars with huge egos. Over Dawn’s 20-plus-year career in technology and operations support system (OSS), she’s seen many terrible hiring practices at various tech companies. She offers a slightly snarky view into what it takes to be a terrible hiring manager.

I Came Here to Meet 10 Black People: Normalizing my own existence in tech
Jocelyn Matthews

Once you’ve “made it” – then what? People of marginalized and underrepresented groups are frequently enticed into tech by the prospect of security, respect, intellectually challenging work and the prospect of building generational wealth.I argue the best strategy is to normalize yourself in the spaces you’re in – whether its a conference, meetup or office.

Tackling tough conversations
Charlotte Weaver

If you work with other people, eventually you’ll have to have a difficult conversation. Nothing can ever make this easy, but in just five minutes, Charlotte helps you develop strategies to make these conversations easier. You’ll learn skills to handle these tough topics with professionalism and grace and have the best chance of getting to the outcome that you want.

My first US trip (sponsored by Indeed)
Sudhamsh Goutham Teegala

Sudhamsh offers humorous and poignant reflections on experiencing a new culture and learning to stay connected to home.

Why did medieval knights fight giant snails?
Paris Buttfield-Addison

Illuminated manuscripts from the late medieval period are full of beautiful, dramatic, hilarious imagery of knights fighting giant snails. What’s the deal? Let’s find out together. Answering this, and other bizarre questions from history, Paris explores why all geeks should learn history (from a geek with a medieval history degree and a PhD in computer science).

Machine learning ate my homework
Aimee Maree Forsstrom

Join Aimee in 2050. You’re running late. You stumble out of bed to find the light switch and realize your homework essay “History of GNU/Linux” was deleted; SkyNet determined the essay was “radical literature.” The future is now. Did they forgot to add the part where algorithms would be wielded against us, and we would end up proving false positives to equations that respond with “do not reply”?

Observability observed, in 5 minutes or less
Aaron Aldrich

What’s an observability, why do I care about it, and what do I do next? Aaron introduces you to a new way of thinking about systems monitoring and gives some pointers on where you can begin to make practical shifts in your stack to get started.

Coding in public: Livestreaming your coding sessions
Jon Manning

Livestreaming video services like Twitch, Mixer, and Facebook Live are what all the dang kids use to show off how many dang points they can get in their dang video games, but there’s an increasing number of people livestreaming creative work. Jon explores how you can get started, how to get the most out of it, and how to have fun.