Technology Radar Roadshow

Every 6 months, ThoughtWorks' Technology Advisory Board (TAB) gets together to compile the Technology Radar - an opinionated look at technology ideas that are impacting digital businesses right now.

We recently ran a roadshow in Perth, Melbourne, Sydney, and Brisbane focused on the latest edition of the Technology Radar. Members of the TAB and senior consultants provided insight into technology trends like reactive architectures, security struggles in the enterprise, microservices, consumer-driven contract testing, and more.

The following videos are from the Melbourne edition of the roadshow. Presentation slides from all 4 cities are available for download below the videos.

Presentation Slides

Melbourne: Download presentation by Scott Shaw and Jennifer Smith
Sydney: Download presentation by Scott Shaw and Evan Bottcher
Brisbane: Download presentation by Scott Shaw and JR D'Amore
Perth: Download presentation by Evan Bottcher and Brain Leke

Scott Shaw

Director of Technology, Australia at ThoughtWorks

As Director of Technology for ThoughtWorks Asia Pac region, I divide my time between customer-facing consulting work and internal technical leadership. As a leader in ThoughtWorks, I'm responsible for our technical brand in Australia, ensuring that we're delivering only the highest technical quality. I help foster and share innovation on our delivery projects and develop leadership skills in our best and brightest technologists.

I work closely with ThoughtWorks CTO Rebecca Parsons, as well as my colleagues on ThoughtWorks' Technical Advisory Board. One product of our global collaboration is the quarterly ThoughtWorks Technology Radar, (http://www.thoughtworks.com/radar)

I also spend a good portion of my time as a working consultant, helping customers shape a technology strategy drives a growing digital business. As a long-time, hands-on Agile practitioner and architect, I've seen many different flavours of, and approaches to software design and delivery and can provide pragmatic advice to help keep teams on track. I also try to stay involved as an avid polyglot programmer. My current passions are building secure microservice systems and writing programs in the Clojure language.

Brain Leke

Developer and Technology Advisory Board Member

I work predominantly as a software developer at ThoughtWorks when I am not wearing other hats such as P2 Lead for Pan Africa or CapDev Champion for the ThoughtWorks Johannesburg office. I also represent ThoughtWorks Pan Africa in the Technology Advisory Board. After having completed a PhD in Engineering with emphasis on Computational Intelligence, I spent time trolling the earth for a purpose until I found ThoughtWorks, giving me the possibility to write software that changed lives and be involved in the Pan-African software renaissance.

Evan Bottcher

Technical Principal / Handyperson

Evan is a software developer and architect for ThoughtWorks, with more than 18 years experience building and integrating systems. Although a technologist at his core, Evan loves all the aspects of building effective teams. In recent years, Evan has become increasingly obsessed with solving the problems that lie in the ‘last mile’ of delivering solutions - continuous integration, automated testing and deployment, and monitoring and supporting systems in production.

Jennifer Smith

Software Consultant / Meddler

I started programming computers when I was 8 on the Spectrum 128k my parents bought me for Christmas. I stopped writing code when this machine was superseded by a Mega Drive that, while technically superior in many ways, didn't have any programming environment to speak of.

I picked up the habit accidentally again at 19 as part of my university course. I took to it like a duck to a compiler and realised that I was happiest when I was reading code, understanding how the parts fit together and writing my own versions of things.

Working as a software developer, and for a large amount of that at ThoughtWorks, I have gone from audio programming to application development to web development to infrastructure and data engineering (with some valuable deviations into coaching and support and even public speaking). Though the environments and circumstances change, the core principles remain the same: understanding how systems fit together and how to change them and grow them.

JR D'Amore

Lead Consultant

I spent many years writing distributed and web applications, while leading teams to transition to better ways to deliver software and manage projects.

I like to provide the insight and energy necessary to look at new ways to do software, taking the developer, the architect, and the CIO on an unexpected journey.

Along the way I swim with sharks (literally), cook, and keep my garden green (both literally and metaphorically).