It's so rare to see real world examples of actual code being run in actual businesses. Luckily as the founder of my business, I'm free to share as much as I can.

As an accounting integrated payments company, the movement of money and handling of financials are our key tasks.

This session will dive into the workings of some key parts of the system and it's architecture, while pointing out coding patterns and solutions that have stood the test of time.

One of the key values of our business is simplicity, and I hope this session can guide juniors down a good path, challenge the opinions of intermediates, and give seniors a fresh perspective (as well as a laugh I'm sure).

Ben Cull

A Lap Around an 8 Year Old Payments Company Codebase

Admit it: we've all checked in an API key or password to a repo at some point... Oops... No one wants their secrets to accidentally leak, so this session is your essential refresher on secret management (and mismanagement!) for your applications and beyond!

Let's explore the range of methods and benefits of securely handling secrets for local development: from features baked into your IDE (Visual Studio, Rider), to secret management services (Azure KeyVault, AWS / GCP Secret Manager), and even loading them from your password manager of choice (i.e. 1Password). We'll progress to look at accessing secrets as part of a CI/CD pipeline, or loading them into infrastructure at runtime, to eliminate hard-coded secrets from every aspect of our projects.

I will discuss the processes for managing secrets on a large scale – including following a least trust approach, methods for revoking and cycling credentials, and appropriately mapping our dependencies so we can measure the impact of a change.

Callum Whyte

All your secrets are belong to us

Kubernetes, microservices, event-driven architecture. And let's not forget Residuality Theory — no, really, what even is that?  As someone who spends their days untangling software complexity, I've seen some serious messes. My last project involved dismantling a kubernetes/microservices setup with a two-day deployment cycle that cost the entire GPD of a small country to run-all because it looked good on someone's resume.

I've even had debates with architects whose entire argument boiled down to: “Netflix does it, so why don't we” Except you're not Netflix and you do not have 200+ million subscribers. And yes, I used to be that kind of architect too.

Look, I get it — we are engineers. We LOVE complexity; it's why we chose this career path. Pondering this question has led me to eat some seriously bad-tasting humbling pie. Sometimes you must set your ego aside and do what's best for your team and organisation.

In this talk, I'll share why I believe software has become overcomplicated, the role I've played in it, and how we can start simplifying things by sticking to core principles like YAGNI, KISS, and more.

By the end, I hope to have shared a slice of that humble pie along with practical tips for becoming a better, more pragmatic developer. As engineers, it's our duty to lead by example and keep things simple — because complexity isn't always better.


Ian Newmarch

Are you overcomplicating software development? I certainly have been...

Event Storming is an increasingly popular technique for helping developers and business stakeholders collaborate on exploring domains and designing solutions.

In this experiential workshop, we'll briefly talk through the fundamental principals of how to run an event storming session & why it works so well, and then spend most of our time event storming together.

This will suit first timers or folk looking to level up their event storming practice and will position you to start using this powerful technique at work immediately.

Chris Simon

Beginner's Guide to Event Storming

Estimates suck.

What if I said you didn't have to play endless rounds of estimation poker? What if you just accepted you were wrong?

We spend hours trying to get our estimates right but we inevitably miss the mark resulting in stressed teams, stakeholder conflict and low-quality software. How do we make it so being wrong actually makes it right?

Come find out how just one estimate, a little math, and accepting that we're always wrong changed our team. It turned us from a team that released twice in a year, to one that released ten times in as many months.

You'll leave this session with actionable advice on how your team can say goodbye to planning poker, and how you can give accurate deadlines, all whilst still being wrong. We'll see the positive impacts these techniques can have on your team, your culture and the software you build.

Tom Ridge

Being consistently wrong

Evolving beyond CI/CD requires dedication and intent. Our quest to expand from continuous delivery to continuous deployment, where every passing merge goes directly to production, was not without its challenges. However, the benefits of streamlining our processes—eliminating release overhead, obtaining faster feedback from customers, reducing risk with smaller changes—compelled us to embark on this path of continuous improvement.

Join me as I share shares my journey, hurdles encountered, and practical tips to enhance your deployment processes and chart your own course toward continuous deployment. Topics covered include strengthening your testing strategy, adapting processes to align with the new approach, and automating all the things. This session aims to provide you with a clear understanding of the advantages of continuous deployment and actionable insights to implement within your team.

Walk away with newfound inspiration and ideas to drive your organization forward on the path to continuous deployment.

Tracy Bongiorno

Beyond Continuous Delivery - Our journey from Gitflow to Continuous Deployment

I will dive into the struggles of masking, burnout and fatigue especially in high demand industries such as IT. I will discuss coping strategies, self care, and finding balance that may not be designed for neurodivergent people. I will weave in my real life personal story and insights that are informative, deeply relatable and inspiring. I will provide actional insights from my own experience living with the rest of the forgotten generation of unidentified neurodivergent women.

Ellie McGowan

Burnout, Masking and Energy Management for Neurodivergent IT professionals

Readers beware! You choose the object-oriented design pattern that we will dare! This interactive "myth-buster-esque" talk will take you through a haunted mansion of object-oriented Java design patterns from the Gang-of-Four book and debunk the myths of their relavence with Kotlin. 

Would you like to go to the kitchen to look at the cake builder and learn about the Builder Pattern? Or do you want to visit the friendly ghost lurking in the basement and learn about the Visitor Pattern? Or perhaps you want to help out with some housekeeping and accidentally shock yourself trying to plug in the vacuum cleaner while learning the Adapter Pattern? The possibilities are endless, so choose wisely! Choose your own design patterns!  

Isuru Rajapakse

Choose Your Own Design Patterns!

In 2005, I got my first full-time programming job. Checks notes—wow, that was 20 years ago (or at least 10, depending on your grasp of math). It was a glorious time of ASP.NET Web Forms, the fiery remains of the browser wars, and JavaScript barely holding itself together.

To celebrate, I’m throwing caution, modern tooling, and my sanity to the wind. Let’s build something using only the tools of the time—no AI copilots, no sleek IDEs, and absolutely no frameworks with names like “Blazor” or “Vue.”

Will we triumph and ship a masterpiece, or will it devolve into me yelling at an uncooperative browser and weeping into a pile of printouts? Will the demo gods show mercy, or will they laugh in my face? Who knows! But one thing’s for sure: we’ll learn something about how far we’ve come—and maybe even appreciate the madness that got us here.

Aaron Powell

Coding Like it's 2005

Not all decisions are created equal, and in tech, knowing when a decision is reversible can mean the difference between rapid innovation and avoidable setbacks.

Join us to explore the principles of ‘one-way’ and ‘two-way’ door decisions, and learn how to apply these insights to strategic tech choices.

Whether it’s selecting a cloud provider, defining a tech stack, or developing agile workflows, this talk will equip you with techniques to assess risks, enhance adaptability, and foster a culture that balances stability with agility.

Stephen Sennett

Decisions, Risk, and Reversibility: Strategic Decision-Making for Tech Leaders and Developers

Finding new ways for your team to develop "core skills"—communication, problem-solving, teamwork, and leadership—can be tough. Traditional activities often feel stale, but what if we could make skill-building fun and impactful? 

In this session, we introduce ‘Ultimate Tech Team’, a tabletop role-playing game (TTRPG) designed specifically for tech teams. Inspired by games like Dungeons & Dragons, this TTRPG creates a playful, immersive environment where tech professionals can develop core skills through engaging gameplay. Instead of awkward role-playing scenarios, ‘Ultimate Tech Team’ allows participants to use their imagination, work together, and roll some dice as they navigate challenges set in a “make-believe” company.

We’ll explore research-backed benefits of TTRPGs—like enhanced collaboration and critical thinking—along with real-world insights on their effectiveness in team settings. Volunteers from the audience will also join a live demonstration, tackling an interactive scenario chosen by audience vote, to show firsthand how TTRPG mechanics help players solve problems and build core skills.

Attendees will leave with a new approach to team-building, practical tips, and example scenarios to bring back to their own teams—no prior TTRPG experience required! Whether you’re a manager or an individual contributor, join us to see how imagination and a few dice rolls can boost your team’s dynamics.

Kirsty McDonald

Dungeons and…Developers? Building skills in tech teams with table top role playing games

In the tech world, few career decisions create more existential dread than the one where you must choose between becoming a Staff Engineer or an Engineering Manager. It’s a crossroads that feels akin to deciding between two different operating systems—one promises sleek, technical prowess, while the other gives you...meetings. Lots of meetings. This talk will unpack the mental gymnastics that go into making this decision: do you stay deeply technical, solving complex architectural puzzles and pushing the boundaries of innovation as a Staff Engineer? Or do you venture into the wild world of managing people, where you can no longer "git blame" your teammates, but instead must inspire and lead them?

On the one hand, as a Staff Engineer, you’ll be the go-to expert, keeping your hands on the keyboard and getting that dopamine hit from solving tough problems. On the other hand, the Engineering Manager role lets you grow teams, mentor juniors, and, yes, become intimately familiar with the nuances of calendar scheduling. But is the loss of direct technical involvement worth the gain of team-building satisfaction? In this light-hearted yet insightful session, we’ll explore the perks, pitfalls, and politics of both paths.

By the end, you'll leave with a clearer sense of what suits your personality and career aspirations better—a Staff Engineer keeping the codebase clean, or an Engineering Manager keeping the codebase creators sane. Whichever path you choose, remember: both are essential to the company, and the end of the day its your decision.

Jaswanth Manigundan

Git Blame or Team Blame? The Tech Career Crisis

Do you care about making your site more accessible but don't know where to start? Have you tried to read the WCAG accessiblity guidelines or use a screen reader but got lost? 

If you want to start you accessiblity journey here or brush up on some techniques then join me in this hands on workshop.

I will show you some easy to access and use accessibility tooling from the browser. Give you some real experience in assessing a website for accessibility thereby making you more comfortable with the guidelines and standards in an easy to understand and practical way.

Rhiana Heppenstall

Hands on Accessibility testing with your browser

What are the decided factors in making your next career move? 

Do you actively think about it? Do you wait for the tap on the shoulder from a recruiter?  Do you have one bad day at work and then decide you want to start applying for jobs? 

In this session, I'll take you through my career design method. There are key questions and activities I go through to make a strategic decision about my next move and I want to share this process with you! 

By the end of this session, you'll have a clear scaffold to help you get clarity about where you're heading and more importantly, why you're heading there. 

Emily Conaghan

How to Design Your Next Career Move

Most larger tech companies have successful home-grown platform products. Things like front-end boilerplates, one-click environment builders, data generators, and design systems. You might be working on one of them!

Once they’re established, these tools get a lot of use. They have off-the-charts ROI. People can no longer code without them! They’re so ubiquitous that everyone in the company has an opinion about them. Team members behind those tools become subject-matter experts and highly valued.

Let’s play a corporate spy, and explore ways to take down these beloved tools. 
What could contribute to their early demise?
What could get in the way of the teams working on them?

Knowing how a spy would act, will help us build healthier and more resilient platform products.

Prae Songprasit

How to sabotage an internal product

It’s in our nature to get used to things that are constantly around us and start taking them for granted. But I think it’s also healthy to take a step back every now and then to reflect and appreciate all those things around us, in general, but also specifically as software engineers.

So, let’s go on that journey together and look at some of the most influential milestones in the evolution of web development. How did they shape the path to modern development as we know it, and what might the future bring next?

Julian Burr

On The Shoulders Of Giants — A Look At Modern Web Development

A slow app sucks. Figuring out what's slow and then fixing it can be difficult, time consuming and error prone. Fortunately you don't need to be a genius or super experienced to make your app go a lot faster!

In this talk I'll run through:

* Tools that I've found most useful for finding performance issues - visual studio's profiler, perfmon, perfview, benchmark.net and nbomber 

* Techniques for fixing your performance problems

* How to avoid the biggest pitfalls and red herrings

* How to prove that you've definitely made a difference



Lachlan Barclay

Performance, Profiling and Optimisation

In an age where technology is reshaping every facet of our lives, many professionals find themselves contemplating a significant career shift—refactoring their paths to migrate into tech roles. Whether you're transitioning from a non-technical background or shifting within the tech landscape, this journey is both challenging and rewarding.

This talk explores the strategies and mindset needed to successfully navigate a career migration into technology. Drawing from my personal experience transitioning from business administration to an ICT Developer professional—and now moving towards DevOps and Solutions Architecture—I'll share insights gained from working across three continents: Brazil, Japan, and Australia.

We'll dive into embracing career shifts, the power of continuous learning and certifications, and how to leverage diverse cultural experiences to enhance problem-solving skills and adaptability. By sharing my experiences in organising tech meetups and fostering community engagement, we'll explore how building strong professional networks can open doors and provide support during transitions. Additionally, we'll discuss the growing importance of emotional intelligence (EQ) and soft skills in tech roles—skills that are essential for effective collaboration, leadership, and driving innovation.

Whether you're at a crossroads in your career or seeking to evolve within the tech industry, this session will provide you with practical guidance and inspiration to refactor your career code, harness the power of both technical and interpersonal skills, and successfully migrate into tech roles.

Thiago Shimada Ramos

Refactoring Careers: Migrating Successfully Into Tech Roles

Cyber security (or lack of) has been covered extensively in the news. Hacker attacks range from bored school kids toying around to state-sponsored ransom-driven targeted strikes. As software engineers it’s our responsibility to incorporate cyber security best practices into the development cycle. 

Secure by design initiative is being adopted by more and more countries including Australia. Products designed with Secure by Design principles prioritise the security of customers as a core business requirement, rather than merely treating it as a technical feature.

I’ll provide a list of resources, best practices, tools for designing and implementing more secure applications and to prepare for penetration testing.

Janna Malikova

Secure by Design: Integrating Security into Development

"We have microservices!" they say. But when we sit down and discuss, the question often becomes: "Is it though?”. This talk aims to clarify the distinction between Service-Oriented Architecture (SOA) and microservices, emphasising that microservices are an implementation style within the broader SOA paradigm.

We will take a step back to explore the foundational concepts of SOA, then dive into microservices, domain APIs, and experience APIs. By understanding these core elements, we can better align architectural approaches with the specific needs of your organisation.

This presentation will delve into the "slicing and dicing" of SOA, offering a comprehensive view of how to assess and implement these architectures effectively. 

Garima Singh

Service Oriented Architecture - Slice and Dice

Engineers, developers, programmers, what ever you want to call us, we have a different way of thinking and a different way of viewing the world. Sometimes this can be a curse but other times it's the ultimate life hack.

Come with me on a journey where I turn everyday household tasks into automated magic. Where simple connectivity with a bit of know-how and developer mindset gives you productivity benefits in your personal life. Use data like never before to turn your house into a home.

Damian Karzon

The life hack of being a developer

READMEs are deceptively simple files. Often written as text files, they are often lightweight and regularly overlooked, but, make no mistake, they are their worth in gold.

Developer projects, in fact, millions on them are built on a premise that some other developer will most likely stumble upon it, clone it, and use it to solve their own tech challenges. The first stumbling block usually arrives in the form of supporting documentation (or lack, thereof).

How can developers ensure that they use good documentation practices to create a simple and straight-forward file (the README) that will be the make-or-break moment for their project's usefulness? 

In this short talk, a technical writer who has worked with a number of software teams, and helped draft and review good README files, will dust off the cobwebs off the lost art of good README documentation, and provide some tips on how to create docs that work for multiple audiences.

Swapnil Ogale

The Lost Art of good README documentation

Discover the secrets to unlocking lightning-fast database performance! In this engaging presentation, I will guide you through a range of tried-and-true techniques that will revolutionize the way you approach database optimization. With plenty of live demos along the way, you'll gain a deep understanding of each technique and learn how to apply them to your own databases. From the simplest tips to more advanced techniques, this session has something for everyone. Get ready to take your database performance to the next level!

Bryden Oliver

Top Database Performance Techniques

Test Driven Development (TDD) is largely being dismissed by large swaths of developers, and in some cases, it's applied without a clear understanding of when and how to use its varying styles effectively. In this talk I will go into the origins TDD and how you can fully leverage its powers become a better developer. 

With one (or maybe a few) simple tricks you can completely revolutionise how you write code and at the same time unlock the ability to split up tickets that normally could take you 3 days or more into several smaller ones which can be worked on in parallel, each only taking only hours to complete.   First I will go over the two main approaches to TDD being the Detroit School and the London School, from there I will go over each approaches primary strengths and weaknesses. 

Finally we explore a more detailed deep dive into how one of these approaches can be fully leveraged inside of C# to revolutionise not only how you write your code but also how you write your tickets.

If you’ve never tried TDD or found that it wasn’t right for you or your team, then I cannot wait to give you some insights into how TDD revolutionised my coding life.

If you’re already rockin’ TDD this talk will give you a deeper understanding of the history of how TDD first came to be and  and might even help unlock entire different approaches to how not only you write your tests but how you approach software as a whole.

#DDDMelbourne? More like #TDDMelbourne!

Michael Crook

Unlocking Hidden Efficiency: Seamless Solutions with TDD You Didn't Know You Needed

Atomic design thinking has revolutionised the way we structure and scale modular design systems, but translating this thinking from design to development has remained a challenge.

In this talk, we’ll share our own journey of building a robust modular design system for an ASX-listed enterprise. We’ll discuss leveraging atomic design principles to create scalable components with React and Tailwind CSS that correspond perfectly across Figma and Storybook.

Attendees will gain an understanding of modular design principles and challenges, the implementation approach, and learnings for fostering better collaboration between design and development.

Joshua Braines-Mead

Up and atom: building modular components through atomic design

Why do so many tech projects fail despite talented teams and big budgets? The answer often lies in poor discovery. Drawing from real experience leading major digital transformation projects, I explain why discovery is the most crucial phase - yet most misunderstood - part of any project. Through practical case studies and real project examples, learn how to transform your discovery process from a checkbox exercise into a genuine foundation for project success.

You'll learn:

- Common discovery phase failures that doom projects from day one
- How to identify and map hidden requirements that typically surface too late
- Real examples of projects saved (and lost) during discovery
- Practical frameworks for running effective discovery sessions
- Methods to get genuine stakeholder engagement, not just nodding heads
- Ways to translate business problems into technical requirements without losing meaning

Julian Wallis

Why Your Projects Are Failing Before They Start - The Discovery Crisis

If you get a call that the code you have written has caused a security breach or found in a vulnerability scanning, what is your reaction? Would you feel stressed, embarrassed, or motivated to fix it.

Come join me going through some industry standards when it comes to writing secure code and make sure you are protected against common attacks. We will review:
* Where to start.
* Handling sensitive data within your apps.
* Validating use input.
* Tools which allow you to scan and validate your code even in your dev machine.

If this is something that piques your interest, get your coffee and join me, I need you wide awake throughout 🍵.


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