Meet a Speaker Amanda Dean

Not long now until DDD Sydney 2018 and in the lead up we wanted to make sure you get to know our speakers. Today we wanted to introduce you to Amanda Dean, who’s another interstate speaker, coming up from Melbourne!

DDD: What excites you most about being a speaker at DDD Sydney?

Amanda: I’m especially excited to be talking about testing at DDD Sydney, which is both my day job and something that I am super passionate about.

This will be my third DDD event, my first in Sydney, and I look forward to collecting the whole set sometime soon (Perth, I’m looking at you!)

DDD: How did you get into speaking?

Amanda: I did a lot of public speaking competitions in high school, because it was fun and because it got me out of going to class.

As an adult? I had been thinking about it for a while after seeing a couple of talks and going, well I could do better than that. So when DDD Melbourne was looking for people to come and speak at their event last year, I decided to give it a go and see what happened.

It was absolutely one of the best things I did last year, and I have kept doing it since then.

DDD: What should people expect in your talk?

Amanda: I’m going to be talking about testing, including how it has changed, and introducing people to newer concepts in testing that can be used by developers. Development continues to grow and develop, and testing has too.

DDD What talks, other than your own, are you looking forward to seeing?

Amanda: There are tons of awesome talks on the agenda so it will be hard to pick which to see. Some I’m interested in are:

Georgie Luhur Cooke on blogging - I’ve been following Georgie on Twitter for a while now, and her blog is super stylish and exciting. I have multiple unsuccessful attempts at getting into blogging under my belt, so I’m super interested to learn more about blogging.

I saw Daisy Smith’s talk on Creative Coding at Levels Conf in July, and it was fantastic. Well worth going to see, make sure you have some sort of device with data with you for this one!

I would be looking forward to seeing Rob Crowley talk about service meshes because he’s such a passionate, engaging speaker who makes complex concepts approachable. Unfortunately, we’re on at the same time.

DDD: Anything else you want to say to people thinking of coming to DDD Sydney

Amanda: I really love the concept of DDD - a conference that is affordable and accessible to many people, that has talks across development and related areas, and that has talks for junior developers, and the more experienced. I’ve met so many great people and learned a whole lot from these events, so it’s definitely worth your time!

Catch Amanda’s talk, Modern testing for modern developers, at DDD Sydney 2018.