I love technology—and I have a core drive to share this love of technology with others. I am self-driven to continually develop my communication skills and to be an adept speaker so that I can effectively share knowledge.

Whether it be a new tool or a completely new way of thinking, there’s something very powerful about an engaging discussion that can drive change forward and something very important about learning with those around us.

PAD Team Tech Talks

To this end, two of us from the Programming and Design team decided to put on a “Tech Talk” about object-oriented programming, including touching on frameworks and design patterns.

Our team and other developers from around campus took a full day and came together to learn about and discuss the foundations of object-oriented programming. This included every range of skilled developers, from the newly-initiated to the framework-designing gurus. We wanted everyone to come away with some knowledge of the techniques available in OOP so that they could consider different approaches to solving problems in the future.

I presented on everything from the basics like “classes are still just datatypes,” all the way up the OOP trail to inheritance, composition, abstraction, encapsulation, interfaces, and polymorphism.

More importantly, we talked about why these things were important to us and our everyday development work—how keeping perspective and using abstractions could help save time and help us write more-efficient, maintainable code.

In addition to other presentations I have given in the past, this was great experience for me and further convinced me that I love presenting and talking to others about the techniques, philosophies, and tools that we have available to us as developers. After all, it’s all about the people and the communities in the end.