Build Stuff'15 Lithuania

At a certain point software was everything in my life. Learning new languages, architectures, design patterns and acquiring skill in practice - my raisons d'etre. After a while things clicked, and I started leading teams of more junior programmers.

"The People Problem" presented new and foreign challenges. There's nothing quite like working with others on real products to transform egocentric practice into empathic pragmatism. My search for a new bag of tricks led me back to my earlier studies in the humanities. Suddenly my liberal arts education, formerly regarded as tangential even if interesting, felt applicable to more than cocktail party conversation.

In this talk we'll look at disciplines outside the purview of software development with an eye for how borrowed ideas can yield not only inspiration and analogy, but real innovations and breakthroughs. I'll share examples from fine art, psychology, history and literature influence my approach and the work of others.

My sincere hope is that you'll walk away from our time together with a heightened appreciation for how looking outside software development can enhance your journey within software development.