GOTO Berlin is a vendor independent international software development conference with more that 60 top speaker and 400 attendees. The conference cover topics such as Java, Open Source, Agile, Architecture, Design, Web, Cloud, New Languages and Processes.

Simon Stewart, Lead developer of WebDriver

Simon Stewart

Biography: Simon Stewart

Simon Stewart is the creator of WebDriver, the open source web application testing tool, as well as a core Selenium 2 developer. WebDriver remains a hot topic at the Google Test Automation Conference.

A frequent speaker at conferences, as well as GTAC, Simon has presented at the Facebook Mobile Developer conference, Selenium conference, Droidcon Berlin and many others.

Simon is Facebook's W3C AC representative, and a former software engineer in test (SET) at Google. He describes himself as “undeniably hairy”, and holds a BSc in computer science from Nottingham University.

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Presentation: Better, Faster, Stronger

Track: Fun@work/ Distributed Teams / Time: Thursday 14:30 - 15:20 / Location: Estrelsaal C7

It's been a long time since I worked in a team that wasn't distributed. The Selenium team is spread throughout the world, with members in the UK, several states in the USA, India and Norway amongst others. My old team at Google once spanned the globe, with members in Sydney, London, Boston and New York. At Facebook, I work with teams in Menlo Park, Seattle and London. In this presentation, I'll share some stories of when working as part of a distributed team went horribly wrong, the lessons I learned, and how those have been applied in later projects. I'll present some of the patterns (and anti-patterns!) that have been used effectively to help keep the projects on track.

But work isn't just about writing code, it's also about enjoying what we do. How do you build a team culture across international boundaries? How do you create a sense of fun? So, as well as the dry lessons on working effectively, we'll also be covering how to bring some joy into the process too.