Tracey Berg-Fulton's talk from Codeland 2021

1. Art History is a Feature
(not a bug)
Tracey Berg-Fulton | Codeland ‘21
Non-dev skills as a superpower

2. Hi. I’m Tracey
(She/Her/Hers)
• Software Engineer at Lumen Learning
• The front of the frontend is my happy place
• Design systems fan
• Twitter: @bergfulton

3. …but in a former (professional) life…

4. I was an art historian
• Museum collections manager
• Provenance researcher
• Problem solver
Photo by Bryan Conley, Carnegie Museum of Art

5. And I was many other things.

6. Those…are different things
• How does art history/museum work translate to writing code?
• …Does it have to?
• There’s more to work (and life!) than technical pro
f
iciency.

7. Finding your superpowers
• Go back to your resume…and keep going
• Do the titles on your resume accurately show your work?
• Provenance Researcher (Collections Database Associate)
• Front-end Engineer (Sr. Web Manager)
• What did you do, but didn’t get formal recognition for?
• Tanya Reilly’s talk Being Glue https://noidea.dog/glue
• Ask around!

8. SIDEBAR!
What if they say stuff that you didn’t expect?

9. ✨Organize your superpowers✨
• Identify your “buckets”
• Action powers
• People powers
• Specialized powers
• These are my buckets, your buckets might be
di
ff
erent!
• Write ‘em down

10. Action Powers
Stu
ff
that I can do anywhere
• Targeted reading/research
• Language switching/pattern matching
• Logical reasoning

11. People Powers
Relating to the humans around you
• “Doing it afraid”
• Timeliness
• Diplomacy

12. Specialized Powers
Stu
ff
that makes us unique
• Niche software…and hardware
• Work “Subcultures”
• What do you do when they’re *really* unique

13. SIDEBAR!
You do not owe a workplace all of yourself.

14. How to talk about your superpowers
• In interviews
• At work
• What do you do when they don’t get it

15. Thanks!
• CodeNewbie: @BergFulton
• Twitter: @BergFulton
Stay in touch, Yinz.