Described as “feelings of incompleteness or being not good enough,” Imposter Syndrome is commonly found in developers and tech workers everywhere. We’re encouraged to change our mindsets around our work, ask questions, or generally pull ourselves up by our bootstraps in order to overcome bouts of this, but as with all syndromes, nobody talks about a cure. If pulling psychological tricks on ourselves isn’t delivering the goods, we’re encouraged to keep trying (and failing,) and thus stacking just one more thing we can’t do on that depressing list.

Crazy amount of data. Eyes glaze over looking at data streams and spreadsheets.  XY graphs barely helpful.  Why constrain ourselves. D3.js opens up all kinds of possibilities.  Multi-dimensional data can be consumed by more compelling and informative visual stories.  What works, what doesn’t and what I have no clue on.  

About the speaker
John Hellier is a visualization developer currently working on not so stealthy projects.

Come discover the basics of Ethereum and how to code on the blockain. Plus we have a special surprise and *FREE CAKE* :cake: (Slack emoji available at abqwebgeeks.slack.com)

On tap for this year:

• Elaine Thomas: Android single page quiz app
• John Hellier: Data Visualization Using D3.js
• Sarah Swanson: Hit the ground sprinting: app ignorance to competent testing in 1 week
• Dylan McDonald: Blocking the blockchain
• Carlos Marquez: Angular Attack and knightsofnode.com
• Yvette Johnson-Rodgers: Tales from Deep Dive Coding Bootcamp
• Gus Liakos: Fractal generative art
• Brooks Walch: GRITS game
   

Search is hard. We'll talk about two different strategies for incorporating ElasticSearch into your site or webapp. We'll cover Google style crawlers and 
database-driven searches, what led to picking ElasticSearch over Solr, concepts and out experiences incorporating search.

About the Speakers:
Brian Bosh is a developer at Summit Electric Supply who has been programming professionally since 2001. These days he works with Docker, Ruby, ElasticSearch, and a little backend & lot of front end JavaScript.

Odds are good that you've heard of Docker. Maybe you're even using it! In fact, if you're using it, maybe this talk isn't for you. Or maybe it is!

Docker does a lot of great things, but one of the nicest things it can do is make it easy to avoid (some of) the mess of setting up development environments.

We'll go through the basics of Docker, and by the end of the talk, you should (hopefully) feel like you know the difference between Docker and VMs, between images and containers, and maybe even have the confidence to go out and try it for yourself!

Best practices in software development is to test your application over and over, in different ways, to make sure it works for your users. But this conversation isn't about best practices, it's about realistic practices.

Manual, Automated, and their 31 flavors of software testing. What they are, who should do them, and how software developers can incorporate testing the important stuff without descending into testing madness.

About the Speaker

We're not sure how many years we have been doing this now. It seems this could be the 10th if you count previous iterations of this group. But once again it is that time to celebrate the holiday of your choice with a White Elephant Gift Exchange. Bring a small gift and we'll put your name in some kind of random generator (probably a hat) and you get to pick a gift. Don't like the gift, you can "steal" a previously picked gift. Don't worry if you are picked first, as first person gets to steal from the lot. It'll be fun!

Do you want to speed up your development time in JavaScript? Are you copying and pasting helper methods from one project to another? Why not start writing your own NPM packages to easily include reusable code from one project to another? Learn how in this talk.

About the Speakers:
Jay Renteria and Eric Debelak are developers at 11 Online. They spend much of their time writing in React.

Giving talks at events can be hard. It doesn't matter if it's a five-minute Ignite talk, an hour-long conference presentation, or a multi-hour workshop, talks are work. They're also an incredibly way not just to share your knowledge, but to improve yourself and your community. Let's talk about how to get started, and how to make your talk the best it can be.