Is Fun Fundamental?

Room 2

13:40 - 14:40

(UTC+02)

Talk (60 min)

Wednesday

Many of us see work as the thing we do to allow us to do other things. Work is, by definition, where we work. But does that mean work can’t be fun? Going further, does a sense of fun and play in the workplace actually make the work we do better?

People

In this talk I look at examples of fun in programming and examine to what extend this benefits work. Is it just about making people happier, or can we discover more things by creating environments where play is part of work? Along the way, we’ll also look at some examples of corporate “play” and how they can often not deliver - including why 20% time might not be what you think it is.

Sam Newman

Sam Newman is interested in technology at the intersection of things, from development, to ops, to security, usability and organisations. After over a decade at ThoughtWorks he is now an independent consultant. Sam is the author of "Building Microservices" from O'Reilly. He has worked with a variety of companies in multiple domains around the world, often with one foot in the developer world, and another in the IT operations space. If you asked him what he does, he’d say ‘I work with people to build better software systems’. He has written articles, presented at conferences, and sporadically commits to open source projects. While Java used to be his bread and butter, he also spends time with Ruby, Python, Javascript, and Clojure, Infrastructure Automation and Cloud systems.