Community Updates & Events
A coach, a programmer, and a product leader walk into a bar...
Hello! Dave here.
I want to share some community events you might be interested in and great news about our team growing at Nerd/Noir.
From growing our team and hosting conversational events featuring Michael Feathers and Anne Steiner—Read on!
Welcome to Nerd/Noir, Jess Brock!
We’re adding some real heat to our team of collaborators at Nerd/Noir. Please join me in welcoming Jess Brock!
Jess is joining us as a strategic advisor, bringing her expertise in business agility, AI, and immersive learning dojos to our clients. On that last part—she helps lead and run an active dojo at Edward Jones and wrote a useful book for immersive learning coaches, “The Dojo Coach's Pocket Guide: Maximizing Immersive Learning for Agile Teams”.
Alex and I have become pals with Jess over the last couple of years, working on some side projects here and there. Aside from her bona fides, we love her personality: a subtle and witty sense of humor, an experimenting and action bias, and a strong community orientation (she helped organize a job fair for out-of-work agilists, amongst other things). She’ll fit right in.
Welcome, Jess!
Community Events
Also, we’ve been feeling (more than a little) nostalgic for the halcyon days of David Hussman’s Jam Sessions (IFYKYK)—his unfiltered, real-talk gatherings where ideas flowed as freely as the beer. While there’s no replacing David, we’re experimenting to see if we can capture some of that magic in a digital and remote form.
We’ve got two upcoming sessions that should be right up your alley!
Product Ecologies: Working with Internal Products with Anne Steiner
Thursday, March 20th, from 12-1 PM EST | Register here or LinkedIn
Internal products don’t get the same love as customer-facing ones, but they should. Anne and I feel this area is somewhat slept on. Most product thought leader (thought lord?) content focuses on B2C or B2B SaaS scenarios.
Internal products power business operations (ERP, CRM, HR systems), enable engineering teams (platforms, APIs, shared services), and help employees deliver value (customer support tools, workflow automation). However, unlike external products, they don’t have clear market signals, often suffer from misaligned incentives, and struggle to get investment.
So we’re kicking off a new series called Product Ecologies with a conversation about what makes internal products uniquely challenging—and how to make them successful. In episode one, we’ll cover:
Common pitfalls in internal product development
How to define success when there’s no direct revenue
Strategies for discovering the unmet needs of internal users
After a short talk, we’ll open the floor for discussion, so bring your challenges and insights. The event occurs Thursday, March 20th, from 12-1 PM EST. Come through!
Software Engineering Conversations with Michael Feathers
Tuesday, April 8th, from 3-4 PM EST | Register here or LinkedIn
A look at software engineering—past, present, and where we might be headed next in the age of AI-first engineering. The event takes place Tuesday, April 8th, from 3-4 PM EST.
If you don’t know, Michael wrote the essential book on wrangling gnarly, scary, and anxiety-inducing codebases, “Working Effectively with Legacy Code”. It greatly influenced my career (and of many others), and it holds up to this day.
No slides, just a straight-up discussion. I hope to craft some unique and surprising questions and conversation-starters for Michael. We’ll also leave plenty of time for an AMA with Michael.
Over the years, we’ve gotten to know each other at various software conferences, and our technical conversations always draw on a lot of cultural references (music, art, philosophy—lateral thinking!). It’s often fun and thought-provoking for us, and we hope it will also be fun and thought-provoking for you.
Again, the event takes place Tuesday, April 8th, from 3-4 PM EST. Hope to see you there!