Jenna Quindica was working at her third startup when she was diagnosed with bipolar disorder. Her journey has been a rocky one, marked by medication changes, mental health days, and more. She wouldn't have been able to maintain her full-time software engineering job without help, support, and encouragement from her manager and coworkers. Jenna will share how she navigated a diagnosis and now a chronic, mental illness. This is a story with a happy ending. Attendees will walk away feeling more comfortable discussing mental health in the workplace and everyday life.

Working in a new role could be daunting and challenging for newcomers. It's not only about the technical challenges but could be a lot to learn about specialized domain knowledge and how effective team communication works. How do newcomers find answers to all these questions? How do they know what is the best path for the given problem? How can they be sure that they're challenged to think differently and guided toward professional growth?

Effective mentorship can help to answer these questions and make sure that the new person feels confident in their position. Mentoring is a process of teaching and growth - making sure to bring mentee to the speed of required team knowledge and expertise. The mentor acts as a guide and challenges mentee to think creatively about the given problem. It is essential for the mentee to discuss their questions with the mentor and get guidance if something is not quite clear. However, this should not be mistaken as a readymade path to the full solution. The mentee is expected to listen to mentor, clarify any doubts, research on its own and apply the advice to get to the solution.

I have previously worked as a mentor at my current organization and I would like to share some of the thoughts and experience I gained during the process. I was fortunate enough to get some of the best mentors when I first started working in the software industry a few years ago. As a person who worked as a mentor and mentee, I would like to share my thoughts from both the perspectives. My goal is to make this talk useful for people who are excited to be mentors in the future by letting them know the elements of effective mentorship and for mentees teaching them how to leverage mentoring to establish the strong foundation and planning for long-term growth.

How do we ensure everyone feels welcome in the workplace? I say "we" to emphasize that the everyday decisions we make in how we interact with fellow coworkers largely impact how welcoming our workplace is.During this talk you'll learn how to become everyday change makers by implementing small changes to create a more welcoming workplace.

What makes you different makes you wonderful. The differences that make us unique and special whether they be our race, ethnicity,cultural traditions, religion, gender, sexual orientation, and/or personalities types can also be a source of contention.How do you handle talking to those who are different and not your typical crowd at work? Do your day to day conversations leave room for others or can they only be understood by a small group of fellow coworkers? Most importantly how can you make an impact on fostering a more welcoming workplace?

During this talk we will walk through these questions together by first defining what diversity truly is and how it impacts an organization. Secondly we'll take a close look at what it means to be an inclusive workplace be redefining what inclusion is and how to balance different ideals and mindsets. Next, we'l walk through detailed steps on how to best evaluate to what level your workplace promotes diversity and inclusion and last but surely not least provide guidance on steps you can take to influence your workplace culture from the ground up.

Participants of this talk will walk away with a greater understanding of what it means to be a diverse and inclusive workplace. Participants will also step away with individual steps they can take to become advocates of change to create a more welcoming work environment.

The tech talent shortage continues. Some experts predict that the push toward automation will only exasperate the challenge and create a generation of workers that may struggle to keep pace. This talk is designed to offer a case study of seven years of virtual self-study group training offered by Boston PHP Meetup that contributed to membership growth from 1,000 to 3,700 members. This talk will explain the concept of a virtual self-study group -- blended learning using existing resources at virtually no cost. These groups include the following:

~ PHP Percolate
~ jQuery jAM
~ HTML5 Brunch
~ Git Lunch
~ Drupal Diner
~ Agile Appetizer
~ Angular Stew
~ AWS Snack
~ WordPress Dressing

In this community discussion about the hiring process, get insight into one manager's thought process and learn how to ace your next interview.