95th Monthly Technical Session

Every month HENNGE hosts a conference on different subjects that our members wish to share with their peers. Some topics are technical, some non-technical, depending on the speakers. The 95th MTS was held on June 24th, 2022. As with most recent sessions, this was a hybrid live & remote talk done via Zoom. This month, four speakers shared their knowledge on various topics.

Let’s dive in!

1. My Journey of 0 -> 1

Our first speaker was Ted, from the Product Management team. He opened the MTS with a talk about his journey in the process of HENNGE One Suite expansion, sharing his experience and advice for the future.

In 2019, as they were looking for new features to add to HENNGE’s product, Ted defined a list of opportunities based on our existing technology and his market’s knowledge. He concluded that connecting other services to our product was the best way to attract new clients and satisfy the possible needs of our existing customers.

It was time to dig deeper. To have a clear image of what customers wanted, Ted needed to study and define the real needs and problems of the market. He analyzed what technologies companies have been using, and for what reasons. He then proceeds to imagine a possible solution. At this stage, going straight to the implementation can be dangerous. It is still too risky to invest resources in a solution that might not exactly be what customers need. Ted’s advice is to draw a problem/solution axis representing the market. The best scenario is when there is a problem, and you have a solution. In case you need to choose between a problem or a solution, always prioritize a problem. You can create a solution, but not a problem (or more like, you should not).

With that in mind, he proceeded with market research, asking customers about their usage and satisfaction. 70% of customers were interested in testing the solution. Ted then clarified the customers’ needs and prioritized what the solution should offer.

He then made a not very stable prototype, but with the help of other members, they found a solution using Ngrok, which also meant offloading the risks to vendors and lowering HENNGE’s risks. The solution was a great success, and customers loved it! Ted’s process can be summarized as Design Thinking 101, a thinking framework that can help you define the market’s needs and potential solutions.

2. Sustainable Architecture

Akiko gave a talk about Sustainable Architecture and how engineers could contribute to it in daily life. Sustainability focuses on meeting the needs of the present without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their needs.

Trends show that the new generations are more concerned about sustainability, which makes sense because they’re inheriting the current issues. In addition, IBM researches show that the market is becoming more concerned about sustainability. Consumer behavior is shifting, sustainable investing has matured, and job seekers are more willing to apply for and accept jobs from sustainable companies. These results explain why more and more companies are shifting to more sustainable products, and are dedicated to publishing their sustainable commitments and activities.

AWS is our main cloud vendor for our products. Amazon is the largest renewable energy purchaser and is using a lot of other methods to increase energy efficiency and reduce its carbon footprint.

HENNGE is also moving toward reducing the energy consumption of its products. Akiko gave us some optimization ideas:

• Switch to AWS Graviton Processor based instances
• ARM/Graviton2/Graviton3 Serverless
• Utilize instance scheduler and shut down when not used
• Utilize AWS Cost Explorer for appropriate workload sizing
• Switch compression algorithm to ZSTD

We can strategically store data and reduce the impact of our data. Some are never accessed, it could be moved to cold storage to save energy. Another idea is to manage reserved resources efficiently.

Amazon provides a Carbon Footprint Tool where we can see an estimation of our products’ carbon emissions over time. A very helpful tool to make sure we are on the right path!

3. Life in Post-Apartheid South Africa

Abid, a front-end engineer from South Africa, gave us a talk about life in Post Apartheid South Africa. He started by giving us an overview of how life was during the Apartheid, the reach of segregation in daily life, and what people had to endure. Abid then explained what is Apartheid, its meaning, its origins, and a glimpse at what it did to the people, such as notable acts introduced by the Apartheid government that limited people’s freedom based on their skin color.

The Apartheid system began to unravel in the 1980s and finally came to an end in 1991, when the Apartheid laws were revoked. Nelson Mandela became the first black president of South Africa in 1994, and The Truth and Reconciliation Commission began in 1995. It was intended to help the country heal by allowing people to tell their stories. People could also apply for amnesty for their racial crimes, be trialed, and possibly forgiven for those crimes. It’s generally considered a success.

Modern South Africa saw a lot of social movements coming from the young generations. There were movements to “decolonize” education across South Africa (i.e. Rhodes Must Fall), movements to increase government funding of universities (i.e. Fees Must Fall), and more recently, movements calling for immediate response to gender-based violence.

In preparation for the MTS, Abid surveyed 73 people and asked them if they feel that Apartheid has had any effects on their life. 65.8% of them said that it did. Abid shared with us some of the feedback that people had given explaining how Apartheid had an impact on their life. He also asked South Africans to comment on social issues in general.

4. Thinking About the Developer Experience

Our last speaker was Kelvin, a backend engineer based in Taiwan. He talked about the developer experience, the overall interaction, and the feeling the developer feels when working towards a goal. Developer experience is about creating an environment in which a developer can do their best work.

Kelvin started by describing what is a bad developer experience. He mentioned five key points:

• Non-automatable interfaces of provided tools and systems.
• Hardware and infrastructure are often scarce and hard to get
• Tedious onboarding and setup costs
• Fragmented team structures
• A lack of enablement when consuming APIs, libraries, or platforms

Having a better developer experience can accelerate software delivery and time to market. When a developer feels safe to experiment, innovation comes naturally. It is also one of the best ways to retain IT talents, as they will enjoy working in this kind of environment.

More and more companies worldwide are moving forward for a better developer experience, especially since remote working became a norm. There are multiple ways to achieve a good experience:

• Adopting product thinking for technical products and platforms that get developers’ jobs done, instead of getting in their way
• Taking a holistic view of your developers’ journeys to understand their path, touchpoints, and influences and identify fundamental constraints
• Identify and shorten feedback loops to improve frequent workflows and continuously measure progress
• Enable and encourage collaboration to eliminate inefficient silos and foster mutual understanding
• Create a culture where team members feel safe to experiment and encouraged to innovate

Let’s work together to improve the developer experience in HENNGE!

As usual, we had Beer Bash after the session on Zoom and on-site 🍻!