Let’s Talk About: Flash Talks with Luís Lopes
Luís Lopes is a lead software engineer at OutSystems. He is the force behind several initiatives that take place in OutSystems engineering. He is a chess player and if you see a Rubik’s cube, he’s probably the one holding it. His personal best at solving a Rubik’s cube? 14.98 seconds. Wow, right?
How long have you been at OutSystems?
Hi, I have been at OutSystems for 12 years now. I started working here in 2006, fresh out of college. I have a degree in computer science from NOVA University. I started working here while earning my Master’s degree and loved it so much that I decided to stay.
What is your current role?
I am a lead software engineer at the stack team.
I’ve been on several teams, and I am currently developing the support for the next generation of containers offered by OutSystems. The OutSystems platform can be installed on-premises or in the cloud, and it can run on top of several operating systems or databases. You can install the platform on the .Net stack, on a Windows machine and against a SQL server database, Oracle database, and so on.
That part, the bottom layer of the platform, is where the stack team operates. Our job is to make sure that everyone that is developing for OutSystems doesn’t have to know exactly what the system is trying to connect to. They will use a unified API, and we will make sure that the API can run on the Oracle database, SQL database, another kind of database, a Linux machine, a Windows machine, and so on.
Applications can run on top of several systems, and now they can be deployed in a container system, so they can work in different environments. We develop the platform on a layer system; each layer is worked on by a specialized team. The other engineering teams working on OutSystems don’t need to worry about where the platform is deployed; we handle this. We offer abstractions for the level above us, for example, the core teams.
Why do you think OutSystems is special? ?
The first reason is the product itself, along with the challenges I have here as a developer. I am still driven by what OutSystems can do and the different challenges we have building it.
Then there’s the people, which I cannot say is the second reason because it’s just as important as the product and the work. I have known several of my colleagues since I started. I can call them my friends. Plus, everyone is very open and friendly. I can easily say “Hey, guys, anyone want to go catch a movie this weekend?” and someone will say “Yes, of course!” for me that’s also very valuable.
New things happen all the time at OutSystems, so there is still a lot to learn. I have been on the stack team for five years, and what we’re doing now is something we could not have imagined possible just three years ago. So, this is new for us. As I mentioned, the team is more focused nowadays on the application server layer, where the running application can be deployed. We have new challenges there every day, and they will continue to evolve because in that area there are a lot of innovations in the industry. Every time there is a new technology, we must research it to make sure we can be more and more scalable and portable.
So, one day you decided to start an initiative called Flash Talks. Tell me about it, what inspired you? What did you want to achieve?
My inspiration came from some Meetups that were happening at the time. I went to a Javascript Meetup with my colleague Miguel Ventura, which featured short talks, about 20 minutes each, and the talks were not even related to each other that much. And I thought “Oh! We could do this at OutSystems. It would be a personal way to let others know the new things we are learning or working on. Well, why not?” Because some people were interested in one subject and others in another subject, this would be a time and place for us to share our knowledge and interests. But over time, it evolved into something quite different.
The Flash Talks started out technical, but slowly they evolved into something more personal. People began talking about topics from their own lives, things they were passionate about.
For example, they described their trips, BTT, about doing tattoos, and cosplay. All of a sudden the scope changed, and people nowadays love that format even more. And I have people come and say to me “I have a talk, but it’s a bit technical and I don’t want to bore people with technical stuff. I only want to talk about stuff that is fun and engaging.” And so it kind of took on a life of its own.
Why do you think that happened?
I think it happened because of our culture. One day, a funny thing happened. I noticed some people from other departments had stopped walking by and instead were sticking around to watch the Flash Talk. And they asked to be invited to future talks. And then it snowballed. More people were showing up and wanting invitations to future talks But, if the talk were on something technical, they wouldn’t feel included; this is more inclusive.
What is your favorite Flash Talk?
I can’t choose one. I can talk about the one that has more views. I liked a lot of them. The most viewed one was the Cosplay Flash Talk. The Cosplay one was for me, very personal. When we heard the story, we could suddenly relate more to our colleague; we could understand what moved him. We suddenly see people in a different light, and that breaks barriers. During that session, there was also a talk about the journey of our cloud offer, how it happened, and what its goal was. Not from a technical perspective, more in terms of the events, what led up to it.
Then there was João Proença, who talked about his music career outside of OutSystems, and the album he recorded that ended up on Spotify, and we were like, “You are a musician?” He told us about the music video he made and that his music was on the radio, and we were amazed. We saw him only as an engineer and yet, surprisingly, here he had this whole other career that we weren’t aware of.
We also had a talk in that session that was about sleep and how you can improve your sleep. At first, that seems like a subject that isn’t very interesting, but after the talk, people were sharing tips and stories about their own sleep issues. Every topic is engaging and people really connect with it.
Why does someone decide to have a Flash Talk about sleep?
Well, Ricardo realized he wasn’t sleeping properly, and as a scientist, he had to do something about it. So he started looking into the research about sleep and he tried to measure himself sleeping, find out what were the best times for him to sleep, and what was the best food to eat before sleeping. He tried to understand himself, and he loaded all the research onto some slides and presented his information.
How did the Flash Talks benefit engineering?
Well, for the Flash Talks, there are two main points: first, we get to know the people behind the talk, we get to know them better, and in second place, people now have a safe way to practice their presentation skills. Since these are topics that they love, usually the presentations have a lot of passion in them; it’s not like presenting a slide deck in a meeting.
Sometimes the presenter loves the subject so much that they bring support material to show everyone. For example: there was a guy who was talking about bees. His father is a beekeeper and a honey producer. We knew this because sometimes he’d leave honey in the office kitchens for us to try. So, for his presentation he brought a huge honeycomb to show everyone. And, the reaction was, “Wow!” He explained how honey is made and collected, the lives of bees, the different types of bees, and a bunch of other interesting facts. He had honey for us to try and see if we could identify which type it was and what flowers it tasted like because of what he’d taught us.
After the Flash Talks you start a new initiative, called “Five to Twelve.” What is that all about?
Well, we were inspired by the format of the Fash Talks but it’s different in terms of scope. The objective is to be the most focused and to the point as possible. We have only half an hour per session, and each team has five minutes of presentation time. We would have five teams per session, and it would end just before lunchtime. At the time there was a TV show here in Portugal called 5 Para a Meia Noite (5 to midnight). So we decided to call it Five to Twelve,” more as a joke.
Every team has to summarize, for all the other teams, what they have been working on for the last few months. This initiative appeared after a reorganization of the department, and we realized that we didn’t know what all the other teams were working on. We have Sprint Review Meetings but we don’t get a clear overall picture. Now teams can show what they are working on and what’s happening next.
You’d invite them to the “pernil certification,” right? What is this certification?
When I first arrived at OutSystems, there were about 30 people at most. Every day we would all have lunch together, downstairs in the food court or at some local restaurant. It was that kind of environment. So religiously, every Friday, we would go to this local restaurant that serves pernil (roasted pork shank). Most of us ate it just because it was Friday, and when new people joined the company, we invited them. It started to become somewhat a tradition.
The company started to grow and so we had to split into separate groups; some people would eat at one location, and others would meet somewhere else. But there was a small group of people who kept going to the pernil restaurant every Friday, so whenever we had a newcomer, we invited them along, too. We would challenge them to come at least once. One day, someone said, “Hey, this is kind of a welcome tradition. We have to “enforce” the certification.” So I made an Excel sheet and I tried to make sure I invited everyone that entered engineering. But the company was growing really fast, and suddenly, we started to have 5 to 10 newcomers each week, and this is a very small restaurant.
It started to become hard to manage all these people, so I made an app, using OutSystems, of course. This app allowed me to track everyone and see who has been “certified,” and who I should invite. We call it certification as a joke! So a new problem arose, OutSystems is growing, and engineering isn’t based only in Lisbon anymore. We now had an engineering team in Braga, which is around 400 km from Lisbon.
When the Braga guys visited us in Lisbon, we would invite them along for the pernil and they decided to replicate this locally with their own newcomers. But as they have a local speciality, they decided to go for another kind of certification, instead of the pernil. So at Braga, they have the Pica no Chão certification. We also decided, to be inclusive, to have a vegetarian certification. I would say that we have “certified” more than 150 people.
So you get to meet every new person? You are part of the welcome package.
Yes, every new person eventually knows me because of the pernil, even if they don’t interact with me on a daily basis.
Please don’t take offense, but you’re an OutSystems Dinosaur :). What advice would you give to a newcomer?
Hmm… That’s a good question. My advice would be this: don’t be afraid to speak up; your opinion is valued starting on day one.
