A few days ago I attended the myConf conference. In one of the presentations, the LEGO® Serious Play® concept was introduced. My first impression was that it seemed a bit forced — a way to sell more LEGO. But after mulling it over, my perspective started to shift. There could be real value in the process. As an educator and occasional facilitator of workshops, I can see potential in the method.

During the last few days, I attended a software development conference in Varberg, Sweden, called myConf. Over the past decade, I’ve participated in several industry-specific conferences, but this was my first purely development-focused conference in more than ten years. It was very different from the trade shows I’m used to attend – in many ways.

As you might know, I’ve been working in the Salesforce ecosystem for the past 15 years. My focus has always been on growth and learning. As part of that journey, I’ve attended various networking events to meet people. Over the years, a few things have stood out to me. These system-specific conferences tend to have a higher focus on selling products, services, and even ideologies. Drink the Kool-Aid. They are usually filled with salespeople trying to sell to new potential customers or to indoctrinate those already in their orbit. As an introvert, this doesn’t appeal to me – it mostly exhausts me. Add to that the fact that if you’re not a customer or a potential lead, you’re not particularly interesting.

I work as a teacher helping adults become developers. I do this at a few different schools as a consultant periodically during the work year. This year, I will have a lot of classes, and some of them will run in parallel, making my life quite busy.

My MacBook Pro has now passed the five-year mark, and its economic lifetime has ended. It still works well, but I worry about the stress and impact it would have on my life if it broke during one of the busy periods. I decided to upgrade preemptively but still keep the computer as a backup if something happens.

The Internet is a dangerous place. Some companies are spying on you and, want to get as much of your private information as possible. What are your interests? What sites are you visiting? What can we sell you? Your information is the new gold.

As a countermeasure, a range of browser plugins has been developed to enhance your privacy by blocking information-gathering attempts. A few of the most common and well-known extensions are uBlock Origin and Privacy Badger. These plugins all use Manifest V2, which grants them certain functionality and determines their permissions in the browser.

During the last few years, our internet has become more private and secure with encrypted traffic using SSL certificates. A certificate is used by the webserver to prove its authenticity on that domain and to set up a secure encrypted channel to the browser. When the traffic is encrypted, no one between the visitor and the server can look at the traffic and see what is being transmitted. Since we have this technology, we can use online banking, healthcare and communicate without spying eyes.