Terminology

• AV - Audio Visual
• Active Voice - specifically referencing an ation eg “John said that”, rather than the more passive “it has been said”
• Bootcamp - a short duration working with a software team to gain experience
• CfP - Call for Papers
• Death march - a software project that stretches on at an unsustainable pace and feels destined to fail
• DevOps - an approach to building and running software systems that emphasises close collaboration, flow, long-term team ownership, automation, and metrics
• Diversity and Inclusion - a movement to acknowledge that having a diverse group is insufficient, so inclusion means making it a welcome space for all, not merely a tolerant one
• Echo chamber - a space where a person only encounters views and beliefs similar to their own - likened to a physical echo chamber which is an enclosed space where sound reverberates
• Emergent leadership - leadership being demonstrated by people taking the initiative, rather than be being given a leadership title
• Emergent learning - new knowledge being acquired through experience rather than from formal training courses
• Guild - a cross-team group who meet to share knowledge and experience within a given discipline / competency
• Hack Day - a short, intense period (often a day) for engineers and other disciplines to work together to create a functioning product by the end of the event
• IoT - Internet of Things
• Lightning talk - a short talk of 5 - 10 minutes
• Live captioning - a service that will capture words spoken on a plain text screen as they are said
• NPS - Net Promoter Score
• Open Spaces - self-organised and lightly facilitated discussions
• PechaKucha 20x20 - a lightning talk consisting of 20 slides which autoplay for 20 seconds each
• Psychological Safety - the ability to be oneself with one’s team without fear of negative consequence
• Q&A - Questions and Answers
• Rhetorical questions - a figure of speech in the form of a question that is asked to make a point rather than to elicit an answer
• Social capital - a form of currency that is built up through positive social interaction, and which then gets spent in more challenging times. Like any other budget, it needs topped up from time to time.
• Straw Man Proposal - a draft proposal designed to stimulate debate - may be deliberately provocative
• Team stand-ups - a short, usually daily, team meeting to set the focus for the day