About me
Who are you?
I'm Steve. I'd describe myself as a passionate software engineering leader with a proven track record in building and leading successful teams across diverse industries including social, retail, and telecom. I've spoken a lot in the past about leadership and software, and my main interest is in how we use technology to drive innovation and create sustainable, happy and high-performing teams.
What do you do for a living?
I'm VP Engineering at Bloom & Wild, Europe's leading online flower company and home to the Bloom & Wild, bloomon and Bergamotte brands
What are you going to talk about at FlowCon?
I'm going to talk about production support. Being able to effectively support systems, and do that in a way that is simple, efficient and as low stress as possible is critical to every engineering team. It’s often the thing that’s forgotten as companies and teams scale. High performing teams do it well. They build trust with their stakeholders, and minimise customer impact while delivering at pace.
What are you the proudest of?
I gave the closing keynote at Agile On the Beach last year which was a great experience and one that I was so happy to be invited to do.
What speaker and/or topic would you like to see at FlowCon?
I'd love to see more people talking about how we're all adapting to a reality where there's no more zero interest rates, our teams aren't growing and yet we still the same ambitions as before
If you were an art piece, which one would it be?
Something that someone like me can cycle past, with a nice view. A big sculpture on a hill or something similar
What's your favorite band, artist or song?
If it's karaoke then it has to be Mr Brightside by The Killers
Sum up your session or workshop in only 1 sentence
All teams should support their systems in production and I'm going to explain what I've learnt about doing that, with added flowers :)
What are the 3 top takeaways from your session or workshop?
1. Why they’ll always be some need for production support, why needing it isn’t a indication of failure and how we can make it a nicer experience
2. The different ways that we've supported our systems at Bloom & Wild and what we've learnt as we've rapidly scaled the team
3. A little about flowers and a lot about learning
