Tampa’s tech team supreme (that’s Anitra and me, in case you’re wondering) are flying to Kansas City today to speak at KCDC, also known as Kansas City Developer Conference! It typically draws around 2,000 attendees and it’s one of the largest independent conference in North America these days.
We’re honored to have been chosen to speak, and from looking at the agenda, we’re excited not just to present, but to also see out fellow speakers’ presentations!
For the curious, here’s what we’ll be presenting…
Thursday, September 10
Nobody Wants to Go to Your Meeting. (Let’s Fix That.)
Presented by Anitra, 10:00 a.m., room 2215C
Your calendar is full of meetings where attendees mentally check out. That’s not a people problem. It’s a design problem. As the meeting organizer, you’re the designer.
Most meetings fail for the same reason most products fail: the meeting organizer never stopped to ask what their attendees actually need, what outcome would make the time worthwhile, or whether a live session is even the right format for the job. The result is a standing meeting that becomes an obligation, a brainstorm where the loudest voice wins, a decision meeting that ends with “let’s take this offline”, and a calendar invitation that should have been an email.
This session makes the case that every meeting is a product. It has users with real needs. It has a value proposition that either holds up or doesn’t. It has a format that either creates the conditions for something meaningful to happen or gets in the way. Treat it like a product, and people show up prepared and engaged. Ignore that, and you get laptops open, cameras off, and the same conversation next week. That’s because most meetings were never designed to answer: what can only happen in real time, among these specific people?
You’ll leave with:
- A framework for designing meetings that people actually want to attend and can explain why afterward
- A method to audit your recurring meetings and diagnose exactly which ones are failing and why
- Specific redesign moves for the three meeting types most likely to waste everyone’s time: the status update, the decision meeting, and the brainstorm
def play_accordion(), or Live Music Coding with Sonic Pi
Presented by Joey, 3:45 a.m., room 2215B
Most developers write code that talks to databases, APIs, or networks. What if your code talked to a speaker instead? And what it if accompanied a live accordion performance?
Sonic Pi is a live coding environment that turns Ruby-like syntax into music in real time. For developers who already know Ruby, it’s one of the fastest on-ramps to making something genuinely impressive. In this session, I’ll introduce Sonic Pi from the perspective of someone who plays accordion, understands music sequencers, and thinks in Ruby. I’m not a music teacher, but as professional developer and hobbyist musician, I can show you exactly where your existing skills transfer and where the surprises are.
We’ll cover the core concepts: loops, samples, synths, timing, and concurrency, and we’ll and explore why Sonic Pi is a surprisingly powerful lens for applying programming ideas you already know in a whole new way. And because a talk about live coding music should actually feature live coded music, we’ll finish with something you won’t see at many developer conferences: a performance where Sonic Pi and a live accordion share the stage.
No musical background required. Ruby curiosity welcome. Earplugs optional.
Friday, September 11
Fixing “Be More Confident” and Other Unhelpful Feedback
Presented by Anitra, 9:45 a.m., room 2215B
On a team, you get and give professional feedback. But can you actually act on that feedback?
Research across tens of thousands of performance reviews reveals a consistent pattern: professional feedback is frequently vague, personality-focused, and disconnected from business outcomes. “Be more confident.” “Work on your executive presence.” “Be a better team player.” These phrases feel like feedback. But they aren’t. They’re opinions dressed up as guidance, and they’re stalling careers and driving away top people.
This session examines what high-quality feedback looks like, why the gap between vague and actionable is wider than most people realize, and what that gap costs when it goes unaddressed. We’ll look at the research on how feedback differs by gender, why high performers are sometimes the ones receiving the least useful guidance, and what separates managers who build strong teams from those who wonder why good people keep leaving.
You’ll leave with:
- A practical framework for giving and receiving feedback that is tied to outcomes, not personality
- A method to recognize and rewrite vague feedback before it does damage
- A clear understanding of how feedback quality affects advancement, retention, and team performance, and what you can do about it starting on Monday
Our speaker bios
Anitra Pavka
Anitra has surfed the waves of tech evolution from the dot-com bubble to the AI revolution. She specializes in customer-centered product management and technology modernization, turbocharged with hands-on AI experience. Her career spans ecommerce, retail, cybersecurity, fintech, and insurance.
Known for speaking fluent human and tech, Anitra speaks on local, regional, and national stages, including three appearances at SXSW Interactive, and as a featured podcast guest. She’s an O’Reilly Media author (HTML5 Cookbook Accessibility chapter) and technical editor (Universal Design for Web Applications book).
Her leadership extends into her community. She serves on the Board of Directors at Tampa’s non-profit Glazer Children’s Museum, where she chaired their strategic planning committee. She also co-organizes several tech-focused Meetup groups, including the Tampa Bay Artificial Intelligence Meetup (with 2,200+ members).
Her north star has been making technology solve real problems and serve the people using it.
Joey de Villa
If you hear an accordion at a programming presentation, chances are that Joey de Villa is the one playing.
Joey got his professional start developing multimedia CD-ROMs when they were the hottest new technology. After that, he built desktop applications including an encyclopedia of every mall in America and fitness tracking software for the Toronto Maple Leafs. Since then, he has written applications for mobile and IoT devices and dabbled in artificial intelligence.
He enjoys talking to people as much as he enjoys talking to computers, and that combination has landed him his current developer advocate role at NetFoundry, and previous roles as a developer advocate at Tucows, Microsoft, Shopify, Auth0/Okta, and HP. He recently optimized an MCP server for Hammerspace’s AI model storage system. As part of his work, he organizes the Tampa Bay Artificial Intelligence Meetup and the Tampa Bay Software Skills Meetup.
Joey has co-authored a 1,500-page book, The iOS Apprentice, 8th Edition, and writes articles about Android programming at Kodeco.com. He also publishes a blog called Global Nerdy, which has been around since 2006 and features a list of Tampa Bay technology events that he creates every week with the assistance of a helpful Python application that he wrote.