What’s Cool About Elixir

Recording | Slides | Aug 2021, Verrency

I gave a talk today on why Elixir is cool, and why I love it. If you’ve never had a chance to dive into Elixir but are curious, please check it out. In under one hour I summarised the cool concepts and features of Elixir.

Adaptable Human - Taking the Company and Your Career to the Next Level

Recording | Slides | Aug 2019, RubyConf China

I travelled to RubyConf China again to deliver this talk - this is effectively the same talk I gave a few months ago internally at Xplor, which is also posted below.

Lightning Talk: GatsbyJS + Netlify

Recording | Slides | Jun 2019, Xplor

In this lightning talk, I will talk about my experience revamping my blog using GatsbyJS and Netlify, and why it turned me from a JavaScript hater to a JavaScript lover again.

Leadership Master Class: Adaptable Human - Taking the Company and Your Career to the Next Level

Recording | Slides | Apr 2019, Xplor

In this Leadership Master Class session, I’ll be talking about the adaptability of an organisation and an individual, and how things could affect an organisation as well as one’s career.

I’ll cover concepts that are fundamental but easy to overlook, as well as interesting concepts that I personally observed/invented over my decade-long career.

Git Gud - Beyond Simply Commit & Push

Recording | Slides | Jan 2019, Xplor

In this session I will take you through some of the git functionalities beyond the simple “commit”, “push” and “pull”. It is important for every developer to know his/her tools well, and git is a very important tool we use on a daily basis. Surprisingly, 9 out of 10 interview candidates I’d come across could not explain the difference between “git merge” and “git rebase”.

Writing Maintainable Code - Leave a Place Better Than You Found It

Slides | Dec 2018, Xplor

As we’re nearing the end of 2018, some of us have started brainstorming and kicking off work for Q1 2019. As the teams grow and products grow, it is crucial for us to write maintainable code to support the ever-growing business needs.

Six years ago I did a conference talk on a similar topic: I would love to talk about maintainable code again - writing maintainable code is a very hard thing to do especially in a fast-moving environment like Xplor. That said, I’d like everyone to start having the mentality of building maintainable code by default, and making conscious trade-offs when necessary.

Elixir Things - Snippets from Real Elixir Libraries

Recording | Slides | Nov 2018, Xplor

For all the devs, and anyone who is interested in and have had some exposure to programming. The theme of the talk is to introduce and discuss many of Elixir’s cool concepts, some not seen in any other languages.

My Story on Open Source - Seek Fulfillment, Build Reputation, Boost Career

Slides | Aug 2018, Xplor

I’m excited to bring you another Lunch & Learn session. This time the topic is about my story on open source - it is mostly tech oriented, but if you are interested in or curious about open source software and its community, you’re more than welcome to join us.

Some of the things I will cover include:

• open source projects I’ve contributed to
• where to start if you’re interested in contributing to an open source project (spoiler: it’s NOT just about coding!)
• how to use open source contributions to lift your work and boost your career, and vice versa
• the opportunities and benefits you get from contributing to the open source community

The goals of this topic are:

• to introduce you to the wonderful world of open source, if you are not already familiar with it
• to give you ideas on what to build and contribute
• to hopefully inspire you to do (more) open source work
• to hopefully help you become a better developer

Machine Learning - Powering the Coming Age of Artificial Intelligence

Recording | Slides | May 2018, Xplor

A talk with my colleague Lauren, together we will cover:

• introduction to Machine Learning, what it really is, and some fascinating real world use cases
• deep dive into some of the ML approaches such as Object Detection, Natural Language Processing and Naive Bayes Classifiers
• cool live demo of Naive Bayes classification using THE world’s BEST Naive Bayes library
• how Machine Learning might be used and applied at Xplor in the future

Get Ahead by Open Source

Slides | Jan 2016, REA Group

A talk on how to use open source to improve yourself as a developer.

Chinese: Podcast Interview on My Open Source Work

Recording | Apr 2013, Teahour.fm

在本期访谈中，Fred Wu 从他在大学时代以自由职业者的身份开始接触项目，到技术话题包括 Ruby，Rails，PHP 框架等，以及 Fred 如何参与开源实践，包括 Angle Nest 的故事，如何去给 Rails 贡献代码的，Slim 项目给我们带来的启发等等精彩内容。

Become a Better Developer You Can

Recording | Slides | Nov 2012, RubyConf China

A talk on how to become a better developer by focusing on a few key areas.