Building a Successful Technology Career

Building a successful career involves way more than just doing the technical work that is your primary responsibility. In this presentation, we'll talk about the following topics: having a plan, but not letting it get in the way of serendipitous opportunities; applying for jobs when you don't have all of the "required" skills; getting paid what you are worth; volunteering for additional assignments without letting people take advantage of you; and becoming known as an expert.

Dawn Foster is the Community Manager for the Puppet community at Puppet Labs. She has more than 17 years of experience in business and technology with expertise in community building, community management, open source software, market research, RSS, and more. She is passionate about bringing people together through a combination of online communities and real-world events. She has experience building new communities and managing existing communities with a particular emphasis on developer and open source communities. Past jobs include work at Intel and Jive Software among others. She is the author of two books and regularly speaks at conferences on a variety of topics.