Speaker announcement: April Wensel

About April

April Wensel is an international keynote speaker and the founder of Compassionate Coding, a conscious business that trains technologists in emotional intelligence and communication skills.

Prior to starting Compassionate Coding, she spent a decade in software engineering and technical leadership roles at various startups in Silicon Valley, building products in healthcare, gaming, education, and user research.

Away from the keyboard, she enjoys gleaning fruit, running ultramarathons, and baking tasty vegan treats.

Get to know April even more on her LinkedIn page.

The talk: Maximize Humanity with Compassion

With all the time we spend on machines, it’s easy to forget that we are human beings, and so are our collaborators and customers. If we neglect the human side of our work, we can end up fighting with coworkers, disappointing users, and even burning out.

Thankfully, we can harness the power of compassion to help us reconnect with our humanity. Compassion isn’t just something soft and fuzzy – it’s a rational choice that helps us minimize suffering and maximize human flourishing.

In this talk, you’ll learn concrete steps for applying compassion to manage your stress levels, connect more deeply with your coworkers, create products that delight users, and ultimately leave a more positive impact on the world.

Why I look forward to this talk

A long time ago at a company far, far away, after a daily standup meeting, one of my colleagues remained behind. In a state I can only describe as crying in anger and frustration, they explained that they felt a lot of their recent work had been invalidated by poor planning and lack of foresight.

What stood out to me was the courage it took to show so many feelings in front of (part of) the team, as well as how well our manager handled it – my respect for both grew that day. Since then, this event has served as a reminder to me that while we work with cold, unfeeling technology, those we collaborate with have feelings and values that we need to accommodate and respect.

I first met April last year at the speaker-unconference following JFokus. Her keynote at the main conference stood out to me because she talked about the soft side of software development, instead of the technical side which is more common at these events.

At the unconference, I had the pleasure of getting to know April a little better. Aside from pursuing the terrific cause of making us collaborate and get along better, she also happens to be a delight to hang out with.

So, when we started talking about which speakers we wanted to invite to myConf, I immediately thought of April and her message about being compassionate and staying human. Two ingredients I am convinced are required if we are to create exponential value in a sustainable manner!

/Raniz, Consultant at factor10