Dev8D: Five minutes with Mark Johnson

Feb 14, 2012 by saldridge

“I am a geek”: A delightfully frank t-shirt that won Mark Johnson, the in-house web developer at Taunton’s College in Southampton, an award when he attended Dev8D in 2011. However this year he’ll be hosting a workshop in addition to his commitment to amusing t-shirts.

What brings you to Dev8D?

There’s just me on the staff in Southampton so these kinds of conferences are a rare opportunity for me to be able to network. You meet people who may have solved problems you may have and it’s a fantastic way of collaborating on possible ideas. For me, it’s also an excellent opportunity for training that I wouldn’t usually get.

Being with other developers is a real moral booster. My employers tend to look at my work with a blank face, so long as it does the job. Here other developers will understand what I’ve done… tell me how to improve it… whether it’s good – you get validation for your work.

What will your workshop be about?

Tomorrow morning I’ll be running a workshop on Moodle plugins, which will take the form of a ‘code-along’ session where I’ll be writing a plugin along with everyone, showing them what to do, and different ways to extend the functionality of Moodle.

This is your third year at Dev8D, how has it changed?

Well, lunch isn’t on time; it was on time last year.

Really, it just seems to get bigger and bigger every year. Last year it was two day event with an optional third day. Every year there’s more people, different people. There’s so many developers that I know solely from coming to Dev8D. In the first year I spent most of the week working on one of the challenges. Essentially you’re told, “do something interesting with this system” and then the best gets a prize. This year I’ve seen a challenge that focused on learning tools that I want to be involved with. Last year I didn’t risk spending all week on a challenge and tried to go to as many workshops as possible.

What are you interested in at this year’s conference?

I’m looking at updating the student note system on Taunton College’s Moodle and I know the developers from the University of London Computer Centre who created the system will be here this year. I’m hoping to collaborate with them and help to improve and develop the system.