Announcing the WorkSpace B3 series designed to help you Build a Better Business -- Presented by WorkSpace Cafe and MindHeap Technology.  This October we present the first sessions in both our business and technology tracks running evenings weekly at the WorkSpace Cafe on the Gastown waterfront in Vancouver, BC.  

From the WorkSpace B3 October Business Track:

Agile development has proven to help build more effective development teams.  Sure you can learn about the mechanics of the process, but how do you engage and manage your agile development team?  What should you expect from your team?  How do you know it is working?  How do you tune your team?  How do you build collective ownership? What infrastructure helps or hinders the team?  What are some of the tricks and pitfalls?  How do you manage outwards and upwards from the team?  Of course this session provides insight into these questions and other topics surrounding agile development.

presented by Jayson Minard of MindHeap Technology

Jayson has a strong background in e-commerce, highly scalable applications, search systems, software development processes and commercial software development. He has developed software ranging from desktop applications through extremely high volume distributed systems.

Jayson currently operates MindHeap Technology, providing technology strategy, architecture, product management and development consulting at high levels in client organizations; from architect through CIO/CTO. He works with clients such as Endeca, Boeing, ProQuest, Zend, AbeBooks, Alibris, JobMagnet and is also the CTO of TinyMassive.  Previously, as CIO and CTO of AbeBooks, he rebuilt the IT organization and technology platform and brought AbeBooks to a level playing field with the likes of Amazon, Barnes and Noble, and Half.com.  That success has led to a recent acquisition by Amazon.

Jayson works across PHP, Java, Ruby and .NET platforms balancing his time and experiences to stay strong in each. In fact in the PHP world he created the Zend DevZone community site and was the founding Editor-in-Chief, created the strategy for ZendCon, and led the Zend Framework open-source project.  He contributed to the Java platform as the Chief Architect for the Java Business Unit at Borland creating JBuilder and shaping early Java specifications.  Jayson also has experience with most major database platforms, enterprise technology and grid computing.

He has been in software development for over 20 years.