DDD Europe 2024 - Program

Building Distributed System Blueprints using DDD Practices

Main Conference - Hands-on Lab

Speakers

Jennifer (JD) Carlston

Jennifer (JD) Carlston
Schedule
Friday 31 from 11:00 until 13:00
Description

(This is a hands-on lab with limited capacity)

If you're facing a large and complex problem that's spread between a lot of different people, domains and organizations, but you still need a plan to identify holes and hotspots that tackle the complexity somehow, the process of building a system blueprint can help you do just that.

System blueprints can be used to solve a myriad of problems across an organization. They can help you identify weaknesses and holes in integration and migration plans, as well as conduct and mergers and acquisitions.

We'll be holding a hands-on lab to help people understand the process of asynchronously building a system blueprint across distributed organizations and services.

Taking lessons from eventstorming and event modeling, facilitators will provide guidance around the hands-on activity to build an integration blueprint.

Participants will be divided into small groups and given questions, scripts and a domain brief.

Each participant will be given time to collaboratively build their own service blueprint within their small group.

From there they will interview other groups to understand how their system fits within the larger whole, clear up any domain language, and generally add to the overall system blueprint.

Prerequisites

Willingness to learn, communicate with others, to read, synthesize, and follow a script.

Here are the files for participants to review beforehand.

About Jennifer (JD) Carlston

Jennifer D. "JD" Carlston (she/they) is an enthusiastic collaborator in the realm of complex and distributed software architecture and engineering systems. Her journey commenced at a young age at a local telco, where her expertise in IP systems laid the foundation for her ascent in the technology sector.

Her role has evolved significantly in FinTech and EdTech from Reuters and Merrick Bank to Pluralsight and Stack Overflow, where she leads teams to transition from on-premises to cloud infrastructures and works to implement lean agile methodologies, improve data discovery, and system integrations. She has led distributed teams of architects and engineers to deliver cutting-edge cloud technologies within event-driven systems. Her leadership extends beyond team management, helping to coordinate cross-functional communities worldwide and liaising directly with board members and C-suite executives to drive key technical initiatives.

JD has a passion for knowledge sharing and mentorship - teaching coding and system engineering practices, not just within her teams but also across the broader engineering community. Her efforts in understanding complexity, improving decision-making processes, streamlining lean agile practices, and enhancing system and data architecture have helped push the effective delivery of value forward.

In January 2024, JD joined Design Cycle Solutions (IoRX) as their Chief A.I. Architect, working with the founders and executives make their dream of revolutionizing the fashion industry while reducing its ecological footprint from the ground up a reality.

Beyond her professional accomplishments, JD is an active participant in their local communities with diverse interests and a commitment to giving back to the community.