About / Editorial

A conference archive, rebuilt as a field manual.

Chicago Coder Conference is a revived developer conference archive. The original event ran across tracks for Java, .NET, architecture, agile, DevOps, cloud, security, mobile, frontend, UX, IoT, and big data. The pages were going to disappear. We kept them, then turned the surrounding site into a serious engineering publication.

The archive is the spine. Every track page, video index, and session list is treated as a recovered record of problems working developers were already solving. The publication is the layer on top: practical field notes that connect what those tracks represented to how teams ship software now.

The editorial voice

Articles are signed by Maya Torres, the editorial persona for archive notes and engineering field manuals. Maya is not a real verified person and does not claim conference attendance, speaker relationships, or insider history. She is the byline we use to keep one consistent voice across the archive: direct, organized, mildly opinionated, and respectful of the original material.

What we publish

• Archive field notes — what an old track represented, what changed, and the durable lesson a working team can still use.
• Engineering retrospectives — recurring problems (delivery safety, service boundaries, observability) with named tradeoffs instead of universal best practices.
• Track hubs — Java, DevOps, security, cloud, architecture, mobile — entry points that explain the problem space before recommending tools.
• Recovery pages — preserved conference URLs, rebuilt with current context rather than redirected away.

If you came here looking for the active conference org, this is not it. This is the archive, kept useful.