pulse - disrupthttps://clearpool.io/2020-08-28T00:00:00+01:00Clearpool awarded UK Funding to Drive Growth of Crypto Markets2020-08-28T00:00:00+01:002020-08-28T00:00:00+01:00Jamie Allsoptag:clearpool.io,2020-08-28:/pulse/posts/2020/Aug/28/clearpool-awarded-uk-funding-to-drive-growth-of-crypto-markets/<p>We're delighted to announce that we were successful in our bid achieve funding from <a href="https://www.ukri.org/councils/innovate-uk/">Innovate UK</a> to support our project titled, <em>"Unlocking the potential of cryptoassets to enable ease of regulation and position the UK as the home of financial service digitisation and innovation"</em>.</p><p>We're delighted to announce that we were successful in our bid achieve funding from <a href="https://www.ukri.org/councils/innovate-uk/">Innovate UK</a> to support our project titled,</p>
<blockquote>
<p><em>"Unlocking the potential of cryptoassets to enable ease of regulation and position the UK as the home of financial service digitisation and innovation"</em>.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>If you are interested in how crytoassets could form a foundational part of future financial service delivery in the UK and Europe in general, or already believe in the technology and want to understand better how it can become more pervasive, then this work will certainly be relevant.</p>
<p>For some time the unique properties of cryptoassets have promised solutions to a variety of problems in financial markets. Properties such as fractional ownership and decentralised settlement which could offer the possibility of sweeping, positive changes in the delivery of services within the wider financial ecosystem.</p>
<p>Last April, the government’s <a href="https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/file/801277/UK-fintech-state-of-the-nation.pdf">UK Fintech - State of the Nation report</a>, reiterated its position in support of the use of cryptoassets in the delivery of financial services, and several key policy movements have since been made by the Financial Conduct Authority (FCA) and others. The seminal FCA Policy Statement, <a href="http://www.fca.org.uk/publication/policy/ps19-22.pdf">PS19/22: Guidance on Cryptoassets</a> was one such example. In short, the government recognises the value of distributed ledger technology and cryptoassets, and would like to see the UK at the forefront of innovation in this area.</p>
<p>Commonly referenced aspirations in favour of using cryptoassets cite better access to financial services, more robust infrastructure, and broader adoption as key benefits of digitisation. However the past few years have shown that, when compared to the existing financial services ecosystem, the opposite would appear to be the case.</p>
<p>Specifically we see two parallel ecosystems forming. The traditional regulated ecosystem, with cumbersome but effective interoperation as a truly global market, and another highly fragmented set of competing crypto ecosystems with minimal adoption and almost no regulation.</p>
<p>In response the FCA identified three major harms that need to be addressed:</p>
<ul>
<li>to consumers,</li>
<li>to market integrity, and</li>
<li>financial crime.</li>
</ul>
<p>Addressing these would encourage future beneficial innovation in the space. To support this, regulators and associated legislation must establish frameworks to help ensure financial services can be appropriately regulated and delivered in a way that minimises those harms.</p>
<p>For those frameworks to be effective it must be possible for incumbent service providers as well as new innovators to easily identify and achieve the authorisations needed to meet their obligations.</p>
<p>However, cryptoasset technologies have two serious limitations. First, they conflate ownership and custody, which means any attempt to achieve authorisation is extremely difficult. Clearly delineating the responsibilities a service requires authorisation for is simply not possible in any meanginful sense. Second, existing technologies are extremely slow, by several orders of magnitude, meaning purported benefits can only be realised in very niche settings. Simply put, the technology doesn't match the aspirations for it.</p>
<p>As a service provider wishing to seek FCA authorisation as a Multilateral Trading Facility (MTF), our project will develop new technology that allows separation of ownership from custody on a public blockchain while also anchoring off-chain activities to that chain in such a way so as to ensure we are not constrained by the chain’s performance. This work will be a game changer for financial service companies wishing to offer high performance, regulated businesses that will drive institutional adoption of crypto.</p>
<p>Watch this space!</p>ACCU Autumn 20192019-08-11T00:00:00+01:002019-08-11T00:00:00+01:00Jamie Allsoptag:clearpool.io,2019-08-11:/pulse/posts/2019/Aug/11/accu-autumn-2019/<p>This Autumn on November the 11th and 12th we will see the biggest deep tech event of the year in Belfast: ACCU Autumn 2019 — with some of the biggest names in programming in town for two days and three intense tracks of top quality talks. If you are a developer you'll want to be there!</p><p>This Autumn, on November the 11th and 12th, we will see the biggest deep tech event of the year in Belfast: <a href="http://www.cvent.com/d/n6qp1t">ACCU Autumn 2019</a> — with some of the biggest names in programming in town for <a href="https://conference.accu.org/2019_Autumn/schedule.html">two days and three intense tracks of top quality talks</a>. If you are a developer you'll want to be there! The conference will be held in the <a href="https://www3.hilton.com/en/hotels/united-kingdom/hilton-belfast-BFSHITW/index.html">Hilton Hotel</a> in the waterfront part of the city.</p>
<p>The ACCU Autumn conference is a new conference which aims to build on the popularity of the annual Spring <a href="https://conference.accu.org/">ACCU conference</a> but with an aspirational theme of "the evolution of programming".</p>
<p>As such the ACCU Autumn conference won’t be about any one technology or language, but rather a celebration of the diversity and richness of the wider programming and development languages, communities and ecosystems that exist today, and will exist tomorrow.</p>
<p>That's not to say the conference will be high level or superficial. Not at all. In the tradition of the long running ACCU conference this will be a highly rewarding deep tech event where you're guaranteed to learn something new, and come away energised and inspired!</p>
<h3>So what can you expect from the conference?</h3>
<p>Well, the goals of the conference are to ensure all delegates will:</p>
<blockquote>
<h5><strong>1</strong> - have an opportunity to hear deep technical talks from industry experts</h5>
<h5><strong>2</strong> - gain valuable exposure to new language and development directions</h5>
<h5><strong>3</strong> - improve their understanding of people, team, business and organisational trends</h5>
</blockquote>
<p>As this is the first year we are running the conference we have a slightly reduced schedule, and so the first two goals gain the majority of attention. Achieving the third goal will need to be fed through the sharing of experiences outside of the scheduled sessions! We aim to address that for next year and already have some strong speakers lined up.</p>
<h3>Can you tell me about some of the sessions?</h3>
<p>Sure. The <a href="https://conference.accu.org/2019_Autumn/schedule.html">current full schedule</a> is already available but here are a couple of highlights:</p>
<ul>
<li>
<p><a href="https://conference.accu.org/2019_Autumn/sessions.html#XIntroductiontoCacheObliviousAlgorithms">Introduction to Cache Oblivious Algorithms</a> - learn how to build algorithms that are cache oblivious, that is, they perform better across disparate hardware (cache) architectures in the average case than those optimised for any specific hardware architecture.</p>
</li>
<li>
<p><a href="https://conference.accu.org/2019_Autumn/sessions.html#XMakeyourprogramsmorereliablewithFuzzing">Make your programs more reliable with Fuzzing</a> - learn how to use fuzzing as an effective technique for significantly increasing the surface area of tests, improving security of code, and notably addressing the problem of "outside data".</p>
</li>
<li>
<p><a href="https://conference.accu.org/2019_Autumn/sessions.html#XTheTruthofaProcedure">The Truth of a Procedure</a> - learn how we can consider procedures and their interfaces to be <em>sentences</em> and how this jump in interpretation facilitates reasoning about procedures in terms of provable logic.</p>
</li>
<li>
<p><a href="https://conference.accu.org/2019_Autumn/sessions.html#XNomoresecretsWhyyoursecretsarentsafeandwhatyoucandoaboutit">No more secrets? Why your secrets aren’t safe and what you can do about it</a> - learn how quantum computing will change how we reason about and address security in our systems.</p>
</li>
</ul>
<p>to mention only a few, with well known names in the industry such as:</p>
<ul>
<li>
<p><a href="https://conference.accu.org/2019_Autumn/presenters.html#XHerbSutter">Herb Sutter</a> <em>(Microsoft)</em> author of the famous <a href="http://www.gotw.ca/publications/concurrency-ddj.htm">The Free Lunch is Over: A Fundamental Turn Toward Concurrency in Software</a> talk that has inspired the evolution of language design and development techniques over the past decade.</p>
</li>
<li>
<p><a href="https://conference.accu.org/2019_Autumn/presenters.html#XJohnLakos">John Lakos</a> <em>(Bloomberg)</em> author of the seminal <a href="https://www.amazon.com/Large-Scale-C-Software-Design-APC/dp/0201633620">Large Scale C++ System Design</a> book (new edition on its way!) that informed not just the C++ community, but has also influenced how large scale systems are reasoned about in every other language since.</p>
</li>
<li>
<p><a href="https://conference.accu.org/2019_Autumn/presenters.html#XLisaLippincott">Lisa Lippincott</a>, mathematician, architect, all-round language nerd, Lisa has been involved in the evolution of the C++ language for many years as well as being responsible for the architecture of many large scale systems out in the wild. She brings her unique perspective on how to map, usefully, many mathematical ideas into the programming domain.</p>
</li>
<li>
<p><a href="https://conference.accu.org/2019_Autumn/presenters.html#XTitusWinters">Titus Winters</a> <em>(Google)</em> founder of Google's open source Abseil library that underpins more than 250M lines of Google code with 12K+ active internal users. As such Titus has extensive knowledge and experience of growing and maintaining huge, mission critical codebases.</p>
</li>
</ul>
<h3>I keep hearing about "WG21". What's that?</h3>
<p>This year we are capitalising on the International Standards Organisation (ISO) <a href="https://isocpp.org/std">C++ committee (WG21)</a> holding their <a href="https://wg21.link/n4814">Autumn meeting in Belfast</a> the week before the ACCU Autumn conference (4th to 9th November). With the biggest names in the C++ world, and some of the biggest names in programming in general, all in Belfast, we will see many of them stay on to attend and speak at the conference, ensuring the programme is of the highest quality.</p>
<p>This also means that this inaugural year there will a large proportion of talks whose language of reference is C++, but we've also made sure there is at least one track in every time slot with a language agnostic or polyglot talk that will appeal to all developers!</p>
<h3>Sounds great!!</h3>
<p><a href="http://www.cvent.com/d/n6qp1t">Registration is open</a> so please sign up now to attend, and close the year with a fantastic opportunity to refresh your perspective, learn something new and expand your community!</p>
<h3>Can my company sponsor the event?</h3>
<p>Certainly, there are still opportunities to sponsor the event. Sponsoring ACCU Autumn, or WG21, or both is probably the most cost effective way to differentiate and help raise your recruitment profile. It's also a highly visible way to demonstrate to your employees that you consider their growth and development to be important to you. Join the ranks of companies like <a href="https://www.microsoft.com">Microsoft</a> who recently confirmed platinum sponsorship of both events.</p>
<p>So <a href="https://clearpool.io/resources/WG21_ACCU_Autumn_Conf_Sponsorship_Pack.pdf">download the sponsorship pack</a> and get in touch! If you don't see something in the pack to suit your required level of exposure, or that meets your budget please reach out through the contact links in the pack and we'll talk through your options.</p>
<p>See you at ACCU Autumn!</p>
<p><em>— Jamie (ACCU Autumn Conference chair)</em></p>ML Conference - Algorithmic Architecture, Real-time AI and the Search for Alpha2017-12-20T00:00:00+00:002017-12-20T00:00:00+00:00Jamie Allsoptag:clearpool.io,2017-12-20:/pulse/posts/2017/Dec/20/ml-conference-algorithmic-architecture-real-time-ai-and-the-search-for-alpha/<p>Earlier in the month I gave an invited talk at the inaugural ML Conference in Berlin, titled, <em>"Algorithmic Architecture, Real-time AI and the Search for Alpha"</em>. The talk looked at the general problem of extracting information from social media and some of the challenges arising from delivering a real-time system to trade from.</p><p>Earlier in the month (December 2017) I gave an invited talk at the inaugural <a href="https://mlconference.ai/machine-learning-advanced-development/algorithmic-architecture-real-time-ai-and-the-search-for-alpha/">ML Conference in Berlin</a>, titled, <em>"Algorithmic Architecture, Real-time AI and the Search for Alpha"</em>. The talk looked at the general problem of extracting information from social media and some of the challenges arising from delivering a real-time system to trade from.</p>
<p>This talk was a slight update to a <a href="https://clearpool.io/pulse/posts/2017/Apr/08/social-media-real-time-ai-and-the-search-for-alpha/">previous talk</a> given at <a href="https://finance.jaxlondon.com/">JAX Finance</a> and once again as a backstory to the session I used the <a href="https://yedup.com">Yedup</a> story to place things into context. Yedup are a leading company in this space who have shown it is possible to detect and disseminate real, actionable alpha from alternative data sources.</p>
<p>This talk back-ended Tuesday as the last session so it was a long day! Here are the slides:</p>
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<iframe src="https://docs.google.com/presentation/d/e/2PACX-1vSgc67lPtuu-QS2OisIKWb_dV1hRAmcw4K5LrgSnEksQpRCnm_xj-aKglaSA_uAUBV15_Zz9S8bFOEI/embed?start=false&loop=false&delayms=3000" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen="true" mozallowfullscreen="true" webkitallowfullscreen="true"></iframe>
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<p><br>
As with most talks these days there is a video which will make the slides a lot easier to follow!</p>
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<iframe src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/3uVjziMtp58" frameborder="0" allow="accelerometer; autoplay; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture" allowfullscreen></iframe>
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<p><br>
Lastly here is the talk abstract from the conference programme as a summary:</p>
<p><em>“Building any AI system is hard but building a real-time AI system brings its own challenges. At Yedup and Clearpool we have been building a real-time AI system to trade against hundreds of securities simultaneously by extracting fundamental signals from real-time social media feeds. We've gone back to first principals to build out a technology stack from scratch to meet our specific needs. This talk looks at how we've exploited algorithmic architecture to build a real-time AI system that delivers market leading alpha. That's interesting in itself, but what's more interesting is looking at some of the challenges that we've had to overcome in order to deliver a system that can not only trade hundreds of instruments simultaneously, but that can also correlate the relationships across industries and sectors to extract yet more alpha. These are challenges that would be applicable to any similar class of problems (such as real-time AI) and this talk explores a couple of the key ones, such as maintaining and recovering with huge amounts of in-flight state to deliver fast, scalable and robust AI systems.”</em></p>Social Media, Real Time AI and the search for Alpha2017-04-08T00:00:00+01:002017-04-08T00:00:00+01:00Jamie Allsoptag:clearpool.io,2017-04-08:/pulse/posts/2017/Apr/08/social-media-real-time-ai-and-the-search-for-alpha/<p>Earlier in the week at JAX Finance I gave a talk titled, <em>"Social Media, Real Time AI and the search for Alpha"</em>. The talk looked at the general problem of extracting information from social media and some of the challenges arising from delivering a real-time system to trade off.</p><p>Earlier in the week at <a href="https://finance.jaxlondon.com/">JAX Finance</a> I gave a talk titled, <a href="https://finance.jaxlondon.com/session/social-media-real-time-ai-and-the-search-for-alpha/">"Social Media, Real Time AI and the search for Alpha"</a>. The talk looked at the general problem of extracting information from social media and some of the challenges arising from delivering a real-time system to trade off.</p>
<p>As a backstory to the talk I use the <a href="https://yedup.com">Yedup</a> story to place the talk into context. <a href="https://yedup.com">Yedup</a> are a leading company in this space who have shown it is possible to detect and disseminate real, actionable alpha.</p>
<p>The talk was rescheduled late in the day so some people missed it. Here are the slides:</p>
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<iframe src="https://docs.google.com/presentation/d/171M3-BXl0D6zcM0G3vYcIp-ogzWfyTcJ0OHaO4pe7cE/embed?start=false&loop=false&delayms=3000" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen="true" mozallowfullscreen="true" webkitallowfullscreen="true"></iframe>
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<p><br>
Here is the talk abstract for those who prefer not to slide flick right now:</p>
<p><em>“The continual search for alpha in trading today has lead to an explosion of interest in alternative information sources, such as social media (Twitter, Stocktwits and so on), and the use of artificial intelligence to make sense of it all. In the world of conversations and opinions it’s hard to sift through the noise and filter out the real events that are impacting the markets. Data mining, natural language processing and heavy retrospective analysis has shown there is valuable information, but there are significant challenges finding that information in real time. Working with Yedup we’ve built an AI system that can extract real-time alpha and provide an API feed of hundreds of stocks and their related companies and industries. Used by one of the worlds biggest market makers we talk through some of the architectural choices and approaches needed to realise the real-time AI found in the Yedup system.”</em></p>
<p>The full programme description was:</p>
<blockquote>
<p><em>Building any AI system is hard, but building a real-time AI brings its own challenges. At Yedup and Clearpool, we built a real-time AI system to simultaneously trade against hundreds of securities by extracting fundamental signals from real-time social media feeds. We’ve gone back to first principals to build out a technology stack from scratch to meet our specific needs.</em></p>
<p><em>This talk looks at how we’ve exploited algorithmic architecture to build a real-time AI system that delivers market leading alpha. That’s interesting in itself, but what’s more interesting is looking at some of the challenges that we’ve had to overcome in order to deliver a system that can not only trade hundreds of instruments simultaneously, but that can also correlate the relationships across industries and sectors to extract yet more alpha.</em></p>
<p><em>These are issues that would be applicable to any similar class of problems (such as real-time AI) and this talk explores a couple of the key challenges, such as maintaining and recovering with huge amounts of in-flight state to deliver fast, scalable and robust AI systems.</em></p>
</blockquote>The Problem of Finance - Video2017-04-08T00:00:00+01:002017-04-08T00:00:00+01:00Jamie Allsoptag:clearpool.io,2017-04-08:/pulse/posts/2017/Apr/08/the-problem-of-finance-video/<p>In preparing for JAX Finance 2017 I came across the video of my 2016 talk, <em>"The Problem of Finance"</em>. I reference that in the talk this year so thought I'd share a link to it here.</p><p>In preparing for JAX Finance 2017 I came across the video of my 2016 talk, "<a href="https://clearpool.io/pulse/posts/2016/May/10/the-problem-of-finance/">The Problem of Finance</a>". I reference that in the talk this year so thought I'd share a link to it here.</p>
<p>Here it is:</p>
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<p><br></p>
<p>Link to source: <a href="https://vimeo.com/172082748">JAX Finance 2016: The Problem with Finance - Dr. Jamie Allsop</a> from <a href="https://vimeo.com/jaxtv">JAX TV</a> on <a href="https://vimeo.com">Vimeo</a>.</p>Testing the Architecture2016-06-30T00:00:00+01:002016-06-30T00:00:00+01:00Jamie Allsoptag:clearpool.io,2016-06-30:/pulse/posts/2016/Jun/30/testing-the-architecture/<p>Last week I had the pleasure of speaking at EXTENT 2016 in the London Stock Exchange. It was a fantastic day and overall an excellent conference. My talk was titled, <em>"Testing the Architecture"</em>. The slides are available online as a PDF along with video but the full animated slides are available here.</p><p>Last week I had the pleasure of speaking at <a href="https://www.exactprosystems.com/events/extent/extent-conference-2016">EXTENT 2016</a> in the London Stock Exchange. It was a fantastic day and overall an excellent conference. My talk was titled, <em>"Testing the Architecture"</em>. The slides are <a href="http://extentconf.com/materialsen/presentations-en/reportsextentjune2016en">available online</a> along with video at the conference website. However, due to a technical glitch any images with filters applied showed up as a black silhouettes (thanks to Internet Explorer for making that happen and yes nobody should every use IE!).</p>
<p>Here are the slides:</p>
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<iframe src="https://docs.google.com/presentation/d/1u2sll99RL9sK_xmOTM4R2KDzeSPKL9TuObEam8vKx58/embed?start=false&loop=false&delayms=3000" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen="true" mozallowfullscreen="true" webkitallowfullscreen="true"></iframe>
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</div>The Problem of Finance2016-05-10T00:00:00+01:002016-05-10T00:00:00+01:00Jamie Allsoptag:clearpool.io,2016-05-10:/pulse/posts/2016/May/10/the-problem-of-finance/<p>Two weeks ago at JAX Finance and JAX DevOps I gave a talk titled, <em>"The Problem of Finance"</em>. I'm sharing the slides here for those who were not able to make it, or those who wondered if I really did spell <em>blockchain</em> incorrectly!</p><p>Two weeks ago at <a href="https://finance.jaxlondon.com/">JAX Finance</a> and <a href="https://devops.jaxlondon.com/">JAX DevOps</a> I gave a talk titled, "<a href="https://finance.jaxlondon.com/session/the-problem-with-finance/">The Problem of Finance</a>". I'm sharing the slides here for those who were not able to make it, or those who wondered if I really did spell <em>blockchain</em> incorrectly! Spoiler alert - I really did...</p>
<p>Here are the slides:</p>
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<p><br>
Here is the talk abstract for those who prefer not to slide flick right now:</p>
<p><em>“We are in the middle of a fintech revolution right now with much interest in the finance domain and how we can use technology to disrupt both incumbents and business models. This is even a conference about developing software in the finance domain. The question begs then, what makes finance special, if anything? And if it is special why do we care and what can we do about it?</em></p>
<p><em>Finance isn’t just about developing technology with a few rules and regulations, it’s about the complex interactions between people and systems and the events that have helped shape the global economy over the past decade. It’s also a domain of contradictions. Corporations that drive the industry and help shape the technology are often hugely resilient to failure allowing bad practices to outlive their natural life. Similarly failure, when it does come, can be very costly, even catastrophic, with technology providers directly culpable.</em></p>
<p><em>Developing effectively in the domain of finance requires an appreciation of the wider context of the domain, where it is today and where it will lead in the future. Armed with that knowledge, and an understanding of why it’s hard to develop effectively in a domain with hard, ever changing constraints it becomes possible to explore approaches that can help make sense of it all. One of the biggest problems encountered in finance is the mapping from some regulatory obligation all the way through to lines of code that actually provide that.</em></p>
<p><em>This talk will look at the problem of finance, where we are today, how we got here and how we might make sense of it all. Along the way we’ll ask what things stand out and perhaps a pattern will emerge. Hopefully it will become clear that finance is challenging, but also rewarding. We get to solve real, hard problems with little room for compromise and get to push our tools and languages to their limits, in some cases driving their evolution.”</em></p>ACCU 2016: Algorithmic Architecture2016-05-04T00:00:00+01:002016-05-04T00:00:00+01:00Jamie Allsoptag:clearpool.io,2016-05-04:/pulse/posts/2016/May/04/accu-2016-algorithmic-architecture/<p>Not long ago I gave a talk at the excellent ACCU conference in Bristol titled <em>“Algorithmic Architecture: Architecture in Evolving Regulatory Environments”</em>. The talk received some very good feedback and quite a few people asked for the slides so here they are in their original format.</p><p>Not long ago I gave a talk at the excellent <a href="http://www.cvent.com/events/accu-2016-registration-open/event-summary-2b856aa829c143abb8a969632105ed44.aspx">ACCU conference in Bristol</a> titled <em>“Algorithmic Architecture: Architecture in Evolving Regulatory Environments”</em>. The talk received some very good feedback and quite a few people asked for the slides so here they are in their original format:</p>
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<p><br>
For those who are wondering if you should take the time to read through the slides here is the abstract that was featured in the ACCU 2016 program:</p>
<p><em>“In complex, highly regulated (and therefore constrained) environments it is a continual struggle to develop high performance systems and adapt them as constraints evolve. Typical architectures stagnate and performance improvements are focused more and more on known pain points with considerable (even heroic) effort employed to address them. Eventually that too is not enough and systems need to be re-architected and re-written. Ultimately leading to costly 3-5 year regeneration programs.</em></p>
<p><em>With the sweeping regulatory changes brought on by the 2008 Financial Crisis and the 2010 Flash Crash as a backdrop, the talk explores regulations, and problems, and their impact on architecture. Such regulatory changes only add to the already huge pressure on system implementors to provide high performance, ultra-low latency, throughput-scalable and highly available systems.</em></p>
<p><em>The talk looks at how these competing forces ― the desire for optimal performance coupled with a need to adapt to an ever changing regulatory environment, or indeed changing constraints in general ― have catalysed our work at clearpool.io to adopt an “algorithmic architecture” approach. This has allowed us to maintain agility while also facilitating the development of optimal systems based on solid architecture. It also turns out that C++ as a language is well suited to supporting the approach, though the techniques are themselves language agnostic.”</em></p>Algorithmic Architecture2015-05-07T00:00:00+01:002015-05-07T00:00:00+01:00Jamie Allsoptag:clearpool.io,2015-05-07:/pulse/posts/2015/May/07/algorithmic-architecture/<p>Last week at <a href="http://jax-finance.com/2015/">JAX Finance</a> my talk titled, "<a href="http://jax-finance.com/2015/session/algorithmic-architecture-performant-architectures-evolving-regulatory-landscape/">Algorithmic Architecture: Performant architectures in the evolving regulatory landscape</a>", was well received. I'm sharing the slides here for those who were not able to make it to the talk and wondered what all the fuss was about!</p><p>Last week at <a href="http://jax-finance.com/2015/">JAX Finance</a> my talk on titled, <a href="http://jax-finance.com/2015/session/algorithmic-architecture-performant-architectures-evolving-regulatory-landscape/">Algorithmic Architecture: Performant architectures in the evolving regulatory landscape</a> was well received.</p>
<p>I'm sharing the slides here for those who were not able to make it to the talk and wondered what all the fuss was about!</p>
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The talk is broken into three parts:</p>
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<p>The talk starts by introducing the regulatory landscape that impacts systems development in the capital markets today, or indeed any highly regulated environment. It then goes on to present concepts and ideas that you can use to make sense of the constraints that are faced in such a setting. Lastly it introduces techniques that can be adopted to help address the issues and problems outlined earlier in the talk.</p>
<p>The emphasis is very much captured by the subtitle of the talk, "Performant Architecture in the Evolving Regualtory Landscape" and aims to offer you constructive advice on how to achieve that.</p>
<p>You can download a copy of the slides as a PDF from the link below:</p>
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<a href="https://clearpool.io/resources/jax_finance_2015_algorithmic_architecture.pdf">Algorithic Architecture</a></p>Agile By Example: Thinking Distributed to Improve Agility2012-10-05T00:00:00+01:002012-10-05T00:00:00+01:00Jamie Allsoptag:clearpool.io,2012-10-05:/pulse/posts/2012/Oct/05/agile-by-example-thinking-distributed-to-improve-agility/<p>Agile by Example had only started in 2011 so this was the second year of the conference where I was invited to give my talk "Thinking Distributed to Improve Agility" (from JAX London the year before)!</p><blockquote>
<p>Note this is a reposting of some older material. The article has been given a date that reflects the time that this event occured so it will appear chronologically in the articles list</p>
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<p>I was honoured to be invited to speak at the second <a href="http://2012.agilebyexample.com/">Agile By Example conference in 2012</a> in Warsaw, Poland. An attendee at JAX London the year before had been at my talk there and it turned out he was the main organiser for the Agile by Example conference in Poland. He persuaded me to come and present the same talk (well - slightly updated...) here in Warsaw. He said it was going to be a great event and he was not wrong...</p>
<p>It has indeed been a fantastic, well organised conference, with a fairly unique structure. Well worth attending for those who can make the trip. Basically a two day conference hosted inside an old sports complex with attendees seated in an old (massive) swimming pool! Some great talks and some great people. THe conference was a single track conference which meant that you never missed a talk and every speaker was presenting to a huge audience. This was my first time in Warsaw so it was a double win for me to speak at such a good conference and also see somewhere new!</p>
<h3>Slides from the talk</h3>
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<p>Speakers etc...</p>
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</div>Thinking Distributed to Improve Agility2011-11-02T00:00:00+00:002011-11-02T00:00:00+00:00Jamie Allsoptag:clearpool.io,2011-11-02:/pulse/posts/2011/Nov/02/thinking-distributed-to-improve-agility/<p>Now a permanent fixture on the JAX calender JAX London Autumn Edition was back in 2011 and for me that meant another talk based on lessons and insights pulled together after years of running distributed and collocated agile teams!</p><blockquote>
<p>Note this is a reposting of some older material. The article has been given a date that reflects the time that this event occured so it will appear chronologically in the articles list</p>
</blockquote>
<p>Today (2nd Nov 2011) I gave a talk titled <em>"Thinking Distributed to Improve Agility"</em> at <a href="http://www.jaxlondon.com/">JAX 2011 in London</a>. This was the first talk in the <strong>Architecture</strong> track on the second day of the conference. In some sense this was bleed over from <strong>Agile Day</strong> yesterday, but the reason for this being in ths <strong>Architecture</strong> track was because this talked to the architecture of teams within an organisation. Now that <em>is</em> interesting...</p>
<p>2011 has been a busy year for me for coference talks. Three conferences, three different talks and all quite different! This one though is one of my favourite talks because it pulls together insights and learnings from many years as a practitioner and offers some genuine insight that is often overlooked. Moreover it does something that I love to see in other talks that have stuck with me over the years: it challenges the perceived wisdom of the community.</p>
<p>The premise of the talk was that, contrary to poplar belief (and "accepted wisdom"), distributed teams exhibit characteristics that can make it <em>easier</em> for them to transition to agile and improve their agility. In contrast co-located teams can somehow struggle to transition and be agile. I take a look at organisational patterns and crowd communication in an attempt to explain why this might be the case. To learn why and a few more things besides you can take a look at the slides...</p>
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</div>Feedback Loops in Agile Development2011-09-16T00:00:00+01:002011-09-16T00:00:00+01:00Jamie Allsoptag:clearpool.io,2011-09-16:/pulse/posts/2011/Sep/16/feedback-loops-in-agile-development/<p>A brief writeup of the very first Agile On The Beach conference that I was invited to speak at by Allan Kelly, way back in 2011!</p><blockquote>
<p>Note this is a reposting of some older material. The article has been given a date that reflects the time that this event occured so it will appear chronologically in the articles list</p>
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<p>Yesterday I gave a talk at the inaugural <a href="https://agileonthebeach.com/">Agile on the Beach</a> conference down in Cornwall on the <a href="https://www.falmouth.ac.uk/">Tremough Campus</a> near at <a href="https://www.falmouth.co.uk/">Falmouth</a>.</p>
<p>It's been a very good conference so far with a great turnout. We'd some great speakers here, such as, <a href="http://www.poppendieck.com/">Tom and Mary Poppendieck</a>, Rachel Davies, Steve Freeman, Jon Jagger, Jason Gorman, and of course <a href="https://www.allankelly.net/">Allan Kelly</a> who invited me to speak at the event.</p>
<p>The essence of my talk was to emphasise the importance of observing and learning from feedback loops that appear in an agile methodology. It starts by examining briefly the nature and problems of typical development, then explores the key elements of an agile methodology.</p>
<p>From here I illustrate how we can use these elements to amplify the feedback loops present to facilitate a better understanding of how to leverage agile development. Finally it takes a look at some of the practical things you should pay attention to when going agile along with a short prescription of where you can start.</p>
<p>The official synopsis for the talk was:</p>
<blockquote>
<p><em>So everyone knows what being agile is all about? It's an old buzzword now, stamped on everything that moves in a development methodology, or everything in an organisation for that matter. The problem of course is that it's hard to to really distil what makes you agile and what doesn't. If you cobble together enough process, and throw in a couple of practices, you have all you need to innovate yourself to a successful, or failing, project. That's the trouble, without real agility it is often hard to know how successful you are being in a project, and often it is hard to know how agile you are. You might think you are agile and that your project is being successfully delivered when in fact neither is true.</em></p>
<p><em>This talk goes back to basics and re-emphasises the concepts behind agility: showing that agility is achieved through understanding, observing and amplifying the feedback loops present in a truly agile approach to development. By understanding how you setup and magnify feedback loops in your methodology, using loose processes and practices, you have a chance at agility. I'll present reliable techniques and show how they relate to agility within the feedback context. You should come away from the talk with a refreshed view of agility, some practical tips, and be able to look more critically at how you try to be agile in your organisation.</em></p>
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<p>You can view the slides below:</p>
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</div>Paying Lip Service to Agile2010-09-27T00:00:00+01:002010-09-27T00:00:00+01:00Jamie Allsoptag:clearpool.io,2010-09-27:/pulse/posts/2010/Sep/27/paying-lip-service-to-agile/<p>After the success of the very first JAX London conference at the start of the year, a Jax London Autumn Edition was hosted and my talk, Paying Lip Service to Agile was accepted!</p><blockquote>
<p>Note this is a reposting of some older material. The article has been given a date that reflects the time that this event occured so it will appear chronologically in the articles list</p>
</blockquote>
<p>Still 2010 and time for another <a href="https://jaxlondon.com/">JAX London</a> event - this time in September. Having been working at the New York Stock Exchange and established (yet another) distributed agile team, while also attempting to drive wider adoption within the business, I'd noticed many efforts both inside the business and also in other companies that were failing with agility. Interestingly though these were silent failures meaning that teams were <em>apparently</em> agile and seemed to be doing agile practices, but in reality were far from being agile at all.</p>
<p>This talk was on the first day of the conference, <strong>Agile Day</strong>. There was a very strong turn-out for the Agile Day and it was encouraging to see so many wanting to learn more about agile development. This talk had some interesting observations to make but also attempted to capture insights from the audience to make it more interactive and let us explore this phenomenon as a group! Im pleased to say that it was well received with some good interaction!</p>
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</div>Effective use of Agile-Trac for Agile Development2010-02-22T00:00:00+00:002010-02-22T00:00:00+00:00Jamie Allsoptag:clearpool.io,2010-02-22:/pulse/posts/2010/Feb/22/effective-use-of-agile-trac-for-agile-development/<p>This is a writeup of my invited talk at the very first JAX London conference. The JAX conference series was already well known in mainland Europe but this was their first event in the UK where it is now a permanent fixture!</p><blockquote>
<p>Note this is a reposting of some older material. The article has been given a date that reflects the time that this event occured so it will appear chronologically in the articles list</p>
</blockquote>
<p>I was very lucky to be invited to speak at the the inaugural <a href="https://jaxlondon.com/">JAX London</a> event back in 2010 by <a href="https://www.jeckstein.com/">Jutta Eckstein</a>. Having crossed paths with Jutta many times at previous ACCU conferences and also at Agile 2008 we knew we shared a common interest in distibuted agile and approaches and tooling that could enable it. My talk was to present Agile-Trac and demonstrate how we could more with the correct tooling.</p>
<p>Having been a fan of the <a href="https://trac.edgewall.org/">Trac Open Source Project</a> which provides source code managment, issue tracking and a wiki to allow development teams to "get work down without the tooling getting in the way" I set about developing a fork called Agile-Trac.</p>
<p>Agile-Trac was developed over a year or so while commuting to work on the train. Originally intended as a plugin for Trac the changes were too extensive and it ended up being a fork instead. In summary though Agile-Trac added agile focused concepts to Trac such as Iterations, User Stories, Relativing Sizing and Estimated Completion Dates based on a team's Iteration Completion Rate, and so on. To learn more check out the slides!</p>
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</div>Distributed Agile Teams and Use Cases in Agile2008-08-08T00:00:00+01:002008-08-08T00:00:00+01:00Jamie Allsoptag:clearpool.io,2008-08-08:/pulse/posts/2008/Aug/08/distributed-agile-teams-and-use-cases-in-agile/<p>A brief writeup of the speaking at Agile 2008 conference in Toronto where I gave two talks, and the very first talk on successful adoption of Agile in a distributed setting!</p><blockquote>
<p>Note this is a reposting of some older material. The article has been given a date that reflects the time that this event occured so it will appear chronologically in the articles list</p>
</blockquote>
<p>I had a great time at the Agile 2008 conference. It was well organised with a couple of great keynotes (see below!) and I met some super interesting people like Kelly Pow (one of my very first LinkedIn connections!) and <a href="https://craigsmith.id.au/">Craig Smith</a>.</p>
<p>This was my first conference outside the UK and the first time the Agile Alliance conference series had a track dedicated to distributed agile development. I was honoured to have two talks accepted to the conference, and one of course in the "Distributed" track.</p>
<h3>Agile Development in a Globally Distributed Team</h3>
<p>One of my talks was on exactly this topic, <em>"Agile Development in a Globally Distributed Team"</em>, and to my surprise it was in fact the first talk to demonstrate that you could in fact use an agile development methodology in a distributed setting. Indeed it was the only talk at the conference that concluded that distributed agile was possible when distributed from the outset.</p>
<p>The majority of other talks that were "experience reports" recommended that an agile methodology could only work with a distributed team if at first the team was brought together for a period of time, at the beginning of the project, and then again periodically. Very different from my experience where a key observation is that the solution to distributed development is <em>not</em> co-location!</p>
<p>Yes, you can effectively deliver as a agile team within a distributed team, and with reasonable tool support this can be quite pain free!</p>
<p>The talk therefore attempts to captures many of the lessons learned from several years of working in agile distributed teams and as it turns out going agile can really bring benefits in a distributed setting as it helps focus both the nature and the quality of communication.</p>
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<h3>User Stories and Use Cases? Sure, it even makes sense.</h3>
<p>The other talk I gave was titled, <em>"User Stories and Use Cases? Sure, it even makes sense"</em> which basically addresses the trend that asserts that User Stories were are 'agile' and Use Cases largely relegated to use as a high ceremony tool for non-agile methodologies. This talk sets out to challenge that view by suggesting that both User Stories and Use Cases could, and should, co-exist as complimentary techniques in effective agile methodologies.</p>
<p>The terms User Story and Use Case are two pretty broad terms, so the first thing the talk does is to clarify just what I mean by each. It would of course be possible to adopt one term over the other. For example, we could call a User Story a Use Case Brief (a la Cockburn), but I believe it is helpful to keep a separation between the two terms. Another aspect of the talk was the idea that User Stories can be used to provide a uniform method of capturing functional requirements, as well as system constraints.</p>
<p>Having introduced the terms, I outline how, and when, User Stories and Use Cases can be used in a typical agile methodology, and importantly how one relates to (and compliments) the other. For example, typically User Stories are the technique of choice when Release Planning and Use Cases help a lot with Iteration Planning.</p>
<p>As User Stories and Use Cases can exist at different levels, from business use down to component interaction, I show how a User Story can relate to more than one Use Case, and how a Use Case can be related to more than one User Story. Similarly I also look at how Use Cases can sometimes provide a 'glue' between User Stories.</p>
<p>If you are an experienced agile developer I would hope this talk gets you thinking more about your requirements elicitation tools!</p>
<p>I shared the session with <a href="https://scottambler.com/">Scott Ambler</a> (who most of you will know from his <a href="https://scottambler.com/agile-database-techniques/">Agile DatabaseTechniques</a> book) and packed room so it was great to have a large, knowledgeable audience.</p>
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<h3>Other Take-aways from the Conference</h3>
<p>The opening keynote that deserves a special mention is <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alan_Cooper">Alan Cooper</a>'s <em>"The Wisdom of Experience"</em> presentation. You can find a full narration, including the slides on Alan Cooper's Medium article <a href="ralancooper.medium.com/how-far-have-we-come-792a80625c94"><em>"How Far Have We Come?"</em></a>. If you ever wanted to hear a talk that made you feel valued to be a developer and understand better how Agile and UX come together, then <em>this</em> is the talk you want to read.</p>
<p>The other keynote that really caught my attention was <a href="https://english.yale.edu/people/full-part-time-lecturers-creative-writers/james-surowiecki">James Surowiecki</a>'s keynote that talked about his bestselling book <a href="https://english.yale.edu/publications/wisdom-crowds"><em>"The Wisdom of Crowds"</em></a>.</p>