Dev:Spark 2025 Sessions

Sessions

Breakfast and Registration

Keynote: Brian Radford, BYU Information Technology VP & CIO

Break

Break

Break

Lunch

Break

Birds of a Feather

Closing Session - Nick Turley, Managing Director, IT Architecture

Web apps for the Millenium

"At the Center for Family History and Genealogy (CFHG), we build web applications with a purpose that extends far beyond efficiency or user engagement. Our mission is to support temple work and contribute to the work of salvation—efforts we believe will continue into the Millennium. This eternal perspective shapes every aspect of our development approach.

In this presentation, we’ll share lessons learned from building applications that handle vast genealogical datasets, support academic research, and scale across projects that span generations. These are not typical web apps. Our tools must adapt to shifting research needs, manage intricate data relationships, and uphold accuracy and accountability across deeply connected records.

Along the way, we’ve faced—and learned from—failures in design, architecture, and process. These challenges forced us to rethink our strategies and discover solutions that not only met technical needs but also reinforced the spiritual purpose behind our work.

The nature of our projects demands long-term vision, patience, and a willingness to see beyond short-term metrics. Through this process, we’ve gained insights valuable to anyone working in research-heavy or mission-driven domains.

Whether you’re drawn to the technical complexities of academic applications, curious about the intersection of faith and software development, or simply interested in how a dev team approaches purpose-driven projects, this talk will offer a candid view of our journey—what we’ve learned, how we’ve grown, and what we’re still discovering."

Jonah Thurston, Alden Transfiguracion

Jonah Thurston
Job Title: Web Developer Team Lead
Department: Center For Family History and Genealogy
Bio: Jonah Thurston is a developer at the Center for Family History and Genealogy (CFHG), where he builds web applications designed to support genealogical research. With experience in managing large-scale data systems, designing long-term applications, and supporting academic research, he brings both technical skill and a sense of purpose to his projects. His work focuses on accuracy, scalability, and the unique challenges of research-driven applications. Guided by a belief in the real-world impact of family history, he is passionate about creating tools that not only solve technical problems but also contribute to meaningful, lasting outcomes.

Alden Transfiguracion
Job Title: Web Developer Team Lead
Department: Center For Family History and Genealogy

Creating an Effective Team on a Budget: A DITL Guide to Managing Student Devs with Limited Resources

In this discussion we'll be talking about ways that we use to try to find the balance of helping students grow and develop for their future careers, while also making sure that they have enough time to make significant progress on their projects to help us with our work in the limited time that they are allowed to work. Roman and Jack will go through some of the activities that they do on their teams to ensure that the work is taken care of and that the students are feeling supported. We also would like to discuss how the size of the teams can change some of these variables. We hope student employees and managers alike will come out of this meeting with some ideas that they could try to improve the worker and manager experience within their teams.

Roman Vish, Jack Wooley

Roman Vish
Software and Infrastructure Specialist with Electrical and Computer Engineering. BS in Computer Engineering from BYU in 2023; MS in Electrical and Computer Engineering from Georgia Tech in 2024. Enjoys coding, watching sports, and playing volleyball and pickleball.

Jack Wooley
Lead Data Scientist at BYU Broadcasting. BS in Statistics from BYU in 2023; MS in Data Science from Texas A&M University in 2024. Enjoys coding, watching basketball, college football, mountain biking and snowboarding.

Simple > Clever

"Everyone knows that debugging is twice as hard as writing a program in the first place. So if you're as clever as you can be when you write it, how will you ever debug it?" - Brian Kernighan

How many times have you admired an intricate for-loop, a deep inheritance chain, or a tidy bit of reflection that saved you a few lines of code; only to return weeks later wondering, “what was I thinking?”

We’re also tempted by big architectural trends: cloud-native, serverless, microservices, event-driven etc. or by coding trends: inheritance, reflection, dependency injection, ORMs etc. They’re powerful, but they often can smuggle in extra cognitive overhead, latency, cost, and a larger security attack surface. Complexity hides costs at every phase: slower onboarding, fragile deployments, maintenance headaches, and difficult to debug defects.

In most cases, clever code and designs are not simple. Simplicity isn’t about dumbing things down; it’s about reducing cognitive load so that the next person (often you at 2 a.m.) can reason about, change, and repair the system safely. In this session we’ll contrast “clever” and “clear” through side-by-side examples: a small refactor that replaces indirection with intent-revealing code, and an architecture proposal that started as a mesh of services and became a lean, maintainable design.

You’ll leave with practical heuristics; to prefer composition over inheritance, make data flow obvious, and choose fewer moving parts. Come see why simple systems add value while clever ones add headaches; and why simplicity is hard to write but easy to live with.

Scott Hutchings

I’m an IT Architect at BYU OIT, following twelve years as a software developer. I hold a graduate degree in Master of Information Systems Management from BYU. Kotlin is my favorite programming language, Go is a close second. Outside of work you’ll find me playing board and video games, visiting Disneyland, or reading Brandon Sanderson novels.

Getting Started with Microsoft Power Platform

This session introduces IT professionals to the Microsoft Power Platform, Power Apps, Power Automate, and Power BI with a focus on how these tools can be securely deployed, governed, and scaled within Colleges and Departments. We’ll explore how IT teams can empower departments to build low-code solutions while maintaining oversight through environment management, data policies, and connectors. We’ll walk through real-world examples, explore how to get started with templates and connectors, and share tips for building your first solution.

Karl Parkinson, Mary Stevens

Karl Parkinson is the Product Manager for Microsoft Power Platform at Brigham Young University. With hands-on experience in Power Platform, Karl helps bridge the gap between business needs and technical innovation, enabling teams to solve complex business challenges through automation and data integration.

How web development revolutionized BYU's largest student research conference

This presentation highlights how innovative web development transformed Brigham Young University's Fulton Poster Conference—the largest student research conference on campus. Attendees will gain insights into how our team designed and implemented a robust digital platform that streamlines critical conference processes, including research submissions, judging, poster printing, lunch RSVPs, and event-day logistics. Key features such as automated student check-in, interactive visitor passports, gamified voting systems, and seamless management of raffle entries and monetary awards demonstrate how thoughtful digital solutions can significantly enhance efficiency and user engagement. This session will provide a detailed look at the technical decisions, challenges overcome, and the measurable impact the website has had on both administrative operations and attendee experience, offering valuable takeaways for institutions aiming to leverage web technology for large-scale academic events.

Duncan Morais, Jake Nef

Duncan Morais: College of Family, Home, and Social Sciences Web Manager

Jake Nef: President of BYU Developers Academic Association

Working Effectively with Stakeholders

Ideas and strategies for working with campus partners to effectively build relationships and develop business solutions.

Bill Cope

Software Engineer, Office of IT

Mendix App Maintenance

We'll discuss the maintenance steps you should be taking to keep your app secure and up-to-date, what maintenance support OIT provides, and how to leverage new Mendix tools throughout your maintenance schedule.

Abigail Egan

Campus Solutions Team Lead,
OIT Application Engineering

Why k8s, Why now?

Why Kubernetes is the preferred solution for any new deployment and what benefit IT teams see from orchestration.

Rhett Bulkley

Site Reliability Engineer, Office of IT

BYU Identity Modernization Roadmap

Come learn about our current Identity Modernization project: BYU One Identity Foundation Journey; and our long-term 5-10 year Identity Modernization initiative strategy and roadmap. There will be time available for Q&A at the end.

Matthew Hailstone

Matthew Hailstone (Identity Product Manager, Brigham Young University) leads identity solution development for the full life cycle of university accounts. Hailstone served as a working group co-chair to design identity agents that led into Hyperledger Aries (Linux Foundation). Hailstone represented BYU at 1EdTech (IMS Global) and contributed to the eTranscripts and EDU API efforts which became the Comprehensive Learner Record. He received a Strong Contributor award in 2018. Hailstone and Microsoft delivered the keynote on blockchain-based digital diplomas at the 2018 Coindesk conference. In 2019-2020 he was an Invited Expert for two Blockchain in Education Summits (US Dept. of Education). Hailstone participates in the Ed 3.0 effort supporting the IEEE Learning and Employment Record and IEEE Conceptual Model for Learning Technology Systems specifications. He holds a B.S. in Computer Science from BYU and an M.S. in Instructional and Performance Technology from Boise State University.

Integration Testing

Have you ever plugged in your phone overnight, only to wake up and realize the charging base wasn’t connected to the wall? That’s what it’s like when you rely only on unit tests—everything appears fine in isolation, but the app breaks when it all comes together. In this session, we’ll explore how integration testing closes that gap. You’ll learn about tools, real-world examples, and useful practices to strengthen your applications beyond unit testing

Logan Brewer

Software Engineer, Office of IT

Standardization

This session explores how our SRE team is reducing developer overhead by standardizing deployments and improving visibility into applications. We'll walk through what we currently offer, what we're actively working to standardize, and where we hope to go next. If you're interested in how SRE practices can streamline development workflows and create more consistent, reliable systems, this talk is for you.

Tyler Johnson

Tyler has been with the OIT for 10 years, bringing a wide range of experience across multiple teams. He began his career in systems engineering before transitioning into monitoring, where he spent several years building visibility into system performance and reliability. After a year working on integrations, he moved into security, spending the next four years focused on protecting infrastructure and improving security posture. Most recently, Tyler joined the Site Reliability Engineering (SRE) team, where he now works on keeping systems stable, scalable, and (ideally) quiet during off-hours.

Error 404: Logging Module Not Found... So We Built One

When we set out to centralize logs from our Mendix applications into OIT’s Falcon LogScale system (formerly Humio), we quickly discovered a gap — no existing modules supported the integration. Rather than compromise, we developed our own solution: FalconLogScale Logger, a custom Mendix module designed to stream application logs directly into Falcon LogScale.

This session will discuss the challenges of using Mendix logs and demonstrate our solution to the problem. We’ll also show how we leveraged Falcon LogScale’s dashboards and alerting capabilities to transform raw log data into useful diagnostics.

Key takeaways will include:

• The importance of centralized logging in Mendix environments
• The trailblazing journey of the FalconLogScale module's development
• How we manage logs and get real-time alerts in Falcon LogScale
• How this module can be used today in other Mendix projects

Whether you're a Mendix developer, system administrator, or security engineer, this session will demonstrate a better way to manage logs from your Mendix apps.

Michael Pettersson

Michael Pettersson is the IT Manager for Risk Management and Safety. He, along with a team of fantastic student employees, manages all the technology needs for the Office of General Counsel and the Integrity and Compliance Office, and Risk Management. Outside of work, Michael spends most of time with his wife and three daughters.

Valerie Harris is a senior Computer Engineering student with plans to graduate in December. At Risk Management, she is a proficient developer specializing in Mendix and UI development. In her free time, she enjoys 3D printing useful additions to her life and surroundings.

Jared Sims is a junior in the Computer Science department studying machine learning. He has been working at BYU Risk Management for the last 3 years doing IT and project development. Jared loves to be outdoors and spending time with friends and family.

The End Is Near! (for CAS)

The rumors are true! BYU is replacing CAS with Okta and the End Is Near - for CAS that is. Come learn about the timelines for the BYU Identity Modernization project and how they will affect developers and application owners across campus. We'll also show you how to get your applications ready for Okta.

Travis Marks, Sam McKnight

Travis Marks is an Identity Engineer with BYU OIT. Travis has been working on various identity systems for almost 20 years - including Active Directory and now more recently Okta. Over the last 4 years he's helped the other CES schools migrate to Okta. Throughout his career he's managed computer labs, printing, Windows servers, SQL servers, and even a few Linux servers. When not at work, he enjoys 3D printing, welding, camping, and hiking with his family.

Sam McKnight is a software engineer in the Office of IT. He began work at BYU in 2002 in Continuing Education, where he worked on custom applications to manage finances and manage payroll for hundreds of adjunct faculty teaching for Continuing Education. In 2018, he moved to OIT to work in business intelligence with Tableau, Business Objects, Informatica, the university data warehouse, and data integrations between systems. He is now part of the Identity Team helping migrate applications off of CAS and move to Okta. Outside of work, he flies planes, teaches EMT courses, bikes, fishes, and spends time with his 5 kids.

User-Focused Test-Driven Design (aka "Testing For People Who Hate Testing")

"I love having tests; at any time I can prove that my latest code changes work cleanly with all existing code."

"I hate writing tests; it's tedious, it's harder than writing the code being tested, and worst of all it doesn't feel like it accomplishes anything."

This presentation will address problems with common ways that "Test-Driven Development" is taught, demonstrating a different approach that makes tests less brittle and more fun to write.

Typical TDD demonstrations begin at the lowest level, writing "unit tests" for small single-use functions. This results both in a large number of tests, and in tests that are strongly tied to implementation details.

Testing should not be driven by implementation details, but instead should be driven by expected behavior. Lower-level tests are still necessary, but by starting with higher-level tests we end up writing simpler, clearer tests that are less prone to breaking.

We will demonstrate how to use this approach by working through a concrete example. Although this demonstration will use the Go programming language, the principles apply to any language or framework.

Credit: this presentation is a modified and updated version of a presentation given by Viraj Khatavkar at CakeFest 2017

Glen Sawyer

Glen Sawyer is an Executive Producer of a Ugandan action film, has toured nationally with a comedy quartet, and still remembers his freshman dorm neighbor's padlock combination.

None of that has any bearing on his role as a Software Developer for BYU's Office of IT. Well, except the comedy quartet thing; that gig was directly responsible for his employment at BYU. He'll bore you with that story if you ask nicely.

Monorepos

Connor Robb

Handlebars: Light-weight HTML Templating

Handlebars is an HTML Templating engine that simplifies the process of generating dynamic HTML in Node projects. Handlebars allows developers to write templates with embedded placeholders, making front-end development more efficient and maintainable. It is designed to keep presentation logic clean and separate from business logic. While many large front-end frameworks provide similar capability, Handlebars is light-weight and easy to use.

We'll discuss the benefits that Handlebars brings to the table and what contexts it might be most useful. While it may be integrated in many different ways, I’ll share the benefits that using Handlebars brought to my team while working on a recent project. Lastly, we'll explore the syntax and basics of Handlebars and showcase its core features throughout a live demo. Attendees will leave with a solid understanding of what Handlebars can provide, as well as an example of how it can be used.

Tyler Blackham

Hi, I’m Tyler Blackham. I’m a senior studying Computer Science at BYU, and I’ve been a student software developer for over two years with BYU OIT, in Application Engineering. I’ve been coding since high school and am passionate about solving real-world problems through software development. About nine months ago, I started working with Handlebars.js, and I’m excited to share some of what I’ve learned along the way.

DSA Manager

DSA Manager is our centralized tool for managing Data Sharing Agreements (DSAs) across business domains, aligned with our Data Mesh architecture. It supports versioned DSAs, consolidates agreements per application, and integrates with Alation as our data catalog. This session will cover how the process works today, what’s improved, and what pain points remain. We’ll highlight the importance of the system and how it supports domain-based ownership.

Markus Carter

OIT business professional with a BS in Accounting and an MBA with systems emphasis. Experienced in system consulting, data governance, entertainment, and litigation support. At BYU for the past 2.5 years, he has advanced data governance to deliver essential data while safeguarding student, staff, and institutional information.

BYU FOSS: Leveraging Open-Source Principles Can Optimize the BYU Developer Community

In this presentation we would like to discuss some Open-Source software principles and how they can be leveraged in the BYU developer community. We will discuss maintaining standards, documentation, and similar tech stacks, and how these principles have helped our team work together, and how we've been able to help other teams with their development projects. There is so much knowledge transferred across campus on a given day, yet many full-time and student developers are left to fend for themselves in figuring out how to do things, or having to build solutions to problems that may already exist. We aim to have an open discussion about these principles, brainstorm some solutions, and also show off some of the code that we've been working on that could benefit some of the other departments on campus.

Roman Vish, Lara Allen

Roman Vish: Software and Infrastructure Specialist with Electrical and Computer Engineering. BS in Computer Engineering from BYU in 2023; MS in Electrical and Computer Engineering from Georgia Tech in 2024. Enjoys coding, watching sports, and playing volleyball and pickleball. Big fan of FOSS.

Lara Allen is a first year Masters of Information Systems Management student from small town Wisconsin. She works for the Electrical and Computer Engineering Department doing Web Development. When she isn't coding, Lara loves reading, playing Ultimate Frisbee, and watching Dancing with the Stars!

Mobile

Brock May

Sustainable, Student-Friendly Web Development

Learn why FHSS embraced a modern, industry-standard web development stack to use in addition to Mendix to meet college needs. Topics include:

• The business case for the new stack.
• Why this stack was selected.
• How this stack attracts and retains student developers.
• When we use Mendix, and when we use the new stack.
• Why this stack may work for you as well.

Tom Pittman, Parker Shumard

Tom is Director of Computing Services for FHSS, BYU's largest college. His previous gigs include IBM, the University of Alaska, the Municipality of Anchorage, the Alaska Native Medical Center, and two startups.

Parker is a Computer Science Major graduating in April. He is from Montana and loves hiking, skiing, and lake water sports. While working as a web developer for FHSS Computing Services, he has learned how to create robust web applications, make critical development decisions, and teach efficient programming practices.