Refresh Miami September September 25, 2008
Posted by ryantxr in Developer events.Tags: developer, miami, newschallenge, refreshmiami
add a comment
I went to the September Refresh Miami meeting last night hosted by Yahoo in Coral Gables. About 75 people showed up. This event isn’t all about developers. It attracts web designers, bloggers and web business men. People started showing up around 6:30. There was pizza and beer. Talk about sticking with what works.
Alexandra Leite from Yahoo did a spirited presentation on agile process. She talked about her own experiences with Agile at Yahoo and gave her insights. She talked about recognizing and admitting what did not work and what went wrong as being an important aspect of Agile.
There was a presentaion from Jeffrey Sass from Myxer. I really enjoyed this presentation. More so, I enjoyed the product that Myxer produces. This is a site for delivering content to mobile phones. We’re talking about ringtones, images, music and games. And Myxer makes this very easy. If you have a tune or a game and want to sell it to mobile phone users, you would upload your content to Myxer. Set your price, free if you want, click a few buttons and you’re done. Small local bands and producers of content will benefit from this service.
The last presentation was from the James L. Knight Foundation, I didn’t get the name of the presenter, but I enjoyed her presentation. This is a non-profit foundation. Newschallenge is a 5 year program in place funded with 25 million dollars for projects related to pushing information out to users. They even have a support system for those who don’t know much about applying for and managing grants. If you have an innovative idea for information dissemination.
If you are in the Miami area, Refresh Miami is an excellent way to meet others in and around the tech industries and you will learn something as well.
Open Hackday in Brazil September 18, 2008
Posted by ryantxr in Developer events, Hackday.Tags: brazil, Hackday, ryanteixeira, yahoo
add a comment
If you know anything about hackday, you know that it can be great fun and very creative. If you do not know what hack is, here is an explanation. Hacking is about making something new and creative in very little time. It is like creating a prototype. Some people think of hackers as people who do illegal or bad things with computers. That isn’t the case. Hackers try to come up with new ideas, products or tools. They do this based on their own ideas, and are not driven by marketing research or product managers. They do what is interesting to them.
At a hack day, developers work individually or in groups of their own choosing and they create something interesting. These mini projects are called hacks. Developers can use any technology they want. The idea is to come up with something novel and interesting. There are some very notable applications and features that have come out of hacking. The biggest one I can think of is YouTube. Yes, YouTube was originally a hack. They created it to share some videos among themselves and it went from there.
Even though there is judging and prizes for the winners, the primary reason for hacking is to hack. Hackers enjoy hanging out together, exchanging ideas, helping each other and hacking. For Yahoo, the benefit is company promotion into the developer space. It is a fun event and, if done right, should cause some buzz in the development community. Developers should remember the event in glowing terms.
A typical conversation should be:
Chan: Remember when we went to Yahoo hackday?
Arvina: Yes. That was insane. I really enjoyed it.
Chan: They are having another one next month.
Arvina: I’m going for sure. I’ll never miss one of those.
You see, programmers sit around at home and hack anyway. They play with new technologies and write applications that are interesting to them. Hackday is just like this except they are in one place and do it together in a mildly competitive environment.
If you are a creative programmer, you should visit a hackday. At worst you will learn something.
Yahoo is hosting a hackday in Brazil in October. It will be in Sao Paulo Oct 18-19 2008. If you can attend you should. If you know someone who might be able to attend, send them the info.
www.hackday.org.
Yahoo Hackday 08 September 12, 2008
Posted by ryantxr in Developer events, Hackday.Tags: application platform, openhackday08, ryanteixeira, web programming, yahoo
add a comment
I am here in Sunnyvale at the open hackday.The place is overrun with people. There is a special wifi network for the event. The signal is strong but overloaded.
I attended Kent Brewster’s presentation earlier on making your own API. This was primarily pipes based. Kent shared an interesting anecdote with us. Apparently when Pipes first came out, he created a pipe that ended up being heavily used and he brought it down. They went back and put Pipes on better hardware to solidify the platform. So if you remember the problem Pipes had when it first came out, they have solved that problem.
I am currently in the Yahoo Application Platform talk. They are consciously staying away from the name “YAP”. Xavier is doing the presentation along with the occasional introduction of the occasional french joke. The demo did not work. While he continued talking, someone corrected the problem. Now it is working.
