How to Kick Ass at Your Job – Slides from Ignite Orlando #2 June 24, 2009
Posted by Ryan in : HowTo, Local, Events, floridacreatives, Ignite, Markteting, Pecha Kucha, presentations ; add a commentBefore you get too far into your creative endeavor, stop and think about why you got into this in the first place. Creating a Mission statement can tell you why, but should not tell you how, when or how much, but a Vision statement can. Arnold, Cyrano and Kermit can help too.
Presented at IgniteOrlando just moments ago.
Drupal Community Helpdesk at CoLab Orlando, First Fridays June 4, 2009
Posted by Ryan in : Local, Tech, CoLab, Coworking, Drupal, floridacreatives ; 3 comments12:00 – 1:30 PM, June 5th, July 3rd, August 7th, September 4th at CoLab Orlando
It might look something like this
A few months ago, I attended my first DrupalCon, and what an explosion of open source community awesomeness it was. As Mike and I are running a fledging Drupal shop, I was subconsciously looking for a shop I could use as a signpost, a group whose values and practices were in line with where I would like to be in a few years. I met the fine guys and gal from Advantage Labs in Minneapolis/St Paul, and was introduced to some of the awesome stuff they do.
One really great thing they offer in addition to web hosting, consulting and training is what they call Lab Hours. Twice a week, anyone experiencing a hang-up in their site, or just folks who are interested in helping, come by their offices for some roundtable support time. A goal is set to accomplish a certain task at the end of 2 hours, everyone pairs off and work commences.
There is no “expert” in the room doing all of the work. It’s roundtable style, and that’s how it should be.
This is pretty much a direct physical manifestation of the kind of help you get in #drupal-support in IRC. I have helped out there a bunch, and then having heard about this concept, I decided Orlando could use some community helpdesk time as well.
Starting with the first Friday of the month, I’ll start hosting Lab Hours of my own here in Orlando. If you’ve attended DrupalCamp Florida or a Drupal Meetup, if you’ve attended one of our DrupalEasy training days or webinars, or if you’re just curious about learning how to use this open source content management system, you’re welcome to come by and share.
If nobody shows up, I’m going to open up IRC and help people in other parts of the world. I also intend to show everyone where they can go and get more help outside of helpdesk time.
CoLab is Orlando’s first and only coworking space, on the 6th floor of the Angebuilt building, 37 N. Orange Ave. It’s right at the corner of Wall St and Orange Ave, above Subway. It’s the perfect place to host an event of this kind.
TED Video: Serious Play April 28, 2009
Posted by Ryan in : Video, Career, floridacreatives, fun, Storytelling, TED ; add a commentIf we’re “Creatives”, one of the things that helps define us as such is that we have not lost our ability to engage in play. This video has more on the subject:
Stuart Brown: Why play is vital — no matter your age
Stuart Brown’s research shows play is not just joyful and energizing — it’s deeply involved with human development and intelligence. Through the National Institute for Play, he’s working to better understand its significance.
Dr. Stuart Brown came to research play through research on murderers — unlikely as that seems — after he found a stunning common thread in killers’ stories: lack of play in childhood. Since then, he’s interviewed thousands of people to catalog their relationships with play, noting a strong correlation between success and playful activity.
One thing you see and hear often is about the “creative types” who work at ad agencies is that they know how to have fun at work. Take MindComet, for example – the building is built with all these crooked lines and rounded corners, to encourage the fun and playful culture they have cultivated – they even have Tequila Fridays, Cakeplow parties, and dress-up days.
Not all creatives work in ad agencies, but when you put them all in one room like that, they can often come up with some great and innovative stuff. Take this video, for example:
Lip Dub – Flagpole Sitta by Harvey Danger from amandalynferri on Vimeo.
’nuff said.
Have you incorporated play in your work and home life? I want some of those “wearable meetings”.
Your Tech Doesn’t Matter, n00b – How to Kick Ass at Your Job April 25, 2009
Posted by Ryan in : HowTo, Podcast, Press, Tech, BarCamp, floridacreatives, Orlando, presentations, Storytelling ; add a commentMy BarCamp Presentation actually hit the home page of SlideShare the other day. I gave this at the very end of the day, so if you missed it, check it out in 35 McCluhan-inspired text-happy slides.
Coming of Age as a Community April 20, 2009
Posted by Ryan in : Local, BarCamp, floridacreatives ; add a comment4 years ago, I had just been away from “home” for a year, having just graduated with my Digital Media degree, ready to go out and cause some riots — but I had no employable skills, no professional network, and very little job experience. Moving away from my comfort zone was difficult, and I decided to move back within 50 miles of where I grew up.
I had been having a stellar year in the frozen midwest, and Detroit’s creative community was very welcoming and bustling. I loved Ann Arbor and was making good connections, but I didn’t see the benefits of that locality over… any other.
So I came back, and, after a fashion, kicked a few tires on the local community, deemed it non-existent, and went about trying to find the likeminded, self-starting folks we would need to build Orlando into something unbelievably awesome.
Getting started was slow, but I didn’t give up, and I soon realized there were dozens of independent, autonomous, “scenes”, but very little to join them outside of a few key Connectors and the local Weekly paper.
I decided to emulate one of the most successful and engaging events I had seen – but wait, I had nothing, knew nobody, and had no reputation. No success to measure against. How does one go about causing an explosion with sparks alone?
One stick of dynamite at a time. You’re going to drop a few on the way to the mine shaft (did I mention you have to dig the mineshaft too, and you can’t be in two places at once, and you have to teach yourself everything, and try to maintain your regular work, family and social lives the entire time?
We’ve now had our third (fourth) BarCamp in Orlando, and it’s clear that our tech/creative scene has matured. No hand-holding, no rule-setting, just a well-oiled machine rolling down the tracks we’ve laid over the last 3 years. It’s a great feeling. It doesn’t happen without lots of hard work and effort, but when we get rolling, it feels pretty darn good.
What’s the next step? If you ask me, it will be connecting our autonomous scene with all the others – locally, state-wide, and internationally. Some inroads have been made, but more formal connections can be built, and those can only be solidified with collaboration (in my mind).
We’ve all got wonderful communities (where we belong, and people listen to us). Let’s bring them in, and tell them how much we admire them, because they’re good at what they do. Then let’s create something together – a film, an event, a manifesto, or let’s share our knowledge. We’re comfortable doing this among our own kind. It’s time to leave the nest.
We have a happy hour coming up tonight. Let’s make some plans.
BarCamp people can Learn from Dead Chickens April 13, 2009
Posted by Ryan in : Local, Video, BarCamp, floridacreatives, Ignite, Orlando, Pecha Kucha, presentations ; 1 comment so farWhile I was at DrupalCon DC I went to a session about how to give a presentation. Emma Jane Hogbin had a slide where she was talking about different presentation styles, and she brought up “Selena talks dead chickens“. With some creative googling, I discovered that the presentation was from Ignite Portland, and that someone had videotaped it.
This is why you have to love events like Pecha Kucha Night and Ignite – people will present on any subject, as long as it fits the time limit. At the same time, they are almost always very personal and gripping.
We have a BarCamp coming up in Orlando this weekend, and I’m really looking forward to what everyone comes up with this year. While I will really enjoy yet another OAuth session, I’m wondering who will be the “dead chickens” of #barcamporlando.
Know Your Creatives: Josh Blount March 24, 2009
Posted by Ryan in : Local, floridacreatives ; 1 comment so far
Yes, it’s that time again! (for the first time?) Meet a Geek, Florida Creatives Spotlight, Local Heroes, Real Men of Genius, or just plain old Blog Tag! Today’s Culprit is Mount Dora’s own Joshua Blount, or @stickwithjosh.
I first met Josh on the interwebs – probably the BarCamp Orlando mailing list, or Coworking Orlando, or one of those. He’s generally involved in lots of local stuff, and we have only seen the beginning, I’m sure.
On Josh’s blog, you can find some useful writing about design, usability, Mac stuff, and a few posts related to Josh’s job at Canonical, Inc, the guys who bring you such awesome tools as the Ubuntu flavor of Linux. I also found this post about the Bazaar (bzr) version control system helpful.
Josh is just one of the Canonical Software guys in Central Florida, don’t ya know? We’ve also got Elliot Murphy and Phil Fibiger (congrats on the new job, Phil!) who represent the Ubuntu/Launchpad/etc/awesomeness, and for all I know, they’re just the beginning.
Josh is also active with (organizes?) the Orlando Python User Group, or @opug. Among the exploits of OPUG are the pending wiki-fication of the BarCamp Orlando website, completion date TBD.
Josh, consider yourself tagged. Go and spread the good word of a creative peer who inspires you, and hopefully one who is from Florida. This message will self-destruct in 36 hours. Go.
Watch my SXSW videos live! March 13, 2009
Posted by Ryan in : Video, floridacreatives, qik, sxswi ; add a commentResearch and Development 2.0 January 16, 2009
Posted by Ryan in : Tech, Books, Entrepreneurship, floridacreatives, Historic, open source, Programming, Reviews, UNIX, VC ; comments closedA few weeks ago I started reading Richard Florida’s game-changing (profound? or controversial?) book, The Rise of the Creative Class
Web 2.0
Something very similar has been happening in the past 4 years with the way we write and deploy web applications – Tim O’Reilly noticed this change happening, and coined the phrase “Web 2.0″ to try and give us a rallying point around the kinds of changes that were taking place. In the Wikipedia entry for Web 2.0, there are mostly references to the kinds of applications and content that exist on the web. Second, it talks about the ways applications interact with people, and finally the way that applications interact with each other; there is very little reference to the way in which applications are built and deployed.
Still, talking about communications protocols and the kinds of applications that are built, fancy business models and altruistic ethics still don’t explain how we got here. Out of the entire article, the only line that really talks about the manufacturing process, in this case computer programming, barely scratches the surface:
Web 2.0 technologies tend to foster innovation in the assembly of systems and sites composed by pulling together features from distributed, independent developers. (This could be seen as a kind of “open source” or possible “Agile” development process, consistent with an end to the traditional software adoption cycle, typified by the so-called “perpetual beta”.)
If you read Rise of the Creative Class, you see that agile processes and perpetual beta are not new tools in the hands of enlightened managers. He shares stories from the optics factory where his father worked, where most of the managers on the shop floor had been promoted from the labor positions. He argues that one of the major things that kept the factory running smoothly was the managers’ faith in the experience of the laborers – if they had an idea about how to speed up production, or if they improved a process or design, the managers understood that their laborers knew what they were doing, and that their voices should be heard. Once the factory started hiring the MBAs and engineers, the management stopped listening to what was happening on the floor and productivity (and innovation) dropped almost to zero.
Research & Development
At the same time, a new class of mega-corporation was emerging, and along with mega-corporations were mega research and development budgets. The Bell Labs and Xerox PARCs of the world ruled the roost, and tons of new ideas were hatched – some succeeded, most failed. At some point, the mega-corporation stopped spending so much on R&D, and the venture capitalists entered the scene. Instead of the large corporations innovating in-house, entrepreneurs and tinkerers created startup companies, and the innovation was externalized. Bigger corporations could now incubate businesses that rose to the top of the pickle barrel by acquiring technologies along with their inventors. The VCs get a return on their investment, and the big companies only need to spend money on projects with a healthy track-record.
Back to Bell Labs, though. There are (at least) two incredibly important inventions that need mentioning before we move on. In an effort to computerize the telephone network, some guys at Bell Labs developed an operating system called UNIX. A few years later, in order to make the code portable to other chipsets and machines, they developed the C language, and UNIX was no longer just developed in assembly code, but could now be compiled to run on different architectures.
Right there we have the birth of two technologies that have utterly defined everything that makes Web 2.0 possible. UNIX and C were used in universities, which were a very important part of the research and development ecosystem, and remain to this day a place where massive amounts of patents are filed and startup companies birthed. By the 1990s, UNIX and C were standardized, and you could run them just about anywhere and, there were now open source (freely licensable) versions of both.
The Building Blocks of the Web
Show me one piece of Web 2.0 that is not based in some way on C or UNIX (with the exception of Microsoft .NET, which is still written on top of C). Nearly every web server is running a UNIX or LINUX operating system, and all of the programming languages fueling the web sites and services we know and love are all implemented in C. Take Perl (developed at NASA), Python (developed at Holland’s CWI research institute), Ruby (developed by the head of an R&D department in Japan), and PHP (developed in Silicon Valley).
One thing all of the above tools allow is the ability for the programmer to work at a higher level. That was the original promise of C, to be able to work higher than machine code. The aforementioned interpreted languages also remove the burden of memory management and lots of the noodly semantics from the development process.
One thing you’ll hear over and over is that all of the technologies used to build Web 2.0 existed before the 2.0 era, and that’s all too true. If you’ve read Florida’s book, you’ll remember he points out that fancy machines are not what made factories successful, it was the innovation of the people running the machines, whether simple or advanced. It was the changes in workflow, allowing workers to focus on a much smaller part of the manufacturing process, which created specialists, who then innovated on the process further.
It’s not like people were never developing great ideas on the web before it went 2.0, on the contrary. One of the most successful features of Amazon.com is their user-generated product reviews, a feature which existed when the service launched.
Old Tools + New Process = Explosive Invention
OK, so we’ve got the same tools, and one thing that is different this time around is how freely available it all is, thanks to the open source movement. When we’re talking about software, the smallest innovation can be shared with millions of people through the channels of Free, Libre and Open Source Software (FLOSS). Because of things like the copyleft in the GPL, when you make a change to GPL software and want to distribute it, you have to also license your newly distributed code as GPL, and everyone can benefit. Not everyone in the world is cool with re-distributing their work, but it’s nearly impossible to avoid the touch of open source these days.
Now, instead of just using programming languages, the web community has realized that most of the code a programmer had to write for a website was being duplicated from one project to the next, and that everyone had to solve the same kinds of problems over and over. This has given rise to several web-specific programming frameworks. All of the above-mentioned languages have at least one framework available, for example: Catalyst, Django, Ruby on Rails, and Zend Framework.
The Calculus
In man’s quest to understand the world, a number of methods of communication have been developed which are ubiquitous: arguably the most universal would be numbers and mathematical symbols, like those used in calculus. The word calculus actually comes from a word used to refer to small stones used for counting and calculations. The human race is often in need of tools to communicate, yet math has achieved that communication with a shared vocabulary, theories, Laws, and symbols that communicate instantly and universally.
Mathematics is called “the language of science” – I can think of few situations where this is more true than computer science and relational databases. A large part of low-level languages and operating systems is simply allocating and recalling bits of data from memory, and of course performing simple operations or instructions on said data – an incredible feat that now can take place over one thousand trillion times per second in modern super-computers.
Think of programming frameworks and design patterns (on which frameworks are based) as the shared language – the calculus and theories – of modern computer science. Instead of lengthy explanations of abstract concepts, experienced programmers are able to speed up their communication with each other with the vocabulary provided by these frameworks. Additionally, growing popularity of practices such as Don’t Repeat Yourself (DRY) and favoring Convention over Configuration have helped frameworks gain widespread adoption, taking frameworks out of the realm of trends and fads, because programmers are able to focus on the parts of their jobs which are specific to the problem at hand, instead of having to “re-invent the wheel”.
Frameworks allow programmers to tackle 80% of their problems in 20% of the time, which reduces the time between invention and realization. Because these frameworks are open source and widely available, communities have begun to support technology-focused user groups, and hundreds of new Ruby on Rails programmers (e.g. “Web 2.0″ developers) are entering the ecosystem all the time. Some cities have a higher concentration of these developers than others, and these cities also tend to be those with more entrepreneurs and inventors, especially if you pay attention to the cities on Richard Florida’s creativity index.
R&D sans University
What am I getting at? Research and Development, particularly on the web, is no longer fueled by big corporations or universities, despite the fact that the tools that are enabling the current advances were all developed in the “R∧D 1.0″ institutions. In the past, you needed a big government contract or a CEO who was liberal with his research budget in order to get the capital to develop new products. These days, we’ve got tons of self-starters, folks who are going months without pay, working nights and weekends, getting funding from mom and dad or other Angel Investors, and roping their friends and relations into some crazy scheme… and it’s all happening on the Internet.
Then Yahoo, Google, AOL, or Microsoft will come along and snatch up your company and make you a millionaire… that’s the dream, at least.
Try to think of the last startup you heard of that was born in a research lab at a university… Google and Ask (Teoma) came from university, but those were almost 10 years ago. The part of this blog post that I can’t research is this one, but I hope people will leave some helpful info in comments, and I’m sure I’ll post about this subject in the future.
Our Opportunity
So here we are, the young, resourceful, well-educated youth of America. What is stopping us from developing new products, starting our own IPTV station, running for government office or just releasing some open source projects? Nothing. Try to find some inspiration, experience the world, travel, meet new and interesting people, try new things, eat food that scares you, speak in front of large groups, run a BarCamp, make some friends, get involved with your community, learn a new skill, and above all, invent something.
A huge thanks is in order to the fine editors and contributors who make Wikipedia such a great resource. You guys rock.
Florida Opportunity Fund
Posted by Ryan in : Local, floridacreatives, News, VC ; comments closedI’ve been a long-time follower of Dan Rua, and I’ve even had the pleasure of meeting the guy. His business, Inflexion, is venture capital – they invest in biotech and technology startup companies. It’s a great thing for the state of Florida to have funding like that available locally.
However, for smaller, “early stage” companies, venture funding is not really the way to go. There are phases to these things… and that’s not Dan’s business.
Now, there is someone playing that middle field, and it’s the Florida Opportunity Fund. It’s their mission to “…focus on identifying and investing in a diversified, high-quality portfolio of seed and early stage venture capital funds that target in whole or in part opportunities within Florida”.
So, it’s a collection of early-stage funds? Huh? But there’s money? What’s it for?
Ah, some clarification here:
The FOF is a fund of funds that directs investments into venture capital fund managers who in turn invest in seed and early stage concepts in Florida. The $29.5M program is sponsored by Enterprise Florida and is managed by Florida First Partners (”FFP”).
They’re trying to create an ecosystem of investors and funds, the right atmosphere for funding a startup, or growing an existing company. It looks like if you have an existing pool of money, they can help, by giving you more…?
That’s all well and good, and thanks to the state legislature, but what do the experts have to say?
Dan recently wrote on his blog:
I think it’s another smart step in the right direction. A pool of $30M split among a few early-stage venture funds isn’t going to change the state’s venture ecosystem overnight. However, I’ve seen firsthand how quality in-state lead investors bring national venture dollars to the state. For example, Inflexion, Florida’s Venture Fund, has experienced 11-18 dollars of co-investment for every Inflexion dollar invested into early-stage companies.
Now that the politicians have taken a key step, setting up the fund with its core goals, it falls to the Florida Opportunity Fund to deliver on those goals, in the face of a difficult macro-environment, plenty of naysayers and likely political pressure along the way. Florida presents unique challenges and opportunities for early-stage venture funds, requiring local access to multiple hotspots across the state combined with national relationships. Early-stage company building is a local business and flying in for periodic board meetings, even by the largest funds in the country who will claim some Florida connection, just doesn’t cut it for early-stage.
It’s an older blog post, but Rich Swier had something to say when the initial bill was passed.
In looking this up, I also learned about the state of Florida’s venture economy:
Some of those companies have already attracted top venture capital firms. This year, Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers and Index Ventures invested $34.5 million in Lehigh Technologies, a Naples company that makes rubber powders for greener manufacturing. Benchmark Capital invested $12 million in Pentaho, an Orlando open-source business intelligence software company that has also been funded by Index Ventures and New Enterprise Associates.
Pentaho? WTF? Who’s that? Enterprise Business Intelligence, you say? In Orlando? Open Source? Why don’t these guys come to BarCamp?
Back to the topic at hand, it looks like perhaps the state has managed to make something that will look really great, but in practice, maybe not the best…
