In November, I presented a keynote at 1DevDay, about entrepreneurship. The talk explored ways that people who never start a company might benefit from knowledge about entrepreneurship. AnnArbor.com recently published an article that I wrote summarizing some of these ideas.
I’ll soon follow up with a second article in this series.
Saturday, December 3, 2011 marks the Global Day of CodeRetreat. CodeRetreats were conceived as a way for programmers to hone their craft, practicing solving a well-known problem in many different ways over and over again.
If you would like to participate and you are in the Ann Arbor area, register and then head over to SRT Solutions at 206 S. Fifth Avenue, Suite 200, Ann Arbor, MI. The event will be held from 9 am – 5 pm.
Enjoy!
CodeMash 2012 has sold out. In 24 minutes. Last year, we sold 900 seats in 3.5 days. The year before, we sold 700 seats in 32 days. But this year …. 1200 seats in 24 minutes.
CodeMash is a volunteer, developer-organized conference held in Sandusky, Ohio, in January. Yes, I said January. We bring folks from all over to the snow belt in January to learn new programming languages, new software development techniques, and have a really good time. This year, we’ll have 108 unique technical sessions, as well as a day filled with tutorials. And because it’s not enough to fill the days with geekery, we have evening events, like a game room. And out of the ordinary talks at CodeMash After Dark. We even have things for geek children (KidzMash) and for spouses who come to manage the geek children (CodeMash Families). We have a water park party and a band and a jam session. If you don’t like the sessions (that the organizers chose from over 700 submissions), we have Open Spaces, where you can convene your own session on a topic of your choice, or join in on one that someone else created.
Did I mention it’s in Ohio? In January? And that we wear shorts and flip flops in the Kalahari Resort/Indoor Water Park where it’s balmy inside and we can watch the snow pile up outside?
Did I mention the amazing speakers? Internationally known speakers and authors like Andrew Glover and Scott Hanselman and Bruce Eckel. And Jon Skeet, coming over the pond from London. Carl Quinn (of the Java Posse and Netflix). Bill Pugh (father of FindBugs). Cool emerging topics like Clojure and ClojureScript. Node.js and Backbone.js. And so much more.
Continental breakfast? Pshaw. If you’re coming to Ohio in the middle of winter, we thought we should feed you. There are eggs. And fruit. And bacon. Yes, bacon. This year, we even have a bacon sponsor. Yes, really.
So if you wondered why eventbrite and twitter were abuzz this morning between 10:24* and 10:48, it was because 1200 software developers were registering for a conference in January. In Ohio. And we’ll be contemplating how the heck to handle registration in 2013.
*Why 10:24, you ask? Well, today IS October 24, of course. And if you want to know why we chose 10:24, you can read the President of CodeMash, Jim Holmes’ blog, where you will learn that “in 1901 Anna Edson Taylor was the first person to survive going over Niagara Falls in a barrel”. And we did want to commemorate her accomplishment. Didn’t I mention the geek part?
Today, October 7, is Ada Lovelace Day. Ada Lovelace is credited with being the first computer programmer. Her work in 1842 describing Charles Babbage’s analytical engine was not code in the same way that we see it today, but her insight was amazing.
During World War II, the ENIAC served as the first digital computer and was programmed by a group of 6 women at the University of Pennsylvania, replacing some 80 women who had been hand-calculating ballistics trajectories via some complex differential equations. Their programming task was quite complex, without the benefit of programming manuals, computer languages, or Google.
Many other women have excelled in software since then. So why has this become a man’s game? When I graduated with a degree in Computer Science in 1986, 36% of degrees in CS were earned by women. The 2009-2010 Taulbee survey showed 13.4% women, an increase over the previous 2 years, but still surprisingly low.
As a women in Computer Science, I’m often asked why there is little interest in Computer Science for women. I have no idea. I enjoy the profession I have chosen, and so I have no insight into why other women have assessed things differently. So, instead of guessing, I’ll use Ada Lovelace Day to say what I love about the software industry.
I have an 8 year old daughter. I don’t know what profession she will choose. I just hope she’s as happy with her choice as I continue to be.
SRT Solutions will be presenting the Scala Koans in a full-day workshop on Wednesday, October 5, from 9 am – 4:30 pm. The Scala Koans provide an interactive and fun way to learn the language.
Koans, as referenced in wikipedia, “may consist of a perplexing element or a concise but critical word or phrase (話頭 huàtóu) extracted from the story”. This is the case with the Scala koans as well. Students of the koans use a simple test-driven process to insert missing information from an exercise to make a test pass, before moving onto the next exercise. The cumulative knowledge from working on each koan builds to provide an in-depth understanding of a particular language feature that can later be applied in the context of solving a software problem.
The Scala Koans were conceived at CodeMash 2010 and have been growing ever since. The Scala Koans have previously been presented as half-day workshops at CodeMash, the Java Posse Roundup, and Strange Loop. Koans are available in many other languages, such as Ruby, Javascript, and Clojure.
Cost for the full day Scala Koans workshop is $100 (early bird, until 9/30) or $125 (10/1-10/4). Lunch and snacks will be provided.
The workshop will be held at SPARK Central, 330 E. Liberty, Lower Level, Ann Arbor, MI 48104. For more information or to register, go to http://srtscalakoans.eventbrite.com/. Please call Lisa Zuber at SRT Solutions (734-929-3211) if you have any problems or questions with respect to registration.
Strange Loop is a conference held in St. Louis, MO, started by Alex Miller. Much like CodeMash, Strange Loop is a developer-organized conference, and is offered at a price (around $250 for 2 days) that attracts those who self-pay and those who work for small companies. I’ve found that the self-motivated individuals are engaged attendees! I decided last winter that I wanted to branch out to attend other regional conferences beyond CodeMash and Strange Loop was top on my list. I was thrilled when Alex asked me to present the Scala Koans at Strange Loop as a 3-hour workshop on Sunday.
The koans approach to learning computer languages offers small exercises, in a test-driven manner, so that people can learn a language by through small steps and self-discovery. Offering a koans workshop is an effective way to encourage people to work on the exercises, since they can ask questions and stay engaged. Particularly while the koans are being developed, any gaps in our “lessons” can be addressed by the instructors, on site. Strange Loop targets 30-40 attendees for workshops, so I asked Joel Neely and Daniel Hinojosa, both who have experience with the koans, to co-present at Strange Loop. This offered a 10:1 student to instructor ratio, which ensured that people were able to make good progress in the 3 hours. (Having 3 presenters also allowed one of us to slip out and order some pizzas for our hungry students, since our session ran 11:30-2:30 and hungry brains don’t focus well! And no, we didn’t plan to order pizza ahead of time!). Our session was well-attended and we got some great feedback. Hallway rumblings and tweets seem to indicate it was well-received. For those who are interested in learning more about the koans, I’m in the process of bringing up a website to provide resources, code, and other hints at ScalaKoans.org. It’s not live yet, so I’ll let you know when it’s up (expecting in the next week or so, depending on how much time I can find to get the content there). In the meantime, you can access the student exercises at our bitbucket site.
Back to Strange Loop. The workshop day was an optional day. The first full day of the conference was on Monday. I attended some interesting sessions, including:
I also attended a purely fun session, “Learn to play Go” by Rich Hickey, creator of Clojure. Finally, I may be able to figure out what to do with the Go board that’s been sitting in my basement for a very long time! I was able to play a game with another newbie and we were very evenly matched!
The Scala talks were interesting. I tend to focus on the simplicity of Scala, as a better language than Java for the JVM. These talks were focused on getting the most out of the functional aspects of Scala. As the industry sees momentum toward using functional for what it does best, this will be very relevant. Strange Loop, in general, has a fairly functional bent to it, and that’s quite fun!
I’ll fill in about day 2 of Strange Loop later. But there are more talks to attend!
The Ann Arbor Computer Society holds its September meeting on Wednesday, September 7. Ann Marie Manzitti will be presenting, “2D Gaming on Android – An introduction to libgdx”. The meeting will be held at SRT Solutions, 206 S. Fifth Avenue, Suite 200 in downtown Ann Arbor (at the corner of Fifth Ave and Washington). It starts at 6 pm, and is free and open to the public.
If iPad development is more your thing, go to the Thursday September 8 meeting of the Ann Arbor CocoaHeads, where Chris Adamson will speak on CoreMIDI. CoreMIDI implements the MIDI signaling protocol for virtual and physical musical instruments, and integrates with Core Audio. See what happens when we connect a Rock Band 3 keyboard, a MIDI cable, and an iPad with the Camera Connection Kit. The meeting will be held at SRT Solutions (see address above). Free pizza (compliments of Arbor Moon Software) at 6:30, with the main meeting starting at 7.
One of the things I like the most about my job is that I work with the most amazing people. Mike Woelmer is one of those folks. As a Senior Developer at SRT, Mike has done a lot of interesting work. His versatility is evident in his work. In the time that he’s worked for us he’s worked on calculations in back-end software, representations of data in WPF, an engaging touch screen interface for our survey engine, a mobile application, and used a Python-based web framework for a local customer.
Early this year, Mike came to Bill and I and asked if we thought it would be a problem for him to take a month off to ride across America in his velomobile. You may have seen this interesting bike parked outside our office. It is a bike — entirely human powered. It’s how Mike gets to work most days, riding about 20 miles. But this was a much different trip. This was a trip from Portland, OR to Washington, DC over a period of 4 weeks. That’s 3000 miles, over first the Rockies, then the Appalachians. And a whole lot of country in between. Mike asked if this would be a problem because he would be taking his vacation in one big chunk of 4 weeks. We told him to go ahead. I don’t think either of us really thought hard about what he was doing. No, it wasn’t a problem for the business, but wow … 3000 miles. On a bike. Through the mountains.
A week ago, Mike and the other riders spent the night in Fort Wayne, IN on their way across the country. I threw my kids in the car and headed down there to cheer him on and to recognize his accomplishment in person. When the children complained that our 140 mile car ride was long, I reminded them that Mike had ridden his bike that far, that day (he rode 128 miles last Thursday). When we got to Fort Wayne, we got to see, in person, what Mike had been doing for the previous 3 weeks. Typically on his bike by 6:30 am until about 4:30-5:30 pm, he rolled into camp and set up his backpacking tent (damp from being taken down at 5:30 am). Mike was limited to one bag on the trip, plus what he could carry on the bike, so he has minimal clothes and has to do laundry every few days. He also had to get out to a restaurant and/or grocery store each night, which meant more riding after his ride for the day had technically ended. When we saw him, he was pretty tired, but determined. Oh, and raccoons had gotten into the tour’s snack bag of Clif bars the night before.
And early in the evening on Wednesday, August 24, Mike and the other riders rolled into Washington, DC, the final destination in their journey across America. We’re all amazed at Mike’s accomplishment. There’s one question that remains: will Mike ride into work on Monday … or drive?
SRT Solutions, is thrilled to be named to the Inc. 5000 list of America’s fastest growing companies in 2011. To top it off, we were the top ranked software company in Michigan (at position 1901 of the 5000). Bill Wagner and I started this company in 1999, and I feel fortunate to have such a great business partner and a thriving company.
Bill and I didn’t grow this company without help. The patience of our staff, as we transitioned from independent consultants to employers, has been critical, and part of the growth experience. But through steady growth, we’ve been careful to preserve the company culture, believing that if we have a company that we want to work for, then employees and customers will agree. That’s served us well. Much of our business is word of mouth and repeat business, and so our growth is due in large part to our customer as well. We’re glad that they enjoy working with us. Exposure to a variety of industries as we work closely with customers, is one of the joys of custom software development, and also brings fresh perspective to applications across disciplines.
Our employees continue to amaze me. They truly participate in the growth of the company, not only by developing great software but also through fresh ideas and valuable insight into managing the company. Their contribution of applications for the CodeMash conference (PaintWars, MobiMash) and the Hands on Museum Tech Twilight (Android Music Player) provide a fun way to showcase software. Their open source projects (Elevate, ActionLinq, and Jasmine-Flex) have provided value to the greater software community, as well as to our customers. Their articles, appearing in national publications such as MSDN Magazine and Visual Studio Magazine, benefit software developers around the world. Their participation in charity development weekends, such as GiveCamp (Ann Arbor, Lansing) have provided working applications to deserving charities. They have grown their own knowledge, participated, and presented at many local, regional, and national software developer groups. I am grateful for their generosity and benefit directly from their knowledge. The Inc. 5000 ranking is a reflection of their hard work.
The Inc. 5000 list of 2011 represents companies who have grown through the recession. As a Michigan company, we are even more sensitive to that, given the hardships that our state has experienced. We’ve written and spoken about the vibrant software ecosystem in Michigan, and the Inc. 5000 list supports this. The other Michigan software companies on the list include WorkForce Software (2426), Plex Systems (2573), Atomic Object (3043), TechSmith (3486), Campfire Interactive (3660), DaySmart Software (4945), DSS Corporation (4949(, and Paramount Technologies (4964). Of course, the list isn’t only made up of software companies; 125 Michigan companies are represented across a variety of industries. Huge congrats to all! Michigan is a great place to be, and we’re glad that the Inc. 5000 list represents so many of our friends and neighbors!
Wow, that’s a lot of S’s.
Join Daniel Hinojosa, Joel Neely, and I for Scala Koans at the Strange Loop conference in St. Louis on September 18. The Scala Koans, inspired by the Ruby Koans, were previously presented at CodeMash 2011 and the Java Posse Roundup 2011. We solicited feedback at both of these events, and we’re adding to them, incorporating some of your suggestions as well.
I’m excited to be attending Strange Loop. Alex Miller has done a great job, starting it in 2009 and growing it every year since. My friend and co-presenter for the Scala Koans, Joel Neely, attended last year and had high praise for the conference. I’ve already signed for another workshop in the afternoon of September 18, and I’m looking forward to seeing the full schedule!