SRT’s software stimulus lab at Automation Alley on June 15

 

SRT Solutions decided that we wanted to join in and provide a little stimulus ourselves, for software developers in our area.  So, we're hosting an event at Automation Alley, geared toward developers. Next Monday, on June 15, our "Software Stimulus Lab" will provide an opportunity for developers to get together and learn from one another.  Software experts from SRT will be on hand to help out with languages and technologies, as well as giving some real-world experience in subversion and bazaar, unit testing and continuous integration.  This low-cost event ($75) is all day long and should be both informative and fun.  So far, registrants have indicated interest in Java, C#, Scala, F#, Python, and GWT.  We'll bring some lab exercises for people to  work on, and of course, you're free to bring your own projects as well.

Oh, and the stimulus part: it's free for unemployed developers. 

Registration is at: http://srtstimulus.eventbrite.com/

I hope that you will join us.

Events in Ann Arbor this week

Well, it's the first week of the month, so there are no shortage of user group meetings. 

Tonight, there's a meeting on Non-dilutive (that means free) finance for early stage startups.  The meeting starts at 7 pm at Blau Auditorium, UM Ross Business School.

Tomorrow night, Wednesday May 6, the Ann Arbor Computer Society will meet at SRT Solutions.  Who's speaking?  You are!  Lightning talks at AACS!  The meeting starts at 6 pm. 

On Thursday, May 7, the Michigan Python User Group will also meet at SRT.   Their topic is "non-relational databases".  This topic is not Python-specific, although many of the demos willlikely be in Python.  The databases: CouchDB, Mongo DB, Tokyo Cabinet, Redis, and Persevere.  More are welcome. The group meets at 7 pm.

And on Friday, SRT Solutions will hold lightning talks at 206 S. Fifth Avenue, Suite 200.  They start at 3:30 pm.

JavaFX, Microsoft Surface, and TDD talks this week

The Ann Arbor area is ripe with events this week (apologies to our spouses).

Join up with fellow coders tonight at NSCoderNight, at Sweetwaters in Kerrytown.

Tomorrow night (Wednesday April 15), you will have to choose between attending a JavaFX talk at the Detroit JUG and a Microsoft Surface talk at GANG (Great Lakes Area .NET User Group).  Jim Weaver has solidly embraced JavaFX, and is working on his second book.  I'm thrilled that he's returning to the area, since I missed his talk at the Ann Arbor JUG late last year.  The meeting will be held at ePrize, 1 ePrize Drive, Pleasant Ridge, MI.  I had a hard time finding the location the first time I went there, so definitely check out the directions. The meeting starts at 6:30.

The Microsoft Surface is also pretty exciting.  VectorForm is a Michigan company that has been doing Surface development perhaps as long as the device has been available.  My first view of the Surface was in the James Bond movie (Quantum of Solace), and then I was also lucky enough to see one at CodeMash.  So if you haven't seen the Surface, definitely head out to the Microsoft office in Southfield (1000 Town Center Drive, Suite 1930, Southfield, MI 48075) tomorrow night.  Joe Engalan and Jennifer Marsman will co-present.  The meeting starts at 6:30.

And after the meeting (around 9 pm), join up with CoffeeHouse Coders in person at Mujo's in the Duderstadt Center on North Campus or on their IRC channel.

On Thursday 4/16 for lunch, choose between the monthly A2 Nerd Lunch or the weekly A2B3.  They're about a block apart, so perhaps you can hit both.

On Thursday evening, you have several choices in Ann Arbor: Ann Arbor Startup Drinks at Grizzly Peak, and the Washtenaw Linux Users Group at WCC.

Also on Thursday, but a little further from home, Dennis Burton is speaking at the Greater Lansing .NET User Group with his talk on "Test Driven Development is Driving me Insane".  Dennis will discuss patterns and techniques for writing tests that are more robust and provide better information, including techniques that you can apply to your design when writing new code to make testing easier, as well as tools for working with existing applications that do not have good test coverage.  If you miss his talk on Thursday, catch this talk again the following week 4/21 in Toledo, at Northwest Ohio .NET User Group.

On Friday, you can learn how (and why) to join a non-profit board in the Ann Arbor area.  A2Geeks is helping to sponsor training at the NEW Center, for just $35.

This is your last chance (mine too!) for the 2008/2009 academic year to visit the MPowered Entrepreneurship Hour at UM.  The speaker this week is Joshua Pokempner of Entrepreneur Toy Company.  The meeting is held from 3:30-4:30.

Pair programming with Corey Haines last week at SRT

Corey Haines is a software developer from Cleveland, OH, who has embarked upon a pair programming journey. He's spending a year or so, traveling around the country (soon to be extended to Europe and perhaps Asia), programming on whatever projects individuals or small companies are interested in working on.  Last week, SRT was privileged to host Corey, and he paired with me one of the days that he was in town.  He also stayed with my family overnight, which is what he does in order to keep his expenses down during his year of travel.

When I was at the Java Posse Roundup, I spent an afternoon with a group of people working with Bill Venners on Scalatest. Several of us agreed to help afterward, but I hadn't had time to jump in.  Last Friday, with Corey, I found that time.  He and I spent the day working on an HTML Reporter for Scalatest.  We made a lot of progress, and even worked a bit with Bill, remotely.  No, Corey's not a Scala programmer, but his ability to pick up the language quickly speaks strongly of his aptitude for languages and perhaps of Scala as well.  Corey had previously worked with David Chelimsky on RSpec.  Since Bill has added behavior driven developmentsupport in Scalatest, we focused on that.

We accomplished WAY more than I had thought that we would, especially given that I couldn't dedicate the entire time to only pairing.  We certainly got more done together than I would have accomplished by myself.  (Hopefully soon,) I'll go back and finish up the other support, and get the code to Bill for his approval and checkin.  And, I think that Corey had a good time too.  He said that he's going to start working on a Scala port of RubySlim!

But I wanted to write a little about Corey's style of pairing and why I enjoyed it so much.  He likes each person to have a keyboard and mouse and monitor.  Instead of pairing side-by-side, he likes to pair across a desk.  That offers the ability for the pair to talk and to see one another.  I like this; it feels collaborative.  And, for someone who doesn't pair every day, it's less disruptive to the office environment.  There was no need to rearrange desks or squeeze behind one.  Rather, we just needed to pull up a desk.

The hardest thing for me when pairing with Corey was that he uses a Mac and I use a PC.  My keyboard doesn't have all of the fancy keys that his does (and I have a habit of using HOME and END, which mapped badly).  But we laughed it off and I really enjoyed my time on the Mac even if it was from my PC keyboard.  I keep threatening to buy a Mac, and by the end of the day, I was pretty convinced that I wanted to hit the Apple store.  Hmm, maybe next week.

My first experience in a bullpen programming environment was in 1988, when I worked for a very progressive company.  I enjoy working in collaborative environments and pairing just notches it up a bit.  Corey made some interesting observations about pairing.  We all spend time collaborating, working together, helping one another. Why not sit down and work together for a little while. Maybe try pairing for a few hours each day.  Try it for a few weeks, a month.  See what you think.  You might find it highly productive.

 

Tech events in Ann Arbor week of March 30

Well, I'm a bit late in getting this out, but the Internet User Experience Conference is ongoing at Washtenaw Community College.  It runs through Thursday, April 2.

On Wednesday April 1, Corey Haines will be speaking at the Ann Arbor Computer Society.  He'll talk about Software Craftsmanship, but I think that you will probably be able to entice him to talk a bit about how he's spent his past few months, on his Pair Programming Tour, as well.  I saw Corey last week at the Philadelphia Emerging Technologies for the Enterprise Confernece.  He's an amazing speaker, and it will be a real treat to have him in town.  He's going to be hanging out at SRT on Thursday and Friday, pairing with our staff on various projects, so I'm really looking forward to his trip.

Also on Wednesday, at the UM Ross School of Business, you can hear Jason Mendelson, Managing Director of Foundry Group, a Boulder-based venture capital firm that invests in early-stage information technology companies, speak on "Building an Entrepreneurial Community: Lessons from Boulder".  The meeting starts at 7 pm. 

Head directly from your choice of Wednesday evening events to theWeekly CoffeeHouseCoders, 9 PM at Mujo, in the Duderstadt Center (Media Union): http://coffeehousecoders.org

Thursday, April 2 is the monthly Michigan Python User Group meeting, at SRT Solutions, starting at 7 pm.  There will be some discussion of what happened at PyCon last week in Chicago.  And if that's not enough Python for you, the Ann Arbor .NET Developer group meeting next week, Wednesday April 8, features Darrell Hawley on IronPython.  That meeting starts at 6 pm.

This is an "off" week for SRT lightning talks, but there are plenty of other things going on Friday afternoon.  "Ask the VC: Live" with Jason Mendelson, Founder/MGP of Foundry Group. Jason says, "I'm going to plant my butt in a conference room on campus for a couple of hours and talk to anyone that wants to come by and chat, pitch me, talk about venture capital, etc.". Meet him between 3 – 5 PM at Lorch Hall (Economics Building) Room 171, 611 Tappan.

I'm hoping to head over to the Weekly M-Powered Entrepreneurship Hour, 3 PM at Stamps Auditorium: http://mpowered.umich.edu/index.php?n=Main.Courses.  I've been wanting to attend for a while.  I'm a huge fan of the Stanford Entprepreneurial Thought Leaders podcast and I'm thrilled that UM is doing something as well.  I'm really curious to experience it!  If only it were available in podcast form … it's WAY easier for me to listen at my leisure (while working out or while driving) than to break away from the office, but it would be interesting to attend in person as well.

Next week's quite busy as well.  In addition to the Wednesday April 8 Python talk at AADND, on Thursday April 9, Google Ann Arbor is hosting CloudCamp from 3-8 pm.

From the website: CloudCamp is an unconference where early adapters of Cloud Computing technologies exchange ideas. With the rapid change occurring in the industry, we need a place we can meet to share our experiences, challenges and solutions. At CloudCamp, you are encouraged you to share your thoughts in several open discussions, as we strive for the advancement of Cloud Computing. End users, IT professionals and vendors are all encouraged to participate.

CloudCamp is being organized by a2geeks.

 

Andy Hunt’s Refactor Your Wetware at Philly Emerging Tech

Andy Hunt gave a keynote at the Philadelphia Emerging Tech Conference, around the title of his latest book, "Pragmatic Thinking and Learning: Refactor Your Wetware".  The talk, and his book, are about our brains, and how we can make changes in the way that we use them.

He offered that some people have asked if the book is substantiated by science.  He warned that some of the book is backed up by science, and other parts by old wives tales, but warned that much of what was thought to be substantiated in science in the past has now been refuted and things that were thought to be old wives tales have been backed up by new studies!  One of the "facts" refuted is that we are born with all of the brain cells that we ever have. Ruin them and they're gone.  But now scientists know that new experiences are essential to the development of new cells, so he offers to get out and experience new things, and new ways of looking at problems. 

Andy talked about the right brain/left brain and how that's sort of fuzzy.  Instead, it seems more accurate to describe the brain as having a "dual core CPU", where one CPU is pretty good at analytical tasks, and the other is more like an asynchronous digital signal processor, with no real control over when ideas emerge.  And that there's a shared memory bus that can't really effectively be doing both tasks at the same time.  For this reason, he talked about how we can often become unblocked by getting up and going for a walk (freeing up the other part of the brain), or doing ANYTHING other than focusing on a very analytical task.

Other useful suggestions (there were many, and I'm going from sketchy notes):

  • Morning writing – try free journaling, writing 3 pages each morning, uncensored.  This will encourage the free flow of information, and is often used by both MBA's and in writers' workshops.
  • Labyrinth walking – I encountered my first labyrinth last spring on the beach in FL.  Check one out if you have the opportunity.
  • Keep track of good ideas.  Write them down (our memories suck).  If we reward our brain by writing them down, more ideas tend to flow. Keep a notebook handy and write down those ideas. 
  • If we continually ignore "good ideas", our brain seems to sort of give up on us, and the ideas stop coming.
  • Multi-tasking.  Stop it.  [Side note: if you haven't read "The Myth of Multitasking", do it]
  • Mind mapping. Andy said that he was all psyched about mind mapping and was talking to his kids about it and they told him that they did this in the second grade.
  • Meditation. Just try it.

Andy also talked about effective learning from books.  He summarized the Reading Summary Technique (SQ3R):

  • Survey
  • Question
  • Read
  • Recall
  • Review

Not so coincidentally, my daughter's kindergarten teacher sent home instructions about how to do this.

And, if you do nothing else, Andy offered one bit of advice toward a 20-30% productivity gain.  Get a second monitor. 

So, I just bought the eBook.  I'm sure that there are tidbits that I missed or have forgotten, and perhaps there are others that didn't make it into his talk.  Overall, this sounds like an enjoyable, interesting book to read.

In Philadelphia, at Emerging Technologies for the Enterprise

I'm in Philadelphia, at the Philly ETE conference, for the second year in a row.  I took a break from working on my slides (my talk is tomorrow afternoon) to carefully consider which talks I want to attend while I'm here.  So, for anyone interested, here's the lineup:

On Friday, I'm looking forward to:

And then, I'll be taking off, so that I can get back to Michigan in time to tuck the kids into bed, but if I were staying through the end of the day, I would have hard choices between James Ward's Architecting Flex RIAs, Clojure and the Robot Apocalypse: Needfuls for Newbies, Introduction to Groovy, and the Agile Round Table: Scrum in the Real World.  Looking forward to both days!  I'm thrilled with the content here, and the organizers do a fantastic job.

AAJUG meeting on Java Expert System Shell (JESS) tonight, March 24

The Ann Arbor Java User Group meeting is tonight, Tuesday, March 24, from 6:39-9:30 pm.  Jason Morris will be speaking on an "Introduction to the Java Expert System Shell (JESS).  The meeting is held at

Washtenaw Community College, WCC BE250

Presentation Title:
Introduction to the Java Expert System Shell (JESS)
 

Summary:
Sandia National Laboratory's Jess is a rule engine implemented in Java and based on the Rete pattern-matching algorithm.  The entire Jess distribution consists of the Jess API, a LISP-like scripting language (also called Jess), and an integrated development environment called the JessDE which is an Eclipse plugin.  Any Java developers who write complex business logic will benefit from this talk.  Business rules will be mentioned, but not glorified as the canonical example of Jess's abilities. 

If you want to learn how to add powerful reasoning capability to your Java applications, then this talk is for you.

Keywords:  artificial intelligence, CLIPS, expert systems, inferencing, knowledge engineering, knowledge-base, LISP, rules, rule engine, rulebases

Speaker Bio:
Jason Morris is the owner of Morris Technical Solutions LLC, specializing in Java web-application development and rule-engine applications.  He has more than 15 years in the software engineering field, spanning many application domains and comprising many different functional roles.  Currently, Jason is involved with the USAF to semantically enable human resources information systems via custom ontologies.  He is also a technical marketing and services consultant for Sandia National Laboratories, where he provides custom training and development services for licensees of Jess, the Java Expert Systems Shell (www.jessrules.com).  His latest joint-development effort with the University of Sydney (Australia) is a rule-based expert system called SINFERS for computation of soil properties from field data.

 

From 2006-2007, Jason was a GAAN Fellow at Worcester Polytechnic Institute in Massachusetts where he was pursuing a PhD in Computer Science and working on Intelligent Tutoring Systems.  He holds a B.S. in Applied Engineering Sciences from Michigan State University, a B.S. in Mechanical Engineering from Michigan Technological University, and a M.S. in Engineering and Technology Management from Portland State University.

Speaking at Philly Emerging Tech conference this week

Last year, I was invited to speak at the Philadelphia Emerging Technologies for the Enterprise conference.  I learned about the confernece through one of the organizers (and fellow devchix member), Andrea Wright.  Much like CodeMash, Philly ETE attracts a mostly regional audience.  A company in Philadelphia, Chariot Solutions, organizes the event, and they do an amazing job.  I'm thrilled to be speaking there again this year.  I'll present my talk "Practical Scala" on Thursday March 26 at 4 pm.  I'm looking forward to several talks, including "Exhibitionism in Software Development", "Under the Covers of the AppEngine Datastore","Legally Agile", "The Future is Clearly Cloudy", "Diets Don't Work: Getting Sustainable Results with Scrum".  I expect to be using the Open Spaces mentality (moving between talks) because there are several running simultaneously that I'm interested in.  AND … all of the keynotes look amazing, especially Andy Hunt's (need I say more than his name?) and another by Jascha Franklin Hodge, the CTO of Blue State Digital, the company who built the Obama technology platform will talk about how they did it.

I'm disappointed that I'll miss David Chelimsky's RSpec talk (coincides with mine).  I met David at the conference last year – he's a great speaker – and I'm really impressed with RSpec.  And I'll miss my friend James Ward's talk on RIA with Flex, since I'm heading home on Friday mid-day so that I can spend the evening with my family.

If you're in Philadelphia this week, I hope that you're able to attend the conference!  (And if you're in Chicago, I hope that you're at PyCon … it's unfortunate that these two conferences overlapped this year!)