Ann Arbor area events this week: JRuby and lightning talks

On Tuesday April 22, Joe O'Brien, famed Ruby developer and Columbus area business owner, will be speaking at the Ann Arbor Java User Group.  He will be discussing JRuby, Ruby that runs on the Java Virtual Machine (JVM).  Sun is putting a lot of resources toward dynamic languages on the JVM.  First, they hired 2 JRuby developers.  Just recently, they hired 2 Jython developers.  Microsoft is similarly loading up, for IronPython and IronRuby.

Anyhow, come out on Tuesday and hear Joe talk about JRuby.  The meeting starts at 7:30 pm at Washtenaw Community College (room BE260), but come early for the networking at 7:00.  Pizza and soft drinks will be provided. 

 And, on Friday April 25, SRT is continuing with the bi-weekly lightning talks.  We're mixing up the format a bit, going to a more traditional lightning talk length of 5 minutes (we had previously allowed 10, but we've babied everyone long enough!).  Instead of starting at 3, we're going to start at 3:30.  But we have an open door policy, so if you break free at 4 and want to stop by, just DO!  This week, we'll have snacks.  It's Nate's last day of working as our intern.  We're sad that he's leaving, but we know that he will do GREAT in Manhattan.

What message are we sending to students?

This week, I was at Michigan Technological University.  I graduated from MTU in 1986, and returned 4 years later for a masters degree in Computer Science.  It's a great computer science program and I also love the area.  I really enjoyed both experiences in Houghton, taking full advantage of the natural beauty of the area for hiking, mountain biking, cross country skiing, or just hanging out on the fresh air. The coursework was difficult, but the very laid back atmosphere of the Keweenaw peninsula often offered some perspective.  A drive up to Copper Harbor and back (45 miles of twisting, windy roads) often cleared my mind, putting me in a better place for studying or understanding the subject matter of my classes.

My purpose in being here was for a meeting of the Presidential Council of Alumnae.  This is a group of women who have been selected by their departments and approved by the council. The group advises the President of the university on a wide variety of topics about the student experience, not limited to simply diversity on campus, but that certainly is a big component.   One of the activities for the meeting was to meet with some of the women who are students here.

I was amazed by the apparent "stress level" in the students I spoke with this week. Many of these students expressed apprehension about … everything. A junior was concerned that she wouldn't find a job (next year!).  Others expressed concern that they don't know what they want to do.  One student mentioned that it's hard to find time to enjoy the area because she's so involved in committees and volunteer work.  Others expressed that they didn't feel that they had time to do small things for themselves, even getting a haircut. It occurred to me that these students are feeling all of the same stresses that those of us in the professional world feel throughout our careers, but they are experiencing them now, along with the traditional stresses of college. That alarmed me.  I went back to grad school full time because I didn't feel like I could devote enough time to my studies alongside the stresses of a full time job (and vice versa). But these students have essentially assumed a load similar to mine at the time.  And they're still in college!

I've been thinking about the message that we (in industry and academia) might be sending to them about the importance of their college experience.  I'm concerned that when those of us in the business community talk about the importance of "community involvement", the students are hearing "the more activities I'm involved with, the better".  I don't really think that this is the message that we want students to hear.  What I want to see, both for the students' wellbeing and in employees is someone who has perspective.  There's a time to work and a time to play.  The "activities" and "community involvement", in my opinion, need to give way for some "down" time.

Granted, what I encountered was a small sample of students.  Those that I met may not be representative of college life in general.  They were selected by their departments specifically, I assume using this flawed selection criteria of the best grades and loads of activities.  The intent of this selection was to choose those who might ultimately qualify to sit on this Presidential Council, after they have some professional experience and success in their fields.  Yet, most of us didn't recognize ourselves in these students. Yes, we were "overachievers", and we were "stressed".  And maybe 20 years of time has faded my views of what was going on in college.  I didn't participate in any regular organized activiites in college (sure, a Bocce Ball club meeting now and again, or a statue for winter carnival, but not an ongoing commitment).  Many of my colleagues on the committee expressed the same.

I'm left wondering that if the departments had sent a random sample of students, or those who they might have considered "second tier", perhaps more of us would have recognized ourselves in these students.  Maybe these students were always on college campuses, and I didn't really run into them.  I don't know.  But I do think that college is a time for exploration, for figuring out what you want to do for a career.  You don't need to have all of the answers, going in, and you certainly don't need to feel constrained by the choices that you make. I advise professionals to regularly re-evaluate what they are doing.  The same definitely goes for students. My advice to them would be: when in doubt, broaden your horizons.  Take "different" classes, outside of your requirements.  If cost is a factor, take something at a community college in the summer.  You might find something that really engages you (and, you might learn something too).  Take time to relax.  Your brain really does do a better job of retaining information when you have some time to absorb things, some time when you're simply relaxing.  I also think that we, in industry, need to ensure that we're not leading these kids down a path that we didn't intend.  We need to talk to people at universities to make sure that they know that when we say "outside involvement", we don't mean a boatload of activities that crush the spirit of the students under their weight.

Society of Women Engineers at Michigan Tech: Panel Discussion

I'm in Houghton, Michigan this week, for a meeting of the Michigan Technological University Presidential Council of Alumnae.  To kick off the meeting, we had a panel discussion, where student SWE members could ask questions. Turnout was good, higher than I had expected.  About 50 students showed up, nearly all of them women, from a wide range of fields.  Questions ranged from work/life balance questions (always interesting to me, since I'm still trying to figure those out), to questions about getting a job and how to build community after moving to a new town.  After the meeting, there was a "social hour" where the students could talk individually with the almunae.

Most of the panelists were from big companies.  Perhaps a few of them had worked for small companies at some point in their careers, but the vast majority were from big companies now … companies like Intel, Ford, FedEx.  I think that I was the only small business owner on the panel.  Unfortunately, I think that college recruiting tends to give students the opinions that most of the jobs ARE with big companies.  I'm happy to be here to provide information about small companies, and why students should consider them.

 Today, I'm doing a talk in the Computer Science department, for students. I'll be talking about Staying Current in Technology, both the why's and the how.  I'll blog my talk later, mainly because I don't want students to feel like they should take notes. Rather, I want this to be an interactive discussion.  Another alum will be joining me for the talk, one that I have never met.  She works for 3M and will be adding input about soft skills.  I hope that the students enjoy it.

Euler problems in Scala

SRT is abuzz with solving the Euler problems, in our collective spare time, and in different languages.

Bill Wagner has been solving the problems on euler.net in C#/LINQ.  Darrell Hawley is attacking them in Python.  Marina Fedner is giving us a flavor for Ruby.  And so I'll jump in, in Scala.   And no, we're not looking at each other's solutions before doing our own! 

Here's my Scala solution to problem 1, which is to sum the numbers between 0 and 1000 that are divisible by either 3 or 5.

    val nums = 3 until 1000
   
    val somenums = nums.filter(x => (x % 3 == 0 || x % 5 ==0))
   
    var sum = 0

    somenums.foreach(sum += _)
    println (sum)

I figured that there was no sense starting with a number less than 3 (not that it made much difference to the solution, but what the heck).  The filter function (on lists) in Scala provides a nice way to grab the appropriate values.  The foreach expression, when combined with the "_", which is a placeholder for the parameter. 

 Alternately, I could have defined a temporary variable x, like this:

for (x <- somenums)   sum += x
 

So, does the temporary variable "x" improve readability?  Perhaps somewhat, until you get used to the new syntax.  There are certainly times in Scala where I appreciate the more verbose syntax (and am grateful for its legality), but in this case, I prefer the more concise "foreach".

Sidenote: as Bill mentioned in his solution, the goal here is not necessarily to provide the most optimal, functional solution.  It's to provide one that works, and learn/expose information about how to use the language along the way.  And people who are interested in solving the problems themselves should probably avoid our posts on this subject.

PyCon 2008: An Overview

I attended my first PyCon this year.  It was in Chicago, and I was able to take Amtrak from Ann Arbor to Chicago (for only $27!).  The trip was quite pleasant, and I will say that I am definitely going to take Amtrak to Chicago again in the future.  My kids are already looking forward to it (to wit: do not tell a 2 year old that we will take the choo choo train "someday"; that's way too similar to "Sunday").

Anyhow, I arrived in time for tutorials.  I had signed up for 3, and they ran from about 9 am until 9 pm.  I was wiped out by the end of the day.  Two tutorials would have been plenty!

The conference was interesting. I met up with some of the devchix, who I had previously only been acquainted with online.  We decided to arrange a Birds of a Feather session and invite all of the women who were in attendance.  I was surprised to notice that a lot more women seem to attend Python conferences than Java or .NET conferences.  Interesting ….  In any case, we had our meetup.  About a dozen people showed up, and we had conversations that ranged from computer science education to how people felt about the bathroom on the lower level being redesignated for "men".  On the latter, it didn't really bother me (there were a LOT more men there than women, and time between sessions was short).  OTOH, it would have made sense just to have made the bathroom gender-neutral, I suppose (which is what we did at the Java Posse Roundup).

I went to a variety of talks, including some open spaces sessions.  I also went to lightning talks.  These were noted by others as a huge bonus of the conference in years past, but as Bruce Eckel noted, they were a bust this year, dominated by vendor talks.  Fortunately, the conference organizers are open-minded and DO listen to attendees.  They have already said that they will not open lightning talks to vendors in the future, and that responsiveness is what I have learned is pretty common in the Python Community (and in community-based conferences in general).

Conference sessions are starting to be put online. You can access them at http://www.youtube.com/user/pycon08. 

  

Upcoming Tech Events in the Ann Arbor area (and Ohio!)

Yes, it's the first week of the month again.  The Ann Arbor Computer Society meeting is tomorrow night, April 2, at 6 pm.  Jay Wren will be speaking on the Boo Programming Language and DSLs (Domain Specific Languages).  Boo is a statically typed language that runs on the CLR.  It has Python-inspired syntax. 

AACS meetings are free and open to the public.  Pizza will be provided.   Meeting will be held at SRT Solutions' offices, at 206 S. Fifth Ave, Suite 200.  That's at the corner of Fifth Ave and Liberty, just above the Linux Box.  Take the elevator to 2R or come up the stairs and wind around to the right side of the elevator.

On Thursday April 3 at 7:00 pm, the Michigan Python User Group will meet to discuss EasyExtend, which allows you to extend Python syntax.  New documentation tools may be discussed as well.  Like AACS, the MichiPUG meetings are free and open to the public, and held at SRT Solutions.  Pizza will NOT be served, but people often go out after the meeting.

Next week, on Monday, April 7, there is a Flex Camp in Cleveland, Ohio.  Go to http://flexcampcleveland.com/ for registration and more information.  Looks like a fun and interesting event.

On Wednesday, April 9, the Ann Arbor Dot Net Developer Group will meet, at SRT Solutions. Bill Wagner will be talking about how to make good use of the new releases in Visual Studio 2008.  Meeting is free, starts at 6, is at SRT, and yes, there will be pizza.

Technical Sessions at the Java Posse Roundup

I'm a month late in posting this, but better late than never.

The Java Posse Roundup was an Open Spaces conference in Crested Butte, CO.  It was held March 4-8, and this was the second (hopefully annual) conference.  The non-technical sessions, about which I already posted, were great, and the technical sessions were great too.  I didn't keep really great notes, because it's hard to take notes and participate at the same time, but here is my re-creation, from my chicken scratch.

The night before the conference started, most of the conference attendees were in town, so we got together at Bruce's house.  We badgered Dick Wall about Android, and he spent some time walking us through his application (WikiNotes), which has been (recently) open-sourced. 

Joe Nuxoll, of the Java Posse, convened a session on Component Based Systems.  Many different systems and libraries were discussed, including Swing, Flex, Boxley, and Thermo.  The consensus was (pretty much) reached that Swing is a library and is not component based.  Flex is component based.  Boxley is an AOL component based application development environment whose lead architect was hired by Adobe to work on Flex.  And Thermo is a design-oriented tool that provides the missing link between FlexBuilder and PhotoShop, allowing designers to build an application that a developer can drop into the production app.

Barry Hawkins convened a session on "Why is Agile Hard?" (note: audio released this week on the Java Posse podcast).  Barry is an agile coach, from Atlanta, and I always enjoy his sessions.  He always seems to come up with some good one-liners, that stick with me.  Like "Agile exposes the dysfunction endemic in software development, whereas other approaches mask it".  He also pointed at some great sources for future "research", including Scott Ambler and Kevlin Henney's podcasts at Parleys.com.  Also Alistair Cockburn's podcast on IT Conversations: Agile Software Development, and of course  Mike Cohn's blog "Succeeding with Agile". A few people who participated in the discussion were looking for answers about how to bring agile into an environment which is hostile to it.  The consensus of the discussion is that until the business respects agile, you're giving up a lot of the benefits, but there are some benefits that can be gained by heading in that direction.  Another reference that came out of the discussion was the book "Waltzing with Bears: Managing Risks on Software Projects".

I think that it was Ophir Radnitz who convened a session on "What does Scala Need".  Many people were interested in Scala at the Roundup (myself included), and this was a lively discussion.   It ranged from how to leverage what we already know (about Java) for Scala to what it will take for the language to be successful.  Toward that end, the group determined that books, community, and tools were important to success.  The books are getting there, with Martin Odersky's Programming in Scala book and others likely on their way.  Community is building both at artima.com and scalax.scalaforge.org. The plugins in development for Eclipse, NetBeans, and IntelliJ's IDEA will help a lot with adoption.  It's hard, these days, to learn a language without code completion. Sounds silly, but I doubt that I'm the only one who has started to depend on that support.  During the session, Carl Quinn and Tor Norbye came to an agreement to work together to help advance the NetBeans Scala plugin.

One nice thing about Open Spaces conferences is the ability to mold them to fit the needs of the actual attendees, at the event.  Last year, there was a discussion about how cool lightning talks are in other environments, and so we added lightning talks to the Roundup.  This year, people wanted to go a bit more in depth on some issues, so we added some very informal workshops.  A few people were worried that the workshops didn't fit the model of Open Spaces, which are interactive, but there really wasn't a conflict.  People who were interested in the workshop format showed up!  Others did not.  Joel Neely and I did a workshop on Scala for Java Programmers, followed by a several hour Scala hacking session the next evening, where we worked on a functional implementation of a problem that we had come across.  You can read more about how far Joel has taken this on Joel's blog.  Chet Haase did a really cool lightning talk where he demonstrated how he was able to implement some of the examples from his Filthy Rich Clients, but in Flex.  We wanted to know MORE so we recruited Chet to do a workshop to do a deeper dive on this.  It was fantastic.  I think that his blog will serve as great reference material for building apps in Flex.

I think that we will see an increase in workshop time at future Roundups, if the attendees want them.  We slid these into the dinner time, after the ski hill closed and before the lightning talks started.  It was time that people were using to socialize anyhow, and it fit well into many schedules.

 Once again, the Java Posse Roundup is over for another year. I had a blast, and learned a lot.  I met some really great people, and also enjoyed seeing some familiar faces.  I'm already looking forward to Roundup '09.

 

Non-technical sessions at the Java Posse Roundup

I decided to break out my summaries from sessions that I attended at the Java Posse Roundup into technical and non-technical sessions.  Last year, I don't recall going to many non-technical sessions. This year, however, I actually attended several, including:

  • Ten Mistakes Not to Make in a Startup
  • Hiring and Retaining Technical Talent
  • Creating a New Company Structure for Programmers
  • Organizing Community Based Conferences
  • Networking for Geeks

I enjoyed each of these sessions and learned something in each as well.  I hope that others blog about them as well, because I will confess to enjoying myself too much to take good notes in most of them!  And, of course, the Java Posse will release each of these sessions on the podcast, and I definitely think that they will be worth a listen.

In "Ten Mistakes", it became evident that a lot of the attendees have been involved in startups (and were OK about revealing battle scars). I thought that one thing that Joe Nuxoll said really nailed it.  He said something along the lines of each company crashing and burning and what a great experience it was.  I know that I learned a lot from crashing and burning in a startup.  For one thing, I really did learn to reframe risk taking.  When I was younger, startups seemed "risky" and I probably wouldn't have gone out on my own to consult.  But after my startup experience, I recalled that my dad's career job disappeared in the 1980's, and what he thought was stable for life was absolutely not that.  That sort of led me down the path to realization that in consulting, at least, *I* am in charge of my own destiny.  *I* know when there aren't contracts out there and it's *my* responsibility to do something about that.  As an employee, it's easy to become complacent, to think that the company is "stable" and will be there as long as YOU want to work there.  In fact, projects get cancelled all of the time, and departments go away.  As Barry Hawkins said (paraphrasing), "As a consultant, I'm very aware that I could be fired at any moment".  All of the decisions I make relate to that: the work that I take on, my savings, etc.  There's a lot of content in this session, and I definitely would urge people to listen to it when the Java Posse releases the audio for the session.

As a result of the "Ten Mistakes" session, I talked to Sean Landis and convinced him to convene a session on "Hiring and Retaining Technical Talent".  Overstock.com, where Sean works, has been hiring a lot of people, and this was an interesting discussion.  We talked a lot about how they hire (recruiters, online advertising, etc.) and contrasted that with how we hire (mainly word of mouth, user groups).     We also talked a lot about what it takes to keep employees happy, including compensation, training, flexibilty, etc.  Overall it was a great discussion, and at the end we tried to brainstorm a bit about what we COULD do rather than what we ARE doing.

 "Creating a New Business Structure for Programmers" was a brainstorming session convened by Bruce Eckel about how companies might organize to satisfy the needs of programmers.  I listened to "Representing the Socially Responsible Enterrpise (B Labs)" on Entrepreneurial Thought Leaders podcast, while in transit to the conference, and while I don't know enough about it, it's definitely an interesting thought.  A lot of discussions centered around loose organization, for a particular job (akin to the Hollywood model for films). I didn't think of it at the time, but a few things came to mind later, like an organization that an Ann Arbor group put together: http://notanemployee.net/.

 From the time that I learned Stephan Janssen had signed up for the Java Posse Roundup, I started looking forward to talking to him about "Organizing Community Based Conferences".  For the past 7 years, Stephan has organized JavaPolis in Belgium. It has grown to over 3000 attendees, which really turned my head, considering that CodeMash (which I help organize) attracts 300-400 attendees and I find the organization pretty overwhelming.  What Stephan has done with JavaPolis is humbling.  We talked a lot about the different conferences and I asked a million questions about how Stephan accomplishes this feat.  I can't wait to listen to this session on the podcast since Stephan had a lot of great advice.  FYI, his lightning talk on promotional ideas for JavaPolis was amusing (albeit R-rated at times).

"Networking for Geeks" came out of both the "Ten Mistakes …" session and some work that I have been doing with Ann Arbor SPARK in terms of helping them figure out how to help the local tech community in Ann Arbor.  In "Ten Mistakes", Joe Nuxoll mentioned how he interacts with the venture capitalists in the Bay Area.  I just don't see that happening here in Ann Arbor.  I guess that there are people who do this, but I don't see it.  I elicited some giggles with my (typical) comparison of traditional networking events with speed dating.  Others weren't quite as repulsed by such networking events. Barry Hawkins and Joe Nuxoll reminded us that user group meetings are NOT networking. People go and listen to the speaker and a few people stand around in the back, talking afterward, but it's not networking. Barry has done something interesting with the Atlanta Java User Group, by inviting everyone to dinner across the street before the meeting.  Contrasted with providing pizza AT the meetings, which people pretty much agreed only brings in the "free pizza crowd", the people who show up to pay for their OWN burritoes evidently are interested in talking.  My husband tells me that a meeting at a brew pub is even more effective (he's held meetings at Corner Brewery in Ypsilanti and people tended to stay afterward for long discussions).  Interesting.  I'm going to have to think more about this. The Python User Group usually adjorns to ABC after meetings.  Maybe they're onto something!  Jim White proposed a technology solution for bringing in people who can't attend and also to attract a younger crowd.  I had a really hard time seeing his point, because for ME, it's all about personal connections with people, and I can't see how this can be effectively accomplished without that personal contact.  I'm on some social networking groups, but they generally only enhance my in-person contact rather than replace it.

Anyhow, I think that's it for the non-technical sessions that I attended.

Next up: technical sessions, including "Why is Agile Hard", "Future of Java", and "What's Scala Missing?".  Also, we video'ed all of the lightning talks and the Posse has promised to get them up on YouTube (along with a very amusing Crested Butte cross country skiing experience). 

 

 

Flex meeting tonight, March 10 at SPARK

An Ann Arbor area Flex meeting is being held tonight, at SPARK.  It's free, and open to all. 

Topic:
Flex: Rich Internet Application (RIA) Demos and Case Studies

Join users of Flex, and others interested in Flex to view demos of Flex applications and talk about how companies are using Flex. Nick Kwiatkowski, manager of the Michigan Flex User's Group will be the guest speaker.

If you're interested in participating in an Adobe Flex User's Group, this meeting will include discussion around starting an official group and talk about its organization. 

If you would like to be involved, please plan on attending this meeting!

Speaker:
Nick Kwiatkowski, manager of the Michigan Flex User's Group (Lansing area)

Date:
Monday, March 10, 2008

Time:
6-8 p.m.

Location:
SPARK Central-330 E. Liberty, Ann Arbor

Cost:
FREE

http://www.annarborspark.org/events/event-calendar/Index.cfm?i=

The Java Posse Roundup: the view from 9000 feet

I'm here in Crested Butte, for the 2nd Java Posse Roundup (my second time as well).  It's been great, and much different than last year.  That's cool because the theme was "Don't Repeat Yourself".  Here's my overview.  I'll post more detail later.

This is an open spaces conference, which means that the conference participants (about 35 people, including the Posse) are defining the content and shaping the character. This year, we're doing sessions from about 8:30 am until about 12:30 pm, then breaking for lunch/afternoon activities.  The 160" base on Mt Crested Butte is amazing.  Some people have been downhill skiing, others snowboarding.  Groups have gone out snowmobiling.  I've even spirited some people away (Dick Wall and Joel Neely and Mike Levin) to nordic skiing, which is fabulous here.  And, of course, some people spend the time working, collaborating with other attendees, or simply relaxing.  In the evenings, after dinner, we've been getting together for lightning talks (5 mins), which have been video-recorded and will be released on YouTube.  I'll post the link when they are available.  But this year, we found that the collaboration aspect of the conference was really growing, and many of us have wanted to have some "workshop" experiences. So, we've conspired to add in some workshop and hacking sessions in the early evening, either over dinner or just before lightning talks.  Joel and I hung back one afternoon and collaborated on some Scala code, and then presented a session comparing Java and Scala during one of those early evening sessions (before lightning talks).  The flexibility to do this speaks loudly for the benefits of open spaces. At more traditional events, people might still hole up in a hotel room and work on code together, but only they would benefit from that experience.  The other attendees likely wouldn't even know of their experience and certainly wouldn't get to listen to a talk about it.

 I don't think that I have attended a single Java specific talk this year.  They've been scheduled, and others are attending those, but I've been more interested in some other talks, like "Startups: Mistakes not to Make", "Hiring and Retaining Technologists", "Brainstorming New Structures for Organizing Companies that serve Programmers Better", "Component Based Systems", "Organizing Community Based Conferences", and "Why is Agile Hard".  But I'm getting some technical mojo out of workshops and hacking sessions.  We spent some time with Dick Wall on Android and that was quite interesting.  Chet Haase did a lightning talk on "Filthy Rich Clients with Flex", which motivated me to strong arm him into doing a more indepth session on that.  A bunch of us sat around for several hours last night hacking some Scala, and we had a lot of fun.  And, of course, there were more lightning talks last night and they were awesome as well.

 So, I'm off for the final day.  Some people will be leaving early today, but I think that they're missing out by not staying for the evening.  Sessions end at 12:30 or so, but we'll be doing dinner together and an informal gathering this evening as well.  Last year, that evolved into "Check out this cool thing on YouTube", but since we're in the mode of "Don't Repeat Yourself", I bet we'll come up with something different tonight.  And I'm taking a group out x-c skiing this afternoon!  Off to breakfast … at Camp4Coffee.