Tag Archives: lightning talks

Lightning Talks at SRT Tomorrow …

Don't forget to show up at our office (206 S. Fifth Ave, Suite 200, Ann Arbor) tomorrow!  Our series of Lightning Talks start tomorrow, and continue biweekly after that.  We'll start around 3 and go til around 5 or whenever people stop talking about cool stuff, whichever comes first (I do have to leave to get the kids at 5!).

I don't know yet who will come, but that's part of the interest.  Having experienced these in the past, all I can say is, I have high hopes for interesting content that is both informative and entertaining.

I haven't planned ahead much (it's a 10 minute lightning talk!), but I may demonstrate some of the rich interfaces that you can do in Java, such as those that can be found in the awesome book that recently came out by Chet Haase and Romain Guy: Filthy Rich Clients (I finally bought a copy last week).   Java does NOT have to equal ugly.  And tell me, have you EVER heard a better name for a book?

Bill has an interesting talk in his back pocket as well. I think it will be fun!  See you there? 

 

SRT in the media

On Tuesday night, we had an open house for customers and friends at our new office, 206 S. Fifth Ave, Suite 200, in Ann Arbor (across from the Blue Nile, just above the Linux Box).  It was great to see people we haven't seen in a while, and we had a lot of fun.

The media seems interested when you open an office.  Perhaps they're starved for a little good news with a (thankfully short-lived automotive strike) and a state government that's threatening to shut down due to a budget impasse.  But SRT opening an office is a nice little story.  We are growing and we are having a lot of fun deciding what interesting things we can do with our new space.  I'm pretty sure that Bill is tired of answering the phone to hear, "Hey!  I had an idea …".  But he's made as many of those calls to me as I have to him, so it's OK.

In our interview with Kelli Kavanaugh of MetroMode Magazine which appeared online today, we mentioned the lightning talks (starting October 12).  We mentioned the user group meetings (AACS and Python User Group here next week). And yeah, the open house too.  But what she really seemed to pick up on in the article was that the stereotypical view of a programmer who sits in a cube all day, bangs out code without talking to anyone, and slides it under the door around midnight after consuming a pizza and a case of Coke is really not all that accurate. Hurrah!  Seriously, I swear I'm sick of hearing, "But you don't LOOK like a computer programmer".  OK, so we all know what those people are talking about because that's mainly what you see on tv and movies (and yes, a few in "real life" too).  But I still maintain (here and in the interview) that good communication skills are essential for computer scientists, especially those who are consultants.  Yes, writing code is fun, but there's SO much more to the job than that.

And yes, most of the attendees at user group meetings are male.  I can certainly understand why some of the moms (especially) don't make it regularly. Now that I have family commitments, it's harder to make it to a lot of user group meetings in the evenings, but it's important for me to be able to attend when I can.  The first week of the month, especially, requires a lot of negotiation around our house, and I suspect it does in some of the guys' houses who have small children as well!

So anyhow, I think it's fun to be around developers who like to talk about what they do and listen to what other people do, and I know I'm not alone in that.  Ed Vielmetti's a2b3 group is quite popular (Thursday lunches; I missed it today while I wrote this blog post). The user groups are popular.  I hope that we're able to snag some younger participants into groups like the Ann Arbor Computer Society, because we have a lot to learn from them as well.  Zattoo guys and everyone else, hope to see you there sometime!
 

SRT Solutions announces Lightning Talk Fridays

Once we decided to rent the new office (instead of working out of homes, coffee shops, and borrowed conference rooms), we started to think about all of the cool things that we could do once we had our own space.  One idea, of course, was to host user group meetings.  Some of the area user groups were facing finding new space, since their previous host (the Ann Arbor ITZone) had changed focus and was now going to start charging for the use of the space.  We think that the user groups are worth supporting, and so one of the biggest criteria as we looked for space was room for events like user group meetings.

But then, as I mentioned, we started thinking about other things that we could do.  One idea was Lightning Talks. We decided to start Lightning Talk Fridays, from 3-5 twice a month. They're free, open to the public, and the topics will be chosen by the people who attend, and we've added an SRT Solutions forum to manage the schedule, and allow people to get more information about them.

Just yesterday, we decided on the Lightning Talk schedule through the end of the year.  I published it on our public events calendar.  A few hours later, one of our readers pinged me and asked where the schedule was, and how to sign up (gotta love RSS).  Turns out that she's going to be in town that day (from Ohio) and wants to do a lightning talk!  Cool!

Anyhow, so I pointed her ar the SRT Solutions Lightning Talks forum, and I'll point all of you there as well.  Please join us, starting on October 12 at 3 pm.  We'll start the first lightning talk (10 mins in duration) at 3:15, and we'll schedule them every 15 minutes until 4:45 if we have enough topics.  If you're interested in talking, please sign up.  If you're interested in attending, please come!  But either way, feel free to join the forum (you need to create an account, but it's free).

Lightning Talks Friday Forum: http://srtsolutions.com/forums/32.aspx

Schedule for October 12: http://srtsolutions.com/forums/t/1280.aspx