There is a lot going on in the Silicon Valley!
Especially when you are on summer vacation and so have your evenings free...

9 Aug 07
~Python User Group Meeting with Alex Martelli speaking~
http://www.baypiggies.net/
Martelli is "Uber Tech Lead" for Google, and arguably the best Python programmer in the country (though he is Italian!) I went in order to publicize my Python class starting next month, but of course learned a few new things.
http://www.aleax.it/

10 Aug 07
~One day DreamWeaver training at AcademyX~
I learned DreamWeaver because I am now the webmaster for the Experiential Learning Center which houses the NSF grant I am working on:
http://elc.fhda.edu/

14 Aug 07
~BayChi meeting with Guy Kawasaki~
http://www.BayChi.org
A very enthusiastic speaker, Kawasaki was responsible for marketing the Macintosh and inventing the position of technology evangelist. Recently Kawasaki created a new social website called "truemors.com", to which anyone can post via email, text messaging, and voicemail.

This talk was about the fact that he created this new website for $12,000 and it now runs on only $2,000 per month. He contracted out the software development to a group in South Dakota, who used Wordpress to make it. He claims we don't need venture capitalists anymore, and he kept repeating "Life is good!"

Kawasaki also said that coming up with good ideas is easy, and that implementation is hard. For example, here is a good idea: "Make an operating system for PC's that is fast, easy and bug free." He mentioned techcrunch.com and Michael Arrington repeatedly.

15 Aug 07
~WebGuild meeting "Future of Online Platforms"~
http://www.WebGuild.org
The networking is the always the best part of this monthly meeting, together with the Google food that brings everyone out. I saw a former guest lecturer, Philippe Alexis, who asked me to find him a student intern. Rearden Commerce is looking for developer evangelist and salesforce.com is also hiring.

They presented a good definition for "platform", which is "something that you can build an application on top of." Therefore a website like facebook is a platform, since developers are making applications that run only on facebook pages.

Web 3.0 was defined as "web services with an open architecture, or web services for the masses."

They also mentioned that there is an application that links Google calendar with iCalendar, called "Spanning Sink", that I may be able to make use of.

19 Aug 07
~BarCampBlock in downtown Palo Alto~
http://barcamp.org/BarCampBlock
This is the third "unconference" for geeks that I have been to. Like the open source movement, these meetings are free, chaotic, and everyone is expected to contribute. I just lurk, but I don't take up much room...

The first session I attended was about building applications for facebook. Unfortunately, they talked more about how one would market or make money from this activity, and I was more interested in how these applications are built. But it did shame me into joining facebook, so if you are there, please ask me to be your friend!

The second session was about the "agile" software development process. This is a new process, and I think I mentioned it in previous posts to this blog. It is very similar to Extreme Programming (XP), iterative, or test driven development. I like to hear about this new process being adopted more widely, because the older methods have been found to fail miserably.
Agile was described by these steps:
1) user's story
2) prioritize features
3) choose the first chunk of work
4) define what it means to be done with this chunk (that is the backlog)
5) implement this chunk and repeat

Agile also requires a daily scrum or standup which is a quick meeting taking approximately 15 minutes for 5 people to each tell what they did, what they are going to do next, and what is keeping them from getting something done.

I knew all this before, but I did learn that wikis were invented to support this type of group work. The concept of starting with a "user's story" is similar but different from my classes where students write "use cases." The idea of a story might be easier for the students, and they always have a hard time with use cases.