Category: Current Events

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Current Events Tampa Bay

What’s happening in the Tampa Bay tech/entrepreneur/nerd scene (Week of Monday, February 22, 2021)

Believe it or not, the end of this week is also the end of the month. Here’s your list of tech, entrepreneur, and nerd events for Tampa Bay and surrounding areas for the week of Monday, February 22 through Sunday, February 28, 2020.

This is a weekly service from Tampa Bay’s tech blog, Global Nerdy! For the past four years, I’ve been compiling a list of tech, entrepreneur, and nerd events happening in Tampa Bat and surrounding areas. There’s a lot going on in our scene here in “The Other Bay Area, on the Other West Coast”!

By “Tampa Bay and surrounding areas”, this list covers events that originate or are aimed at the area within 100 miles of the Port of Tampa. At the very least, that includes the cities of Tampa, St. Petersburg, and Clearwater, but as far north as Ocala, as far south as Fort Myers, and includes Orlando and its surrounding cities.

For the time being, I’m restricting this list to online events. We’re still deep in a pandemic, and the way out is to stop the spread, however we can. In the age of broadband internet, smartphones, and social media, it’s not that hard. Stay home, stay safe, stay connected, and #MakeItTampaBay!

Monday, February 22

Tuesday, February 23

Wednesday, February 24

Thursday, February 25

Friday, February 26

Saturday, February 27

Sunday, February 28

Do you have any events or announcements that you’d like to see on this list?

Let me know at joey@joeydevilla.com!

Join the mailing list!

If you’d like to get this list in your email inbox every week, enter your email address below. You’ll only be emailed once a week, and the email will contain this list, plus links to any interesting news, upcoming events, and tech articles.

Join the Tampa Bay Tech Events list and always be informed of what’s coming up in Tampa Bay!


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Current Events Programming

Global Nerdy’s mega-list of online tech events for Tampa and beyond (Tuesday, February 16, 2021)

This is an experiment!

Creative Commons image from Alpha Stock Images and taken by Nick Youngson. Tap to view the source.

Each week, I publish a listing of tech, entrepreneur, and nerd online events by and for people in Tampa Bay and surrounding areas. But what if I tried expanding the scope and listing online events beyond Tampa Bay?

That’s the subject of this week’s experiment. Each weekday this week, I’m going to provide a list of:

  • the day’s tech, entrepreneur, and nerd online events for Tampa Bay and surrounding areas, and
  • a selection of the day’s tech events for the rest of the world.

Let’s face it — with COVID-19 still raging away, new variants of the disease popping up, and vaccines being slow in coming, we need to step up our online connection game. The way to do that is to look at tech events from beyond our backyard, see what other people are talking about, learn from them, and take those lessons back here to “The Other Bay Area!”

I’ve listed the events below. Check them out, and let me know if this sort of list is interesting or useful to you.

Tuesday’s ONLINE tech, entrepreneur, and nerd events in the Tampa Bay area

Here’s the list of Tuesday’s online events for the Tampa Bay area, taken straight from my larger list of this week’s Tampa Bay tech, entrepreneur, and nerd events.

Tuesday’s ONLINE tech events worldwide

…and here’s a selection of online tech events taking place across the country and around the world. I have no idea if any are limiting attendance to locals, but I suggest you drop in and find out!

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Current Events

Even more online tech events happening this afternoon and evening (Monday, February 15, 2021)

If you can’t find the kind of event you’re looking for in my weekly list, perhaps you’ll find something in this list of events taking place tonight!

Categories
Current Events Tampa Bay

What’s happening in the Tampa Bay tech/entrepreneur/nerd scene (Week of Monday, February 15, 2021)

It’s hard to believe that’s it’s the middle of February already! Here’s your list of tech, entrepreneur, and nerd events for Tampa Bay and surrounding areas for the week of Monday, February 15 through Sunday, February 21, 2020.

By “Tampa Bay and surrounding areas”, this list covers events that originate or are aimed at the area within 100 miles of the Port of Tampa. At the very least, that includes the cities of Tampa, St. Petersburg, and Clearwater, but as far north as Ocala, as far south as Fort Myers, and includes Orlando and its surrounding cities.

For the time being, I’m restricting this list to online events. We’re still deep in a pandemic, and the way out is to stop the spread, however we can. In the age of broadband internet, smartphones, and social media, it’s not that hard. Stay home, stay safe, stay connected, and #MakeItTampaBay!

Monday, February 15

Tuesday, February 16

Wednesday, February 17

Thursday, February 18

Friday, February 19

Saturday, February 20

Sunday, February 21

I’ve running an event on Monday, February 22!

My Programmers of Portables Meetup will have its first session on Monday, February 22nd at 7:00 p.m.. We’ll be using Python and Pygame to write a simple game about the “Super Bowl Streaker”. Want to know more? Check out the Meetup page!

Do you have any events or announcements that you’d like to see on this list?

Let me know at joey@joeydevilla.com!

Join the mailing list!

If you’d like to get this list in your email inbox every week, enter your email address below. You’ll only be emailed once a week, and the email will contain this list, plus links to any interesting news, upcoming events, and tech articles.

Join the Tampa Bay Tech Events list and always be informed of what’s coming up in Tampa Bay!


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Current Events Programming Tampa Bay

“Programmers of Portables” Meetup on Monday, Feb. 22: Let’s write a game!

It’s high time for the Programmers of Portables Meetup group’s first meeting. It’s called “Let’s write a game (with Python and Pygame)!”, and it’s happening online on Monday, February 22nd at 7:00 p.m.!

In this meetup, we’ll use the Python programming language and the Pygame collection of game development libraries to write a game similar to this “Super Bowl Streaker”-themed parody of the old videogame Tecmo Bowl:

That’s right, we’re going to build a game where the player controls the guy who ran onto the field in a pink leotard during the Super Bowl, and the goal of the game is to dodge security for as long as you can.

While writing the game, you’ll learn about key game programming concepts including the main event loop and collision detection, as well as everyday programming topics including object-oriented programming and data structures.

This is going to be a “code along with the instructor” exercise. I’ll explain a key concept for the game, and then we’ll code it together. By the end of the session, you’ll have a working game that you can play but even modify and improve on!

Register here to join us on Monday, February 22nd at 7:00 p.m., and let’s write a game!

What will you need for the Programmers of Portables Meetup?

Compaq 610 laptop
Even this decade-plus-old hardware (which I own) will do.

Aside from a computer (which could run macOS, Windows, Linux, or Raspberry Pi OS) made sometime in the past ten or so years and an internet connection, you’ll need:

  • Zoom (I’ll provide a link to the Meetup as the day gets closer)
  • Python 3 (version 3.6 or later — I recommend Anaconda’s distribution, although the Python.org distribution is also good)
  • Pygame (version 2.0; once you’ve installed Python 3, go to the command line and execute the command pip install pygame==2.0.0)
  • You favorite code editor. I’ll be using Visual Studio Code.

All you need for this session is just some programming experience, and it doesn’t have to be in Python. If you can code a “Magic 8-Ball” in JavaScript, you’ll understand most of what we’ll cover when writing our game.

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Current Events Tampa Bay

What’s happening in the Tampa Bay tech/entrepreneur/nerd scene (Week of Monday, February 8, 2021)

This will be a very busy week!

This will be a very busy week for these reasons:

  1. Chances are that when you read this, the Big Game (I can’t call it by its official name because the NFL guards its trademarks a little too zealously) will have come and gone, and Tampa Bay will have emerged the victor. Congrats, Tampa Bay!
  2. Chinese New Year happens on Friday, February 12, and this year is the Year of the Ox — or more specifically, because each year name comprises the name of a zodiac animal and an element, it’s the year of the Metal Ox. 恭喜发财 / Gōngxǐ fācái / Kung hey fat choy!
  3. Valentine’s Day is Sunday, February 14.

…and it’s also another week in Tampa Bay’s tech scene, where there’s always a lot going on. That’s what this list is for — connect, share, stay safe, and Make It Tampa Bay!

This week’s events

Monday, February 8

Tuesday, February 9

Wednesday, February 10

Thursday, February 11

Friday, February 12

Saturday, February 13

Sunday, February 14

Do you have any events or announcements that you’d like to see on this list?

Let me know at joey@joeydevilla.com!

Join the mailing list!

If you’d like to get this list in your email inbox every week, enter your email address below. You’ll only be emailed once a week, and the email will contain this list, plus links to any interesting news, upcoming events, and tech articles.

Join the Tampa Bay Tech Events list and always be informed of what’s coming up in Tampa Bay!


Categories
Current Events Tampa Bay

New video: “TAMPA BAY: An Unexpected Destination for the Tech Industry”

Among the YouTube videos produced by the Tampa Bay Super Bowl LV Host Committee, there’s one promoting Tampa Bay as as the tech hub you didn’t expect: TAMPA BAY: An Unexpected Destination for the Tech Industry, which you can watch below:

It’s a great promo for the tech virtues of “The Other Bay Area, on the Other West Coast”, featuring these locals:

  • Jacqueline Darna, CEO and Medical Inventor of Nomo Nausea
  • Joy Randels, CEO and Founder of New Market Partners, person behind a lot of things in the Tampa Bay tech scene, and indirectly the reason I live here now
  • Brian Murphy, CEO and Founder of ReliaQuest
  • Sheryl Hunter, Founder and President, Hunter Business Law
  • Ryan Nece, Managing Partner, Next Play Capital

The only thing I’ll nitpick about the video is that St. Pete and Clearwater are underrepresented, appearing only as beach scenes. Let’s let the world know that they’re part of Tampa Bay, and home to Tech Data, Jabil, KnowBe4, The Penny Hoader, and Malwarebytes’ east coast office to name a few players, as well as the birthplace of Wikipedia!

In fact, when it comes to “Tampa Bay”, I view it as the area served by Tampa International Airport (TPA). This means that I count Sarasota County —  home to advertising and marketing tech companies and agencies including AdRizer, DealersUnited, FloorForce, Perform[cb], and Revcontent — as part of Tampa Bay.