Category: Current Events

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Career Current Events Programming Tampa Bay

What skills and subjects are you betting your development career on? Let’s meet up about it!

Sure things, maybes, and longshots

Back in November, in an article promoting the Tampa Bay Full Stack Meetup, I wrote about the concept of balancing my skills in the same way some financial people balance their stock portfolio: 70 percent “sure thing” programming languages and technologies, and 30 percent gambles — 20% “maybes” and 10% “longshots”.

Here’s what I wrote about my portfolio:

  • I invest the majority — about 70% — in “sure thing” skills, such as mainstream platforms, programming languages, and technologies. In my case, this is…
    • C#,
    • JavaScript,
    • Kotlin,
    • Mobile operating systems, namely Android and iOS,
    • Python, and
    • Swift.
  • I spent about 20% on “maybe” technologies, and one of these is Flutter, which also involves the Dart programming language.
  • The remaining 10% of my time on sharpening my skills is spent on longshots. For me, this is blockchain technology.

For the most part, with the notable exception of Flutter and Dart, my portfolio’s been pretty stable for the past few years. I’m probably due for a review.

A 70-30 technology skills map for Tampa Bay techies

Here’s a 70-30 tech skills map, which takes a bunch of technologies that Tampa Bay companies are currently hiring for, and divides them into two categories:

  • The 70% category, which consists of things for which local companies are generally hiring for at the moment, and
  • the 30% category, which comprises things for which local companies might hire for in the future, or which might qualify you for an interesting remote job.

Here are the languages and technologies represented by the logos in the 70% category, listed in alphabetical order…

  • Angular
  • AWS
  • Azure
  • Java
  • JavaScript/ECMAScript
  • .NET/.NET Core
  • Node.js
  • PHP
  • React / React Native
  • Ruby on Rails
  • SQL
  • Vue.js

…and here are the languages and technologies represented by the logos in the 30% category, listed in alphabetical order, with some notes for each:

  • Artificial intelligence / machine learning / whatever else you want to call it: The buzzwords of the moment, and the answer to the question “What if we made algorithms that came up with algorithms?”
  • Assembly language and C: Both appear to be making a comeback in the age of IoT devices, where you’re trying to squeeze big performance out of tiny systems.
  • Augmented reality / virtual reality / glasses: Once upon a time, “multimedia” was a specialized subject, now it’s just part of everyday computer interfaces. AR, VR, and glasses may eventually be like this.
  • Dart / Flutter: Dart is an object-oriented, class-based, garbage-collected language with C-style syntax, and Flutter is a cross-platform mobile app development framework.
  • Elixir / Phoenix: Elixir is a functional, concurrent, general-purpose programming language that run on the Erlang virtual machine, and Phoenix is an Elixir-based web development framework.
  • Fuschia: Google’s multi-platform operating system for computing devices of all sizes, from embedded systems, smartphones, tablets, and desktops/laptops.
  • Go: A C-like object-oriented language for systems-level programming
  • “Internet of Things”: Including small systems like the Arduino and Raspberry Pi.
  • Kotlin: An early paper on the language said “Don’t call it ‘Swift for Android’, but that’s pretty much what it is, and that’s not a bad thing. It’s Swift for Android.
  • Python: First eclipsed by Perl in the ’90s and then Ruby in the ’00s, it’s now coming into its own thanks to its math, scientific, and data science libraries and the rise of machine learning, I’m glad to see Python finally being recognized. Out of all the languages in this category, this is the only one I’ve ever been paid to code in.
  • R: A language and environment for statistics. Like Python, it’s become popular because of its applicability to data science and machine learning.
  • Rust: A multiple-paradigm programming language with an emphasis on concurrency. The consistent winner of Stack Overflow’s “Most Loved Programming Language” for the past four years.
  • Scala: The answer to the question “What if Java didn’t suck and had better support for functional programming?”
  • Serverless tech: A refinement of cloud computing that lets you run applications and services on the cloud without thinking about the servers they run on. Amazon’s AWS Lambda, Google’s Cloud Functions, and Microsoft’s Azure Functions are examples of serverless offerings.
  • Smart watches: These are a fantastic platform for what I can “nano-tasks”: little tasks that take ten seconds or less.
  • Swift: Objective-C was getting long in the tooth, so Apple created Swift. It’s a pretty nice language, and pretty much necessary if you’re developing for anything Apple.

This is by no means a complete list — think of it as a starter, and I’m writing it only from a developer point of view.

After viewing this list, you may be asking yourself “So which do I choose?” That’s what I’m doing right now.

Would you like to meet up to discuss your 70/30 plan?

Let me know if you’d like to talk about this at the next Coders, Creatives, and Craft Beer meetup, which I’m looking to schedule for near the end of the month. It’ll still follow the same informal “we’re just here to chat” format, but it might be something to discuss.

Categories
Career Current Events

The EFF is looking for a Technical Projects Director

The EFF — Electronic Frontier Foundation — are always on the front lines in the battle to preserve digital freedom. From their first case, when the Secret Service thought that a Steve Jackson cyberpunk role-playing game manual was a how-to handbook for cybercrimes to the present-day challenges of privacy and security, we are lucky to have them fighting on our side. (I myself owe them for a couple of times when they’ve helped me personally.)

They have an opening for a senior position — Technology Projects Director, who will lead a 16-person team whose goal is to work on projects to create a more secure, private, and censorship-resistant internet. The Technology Projects Director will be a member of the senior leadership team, and help the EFF figure out what their next moves are: what positions to take, what projects to invest resources in, and the strategic direction of the organization.

Some of the projects the Director will oversee are:

  • Privacy Badger, EFF’s wildly popular tracker blocker
  • HTTPS Everywhere, used by millions to make their web browsing more secure
  • Certbot, a Let’s Encrypt client helping website owners globally receive and install SSL certificates to secure their sites
  • Panopticlick, a research and education project that sheds light on the seedy underbelly of browser fingerprinting
  • STARTTLS Everywhere, a project to foster STARTTLS adoption and make email delivery more secure
  • EFF’s Threat Lab, which has published blockbuster investigations into abusive practices by technology companies, leading to major policy changes

More details about the position are available here.

The EFF wants to encourage lots of different people to apply for this role, but they won’t achieve that without the help of the community. Please help them by sending a note about this role to folks that you believe might be a good fit, and sharing this announcement on social media.

If you’re thinking of potentially applying but have a few questions, email rainey@eff.org, and someone will get back to you.

I may have to send them an application.

Categories
Current Events Tampa Bay

Tential Tuesday: Tuesday, March 31st at Zydeco Beer Works in Ybor City!

The first Tential Tuesday of 2020 takes place at the end of the month — Tuesday, March 31 — at Zydeco Beer Works in Ybor City! There’ll be a special presentation on digital transformation in Tampa Bay, and you won’t want to miss it.

Register now, so that they’ll know how much food, drinks, and prizes to set up!

Categories
Current Events Tampa Bay

Roberto Torres at Café con Tampa (Oxford Exchange) this Friday!

Roberto Torres is an unstoppable force for good in Tampa Bay. Since founding the Blind Tiger Café, he’s since expanded to multiple locations all over the area, including a branch called Endeavr located right in our new startup accelerator, Embarc Collective.

Café con Tampa is also an unstoppable force for good — it’s a weekly gathering on Friday mornings between 8 and 9 a.m. at the Commerce Club (upstairs at Oxford Exchange) where you’ll see interesting speakers give presentations over breakfast on topics that matter to them. Think of it as an intellectual salon with the city’s best breakfast sandwiches.

This Friday, March 6th, Roberto Torres is the guest speaker at Café con Tampa, and he’ll be presenting on a topic that’s near and dear to my heart: choosing Tampa as the destination to live, work, and play.

(I myself made this decision 6 years ago, having driven into town with a Honda CR-V full of my stuff on March 7th, 2014 — this presentation will be a sort of early anniversary for me!)

I’ll be there, and I’d like to see some of Tampa’s tech community come to this one. It happens this Friday at 8:00 a.m., ends promptly at 9:00. Tickets are $12 at the door (they take cash or credit), and covers the cost of the room and the breakfast buffet.

Categories
Career Current Events Tampa Bay

Tampa Bay Innovation Center’s Entrepreneur & Investment Challenge is looking for applicants

Tampa Bay Innovation Center’s Spring 2020 Entrepreneurship & Investment Challenge takes place from April 28th through July 15th, and they’re looking for Tampa Bay-based tech startups to join!

The Entrepreneurship & Investment Challenge is a program focused on preparing technology ventures in how to scale a company. It’s not about preparing your pitch, marketing, or raising money. Instead, it takes an “inside-out” approach. It’s about preparing your company not to just look ready but to be ready to take an investment, hit the ground running, and execute your plan.

From their site:

The program helps CEOs develop into leaders that can rapidly execute plans, adjust plans when appropriate, and give them the experience to know how to navigate the obstacles that derail promising startups. While a good pitch will attract investors, the deal is closed based on your response to questions and successful due diligence. Having the confidence that you can handle the next phase of your startup will help close the deal with investors.

Eligible companies are:

  • Scalable B2B tech ventures

  • Are pre-seed, seed, or post-seed to Series A

  • At the post-MVP / proof of concept stage

  • In possession of less that $2 million in capital

  • Made up of two or more team members

  • Able to commit to a 12-week program

The program is free-as-in-beer — you won’t spend anything to attend — and no equity is required. It’s offered in a series of 1= to 2-day workshops over 10 to 12 weeks, and accommodates up to 10 companies per cohort.

Interested? Find out more at the Entrepreneurship & Investment Challenge page at the Tampa Bay Innovation Center site.

Categories
Current Events Players Tampa Bay

Don’t miss the 7th annual WITI Geek Glam this Thursday!

The WITI (Women in Technology International) Geek Glam is Tampa Bay’s most glamorous tech event, and it takes place this Thursday, March 5th at Tampa River Center at Julian B Lane Riverfront Park. One of the events at the Geek Glam will be the fashion show, featuring a number of Tampa Bay tech women, including my favorite, Anitra Pavka:

The event will also feature:

  • A silent auction, whose proceeds will go to the WITI Tampa Network Scholarship fund at SPC and USF to support future generations of Tampa Bay technologists
  • A pop-up market
  • Door prizes
  • Networking with 350 of your peers in the Tampa Bay tech community
  • A DJ to keep the tunes going and a photographer for some non-selfie shots
  • Some nerd with an accordion providing scintillating conversation and additional musical merriment

…and it all happens in this gorgeous venue with a wonderful riverfront view:

Here’s the event schedule:

  • 5:30 – Event Starts
  • 6:00 – Welcome from WITI
  • 7:00 – Welcome from Sponsors
  • 7:15 – Fashion Show
  • 8:30 – Silent Auction Closes
  • 9:00 – End of Geek Glam 2020!

And here’s how you can attend:

  1. You can go to the event registration page and buy a ticket, which is $30 for WITI members and $45 for non-members.
  2. You can attend for free by volunteering. Suzanne Ricci is looking for a handful of volunteers; the details are on LinkedIn.

This will be a fun, stylish event, and it’s both a great cause as well as a great opportunity to catch up with local techies and other business movers and shakers. Don’t miss out on this one!

Categories
Current Events Tampa Bay

What’s happening in the Tampa Bay tech/entrepreneur/nerd scene (Week of Monday, March 2, 2020)

Hello, and welcome to another installment of the weekly What’s happening in the Tampa Bay tech/entrepreneur/nerd scene list! I’ve been putting together this list since 2017, and my goal was to give the Tampa Bay technology community a useful, convenient resource for finding tech, entrepreneur, and nerd events. Just as regular get-togethers of techies helped grow the scenes in my former homes of Toronto and Silicon Valley, I believe that bringing together the bright lights of Tampa Bay will help bring about the “Silicon Suncoast”.

Here are the coming week’s events…

Monday, March 2

If you’ve got Monday free and can make the drive to Orlando, you might want to check out Women in Data Science — a UCF gathering whose goals are to inspire and educate data scientists worldwide, regardless of gender, and support women in the field. It’s an annual one-day technical conference covering the latest data science-related research and applications. There’s no risk of a “manel” here — all the speakers are female. All genders are invited to participate in the conference.

Tuesday, March 3

If you hear the phrase “board game” and think of tripe like Monopoly or Sorry, you’ve been away from them too long. We now live in the golden age of board games, a era where they’ve gone well beyond the old “be the first person to make it to the finish line” paradigm and reached levels of sophistication normally reserved for computer games. If you’re looking for something different to do on Tuesday night, you might want to check out the board game nights in Brandon and St. Pete.

Wednesday, March 4

The topic at Wednesday’s Tampa Android Developers Group meetup is Android Google Maps. It’ll be a walkthrough of the Advanced Android in Kotlin 04.1: Android Google Maps codelab produced by Google. It’s in Kotlin — which you should learn if you want to do native Android programming (if you have a grasp of Java or any other object-oriented programming language, you’ll understand Kotlin). Bring a laptop with Android Studio 3.5 or higher!

Thursday, March 5

WITI’s (Women in Technology International) Geek Glam will be a great night out for a great cause! It’ll have a fashion show featuring models you’ll recognize from our local tech scene, a pop-up market, door prizes, and a silent auction whose proceeds will go towards scholarships for women in tech. It happens on Thursday at 5:30 p.m. at the Tampa River Center.

Friday, March 6

If you haven’t yet been to Café con Tampa, you’re missing out on the best weekly community event in the area. Every week, they bring a compelling speaker to talk about an interesting (and often important) topic at the Commerce Club in Oxford Exchange. For $12, you get a breakfast buffet featuring Tampa Bay’s best breakfast sandwiches, a great presentation, and the change to meet with some of the area’s movers and shakers.

This Friday’s Café con Tampa should be a great one — the guest speaker is Roberto Torres, founder of the Blind Tiger Café, who just opened a branch at Embarc Collective. He’ll talk about a pet topic of mine: Tampa Bay as a place in which to live, work, and play. I’ll be there, and I’d love to see you there as well, representing the Tampa tech community!

Saturday, March 7

Sunday, March 8

Do you have an upcoming event that you’d like to see on this list?

If you know of an upcoming event that you think should appear on this list, please let me know!

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