There’s a lot going on in the local (and not-so-local) tech scene tonight…
I’m speaking in Orlando at the Google Developer Group Central Florida at Design Interactive about the beginner-friendly Android dev tool you didn’t know about tonight! Join me as I take you on a fun (and funny) tour of Ren’Py, the amazing visual novel engine that also happens to be a very nice Android development tool. Find out more and register here.
This morning at 11:00: ClearlyAgile’s May webinar, Creating Actionable User Stories: Methods for Writing and Splitting with Purpose, presented by Fred Mastropasqua and Robert Shaw! Find out more and register here.
Tonight at 6:00: Tampa QA Meetup will be at the ECC, and their topic is Games and Puzzles to Build and Improve Testing Skills. Bob Crews will explain the history of games and their role in developing specific skill sets, discover the types of games to use for identifying personality traits and key attributes, and understand the value of games for boosting morale. You’ll leave with an understanding of specific games, puzzles, and brainteasers that target certain skills, as well as when to play and observe. Find out more and register here.
Also tonight at 6:00 — the Tampa Bay AWS User Group is hosting a meetup called Cloud Encounters of the Ransomware Kind, where GreenPages will discuss their view from the trenches when dealing with cloud-based compromises and Orca Security will discuss how their innovative Cloud Security Platform enables companies to scale in the cloud with confidence. Find out more and register here.
Yet another thing tonight at 6:00: Tampa Bay Devops is looking for speakers, and this meetup is your chance to get a speaking gig!Find out more and register here.
Can’t make any of the in-person events listed above, but still want to do something? WordPress Clearwater FL is holding its monthly meeting on Thursday, and it’s online!Find out more and register here.
So what’s this beginner-friendly Android dev tool that we don’t know about?
The Ren’Py icon.
It’s Ren’Py, a “visual novel engine” that makes it easy to create visual novels — interactive stories featuring a combination of text, images, sound effects, and music — that run on computers and mobile devices.
There are a couple of ways to think of visual novels:
As a “Choose Your Own Adventure”-style book, but in electronic form, and backed with visuals, sound effects, music, and interactivity, or
As a story-driven, turn-based multimedia game, which can fit any number of genres, including adventures, simulations, or role-playing games.
What will Joey cover at the meetup?
In this meetup, Joey’s presentation will cover:
A quick intro to visual novels, including some delightfully ridiculous ones like Attack Helicopter Dating Simulator and I Love You, Colonel Sanders.
A tour of Ren’Py and its basic features.
A look at the code of a beginner-friendly project: a “Choose Your Own Adventure”-style game/novel.
A look at the code of a more advanced project: Attack on Walmart, a turn-based combat role-playing game.
Q&A, which in this case means Questions and Accordion!
Why is it called Ren’Py?
Ren’Py is a portmanteau of ren‘ai (恋愛), Japanese for “romantic love”…
…and Python, the programming language in which it’s implemented, and one of the languages you can use to create Ren’Py visual novels / games.
How much programming do I need to know to make visual novels or games in Ren’Py?
You’ve got options!
If you’re new to programming, Ren’py provides a scripting language that’s easy enough to let you get started writing visual novels after a couple of minutes’ worth of learning, but powerful enough to add a surprising amount of interactivity.
If you know Python or are an experienced programmer, you can harness the entire Python language and its libraries and geek out to your heart’s content.
And, yes, you can program using a mix of both Ren’Py’s programming language and Python.
What platforms can I use to develop Ren’Py visual novels and games?
You can run the Ren’Py development tool on Windows, macOS, and Linux…
…and with a little work, you can even do Ren’Py development on a Raspberry Pi!
What platforms do Ren’Py visual novels and games and run on?
The point of my presentation is that you can use Ren’Py to build visual novels and games for Android. Ren’Py can convert your scripts into an Android Studio project, which you can then deploy to your Android device or submit to the Play Store.
Tallahassee is the capital of the state of Florida, and it’s also the home of Domi Station, Tallahassee’s business incubator, coworking space, event venue, general all-round supporter of startups in the area, and friend of this blog (they were a host for StartupBus Florida when we passed through earlier this year). Domi Station is also the home of Startup Week Tallahassee, which happens this week!
And the events are FREE TO ATTEND!
The event is the Tallahassee edition of Techstars Startup Week, a week-long event celebrating entrepreneurship and the startup community. Startup Week features speakers and events to inspire, inform, and introduce people who share an entrepreneurial spirit.
Startup Week Tallahassee 2022 takes place this week, November 14th through 18th at three locations (including Domi Station) and will have 12 tracks focused on different industries:
Anitra and I attended last night’s CyberX Tampa event, an conference about the cybersecurity industry here in Tampa Bay. It was an extraordinarily well-attended event, with over 170 people gathered together to talk about technology, security, and the local tech scene.
Tap to view at full size.
The event took place at TheIncLab’s offices, located in one of the old warehouses in Tampa’s historic Ybor City neighborhood, which is largely made of repurposed cigar factories from the late 1800s. They have a beautiful courtyard which I’m familiar with — before it was TheIncLab’s place, it was home to The Undercroft, whose UC Baseline cybersecurity course I took in 2020.
Tap to view at full size.
CyberX Tampa opened with drinks, snacks, and networking, followed by two simultaneous panels.
The courtyard had the Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion panel, featuring:
With all the Hurricane Ian memes on my personal blog, The Adventures of Accordion Guy in the 21st Century (I’m based in Tampa), I thought I’d post one here!
StartupBus Florida 2022! Tap to view at full size.
This article is a work in progress — I’m making it available to readers as I write it!
On Wednesday July 27, 2022, 13 people boarded a bus at The Sail on the Riverwalk in downtown Tampa bound for Austin, Texas to participate in a contest unlike any other: StartupBus 2022. I was one of those 13 people, and this is what happened on (and off) that bus.
StartupBus is the Mother of All Hackathons. The first part of the event is a three-day bus ride where buspreneurs (contestants), with help from conductors (coaches), conceive a technology startup, its software, and marketing and business plans. There are a number of buses that start in different places — in 2022, the buses left from California, Mexico City, Cincinnati, and Tampa — and they spend three days making their toward Austin, where their buspreneurs present their startups at the qualifying, semi-final, and final rounds of judging. It’s a road trip, entrepreneurship crash course, competition, and adventure all in one.
Day 1: On the bus from Tampa to Gainesville and Tallahassee
Boarding the bus
At 6:00 a.m., I arrived at The Sail, the designated pickup loacation. It’s a pavilion located downtown, on the Tampa Riverwalk, just a stone’s throw away from the Tampa Convention Center. The buspreneurs were told that the bus would depart at 7, so I expected to be the first one there. Instead, Mandy was there, and so were a handful of buspreneurs. This was a good sign.
The bus should’ve been there too, but it wasn’t. None of our bus contacts were responding to messages or Mandy’s phone calls.
“Let’s just chalk this up to Murphy’s Law and declare 6:45 as ‘panic o’clock,’” I suggested.
Fortunately, she made contact with the bus people at around panic o’clock, and they told us that they were on their way. That gave us a little more time to chat and get to know each other a little more:
Wednesday, 7:16 a.m.: VJ, Ray, Marley, Chevy, and Justin. In the background: Cary. Tap to view at full size.
The slight delay gave us a chance to load up on coffee and a little breakfast food. We started boarding the bus soon afterward:
Wednesday, 7:22 a.m. The buspreneurs get set to board the bus. Tap to view at full size.
Here’s a shot showing Josh’s photobombing prowess:
Wednesday, 7:22 a.m. Me in the foreground, VJ and Josh in the background. Tap to view at full size.
…and shortly after 7:30, our bus started making its way toward the highway.
The secret route
While the buspreneurs knew that the bus would start in Tampa on Wednesday morning and arrive in Austin sometime on Friday evening, they didn’t know what route we’d take or what stops we’d make.
The simplest route from Tampa to Austin takes I-75 north to I-10, and then takes I-10 west, a route 1,200 miles (a little over 1900 km) long. If you were to drive that distance at a consistent 70 miles an hour with no stops at all, you could make the trip in a little over 17 hours. Add stops for activities (more about these later), meals, sleep (at hotels or Airbnbs — we weren’t going to sleep on the bus), and bio breaks, and the trip easily expands to fill three days. At least one of the buspreneurs did some map consulting and guessed our route and where we might end up stopping.
Here’s a map of the route we took:
The route we took from Tampa to Austin. Tap to view at full size.
Opening ceremonies
Shortly after everyone had settled in on the bus, it was time to get started with the opening ceremonies. The buspreneurs were already familiar with us conductors, so we got on with the task of having the mentors say something to inspire them. First Cary…
Wednesday, 7:42 a.m. Cary addresses the troops. Tap to view at full size.
…then Josh:
Wednesday, 7:43 a.m. Tap to view at full size.
Wednesday, 7:43 a.m. The troops watch the opening address. Tap to view at full size.
With the introductory speeches out of the way, the next step was to have the buspreneurs introduce themselves and propose a startup idea.
Wednesday, 7:47 a.m. Chevy proposes “Tinder for puppy playdates.” Tap to view at full size.
Wednesday, 7:49 a.m. VJ proposes an electronic replacement for a first responder standard operating procedure manual. Tap to view at full size.
The buspreneurs got to refine their startup pitches in an online meetup with one of Tampa Bay’s Toastmasters groups, who listened and provided valuable feedback.
After the meetup, the buspreneurs started talking amongst themselves to figure out which startups they should create. Remember, they had only three days to create them!
Wednesday, 9:06 a.m. Tap to view at full size.
Wednesday, 9:47 a.m. Tap to view at full size.
Wednesday, 9:47 a.m. Tap to view at full size.
In the meantime, I got into an extensive conversation with Cary about his life and work, and we discovered that we had both lived in Toronto. Small world!
Unlike those recipe sites where you have to scroll past lots of backstory and unrelated personal trivia before you get to the actual recipe, I’m going to give you the advice first.
It’s just this: in a hackathon, simple and working beats complex and non-functional.
The demo you build should be all about showing your main idea in action. The user should be able to go to your site or launch the application, use it to perform the intended task or achieve the intended result, and there should be a clear sign that the user succeeded at the end. That’s it. Anything else is gold-plating, and you don’t have time for that in a hackathon, whether you’re allotted an afternoon or, as in the case of StartupBus, three days. On a bus. With lots of interruptions.
Once again, I repeat my best hackathon advice: simple and working beats complex and non-functional.
Want to join StartupBus Florida?
It’s not too late to register to register for StartupBus Florida, which departs Tampa on the morning of Wednesday, July 27 and arrives in Austin, Texas on Friday, July 29 with surprises aplenty in between.
While on the road for three days, you’ll build a startup and its supporting application. Then on Saturday, July 30 and Sunday, July 31 in Austin, you’ll present your startup and application to judges in the semifinals (Saturday) and finals (Sunday).
Here’s a story from a hackathon where I applied this principle and impressed the judges enough for them to make up a new prize category on the spot.
In 2017, GM (yes, the auto manufacturer) held “Makers Hustle Harder” hackathons in a handful of cities to see what people could build on their Next Generation Infotainment (NGI) SDK for in-car console systems.
They held one of these hackathons in Tampa at Tampa Hackerspace. and I offered to help Chris Woodard work on his app idea. I did that for most of the day, and with a couple of hours left, I came up with a goofy idea that I could whip up in very little time.
A little technical background
The NGI SDK made it possible for developers to write apps for the in-car infotainment consoles located in many GM vehicle center dashboards, like the one pictured above. The SDK gives you access to:
An 800-pixel high by 390-pixel wide touchscreen to receive input from and display information to the user
The voice system to respond to user commands and provide spoken responses to the user
Data from nearly 400 sensors ranging from the state of controls (buttons and the big dial) to instrumentation (such as speed, trip odometer, orientation) to car status information (Are there passengers in the car? Are the windows open or closed?) and more.
The navigation system to get and set navigation directions
The media system to play or stream audio files
The file system to create, edit, and delete files on the system
An inter-app communication system so that apps can send messages to each other
With the SDK, developers could build and test apps for GM cars on your their own computers. It came with an emulator that lets you see your apps as they would appear on the car’s display, simulate sensor readings, and debug your app with a specialized console.
The hackathon
I arrived at Tampa Hackerspace that morning, and it was already abuzz with activity:
Outside in the parking lot were 3 NGI-equipped GM vehicles provided by Crown, a local auto dealer. Two of them were Buick Lacrosse sedans…
…and one was a GM Sierra truck:
The NGI team were there to answer our questions and help us install our apps onto the in-car console to give them some non-emulator, on-the-real-thing testing.
I performed a “smoke test” on my test app, Shotgun (an app that takes a list of names and randomly decides which one gets to “ride shotgun”) early in the morning on the Sierra’s console…
…and I have to say that there’s nothing like the feeling when your code runs for the first time on a completely new-to-you platform.
My main reason for being there was to help out Chris Woodard (whom I knew from his Cocoa / iOS programming Meetup group) on WeatherEye, his app that provides live weather reports for your planned route as you drove. When we completed it early in the afternoon, I ran a smoke test on it, and it worked as well.
With a couple of hours of “hacking time” left, I came up with a silly idea and coded it up: a timer for the game classically known as the “Chinese Fire Drill”. Here’s how it worked:
Four people get in the car, close the doors, and someone starts the app. They’ll see this screen:
When everyone’s ready, someone in the front presses the start button.
If any of the doors are open when the start button is pressed, the players will be told to close all the doors first:
If all the doors are closed when the start button is pressed, the game begins. The screen looks like this:
Players exit the car, run around it once, return to their original seat, and close their doors.
The game ends when all four doors are closed, at which point the time it took them to complete the drill is displayed:
The app wasn’t pretty, but that’s not what hackathons are about — they’re about getting your idea to work in the time allotted. Remember: simple and working beats complex and non-functional.
Everyone who built a project presented it at the end of the day to the panel of judges, and the organizers saved Fitness Fire Drill for the very end — it got a lot of laughs.
In the end…
My wife Anitra was flying out early the following morning on business, so rather than stay for the hackathon dinner and judges’ results, I high-tailed it home to have dinner with her. Before going to bed, I noticed that Chris had sent me an email telling me that Fitness Fire Drill won the “Judges’ Fetish” prize (a category they’d made up just for my submission), something I wasn’t expecting!
From that outcome, I learned what I now call the First Rule of Hackathons: simple and working beats complex and non-functional.
