I’m painfully aware that nobody reads documentation, and I’ve taken steps to ensure that the docs I’m writing are clear, easy to follow, and get to the point ASAP. You won’t need a Ph.D. to read what I’m writing, unless it means “Push here, devops.” I’m trying to make it that simple.
PackfilesTampa-based Packfiles is a project management and software platform founded this year. After meeting and working together in Tampa Bay, co-founders Rob Bremer and Charlton Trezevant — the creator of the software developer meetup group and nonprofit Tampa Devs — wanted to create a tool that eliminates the need for service firms during the coding file migration process, which developers utilize for efficiency.
The tool seeks to simply and controllably migrate files to Microsoft-owned platform GitHub, a popular tool for software developers that hosts code for collaboration and storage. In an ecosystem where successful startups are all about fulfilling a need, the co-founders’ experience collaborating at their prior company to help found one of the premier GitHub Professional Services practices in the United States will be key as they continue to build the platform.
Okay, that’s the layperson’s explanation. What does Packfiles actually do?
Packfiles’ SaaS, called Warp, is a GitHub migration service. Normally, the process of migrating repositories from Azure DevOps to GitHub involves a complex process that requires a fair bit of planning, a number of shell scripts with limited support, and tedious, error-prone manual work.
It looks like this:
Warp is built on Packfiles cofounders Rob Bremer’s and Charlton Trezevant’s experience with performing these migrations. It automates the lion’s share of the process, and once you’ve done the necessary configurations, Azure DevOps-to-GitHub migrations end up looking like this:
In case you were wondering, that’s an actual screen capture of what I did to migrate a repository from Azure DevOps to GitHub, and if it looks like the comments section from a GitHub issue, that’s because it is! In Warp, you use GitHub to migrate to GitHub:
Warp creates a GitHub repository called Migration HQ, which represents the migration-to-GitHub project.
Each Migration HQ issue represents a repository to be migrated.
You enter Warp commands in the issue comments. For example, in the issue representing a repository that I wanted to migrate, I entered the “slash command” /migrate to start the migration process for that repository. Warp first replied in a follow-up comment to tell me that the migration was in progress, and then notified me in another follow-up comment that the migration was complete and provided a link to the repository’s new GitHub location.
Who’s going to use Packfiles’ Warp?
Warp’s target market, as you’ve probably figured out, is organizations who use currently Azure DevOps and want to switch to GitHub.
And who uses Azure DevOps? It turns out there’s a little club of businesses call the Fortune 500, and 85% of them are on Azure DevOps.
This leads to a follow-up question: What makes you think organizations want to move from Azure DevOps to GitHub?
My unofficial answer would be: Have you tried using Azure DevOps?
My more-official answer’s a little more serious, and it’s a citation of a Reddit thread in r/devops from a mere 14 hours ago at the time of writing:
Finally, there’s the reaction that Rob, Charlton, and the rest of the Packfiles team got at the 2024 edition of GitHub Universe, the conference for all things GitHub. They were approached by companies of all sizes, including some very large ones you’ve definitely heard of.
Simply put, Warp solves a problem that most people don’t even know exists, but a lot of organizations need solved.
What will I be doing at Packfiles?
Long story short: I’ll be doing whatever Packfiles needs me to do. A lot of it will involve creating their documentation and developer/devops relations material, as well as technical sales and support.
The work I’ll be doing, especially in the beginning, will be collaborating very closely with Charlton, who’s lead developer and CTO, as well as with developer Justin Linn (whom I’ve been on not one, but two editions of StartupBus), so I’ll be working at least three days a week at Packfiles’ office at Tampa’s premier coworking/incubator space, Embarc Collective. Here’s what I see when I enter the place:
Luckily, it’s a quick drive from my place; in fact, it would take me 35 minutes to bike there, which I’ll do when the weather’s nice.
And here’s my desk at the office:
I’ve been working with Packfiles for the past couple of weeks, and I’m enjoying working there, being “in the room where it happens,” and also seeing the other folks at Tampa Bay’s startups at Embarc Collective.
This should be an interesting year. Keep watching this space for more!
It’s a Raspberry Pi 500, which takes a Raspberry Pi 5, the latest generation of the “Internet of Things” tiny computer, and puts it into a keyboard chassis. I probably have more than enough computers, but I love Raspberry Pis, and this 1980s-style “all-in-one” form factor was impossible to resist, especially with its $90 price tag.
I put it on. my main desk and hooked it up to the secondary monitor with an HDMI splitter so that my MacBook and the Pi 500 can share it. Here’s what it looks like on my desk:
Setup was straightforward: the Pi 500 comes with a 32 GB A2-class MicroSD card, which acts as its “hard drive.” I plugged it into a MicroSD-to-USB adapter, plugged into my MacBook, and used the Raspberry Pi Imager app to load the latest version of the Raspberry Pi OS, which is based on Debian, onto the card.
In case you need a reminder that we live in an age of technological wonders, here’s the MicroSD card, posed beside a U.S. quarter coin for scale:
I was a bit concerned about the “feel” of the keyboard based on its “chiclet” style, but it’s actually not bad. It feels like a mid-level “wintel” laptop keyboard, and I think the feel of the Pi 500 keyboard feels better than the one on my Windows machine, a 2020-edition Acer Nitro 5 (nice machine, but I despise its keyboard and trackpad).
What it’s for
I already have computers that can run circles around the Pi 500 — an M1 MacBook pro and a Windows gaming laptop powered by a 10th-gen i5. What possible use could the Pi 500 possibly serve for me?
Here are my excuses — er, reasons:
As a server for mobile apps or client applications that I’m running on my Mac and Windows machines.
As a “bare-bones” computer for sharpening some rusty C++ skills and learning Go. No fancy IDEs — it’s just Visual Studio Code and the command line.
Because it’s fun.
Maybe that last reason is the most important — it’s just fun to play with the Pi 500, and that form factor makes me feel nostalgic for the days when I’d play games that I entered from BASIC source code published in Creative Computing or COMPUTE! magazine.
Watch this space
I’ll write more about my experiences with the Raspberry Pi 500 here, so watch this space if you’re curious about this fun, inexpensive platform!
TBTLA’s people have been active in the Tampa Bay tech scene for literally decades (they’ve been around since 2001!). Their gatherings have been bringing leaders in information technology together since their inception, and they’ve been great!
This year, they’re doing the same at the offices of Feeding Tampa Bay.
The event will feature the following speakers:
Michael Raj, Vice President – Artificial Intelligence & Data (CDO Organization), VerizonChad Hage, Sr. Cloud Solution Architect, MicrosoftSantiago Echeverry, Professor, University of TampaJoey de Villa, Supreme Consultant, Atypical Consulting LLC
My talk: It happens every 13 years
I was invited to talk at TBTLA’s Tech Day about tech trends and how you can find local resources and groups to learn how to take advantage of these trends. As the person who publishes the “official unofficial” weekly list of tech, entrepreneur, and nerd events for Tampa Bay, I have some knowledge of this domain.
Join us this Saturday and hear what I and the other speakers have to say about this particularly exciting time in technology. lt’ll be a great opportunity to network with people in Tampa Bay’s tech scene. Feel bring to bring your partner, and enjoy the late afternoon with lively talks, interesting conversation, and free food and drinks!
Mine’s going through its greatest era. (And no, there’s nothing secret or security-compromising on my laptop screen in these photos — in fact, it’s documentation that I wrote for Writer, and you’re supposed to see that.)
Tap to view at full size.Tap to view at full size.
Since March 13, 2017, I’ve posted a weekly list of tech, entrepreneur, and nerd events happening in Tampa Bay and surrounding areas. I’ve continued to do this to this day, with me typically assembling the list on Thursday and posting it on Friday.
Today is Thursday, so I’m assembling the list — or more accurately, a Jupyter notebook running some Python code I wrote is scraping various sites and creating a checklist like the one you see in the screenshot above.
Back when I first started the list, I used to put it together manually, but as Tampa Bay’s tech scene and events grew, so did the list. It wasn’t long before assembling the list was eating up the better part of an afternoon, and that’s when I decided to add some automation to the process.
The checklist contains likely candidates for inclusion in the list, and each item in the list is checked by default. The checklist is there to allow me to apply my final judgement as to what goes and doesn’t go into the list.
There’s a hug “deny” list of key words and phrases that cause an event to not make it into the checklist because it doesn’t fall under the umbrella of “tech, entrepreneur, or nerd.” For example, events with the words “real estate” don’t make it into the list — they often contain the word “developer,” which my code is looking for, but that’s not the right kind of developer event for the list.
Would any of you be curious as to what’s in my tech events list-creating code and how it works? Would you like me to do a presentation at a local meetup or on YouTube explaining how it works? Let me know.
