Category: What I’m Up To

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Meetups Tampa Bay What I’m Up To

Photos from last night’s “Coders, Creatives, and Craft Beer” meetup

The Coders, Creatives, and Craft Beer meetup, which Anitra and I run, returned last night, and we had a grand old time!

Coders, Creatives, and Craft Beer logo
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I like to describe Coders, Creatives, and Craft Beer as “all conversations, no presentations.” It’s a social meetup for Tampa Bay people with an interest in technology or creativity — or even better, both! We get together once a month to talk about whatever’s interesting us at the moment.

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Last night’s event took place at the Corner Club in Seminole Heights, a concrete bunker of a dive bar that’s since been converted into a quirky neighborhood cafe. They’re a pillar of the Northeast Seminole Heights neighborhood, they generally get great reviews (4.5 on Yelp, 4.6 on Google), they make a damned fine biscuit, as wells as other good food and alcoholic and non-alcoholic drinks.

And of course, they’ve got a lovely back patio.

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It’s been a couple of years since we’ve had a proper stand-alone Coders, Creatives, and Craft Beer, and we’re happy that you all came out last night — some of you made an hour’s drive to attend, and we appreciate that. It was great seeing old friends and making new ones!

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The next Coders, Creatives, and Craft Beer

2nd Annual End of Year Tech Meetup Extravaganza

The next Coders, Creatives, and Craft Beer is part of a larger “meetup of meetups” — the 2nd Annual Tech Meetup Extravaganza on Wednesday, December 14th at Embarc Collective. We’ll see you there!

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Current Events Meetups Tampa Bay What I’m Up To

Meet up and learn about Mastodon at Wednesday’s “Coders, Creatives, and Craft Beer!”

Banner: Coders, Creative and Craft Beer / Wednesday, Nov. 16 / The Grand Return, The Great Resignation, and The Big Migration (to Mastodon)
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The Coders, Creatives, and Craft Beer meetup returns this Wednesday, November 16th, and it’ll happen at The Corner Club in Tampa’s Seminole Heights neighborhood. They’ve got beverages, both alcoholic and non- (including some very good coffee), and great food!

Want to join us? Once again, we’re meeting at The Corner Club in Seminole Heights (1502 E Sligh Ave., 3 lights east of I-275’s Sligh exit) at 6:00 p.m. on Wednesday, November 16th. Register on the event’s Meetup page.

Mastodon and other conversations

Dumpster with the Twitter logo on fire

By now, you’re probably aware of the complete dumpster fire that Twitter has become. In fact, there’s a good chance that it may have even become worse by the time you read this.

You’ve probably been hearing about an alternative social network called Mastodon, which exists in something called the Fediverse, and you might be wondering what it’s all about. We’ll show you!

Creative Commons photo by Tony Webster. Tap here for the source.

We’ll also be talking about The Great Resignation in both its forms — leaving a current tech job, and landing a new one. Are you looking for a job? Are you looking to get out of a job? Are you looking to “upskill” for the job you want? We’re here to talk about that, and we’re connected — we might even be able to help you!

The Corner Club

Photo: Corner Club

We’ll be at The Corner Club, one of Seminole Heights’ many hidden gems. They’re a neighborhood café with lots of great food prepared from scratch (we recommend the papas bravas potatoes), an interesting drinks selection — with and without alcohol, including some really good coffee — and even local artists’ works on the wall for sale. They’ve got a great outdoor space in the back, which is where we’ll be.

In case you’re curious:

Tap to view the event page.

Coders, Creatives, and Craft Beer is Tampa Bay’s “No presentations, just conversations” meetup for coders and creatives who want to hang out, make friends, and talk over great food and drink. It’s just people getting together at an interesting Tampa Bay venue, tasting what comes out of the taps and kitchen, talking about what interests us, what we’re working on, and what we’d like to work on.

Do you write or manage code, prose, or poetry? You belong in this group. Do you make art for the eyes, ears, or other senses? Join us. Is your creativity more about business and “the hustle”? You should be here. The goal of this meetup is to bring together all sorts of people from Tampa Bay and making it an even better, interesting, and more creative place in which to live, work, and play.

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Meetups Programming Tampa Bay What I’m Up To

Tampa Devs’ “Mobile App Development” meetup has been postponed [Update]

Update by Nick Youngson CC BY-SA 3.0 Pix4free

Tropical storm/hurricane Nicole update (Wednesday, Nov. 9, 2:00 p.m.)

With tropical storm Nicole expected to become a hurricane before bearing down on Florida tonight this event has been postponed until further notice. Keep an eye on the Meetup page for details.

Tampa Devs’ next meetup is tomorrow, and it’s on a topic that’s close to my heart: Mobile Development and Digital Nomad Lifestyles!

The Meetup

The main talk will feature André Crabb — a “once digital nomad settled in Tampa” — talking about “mobile app development, its evolution, and life as a digital nomad.” His talk outline includes:

  • Evolution of mobile development
  • Existing frameworks
  • Android
  • iOS
  • React Native + Expo
  • Other frameworks, but in not as great in detail as the ones above
  • Lifestyle of a digital nomad

Here’s the schedule:

  • 6:00 – 6:30 pm: Networking
  • 6:30 – 7:00pm: Intro slides + quick game
  • 7:00 – 7:30 pm: Lightning talks, 5-10 minute talks anyone can come speak
  • 7:30 – 9:00 pm – Main talk + networking time

This meetup will take place at USF in the “Education Building,” a.k.a. EDU 115, located on 4110 USF Apple Drive:

The event is free to attend — register on their Meetup page — and I’ll see you there!

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Conferences What I’m Up To

I’m catching Oktane22 online for free, and so can you!

Oktane22 is the tenth annual Oktane conference held by Okta, where I work. Okta is in the business of digital identity — providing authentication and authorization as a service — or more simply put, giving systems the power to know who’s using them and what they’re allowed to do.

And you can register to attend online for FREE!

Even if you’re not interested in authentication and authorization, you might be interested in the big keynotes featuring these guests…

…Serena Williams and Magic Johnson, who’ll talk about establishing an identity:

  • Serena’s keynote will take place tonight (Tuesday, November 8th) at 8:00 p.m. Eastern (5:00 p.m. Pacific, 01:00 UTC) and will be a chat with Bloomberg Technology’s Emily Chang.
  • Magic’s keynote will take place on Thursday, November 10th at 12:00 p.m. Eastern (9:00 a.m. Pacific, 17:00 UTC).

I also plan to catch these sessions:

  • Wednesday, November 9:
    • Using React to Customize Your Auth0 User Experience
    • HTTP Security Headers Refresher
  • Thursday, November 10:
    • Terraform-Driven Auth0 Customization Using Modern CI/CD
    • Identity and the Future of the Internet: Where We’re Going, and How Identity Will Shape It
    • The Future of Security: Zero Trust and Continuous Authentication
    • Identity 201: Ten Key IAM Trends for the Next Five Years
    • How Identity Will Transform the Future of Banking, Citizen Engagement, and [Australian!] Football

Want to know more about watching Oktane22 online? I’ll leave it to Vivi to explain…

And don’t forget that you can register to attend online for FREE!

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Current Events What I’m Up To

I’m pulling the ol’ Mastodon account out of mothballs, just in case…

As you can see from this screenshot, it’s been a while.

I can’t even remember exactly why I picked up a Mastodon account back in 2017, but I know that 5.5 years later, I’m bringing it back to life.

Rather than make you memorize the unwieldy URL https://mastodon.cloud/web/accounts/11270, I created two quick redirects using my own domains:

I’ll update my profile photo and banner soon.

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Business Conferences Current Events Florida Tampa Bay What I’m Up To

Scenes from CyberX Tampa

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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.

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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.

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CyberX Tampa opened with drinks, snacks, and networking, followed by two simultaneous panels.

The courtyard had the Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion panel, featuring:

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And inside, there was the panel titled Blackhat Tactics You Should Know, with:

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The final panel of the evening was the big one — a discussion of the state of cybersecurity in Florida.

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The panelists were:

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It was a great evening all around, and I hope it’s a good sign for future events in Tampa Bay, and a sign that our tech community is active!

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Of course, the events wouldn’t have happened without the sponsors. Click on their logos to find out more about them!

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Conferences Security Tampa Bay What I’m Up To

CyberX Tampa: Tonight at TheIncLab in Ybor City!

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The topic: Cybersecurity.

The event: CyberX Tampa, an evening conference with some pretty interesting speakers and topics, and a chance to catch up with some local techies and security nerds.

The place: TheIncLab in Ybor City, in the place where The Undercroft — the guild where I took a pretty intense cybersecurity course during the pandemic — used to be.

The cost: Free as in beer. $0. Just register on their Eventbrite page.

The agenda:

TimeEvent
5:30 p.m. – 6:00 p.m.Networking
6:00 p.m. – 6:15 p.m.Special honoree: Courtney H. Jackson, founder and CEO of Paragon Cyber Solutions and Global 2022 Cybersecurity Woman Entrepreneur of the Year
6:15 p.m. – 6:45 p.m.Breakout sessions

DE&I in Cyber Panel with:
• Moderator: Suzanne Ricci | Chief Success Officer @ Computer Coach
• Courtney H. Jackson | Founder & CEO @ Paragon Cyber Solutions
• Samantha Ramos | Information Security Risk Manager @ Nextech Systems
• Hugh Percy | Mgr, Cyber Security Threat Analysis & Operations @ Moffitt

Blackhat Tactics You Should Know
• Charlton Trezevant | Senior Application Security Consultant @ GuidePoint Security
• Robert Lubin | Security Operations Center Director@ Abacode
6:45 p.m. to 7:00 p.m.Networking
7:00 p.m. – 7:45 p.m.Panel Discussion: State of Cybersecurity in Florida
• Moderator: Larry Whiteside | CISO @ RegScale
• Jason Allen | CTO @ Digital Hands
• Kari Schori | CIO @ Office of the Public Defender 6th Judicial Circuit
• Rolando Torres | Co-Founder & COO @ Abacode
7:45 p.m.Thank you’s and good night

What you’ll get out of it: Well, that depends on what you put into it. But trust me, there are opportunities and a lot of potential there, and I can tell you that half of winning is just showing up.

I’ll see you there!