Categories
Current Events Tampa Bay

What’s happening in the Tampa Bay tech/entrepreneur/nerd scene (Week of Monday, July 26, 2021)

Here’s your weekly list of tech, entrepreneur, and nerd events — plus a little area tech news — for Tampa Bay and surrounding areas for the week of Monday, July 26 through Sunday, August 1, 2021.

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 Bay and surrounding areas. There’s a lot going on in our scene here in “The Other Bay Area, on the Other West Coast”!

I’m moving this list to Fridays so that you’ve got more time to plan for the upcoming week. Let me know if this change works for you (or if it doesn’t)!

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.

This week’s events

Monday, July 26

Tuesday, July 27

Wednesday, July 28

Thursday, July 29

Friday, July 30

Saturday, July 31

Sunday, August 1

Tampa Bay area news roundup

Tech job boom in Tampa Bay continues as companies relocate to Sunshine State

“Hundreds of jobs are up for grabs in the Tampa Bay area, but one of the hottest markets right now is the technology industry. New companies keep moving to Tampa and that adds to the idea of Tampa as a major tech hub.”

ConnectWise signs big deal to move HQ from Westshore to downtown Tampa

“Tampa software company ConnectWise has signed a big office lease in downtown Tampa and plans to move its headquarters from Westshore to the urban core.”

San Francisco real estate tech firm opens regional hub in Tampa

“San Francisco-based real estate tech firm HomeLight has opened a regional hub in Tampa, marking a critical step in its expansion plans for the state.”

With defense industry businesses flocking to Tampa Bay, St. Pete Innovation District proposes new hub to city

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 What I’m Up To

Hanging out at Sparkman Wharf tonight!

Want to meet up tonight? Anitra and I will be joining friends from the Masterminds Tampa group tonight at 7:30 p.m. at Sparkman Wharf’s Fermented Reality Biergarten to catch up.

This is just a friendly gathering in the fresh air to see old friends and make new ones. I may be bringing the accordion, but the business cards are staying at the home office.

Categories
Career

Join my team at Auth0!

Now Hiring | Phillip Patterson Painting in Louisville

You might know that I hold the position of Senior Developer Advocate at Auth0 (see my article about out how I landed the job). What you might not know is that there’s an opening for a similar position on my team, and you might be my newest teammate!

Joey deVilla • #StopAsianHate • #BlackLivesMatter (@AccordionGuy) | Twitter
Yours Truly, captured during a Zoom call with the rest of the Developer Relations team.

What’s the job?

The official job title is Senior Developer Advocate. This job has two main areas of focus, namely:

  1. Developer education. This involves educating developers about identity in general and Auth0’s identity-as-a-service platform in particular. You’ll do this by:
    • Speaking at events
    • Creating live and pre-recorded video content
    • Writing articles, how-tos, and other instructional material
    • Editing other authors’ articles, how-tos, and other instructional material
    • Appearing on podcasts (or hey, even creating one!)
    • Working in any other creative medium to communicate about Auth0 and identity
  2. Community outreach. This involves serving the larger developer community by answering questions, listening to feedback, and being Auth0’s technical ambassador on various online venues, including discussion forums, chat applications, GitHub, social media. You’ll also relay feedback to other teams at Auth0 with the goal of improving the developer experience.

The job also involves working with related teams and programs, including:

  • Auth0’s Apollo Program, which encourages the developer community outside Auth0 to share their expertise by writing articles for the Auth0 blog. I myself have worked with a number of guest authors by editing their work and helping bring it to the Auth0 Blog’s sizable audience. And yes, writers get paid (and alsop get cool swag) for their effort!
  • Auth0’s Ambassador Program, which empowers developers all over the work to learn about identity and the Auth0 platform and then share that knowledge with their communities. Auth0 Ambassadors have access to travel support, exclusive swag, perks, technical skill development, and the Auth0 developer relations team.
  • Avocado Labs, our online show where we present topics of interest to developers or have guest speakers share their deep tech knowledge.

What qualifications are we looking for?

What qualifications will a successful candidate have? The job page has a bulleted list, and I’ve taken those bullets and turned them into the handy table below:

General skill Details
Software development 3+ years experience as a developer. It can be front-end or back-end (or hey, both!) in a programming language that’s either in wide general use (JavaScript, for example) or up-and-coming (say, Go and Rust).
Education You should be an educator at heart who loves teaching developers how to build amazing things. You must be comfortable taking complex topics and making them accessible to developers of different experience levels.
People skills You must enjoy serving the community and helping fellow developers get better at their jobs. The job will involve speaking in front of groups of developers at conferences and meetups, or online.
Content creation We need strong independent contributors, who also enjoy collaborating with teammates and multi-functional teams. Writing and research are important for this job — you’ll be the first to try new APIs and products, write code snippets and sample applications, and articulate ways they can be improved to make all developers’ lives easier.
Work skills You are comfortable learning multiple skills simultaneously and managing multiple projects at once, while working remotely at an organization that’s undergoing some big changes.

This is a community-facing job, which means that there’ll be travel involved once it’s safe to do so. It may take up to 30% of your time.

Candidates from underrepresented backgrounds often don’t apply unless they meet all the job criteria. Let me make it clear right now: We’re not using a checklist and considering only those people who can check every last box — instead, we’re looking for lifelong learners and people who can make us better with their unique experiences. If you think you’d be a great fit, apply!

Is this a remote/work-from-home job?

One of my offices.

Yes, it is! Better still, Auth0 has a home office expense and reimbursement policy that allows you to expense items for your home office so that you can do your job effectively. Simply put, Auth0 paid for my Autonomous adjustable desk and ergonomic office chair, pictured below:

What’s it like working at Auth0?

I often get asked “How are things going at Auth0?”, and my answer is always the same: They’re going very, very well. But don’t take my word for it — take it from the Forbes/Great Place to Work survey, which put us in the 100 Best Small and Medium Workplaces for Millennials.

According to the results of our most recent survey (in which I participated), the general feeling at Auth0 is that it’s a great place to work. 99% of Auziros (our own inside term for “Auth0 employee”) say so, which is well above the U.S.-based company average of 59%.

Here are some other stats on what Auziros said in the survey:

  • “I’m proud to tell others I work here.”: 100%
  • “When you join the company, you are made to feel welcome.”: 100%
  • “People here are given a lot of responsibility.”: 99%
  • “People here are willing to give extra to get the job done.”: 99%
  • “People care about each other here.”: 99%

How to apply for the job

Go to the Senior Developer Advocate job page, read the job description to make sure it’s the job you want to apply for, and then fill out the form on that page.

Super secret helpful hints: Everything you need to know to land the job, if you’re really up for it, is in my article How I landed my job at Auth0.

Want some insights on the job from actual Auth0 Developer Advocates? Check out these interviews on the Thunder Nerds podcast with these team members:

Are there other job openings at Auth0?

Yes — lots of them. Check out our Careers page to see them all.

Do you have any questions about the job or working at Auth0?

Feel free to ask in the comments, and I’ll happily answer!

Categories
Conferences Security

Okta/Auth0’s developer day: “Auth for All” – Tuesday, Aug. 24!

Tired of writing the login part of your application? Would you rather work what your API actually does rather than work on securing it? Want to know what identity, authorization, and authentication are, and how you can use them to create applications that give your users great, secure experiences?

Then you’ll want to attend Okta’s and Auth0’s virtual developer day, Auth for All, which happens on Tuesday, August 24! The theme will be “Build the future of identity with us,” and it’ll be a day of celebrating developers around the world while learning how identity empowers builders of all kinds to innovate.

And in case you were wondering…

The agenda

WhenSession
1:00 p.m. EDT /
10:00 a.m. PDT		Platform + Chat Room Opens
1:30 p.m. EDT to
2:15 p.m. EDT / 10:30 a.m. PDT to
11:15 a.m. PDT		Opening Keynote: Build the Future of Identity with Us

In today’s keynote, we’ll kick off Developer Day by celebrating developers like you building for the web, mobile, cloud infrastructure, and everywhere else code runs around the world. Then, lifelong hacker and security expert Alyssa Miller will share updates from the world of cyber security that will help you build your apps and infrastructure with
2:30 a.m. EDT to
3:00 p.m. EDT / 11:30 p.m. PDT to
12:00 p.m. PDT		Traveling Through a Secure API in Python

In this talk, we will see how you can use Python and Auth0 together to build your very own “Where Have I Been” map! I will walk you through all the steps we will need starting from scratch. From building the first API endpoints, protecting the endpoints that create new markers, all the data manipulation, and even deployment!
2:30 a.m. EDT to
3:00 p.m. EDT / 11:30 p.m. PDT to
12:00 p.m. PDT		Auth for IOT: Securing Your Smart Home

Have you moved into a new house and want to automate all the things? Sounds pretty cool, right? Just one tiny concern: how secure is it to use “smart home” devices? Should you create your own software to control your blinds? What about hacking your cameras? The world of IoT (Internet of Things) has so many options to choose from but very little guidance about how secure they are, and how you as a developer can prevent unauthorized access. In this session, we will go over what you can do with existing platforms like Alexa and roll your own DIY projects to lock down who can use them – YOU.
2:30 a.m. EDT to
3:00 p.m. EDT / 11:30 p.m. PDT to
12:00 p.m. PDT		OAuth: Past, Present, and Future

OAuth is the foundation of most of modern online security, used everywhere from signing in to mobile apps to protecting your bank accounts. Despite its ubiquity, there are still many misconceptions about OAuth and OpenID Connect in the wild.

In this session you’ll learn about the background and original motivations that drove the creation of OAuth, how OAuth and OpenID Connect are used today to provide secure online experiences, as well as the latest developments and future work within the OAuth and OpenID Connect communities.

This session will cover the many new RFCs that have been published since the original draft of OAuth 2.0, which both add and remove functionality from the core spec. These include OAuth 2.0 for Native Apps, Proof Key for Code Exchange, OAuth 2.0 Security Best Current Practice, as well as some in-progress and experimental drafts such as JWT Access Tokens, Rich Authorization Requests, and various Proof of Possession techniques. This session will cover the current status of this ongoing work and what you need to know to be prepared for the future.
3:15 p.m. 3:15 p.m. EDT to
3:45 p.m. EDT / 12:15 p.m. PDT to
12:45 p.m. PDT		Authenticating Your Next(js) Jamstack App
3:15 p.m. EDT to
3:45 p.m. EDT / 12:15 p.m. PDT to
12:45 p.m. PDT		Inclusive Digital Identity and Web Monetization for Earning Online

Digital IDs controlled by the users enables users to seamlessly onboard to any web app or platform. With Web Monetization, users can earn freely and spend freely from their digital Identity connected wallets. This talk with highlight two open standards, the Verifiable Credential Standard and the Web Monetization Standard and show how developers can build with them today.
3:15 p.m. EDT to
3:45 p.m. EDT / 12:15 p.m. PDT to
12:45 p.m. PDT		Seamlessly Integrate Identity Into Your APIs with Okta and Kong

Learn how to implement powerful new authentication and authorization scenarios with Kong and Okta. In this demo-heavy session, we will show you how to do sophisticated API access and API management flows with OIDC and OAuth – including how to plug in Identity into your CI/CD pipelines.
4:00 p.m. EDT to
4:30 p.m. EDT / 1:00 p.m. PDT to
1:30 p.m. PDT		Shift-Left DevOps for Your APIs with Okta and JFrog

With Okta and JFrog, strengthen your shift-left DevSecOps strategy by validating the security of your application’s REST API endpoints before you release to production and to your customers. Learn how you can use Okta and JFrog to automate the validation of your authentication and authorization policies for your REST APIs.
4:00 p.m. EDT to
4:30 p.m. EDT / 1:00 p.m. PDT to
1:30 p.m. PDT		OAuth for Game and XR Developers

Gaming and XR technology represent a wild west for identity security. The industry itself is one of the most highly targeted and breach prone in all of tech, yet security is commonly prioritized last. Often user experience is emphasised over security and best practice standards are not always a perfect fit for some target platforms such as consoles or headsets. With constantly increasing demand for interconnected experiences in gaming, growing reliance on cloud based backend solutions, and the increased collection of player data occurring as players become the product, security has become paramount for game developers. In this talk, we will deep dive into how game and XR developers can balance experience and security using the security best practice standard OAuth. We will discuss the basics of OAuth, designing experiences for different target platforms, and using a player’s authorization to interact with other cloud based backend solutions. This session is intended for game/XR developers, or developers who are interested in game/XR development, and assumes a basic level of development knowledge with related engines and tech. Existing experience with identity security best practices and OAuth are not required.
4:00 p.m. EDT to
4:30 p.m. EDT / 1:00 p.m. PDT to
1:30 p.m. PDT		Securing Authorization In Your Web Apps
4:45 p.m. EDT to
5:15 p.m. EDT / 1:45 p.m. PDT to
2:15 p.m. PDT		Closing Keynote with Cassidy Williams
7:00 p.m. EDT / 4:00 p.m. PDTChat Room Closes

Once again, I remind you…

This image has an empty alt attribute; its file name is auth-for-all-600x143.png

Register now!

Categories
Current Events Tampa Bay

What’s happening in the Tampa Bay tech/entrepreneur/nerd scene (Week of Monday, July 19, 2021)

Here’s your weekly list of tech, entrepreneur, and nerd events — plus a little area tech news — for Tampa Bay and surrounding areas for the week of Monday, July 19 through Sunday, July 25, 2021.

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 Bay and surrounding areas. There’s a lot going on in our scene here in “The Other Bay Area, on the Other West Coast”!

I’m moving this list to Fridays so that you’ve got more time to plan for the upcoming week. Let me know if this change works for you (or if it doesn’t)!

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.

This week’s events

Monday, July 19

Tuesday, July 20

Wednesday, July 21

Thursday, July 22

Friday, July 23

Saturday, July 24

Sunday, July 25

Tampa Bay area news roundup

The boomerang-worker boom

“Boomerang workers” — those who’ve returned to their hometowns to do remote work — rose with the pandemic, but the phenomenon shows signs of sticking around beyond it. For example, a large number of Tampa Bay natives have returned to the area after stints in bigger cities, bringing their contact lists and industry expertise with them.

Tampa emerges as a growing tech hub, but what does that really mean?

Over the last decade, the Tampa Bay Area has transitioned into a place that helps technology startup companies succeed, making it possible for them to show up on the national radar. Capital sources across the country have begun referring to Tampa as a top emerging market. 

Tampa serial entrepreneurs unveil latest startup with focus on real estate tech

iApartments was founded in 2019 and born out of the three co-founders’ experience working in the industry. Fiske is a founding partner of Unikey Technologies, which operated in the smart home industry. He also an entrepreneur-in-residence at the Tampa Bay Wave, a local startup incubator. iApartments CEO Dave Magrisso is the founder of Valet Waste, which is now known as Valet Living. Rounding out the team is Mohammed Syed, the company’s co-founder, CTO and former technology partner at AutoWeb.

Meet Spectrio, a 2021 Fast 50 honoree

Spectrio is an Oldsmar-based provider of customer engagement technology and a 2021 Fast 50 honoree.

St. Pete cybersecurity startup launches, raises $5M Series A

A St. Petersburg-based cybersecurity company has spent the last three years testing its technology and is now ready to unveil its platform — along with a solid funding announcement.

“We have spent the last three years to come out like a lion,” Code-X founder and CEO Darren LaCroix said.

The company offers a software as a service platform, which protects sensitive information across multiple environments concurrently. The platform includes video, email and chat functions that can work simultaneously without the threat of being hacked.

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
Design Process What I’m Up To

Working on an article for the Auth0 blog

Tap to view my scribbling at full size.

I like drawing out my article ideas for the Auth0 Developer Blog before firing up the blog editor and typing. Here’s an example, which I was doodling this morning, which I made at the dealership while my car was being serviced.

Categories
Humor

The no-fun game for the whole IT department!

Thanks to Ramon Grajo for the find!