Categories
Current Events Tampa Bay

What’s happening in the Tampa Bay tech/entrepreneur/nerd scene (Week of Monday, May 24, 2021)

Creative Commons photo by Matthew Paulson — click here to see the original.

We’re approaching the end of May and the Memorial Day weekend! Here’s your list of tech, entrepreneur, and nerd events for Tampa Bay and surrounding areas for the week of Monday, May 24 through Sunday, May 30, 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”!

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.

How long will this list contain only ONLINE and OUTDOOR events?

Two Thursdays ago, the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) announced that anyone who is fully vaccinated — meaning that they had their final vaccine two weeks or longer ago — can now stop masking and social distancing, including indoors in many cases. That means this list will start including in-person events, right?

Not just yet. This list will stick to online and outdoor events for the time being.

As I write this:

  • 36.8% of the Florida population has been fully vaccinated (I’m one of them), and 46.9% has had their first dose.
  • 38.9% of the U.S. population has been fully vaccinated, and 49.1% has had their first dose.

Those numbers are a good sign, but I’m holding off on listing indoor in-person events until after the 4th of July for the following reasons:

  • Most of the events aimed at a tech, entrepreneur, or nerd audience are still being held online.
  • The CDC’s announcement depends on people exercising good judgement. We live in Florida. Do the math.
  • If the CDC’s call was right, we’ll know by July 4th. If the CDC’s call was wrong, we’ll also know by July 4th.

I’m looking forward to life getting back to normal, but I’m also happy to exercise a few weeks’ worth of caution because I think it’s worth it.

Stay home, stay safe, stay connected, and #MakeItTampaBay!

This week’s events

Monday, May 24

Tuesday, May 25

Wednesday, May 26

Thursday, May 27

Friday, May 28

Saturday, May 29

Sunday, May 30

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
Programming Reading Material

Get $411 worth of Python books for $18 with this Humble Bundle!

Once a year, Humble Bundle releases a bundle of No Starch Press’ excellent Python books, and it’s that time of year again! For the next 18 days from the time of this writing, you can get $411 worth of ebooks for as little as $18.

What you get for $1

The bundle is sold in tiers. If you pay only $1, you get this portion of the bundle, which makes for a great starter set for younger readers or if you’re thinking of getting into game development:

If these books alone for a dollar have piqued your interest, you can get them now by going to the Humble Bundle Python book page.

If a dollar is all you can spare, you’ll still be well-served by this deal. However, if you can spend a little more, the deal gets better…

What you get for $10 – $17.99

Pay between $10 and $17.99, and they’ll add these to the bundle:

In my opinion, the stand-out book in this tier is Serious Python, which cover languages features, tools, and techniques that you’ll need as you start writing applications that you or your customers will regularly use and rely upon.

If $17.99 is the most you can spare, you’re still getting a good deal, and you can go to the Humble Bundle Python book page and get your bundle now.

However, if you can part with $18 or more, you should read on…

What you get for $18 or more

And finally, if you pay $18 or more, they’ll throw in the gems of the collection:

If you’re serious about learning Python, you’ll want to pay $18 or more I used Python Crash Course and Automate the Boring Stuff with Python in the Python courses I taught last year.

Even though I bought the 2020 edition of this bundle, I bought the 2021 edition just to get Real World Python is a great way to learn some new tricks through its tour of algorithms and Python libraries. It was cheaper to buy the bundle than to buy Real World Python on its own. Do the math: You can pay $28 for Real World Python, or get all the books in the bundle for $10 less!

Beyond the Basic Stuff with Python is a great guide for writing more Pythonic code, Python One-Liners is worth it for just the NumPy and regex chapters alone, and Natural Language Processing with Python and spaCY packs an NLP course with lots of practical exercises into under 200 pages.

If the $18 bundle is what you’re looking for, go to Humble Bundle and get it while it’s still available!

The money goes to good causes

The proceeds from sales of this bundle go to:

The mission of the Python Software Foundation is to promote, protect, and advance the Python programming language, and to support and facilitate the growth of a diverse and international community of Python programmers. The majority of the PSF’s work is focused on empowering and supporting people within the Python community. The PSF has active grant programs that support sprints, conferences, meetups, user groups, and Python development efforts all over the world. In addition, the PSF underwrites and runs PyCon US, the primary Python community conference. Being part of the PSF means being part of the Python community. Recently we changed the PSF to an open membership organization, so that everyone who uses and supports Python can join.

To learn more, visit https://www.python.org/psf/membership.

The No Starch Press Foundation is an IRS 501 (c) (3) tax-exempt non-profit corporation created to support and grow the collective knowledge and contributions of the worldwide hacker community.

We support hackers of all types, regardless of experience — whether that’s the passionate beginner or the lifelong hacker wishing to make a broader contribution to the hacker community and the world.

The Foundation was formed to give back to and strengthen the hacking community. The Foundation’s founder, William Pollock, has been closely involved with the hacking community since about 1999 and much of the success of his company, No Starch Press, is due to the support of the worldwide hacking community. To date, Pollock has given over $800,000 to the Foundation and is working to expand its donor base. The Foundation’s funding will be used to help strengthen and expand the hacking community, by educating the public about hacking and working to create safe and central places for the hacking community.

Categories
Current Events Tampa Bay

What’s happening in the Tampa Bay tech/entrepreneur/nerd scene (Week of Monday, May 17, 2021)

We’ve just passed the middle of May! Here’s your list of tech, entrepreneur, and nerd events for Tampa Bay and surrounding areas for the week of Monday, May 17 through Sunday, May 23, 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”!

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.

How long will this list contain only ONLINE events?

Last Thursday, the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) announced that anyone who is fully vaccinated — meaning that they had their final vaccine two weeks or longer ago — can now stop masking and social distancing, including indoors in many cases. That means this list will start including in-person events, right?

Not just yet.

As I write this, 34.6% of the Florida population has been fully vaccinated (I’m one of them), and 45.1% has had at least one dose. Those numbers are a good sign, but I’m holding off on listing in-person events until after the 4th of July for the following reasons:

  • Most of the events aimed at a tech, entrepreneur, or nerd audience are still being held online.
  • The CDC’s announcement depends on people exercising good judgement. We live in Florida. Do the math.
  • If the CDC’s call was right, we’ll know by July 4th. If the CDC’s call was wrong, we’ll also know by July 4th.

I’m looking forward to life getting back to normal, but I’m also happy to exercise a few weeks’ worth of caution because I think it’s worth it.

Stay home, stay safe, stay connected, and #MakeItTampaBay!

This week’s events

Monday, May 17

Tuesday, May 18

Wednesday, May 19

Thursday, May 20

Friday, May 21

Saturday, May 22

Sunday, May 23

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 Programming Tampa Bay

“Python: A Bicycle for the Mind” — 9:00 a.m. this Wednesday at the Women Who Code Tampa online meetup!

I’m talking about Python at this Wednesday’s Women Who Code Tampa online event!

This Wednesday, May 12th, from 9:00 a.m. to 10:00 a.m. Eastern (UTC-4), I’ll be in an online session where I’ll talk about using Python as a “bicycle for the mind”. I’m going to present a couple of Python tricks that I actually use to be more productive.

This session is this week’s installment of Women Who Code Tampa’s Coffee + Code, a weekly online networking event featuring a tech topic.

Here are the relevant links:

What’s this about “Bicycle for the mind”?

It’s how Steve Jobs describes computers in his appearance in a 1990 documentary film called Memory & Imagination: New Pathways to the Library of Congress.

Here’s what he said:

I think one of the things that really separates us from the high primates is that we’re tool builders. I read a study that measured the efficiency of locomotion for various species on the planet.

The condor used the least energy to move a kilometer. And, humans came in with a rather unimpressive showing, about a third of the way down the list. It was not too proud a showing for the crown of creation. So, that didn’t look so good.

But, then somebody at Scientific American had the insight to test the efficiency of locomotion for a man on a bicycle. And, a man on a bicycle, a human on a bicycle, blew the condor away, completely off the top of the charts.

And that’s what a computer is to me. What a computer is to me is it’s the most remarkable tool that we’ve ever come up with, and it’s the equivalent of a bicycle for our minds.

Categories
Current Events Tampa Bay

What’s happening in the Tampa Bay tech/entrepreneur/nerd scene (Week of Monday, May 10, 2021)

Happy first week of May! Here’s your list of tech, entrepreneur, and nerd events for Tampa Bay and surrounding areas for the week of Monday, May 10 through Sunday, May 16, 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”!

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.

Yes, many of us have had their first (and even second!) vaccines, but we’re not at the point where it’s advisable to return to pre-pandemic-style in-person events. It will happen soon, but in the meantime, I’m restricting this list to online events. In the age of broadband internet, smartphones, and social media, it’s not that hard. Stay home, stay safe, stay connected, and #MakeItTampaBay!

Monday, May 10

Tuesday, May 11

Wednesday, May 12

Thursday, May 13

Friday, May 14

Saturday, May 15

Sunday, May 16

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 Podcasts What I’m Up To

Watch my live podcast recording with the Thunder Nerds tonight!

Tonight, May 6th at 7:30 p.m. EDT (UTC-4), I’ll be the guest of Tampa Bay tech podcasters, the Thunder Nerds, and you can watch LIVE it as we record!

With 279 episodes so far, The Thunder Nerds have been at this for a long time. I’ll chat with hosts Frederick Philip von Weiss and Brian Hinton about all sorts of things, not the least of which is how their podcast was a key part of the research I did to land my job at Auth0.

I’m sure that a good chunk of our conversation will be about what working at Auth0 is like, authentication and authorization, and possibly the hardware and electronic music dabbling that I’ve been doing lately.

The Thunder Nerds record their podcasts in such a way that you can watch the recording process LIVE on YouTube, and can even type in questions or comments as it’s happening! If you’d like to see how the sausage is made, follow this link tonight at 7:30 p.m. EDT and watch the fun!

Categories
Podcasts Programming

What’s on Tampa Bay’s sci/tech podcasts (May 2021 edition)

Once again, it’s time to list Tampa Bay podcasts that you, the Global Nerdy reader, might find informative, interesting, and illuminating!

In the last list, I listed the podcasts from newest to longest-running. This time, I’m listing them from longest-running to newest:

  1. Thunder Nerds
  2. The 6 Figure Developer
  3. The Mike Dominick Show
  4. Friends That Code
  5. Space and Things

And now, the podcasts…

Thunder Nerds

Of the podcasts in this roundup, Thunder Nerds — “A conversation with the people behind the technology, that love what they do… and do tech good” — has been around the longest, with 279 episodes over five seasons to date. You’ve probably seen the hosts at local meetups and conferences; they’re Frederick Philip Von Weiss and Brian Hinton.

Auth0 logoThunder Nerds is sponsored by a company that’s near and dear to me, Auth0! That’s partly because they have a great authentication, authorization, and identity service, and partly because I work there in my role as a Senior R&D Content Engineer!

Here are Thunder Nerds’ podcasts since the last time I did a roundup of Tampa Bay podcasts:

279 – 💡 Super Friendly Design Systems with Dan Mall — In this episode, we get to speak with Dan Mall : Co-founder and CEO of Arcade, and Founder & CEO of SuperFriendly. We discuss the origins of SuperFriendly, Arcade, the “Get It Out of Your System‬” podcast, and more.

I’ll be recording an episode with the Thunder Nerds this Thursday!

This Thursday, I’ll chat with Brian and Frederick about  all sorts of developments since the last time I chatted with them, not the least of which is how their podcast was a key part of the research I did to land my job at Auth0.

I’m sure that a good chunk of our conversation will be about what working at Auth0 is like, authentication and authorization, the hardware and electronic music dabbling that I’ve been doing lately, and maybe even what my ideas for a post-lockdown world are.

The Thunder Nerds record their podcasts in such a way that you can watch the recording process LIVE on YouTube, and can even type in questions or comments as it’s happening! If you’d like to see how the sausage is made, follow this link next Thursday evening at 7:30 p.m. EDT and watch the fun!

The 6 Figure Developer

At the time I’m writing this, The 6 Figure Developer — hosted by John Callaway, Clayton Hunt, and Jon Ash — has posted 178 episodes. It’s…

…a show dedicated to helping developers to grow their career. Topics include Test Driven Development, Clean Code, Professionalism, Entrepreneurship, as well as the latest and greatest programming languages and concepts.

Here are The 6 Figure Developer’s podcasts since the last time I did a roundup of Tampa Bay podcasts:

  • Episode 193 — Software Coaching with GeePaw Hill — GeePaw Hill is a coach – a professional harvester of the value of change — in the software development industry. A geek for forty years, he’s spent the last two decades helping individuals, teams, and organizations take steps to become closer to who or how they wish to be.
  • Episode 192 — Blazor with Carl Franklin — Carl Franklin is Executive Vice President of App vNext, a software development firm focused on modern methodologies and technologies. Carl is a 20+ year veteran of the software industry, co-host and founder of .NET Rocks!, the first and most widely listened to podcast for .NET developers, a Microsoft MVP for Developer Technologies, and Senior Executive of Pwop Studios, a full-service audio and video production/post production studio located in Southeastern Connecticut.
  • Episode 191 — Scrum with Dr. Jeff Sutherland — After 11 years in the military he became a doctor at the University of Colorado School of Medicine. Sutherland contributed to the creation of the Agile Manifesto in 2001. Along with Ken Schwaber, he wrote and maintains The Scrum Guide, which contains the official definition of the framework.
  • Episode 190 — Microservices with Sean Whitesell —Sean is a Microsoft MVP, ASP Insider, Technical Reviewer, and Cloud Architect at TokenEx.
  • Episode 189 — Reactive DDD with Vaughn Vernon — Vaughn Vernon is an entrepreneur, software developer, and architect with more than 35 years of experience in a broad range of business domains. Vaughn is a leading expert in Domain-Driven Design and Reactive, and champions simplicity. He consults and teaches around Domain-Driven Design and Reactive software development, helping teams and organizations realize the potential of business-driven and reactive systems as they transform from technology-driven legacy web implementation approaches. Vaughn is the author of three books: Implementing Domain-Driven Design, Reactive Messaging Patterns with the Actor Model, and Domain-Driven Design Distilled, all published by Addison-Wesley.
  • Episode 188 — Designing for Scale with James Avery — James is the Founder and CEO of Kevel, previously known as Adzerk. Kevel is the next generation of publisher ad serving; offering the infrastructure APIs needed to quickly build custom ad platforms for sponsored listings, internal promotions, native ads, and more. It’s built to be faster, easier to use, and more comprehensive than anything on the market today.

The Mike Dominick Show

The Mike Dominick Show is the second-newest of the podcasts in this list, and it has an open source focus.

His most recent podcasts:

Friends That Code

Friends That Code is hosted by Mike Traverso, whom locals may know from the Tampa Bay Google Developers Group meetup and other Google-y events. In this podcast, he showcases…

…some amazing people I know that just happen to write code for a living. Whether they started off intending to code or just happened into it, we get to hear about the types of people you’ll meet, things you’ll get to do, jobs you’ll have along the way, and advice from some awesome coders along the way!

Here are Friends That Code’s podcasts since the last time I did a roundup of Tampa Bay podcasts:

Space and Things

Space and Things is the newest podcast on this list, and it has the distinction of being the only one here that isn’t about software development. Instead, it’s about…well, you get three guesses. Just read its name.

Space and Things features two hosts:

  • Emily Carney: A veteran of the United States Navy, Carney became a freelance writer back in 2008 and started a blog called This Space Available, which is hosted by the National Space Society.In 2011, Carney founded a facebook group Space Hipsters, of which I am a member. Originally intended to be a place to share news and insights amongst friends, this community has now grown to close to 20,000 members including astronauts, engineers, scientists, historians and space flight enthusiasts from around the globe.
  • Dave Giles: Giles is a singer/songwriter from London, England who has always had a passion for space flight. Since his early years he’s been looking skyward and though he ended up wielding a guitar for a living, space exploration is alway on his mind and one of his most popular songs is about astronaut Gene Cernan, ‘The Last Man On The Moon’.In 2019 to celebrate the 50th anniversary of Apollo 11, Giles visited all of the crewed space vehicles flown by NASA from Freedom 7 to the Space Shuttle Orbiters.

Here are Space and Things’ podcasts since the last time I did a roundup of Tampa Bay podcasts:

  • Remembering Michael Collins — We decided we needed to record an extra podcast to celebrate the life of Michael Collins, who died on Wednesday 28th April at the age of 90.
  • STP 35 — This week we talk about a true unsung hero. Gerard K. O’Neill. His work about space colonies was truly ground breaking and his book ‘The High Frontier’ is one of the most inspiring there is. O’Neill is the subject of a new movie, ‘The High Frontier – The Untold Story Of Gerard K. O’Neill’ and we’re joined by three members of the production team to discuss O’Neill and the movie: Director Ryan Stuit; writer and producer Will Henry; and executive producer Dylan Taylor.
  • STP 34 — April 22nd is Earth Day, so today we are joined by BluShift Aerospace CEO Sascha Deri and communications director Seth Lockman to talk to us about what they’re doing to try and kickstart the conversations in the aerospace industry about sustainability and using non toxic biofuels.
  • STP 33 — This week we take a look at the very first Space Shuttle mission which took place on April 12th 1981. To do this we’re joined by the wonderful author David Hitt who wrote the book ‘Bold They Rise: The Space Shuttle Early Years’.
  • STP 32 — On April 12th it’s the 60th anniversary of Yuri Gagarin’s first spaceflight, so we asked author Stephen Walker to join us. He has just released a wonderful book called ‘Beyond’ all about Gagarin and it’s a belter.
  • STP 31 — Today Lego release a brand new Space Shuttle Discovery set which also includes the Hubble Space Telescope, so we thought it was a great time to talk Lego and space with Charlie Nangle who runs one of our favourite instagram accounts: The Brick Space.
  • STP 30 — On Friday, the news broke that legendary NASA flight director Glynn Lunney had passed away aged 84. We spend some time talking about his finest moments and do our best to pay tribute to one of our heroes. To do this we’re joined by author of “Go, Flight! The Unsung Heroes of Mission Control” – Rick Houston.