Categories
Current Events Tampa Bay

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

Here’s your list of tech, entrepreneur, and nerd events for Tampa Bay and surrounding areas for the week of Monday, April 19 through Sunday, April 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 Bat 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!

This week’s events

Monday, April 19

Tuesday, April 20

Wednesday, April 21

Thursday, April 22

Friday, April 23

Saturday, April 24

Sunday, April 25

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

I’m giving away my Python tricks at “Women Who Code Tampa” next month

Next month, on May 12th from 9:00 to 10:00 a.m. Eastern, I’m going to facilitate an online “Coffee and Code” session with the Women Who Code Tampa meetup, and according to the event description, I’ll be talking about Python.

But it’ll be a little bit more than just Python. It’ll be about using Python to automate certain tasks and assist you in others.

You can learn a lot about a programming language from the coding projects featured in tutorials, but sometimes, that problems tackled in those projects can seem as if they don’t apply to the the kinds of problems that you’d like to tackle with code.

In the upcoming “Coffee and Code”, I’m going to show you how I use Python and Jupyter Notebooks to automate certain tasks to give me more time during the day and make those tasks less error-prone.

Consider the list of Tampa Bay tech, entrepreneur, and nerd events that I publish every week (and its companion mailing list). I started publishing a few years ago, and in the beginning, I created it manually, copying and pasting text and links from Meetup.com and other places.

In the beginning, there weren’t that many events in the area, and putting the list together would take about an hour. As Tampa Bay’s tech scene grew bigger, more events came up, and creating the list grew into a task that could easily take up two or three hours — sometimes even longer.

That’s when I decided to create a couple of Python scripts to speed up the process. I’ll show you how I put those scripts together, and even give you to the code so that you can tinker with it and create your own tools to automate your life and make it easier.

That’s my plan — to show you how I think when I’m trying to use Python to automate processes and solve problems in my everyday life and work, and give you concrete code examples that you can use, modify, experiment with, and learn from!

Join me at the Women Who Code Tampa meetup on Thursday, May 12 at 9:00 EDT and see how you can use Python as an everyday assistant!

Categories
Career

Auth0 is looking for a developer advocate!

Can you answer “yes” to all these questions?

  • Are you looking for a new job?
  • Would you like to work with me?
  • Do you have programming skills, particularly with back-end .NET or Java?
  • Can you write technical and marketing articles well?
  • Can you deliver technical presentations to an audience well?
  • Are you based in the U.S. or Canada?
  • Can you work remotely with a global team?

Were you able to answer all the questions above with a definite “yes”? If so, you might be the very person we need to fill the role of Senior Developer Advocate at Auth0!

Remind me again — what does Auth0 do?

Every month, Auth0 processes 4.5 billion login transactions.

I’ll let this video — which is only 1 minute and 33 seconds long — explain in a little more detail:

 

Simply put, we are in the business of digital identity. In a heavily-networked world with processing power everywhere, knowing who every user is and what they’re allowed to do on a given system becomes fundamentally important.

This is a hybrid role

In this role, you would split your time between two major categories of activity:

  1. Developer relations: Actively reaching out to developers to educate them about identity in general and Auth0 in particular through speaking at events, appearing in videos and podcasts, creating tutorials and other training material, answering questions in forums, and generally being Auth0’s representative to the developer community and the developer community’s representative to Auth0.
  2. Developer content: Creating, curating, and editing content for developers (primarily written, but we’re expanding into audio, video, and whatever new medium comes up) on the Auth0 blog, which is in one of the top 1000 most-accessed sites on the internet.

You would be part of the Developer Marketing group, which in turn is part of the Marketing department.

What’s the team like?

Creative Commons photo by “Wonder woman0731”. Tap to view the source.

This is a high-performance team that does publicly visible technical work for a high-profile unicorn (as in “privately held startup company with a valuation of $1 billion or more”). It means that each member not only has to excel individually, but also that we truly shine we we combine our skills to produce results. Even though we’re spread over Europe, North and South America, and Australia, we stay in close contact, communicate regularly, and deliver work consistently and reliably.

It’s also a high-trust team. We listen to each other, help each other out, hand out the high-fives freely when one of us succeeds, and the condolences and offers of assistance when one of us doesn’t. We have each other’s backs.

Simply put, it’s a “two beers and a puppy” team.

For each and every person on the team, I would answer “yes” to both these questions:

  1. Would I have two beers with this person?
  2. Would I allow this person to look after my puppy over a weekend?

What’s it like to work there?

It’s great. In spite of rapid growth over the past three years, we’ve taken great care to maintain their culture, philosophy and “feel”.

Auth0’s works hard at maintaining three key values:

  1. One team, one score: Yes, what each person accomplishes on their own is important, but the really big thing is when the entire team succeeds. We celebrate both. This isn’t a “not my circus; not my monkeys” kind of place.
  2. N + 1 > N: We’re always trying to get to n + 1 and make improvements — to ourselves, our teams, the way we do things, and the services we provide. This isn’t a place for passive bystanders.
  3. The final value is my personal favorite: We give a shit. these four words speak volumes about the work environment at Auth0, including the fact that we care deeply about the work we do and how we get it done, and that we’re not stiff and overly corporate. This isn’t a place for an IDGAF attitude.

As an employee, you’ll get good work equipment and swag…

…and we’ll cover some of the costs for improving your setup with their home office expense and reimbursement policy, which I used to upgrade to a standing desk and ergonomic chair:

Also:

  • You’ll be paid well and get good benefits.
  • There’s actual work-life balance.
  • The vacation/paid time off policy is: no minimum or maximum number of vacation days, and you’re generally encouraged to take 3 weeks off per year in addition to holidays.
  • You may want to research recent business news for recent announcements, say around the first few days of March, and factor it into your decision to join.

What’s the interview process like?

Luckily for you, there are a number of articles on exactly this topic:

Okay, I’m sold. How do I apply?

Drop me a line and let’s start a conversation!

Categories
Current Events Tampa Bay

Interesting Tampa Bay meetups this week, part 1

Here’s a selection of Tampa Bay meetups happening today and tomorrow. To see this week’s meetups, see What’s happening in the Tampa Bay tech/entrepreneur/nerd scene (Week of Monday, April 12, 2021).

Python tutorial (Monday, 7:00 p.m.)

Tonight at 7:00 p.m., the Tampa Cyber Security Awareness Meetup Group will host a Python tutorial. If you’ve been putting off learning it, this is your chance to get started.

🌐 Meetup: Tampa Cyber Security Awareness Meetup Group — Python tutorial

12 things you may be doing wrong in your job search (Tuesday, 10:00 a.m.)

Tomorrow at 10:00 AM (not PM — the info on the Meetup page is wrong), Computer Coach will host the 12 Things You May Be Doing Wrong in Your Job Search workshop, where they’ll cover a dozen common mistakes that people make when looking for work — and how to correct them.

🌐 Meetup: Tampa Bay Tech Career Advice Forum — 12 Things You May Be Doing Wrong in Your Job Search

Introduction to identity for developers (Tuesday, 7:00 p.m.)

Tomorrow at 7:00 PM, the St. Pete .NET Meetup will present Introduction to Identity for developers with Christos Matskas, which will cover implementing authentication and authorization for your applications using the Microsoft Identity platform.

🌐 Meetup: St. Pete .NET Meetup — Introduction to Identity for developers with Christos Matskas

Categories
Current Events Tampa Bay

What’s happening in the Tampa Bay tech/entrepreneur/nerd scene (Week of Monday, April 12, 2021)

Here’s your list of tech, entrepreneur, and nerd events for Tampa Bay and surrounding areas for the week of Monday, April 12 through Sunday, April 18, 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 Bat 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.

For the time being, I’m restricting this list to online events. We’re still deep in a pandemic, and the way out is to stop the spread, however we can. In the age of broadband internet, smartphones, and social media, it’s not that hard. Stay home, stay safe, stay connected, and #MakeItTampaBay!

This week’s events

Monday, April 12

Tuesday, April 13

Wednesday, April 14

Thursday, April 15

Friday, April 16

Saturday, April 17

Sunday, April 18

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’s happening in the Tampa Bay tech/entrepreneur/nerd scene (Week of Monday, April 5, 2021)

Here’s your list of tech, entrepreneur, and nerd events for Tampa Bay and surrounding areas for the week of Monday, April 5 through Sunday, April 11, 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 Bat 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.

For the time being, I’m restricting this list to online events. We’re still deep in a pandemic, and the way out is to stop the spread, however we can. In the age of broadband internet, smartphones, and social media, it’s not that hard. Stay home, stay safe, stay connected, and #MakeItTampaBay!

Monday, April 5

Tuesday, April 6

Wednesday, April 7

Thursday, April 8

Friday, April 9

Saturday, April 10

Sunday, April 11

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

Friday 5: Useful things for coders (April 2, 2021 edition)

Every Friday, I publish the Friday 5, a list of 5 links to useful things for coders.

In this week’s Friday 5: a closer look at JavaScript’s ternary operator, JSON’s interop vulnerabilities, a free Python course on Udemy, reading, editing, and erasing Exif metadata from photos, and questioning a specific kind of interview question.

Rethinking the JavaScript Ternary Operator

JavaScript’s version of the ternary operator — ?:, also known as the “conditional operator”, is examined very thoroughly in this article. It goes beyond the standard “avoid it; it makes your code hard to read” advice, and shows cases where it does make your code easier to read, reason about, and maintain.

Check it out: Rethinking the JavaScript Ternary Operator

An Exploration of JSON Interoperability Vulnerabilities

“TL;DR: The same JSON document can be parsed with different values across microservices, leading to a variety of potential security risks. If you prefer a hands-on approach, try the labs and when they scare you, come back and read on.”

Check it out: An Exploration of JSON Interoperability Vulnerabilities

Get the Automate the Boring Stuff with Python course for free!

For a limited time only — that is, until Sunday, April 4, you can get the Udemy course based on the book Automate the Boring Stuff with Python for free! The book, and hence the course, is quite good; in fact, I used it as one of the texts for the Python courses I taught last year. Just click the link above or use the coupon code APR2021FREE at checkout.

Check it out: The Automate the Boring Stuff with Python course on Udemy — for free!

JavaScript and Photos: Read, Edit, and Erase Location and Other Exif Metadata

I’ll admit it — this article’s mine; I wrote it for work. It covers the use of the Piexifjs JavaScript library to read, edit, and erase the Exif metadata in digital photos.

Check it out: JavaScript and Photos: Read, Edit, and Erase Location and Other Exif Metadata

Why do interviewers ask linked list questions?

It doesn’t happen often in interviews for front-end developers, but I have been asked linked list questions in interviews for native mobile and back-end positions. Mind you, I haven’t actually needed to build a linked list for anything work-related — ever. So why do interviewers ask linked list questions?

Check it out: Why do interviewers ask linked list questions?