Categories
Humor

This photo reminds me of pre-Corona times, when I could go to tech conferences

Developer conferences are often close-packed affairs in trench-like spaces, there’s a tendency towards drab clothing, and while the situation has been steadily improving, they’re still largely sausage parties.

Categories
Current Events Tampa Bay

What’s happening in the Tampa Bay tech/entrepreneur/nerd scene (Week of Monday, October 26, 2020)

Once again, here’s the weekly list of events for events for Tampa Bay techies, entrepreneurs, and nerds. Every week, on GlobalNerdy.com and on the mailing list, I scour the announcements for events that are interesting to or useful for those of you who are building the future here in “The Other Bay Area, on The Other West Coast”.

This list covers events from Monday, October 26 through Sunday, November 1, 2020. That’s right, this week has both Halloween and Day of the Dead!

I’ve opted to list only those events that I can confirm are happening online. I’m not yet listing in-person events, as we’re still in the middle of a pandemic in one of the hardest-hit states (752,000 cases, which is an increase of 23,000 since last week, and 15,916 deaths, which is up 700 from last week) in one of the hardest-hit countries in the world (8.14 million cases, which is an increase of 390,000 from last week, and 219,000 deaths, which is up 5,000 from last week).

Events — especially virtual, online ones — can pop up at the last minute. I add them to the list as I find out about them. Come back and check this article from time to time, as you might find a new listing that wasn’t there before!

Monday, October 26

Tuesday, October 27

Wednesday, October 28

Thursday, October 29

Friday, October 30

Saturday, October 31

Sunday, November 1

There aren’t any scheduled online tech, entrepreneur, and nerd events for Tampa Bay…yet!

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
Career Programming Tampa Bay

Introducing “Night Shift”: Suncoast Developers Guild’s coding bootcamp, but as evening classes!

If you’ve wanted to learn programming and web development through Suncoast Developer Guild’s excellent bootcamp, but couldn’t take 12 weeks off work to do so, they’re launching a new program that might work for you. It’s called Night Shift, and it’s their bootcamp program, but as a part-time after-hours course that you can take while keeping your day job!

Logo: “Night Shift” (Suncoast Developers Guild’s part-time night class)

Suncoast Developer Guild’s 12-week, full-time immersive coding bootcamp is an excellent program. I know the folks at SDG. I’ve done guest presentations at their classes. I’ve met many of their students, and have even worked with their graduates (and yes, by and large, they’re good).

But not everyone can drop their job to devote 12 full-time weeks to a course and cover the costs of tuition. Night Shift allows you to keep a full-time job and still learn take part in SDG’s well-regarded course by stretching the course over 36 weeks, with online lectures on Tuesday and Thursday evenings, and lab work in your spare time.

Think of it as more than just learning while still being able to cover the rent or mortgage. Think of it treating your day job as an angel investor in your new software development career.

I can tell you that having programming skills — especially in combination with other talents — is valuable. They can future-proof your work, open opportunities unavailable to many people, and help you weather seismic job market shifts like the ones COVID-19 is bringing about.

And now, the warning. In addition to devoting time to participating the Tuesday and Thursday evening lectures, you should expect to devote a couple of hours on most nights to your lab work. If you’re new to programming, you’re not only going to learn a lot of new concepts; you’ll also have to apply them in order to make working software. You’re also going to have to be creative, because you’ll have to come up with an idea for your end-of-course capstone project.

Simply put: Your spare time will vanish. You will work on a code editor and do Google searches for hours, and you will see them in your dreams. You will spend inordinate amounts of time trying to figure out higher-order functions, wondering why there are so many ways to create objects and functions in JavaScript, trying to understand the difference between == and === and experiencing all the other joys of working with a programming language whose original version had to be cobbled together in 10 days.

On the bright side, if you have a Netflix or videogame addiction, Night Shift is an effective (and productive!) way of quitting those “cold turkey”.

The folks at Suncoast Developers Guild aren’t just capitalizing on our software-driven economy to run a coding school. They’re key players in and supporters of the Tampa Bay tech scene. They support their students beyond just the coursework. If you think you can handle both your job and night classes (and a lot of time on your computer),Night Shift might be your first step into the world of software development.

Find out more in Suncoast Developer Guild’s press release for Night Shift.

Categories
Current Events

Whoever bought “ZoomDickIncident.com” is wasting their limited-time opportunity

Photo: An unhappy-looking Jeffrey Toobin, captioned with “ZoomDickIncident.com”.
He’s an author of several books, writing at the New Yorker since 1993 and a senior legal analyst at CNN since 2002, but guess what we’ll remember him for.

One of the things I learned at Tucows — you may still think of them as a shareware company, but they’re really the second-largest domain registrar in the world — is that there are all sorts of ways to make money from keyword-rich domain names, such as the possibly-lucrative ZoomDickIncident.com.

The classic way to cash in on a domain name is to buy one with the right keywords before the demand for it makes it valuable, and then sell it at a huge markup. irishwhiskey.com is a classic example — back in the early 2000s, it was up for sale at an auction for $300,000.

There are other, smaller-scale ways to make quick money with a domain name. One of them is to buy a domain name with keywords reflecting some big trend or news story, set up an inexpensive site or page with a little content and a lot of ads, and point the name there. For an hour or two of work, you can make a few hundred or thousand bucks this way. I’ve done this myself.

When the story about CNN reporter and New Yorker writer Jeffrey Toobin exposed himself on a Zoom call (something I’ve managed to not do, despite having spent the summer and fall teaching programming courses over Zoom in four-hour sessions a few days a week), I thought I might have a little lucrative fun. A page with a quick summary of Toobin’s up-till-now-impressive career, some Zoom tips, including etiquette, and of course, ads.

I went to my ride-or-die registrar, Hover (which is part of Tucows — I like giving my old workplace my business) and tried to get my hands on the “zoom dick incident” prize name: ZoomDickIncident.com. Unfortunately, domainers are always looking for opportunities like this and act quickly:

According to WHOIS records, it got snapped up on Monday, shortly after the story broke:

Domain Name: ZOOMDICKINCIDENT.COM
Registry Domain ID: 2566933359_DOMAIN_COM-VRSN
Registrar WHOIS Server: whois.domain.com
Registrar URL: http://www.domain.com
Updated Date: 2020-10-19T19:06:04Z
Creation Date: 2020-10-19T18:49:07Z
Registry Expiry Date: 2022-10-19T18:49:07Z
Registrar: Domain.com, LLC
Registrar IANA ID: 886
Registrar Abuse Contact Email: compliance@domain-inc.net
Registrar Abuse Contact Phone: 602-226-2389
Domain Status: ok https://icann.org/epp#ok
Name Server: NS1.DOMAIN.COM
Name Server: NS2.DOMAIN.COM
DNSSEC: unsigned
URL of the ICANN Whois Inaccuracy Complaint Form: https://www.icann.org/wicf/
>>> Last update of whois database: 2020-10-21T13:38:07Z <<<

Although the zoomdickincident.com buyer acted quickly, they’re failing on the follow-through. The domain points to a parking page at the time of writing:

What a waste of an opportunity! In a couple of weeks, searches for related keywords will dwindle to nothing, especially with the upcoming US elections, which will eat up the news cycles.

In the meantime, if you’re shopping around for a good name for your adult site, zoomdickincident is still available for many adult TLDs:

Categories
Current Events Tampa Bay

What’s happening in the Tampa Bay tech/entrepreneur/nerd scene (Week of Monday, October 19, 2020)

Once again, here’s the weekly list of events for events for Tampa Bay techies, entrepreneurs, and nerds. Every week, on GlobalNerdy.com and on the mailing list, I scour the announcements for events that are interesting to or useful for those of you who are building the future here in “The Other Bay Area, on The Other West Coast”.

This list covers events from Monday, October 19 through Sunday, October 25, 2020.

I’ve opted to list only those events that I can confirm are happening online. I’m not yet listing in-person events, as we’re still in the middle of a pandemic in one of the hardest-hit states (752,000 cases, which is an increase of 23,000 since last week, and 15,916 deaths, which is up 700 from last week) in one of the hardest-hit countries in the world (8.14 million cases, which is an increase of 390,000 from last week, and 219,000 deaths, which is up 5,000 from last week).

Events — especially virtual, online ones — can pop up at the last minute. I add them to the list as I find out about them. Come back and check this article from time to time, as you might find a new listing that wasn’t there before!

Monday, October 19

Tuesday, October 20

Wednesday, October 21

Thursday, October 22

Friday, October 23

Saturday, October 24

Sunday, October 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 Tampa Bay

Tampa Bay tech news roundup

The 17th annual Tampa Bay Tech Awards: November 12thLogo: PoweredUP - Tampa Bay Tech Awards

This year’s Tampa Bay Tech Awards will be online and take place on November 12th at 4:30 p.m.. St. Pete Catalyst has story, and the categories and finalists are:

  • Bridge Builder: “An individual in the community who is dedicated to building a radically connected tech ecosystem, whether through philanthropy, thought leadership or a commitment to social causes.” The nominees are:
    • Evan Brenner, Geographic Solutions
    • Brian Kornfeld, co-founder and President, Synapse
    • Suzanne Ricci, Executive Director, Computer Coach
  • Emerging Tech Leader of the Year
    • Erik Maltais, founder and CEO, Immertec
    • Kate Dalley, Director of Product Development, PowerChord
    • Samyr Qureshi, co-founder and CEO, Knack
  • Tech Leader of the Year
    • Balaji Ramadoss, founder and CEO, Edgility
    • Greg Ross-Munro, CEO, Sourcetoad
    • Jean Kneisler, vice president and CIO, Jabil
  • Tech Company of the Year
    • Digital Hands
    • InSync Healthcare Solutions
    • KnowBe4
  • Tech Project of the Year
    • Cope Notes
    • Geographic Solutions
    • Nextech
  • Emerging Tech Company of the Year
    • Chattr
    • NIX United
    • Venuetize

Tampa Bay Wave’s TechWomen Rising 2020 Cohort

Photo: Linda Olson speaks at a Tampa Bay Wave presentation.

The TechWomen Rising 2020 cohort, which comprises 13 tech woman-led tech startups selected by Tampa Bay Wave, has just been announced. TechWomen Rising is a JP Morgan Chase-funded accelerator program that gives women founders the resources to succeed in a world where male founders tend to get more startup capital earlier in their startup journey.

The startups are:

Tampa Bay Inno: Tampa Bay startups are getting recognized on a national scale

Here’s Tampa Bay Inno’s roundup of startups here in “The Other Bay Area” who are making waves at the national level. You can read the full article, which I’ve summarized below.

Logo: Florida Venture Forum’s Early Stage Capital Conference

Of the 18 companies presenting at Florida Venture Forum’s Early Stage Capital Conference, which took place on October 14th and 15th, four were from Tampa Bay: BlockSpaces, TSOLife, Wedzee, and Wherewithal (whom you might know by their original name, Fruutfull).

Logo: Venture Atlanta conference - VA20: Live onlineAt the Venture Atlanta conference, which happens on October 21st and 22nd, seven Tampa Bay companies will participate. Immertec and Knack were chosen to participate in the early stage companies presentation, while Chattr, Global Safety Management, ProCredEx, SoleVenture and TSOLife will be presenting compnies.

Logo: Startup of the year

The Startup of the Year Summit 2020 will take place on November 16th through 20th. Out of 100 semifinalists, four are from Tampa Bay: Grifin, JustProtect, Nickelytics, and RxLive.

RxLive is a special one for me, as I helped to shepherd it from concept to initial version during my time as Lead Product Manager at Sourcetoad. Best of luck to Mark and Kristen Engelen, RxLive’s co-founders!

 

Categories
Hardware

Before you freak out because iPhones no longer come with chargers…

…go check your drawers. I just opened the drawer on my right-side desk and this is what I saw:

Photo: An open drawer packed with USB chargers.
Tap to view at full size.

And these are the ones that aren’t being used to charge phones, iPads, Apple watches, or drive other USB-powered things including my videochat lighting rig.

You probably have lots of them around your place as well.