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Humor

Programmers — Before, during, and after COVID-19

It is nice work if you can get it.

Thanks to Kristan Uccello for the find!

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Current Events Tampa Bay

Next Tuesday is Tential Tuesday!

Banner: “Digital Transformation — The Driving Need” / Speaker Siddarth Rao, CIO of Axogen / 5:15 p.m.

Tential have been good to the Tampa tech community and me personally (during my own personal job crisis last year, which I’ll write about later), and they continue to be good, even when we’re all staying at home, and hopefully working remotely. Their goodness continues with the upcoming Tential Tuesday, which takes place online next Tuesday, March 31st, at 5:15 p.m.!

The topic will be Digital Transformation — The Driving Need, and the speaker will be Siddarth Rao, CIO, Head of IT and Digital Transformation of Axogen, a company focused specifically on the science, development and commercialization of technologies for peripheral nerve regeneration and repair. I assume that “Axogen” gets its name from axon (a nerve fiber) and regeneration.

Sign up for the online event; they’ll post the Zoom link soon.

I’ll see you there! In the meantime, here’s the Tential Tuesday jingle, which I performed at BarCamp Tampa Bay:

 

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Current Events Tampa Bay

What’s happening in the Tampa Bay tech/entrepreneur/nerd scene (Week of Monday, March 23, 2020)

Hello, Tampa Bay techie, entrepreneur, and nerd friends! I hope that you’re safe, symptom-free, and social distancing!

Pictured above is my front porch, where I’ve decided to take advantage of the current good weather, comfortable temperatures, and Seminole Heights views. Lilypad, my place of work, has been really good about giving people the choice of working remotely for the past couple of weeks, and in the past few days, they’ve told everyone to work from home.

This will probably be the first of a few weeks’ of very interesting, very different weekly lists. I’m going to include only online/webinar/web-chat events in the list as my part in helping combat the spread of COVID-19.

This week’s online events

Monday, March 23

Tuesday, March 24

Wednesday, March 25

Thursday, March 26

Friday, March 27

Saturday, March 28

Sunday, March 29

(No events listed)

Additional news

A “stay at home” order this week?

Mayor Jane Castor has told WTSP 10 News that it was extremely likely that a “stay at home” order for all of Hillsborough County will be issued this week — and from the look of things, it will happen early this week. Earlier this weekend, she said that she expected that a state- or area-wide “stay at home” order would go out, and failing that, the Hillsborough Emergency Policy Group will discuss issuing a local order during a meeting Monday afternoon at 1:30 p.m..

Simply put: Expect a Hillsborough County “stay at home” order as early as Monday afternoon and plan accordingly. The order would still allow essential trips, such as going to the grocery store, solitary exercise, or even to “get fresh air”, as long as you maintained a safe distance from other people. Non-essential trips would not be allowed.

Got an online event?

Expect lots of last-minute online events to happen for the next little while. If you’ve got one that you’d like announced on the mailing list and on GlobalNerdy.com, let me know!

Want to participate in a COVID-19-related software project, or start one?

HelpWithCovid.com is an online listing of COVID-19-related projects looking for talent, including remote software talent. If you’ve got the time and the skill, you might want to find a project and lend a hand, or start one yourself.

 

Categories
Current Events Tampa Bay

What I’ve been up to this week

Tap the photo to see it at full size.

Hello, Global Nerdy readers! I hope you’re staying safe, and perhaps even productive, as much of the world socially distances themselves in order to help slow down the spread of the COVID-19 virus.

I normally do my work in the Lilypad office, and while we do have one of the bedrooms in our house set up as a home office, it’s Anitra’s office these days, as most of her work is done from there. She‘s a ScrumMaster, which means that a lot of her work involves teleconferencing and requires her to have the office to herself.

I decided that with Tampa being quite temperate in late winter — it’s 87° F / 31° C as I write this at 2 in the afternoon — I should set up my temporary home office on our screened-in front porch. Here’s the wide view of my setup:

Tap the photo to see it at full size.

Here’s a closer look:

Tap the photo to see it at full size.

Many parts of the working world may be grinding to a halt, but that’s not the case where I am. Here’s what’s keeping me busy…

First, there’s my day job: Lilypad. It’s a CRM for brewers, distillers, and other makers of beverage alcohol, which allows their salespeople and their managers to manage their sales activities, track who they’ve talked to, and maintain relationships with their customers — namely, the bars, restaurants, hotels, and stores that sell their booze. The app has both web and mobile components, and I work on the mobile app. For the past few weeks, I’ve been working on making some fixes to the Android version of the app.

I’m also working on a revision of iOS Apprentice, a beginner-friendly book that teaches you how to write apps for the iPhone. I’m one of the authors, along with Eli Ganem, and the book is published by raywenderlich.com, the premier site for tutorials on developing mobile apps. We’re updating the book to cover some changes in iOS and Xcode, the developer tool for building iOS apps.

I’ve got a couple of extra mobile projects currently under wraps, but I’m sure I’ll write about them soon enough.

As long as we’re practicing social distancing to slow down the spread of COVID-19, I won’t be holding any in-person meetups. However, thanks to modern technology, we might still be able to have Coders, Creatives, and Craft Beer as well as the return of Tampa iOS Meetup — at least in online videoconference form! Watch this space — I’m looking to get these started next week.

Categories
Current Events Tampa Bay

Thinkful Tampa’s webinars for the week of Monday, March 16th

If you’re following the recommended practice of social distancing as part of a civic-minded attempt to help mitigate the spread of COVID-19 and buy some much-needed time for our healthcare system, I salute you with a filet mignon on a flaming sword!

However, you may find yourself jonesing for a meetup. You might want to check out the webinars put on by the online coding school Thinkful, who have several webinars on current software development topics every week. If you want a session on JavaScript or Python fundamentals, want to know more about data science, or are thinking about getting into product management or UI/UX design, these might be what you’re looking for. I’ve losted this week’s webinars below.

These webinars are all free, and they’re there to help entice you into enrolling in one of Thinkful’s full courses. They generally place well in “best coding bootcamp” lists, but you might want to take those with a grain of salt.

I’ll probably check out the Intro to JavaScript: Build a Virtual Pet webinar on Thursday evening; I’d like to see what approach they take. Let me know if you’re checking out any of their webinars!

Monday, March 16

Tuesday, March 17

Wednesday, March 18

Thursday, March 19

Saturday, March 21

Categories
Current Events Tampa Bay

What’s happening in the Tampa Bay tech/entrepreneur/nerd scene (Week of Monday, March 16, 2020)

Welcome to the March 16, 2020 installment of the What’s happening in the Tampa Bay tech/entrepreneur/nerd scene list! I’ve been putting together this list since 2017 (next week is its third anniversary). My goal was simple: to give the Tampa Bay technology community a useful, convenient resource for finding tech, entrepreneur, and nerd events. I watched as regular techie get-togethers helped grow the scenes in my former homes of Toronto and Silicon Valley, and I believe that bringing together the bright lights of Tampa Bay will do the same here.

Three years ago, I put together my first “What’s happening in the Tampa Bay tech scene” post here on Global Nerdy. What started as a little project to give me an additional edge over other people looking for work has turned into a community service for the Tampa Bay tech, entrepreneur, and nerd communities that I’m only too happy to perform. I’d like to thank all of you for your support and for making me feel welcome here, and I plan to keep this list up for as long as people find it useful.

As far as any of the events on this list are concerned, I have a two-word bit of advice for you: Expect cancellations. If you’re planning on attending any of the events listed below, check with the organizers, as they might no longer be happening.

As for me, I’m following the advice of my sister, Dr. Eileen deVilla, who’s the Medical Officer of Health for my old home town, Toronto (community service runs in our family!). As the head of the public health agency in Canada’s largest city and economic capital, and as someone who’s been working in public health since the SARS outbreak, she’s forgotten more about dealing with the spread of viral diseases than most of us will learn. Along with just about public health official and a number of scientists and mathematicians, she’s advising that we all take up the practice of social distancing in the short term to prevent much worse things happening in the long term. Hence the postponement or cancellation of many gatherings from meetups of a couple dozen people all the ways to large events including South by Southwest and the rest of the NBA and NHL seasons.

For this reason, I’m putting the Coders, Creatives, and Craft Beer meetup on hold this month, and holding off on re-starting the in-person Tampa iOS Meetup until I get the word from public health officials — my sister included — that it’s safe to resume regular socializing. I’m an extrovert and don’t relish the idea of clearing out my social calendar, but I’ll deal with it.

In the meantime, stay safe, don’t touch your face or your 401(k), and keep an eye on Global Nerdy for tips on how techies can make the most of the current situation.

Monday, March 16

Tuesday, March 17

Wednesday, March 18

Thursday, March 19

Friday, March 20

Saturday, March 21

Sunday, March 22

Do you have any events or announcements that you’d like to see on this list?

Let me know at joey@joeydevilla.com!

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Categories
Humor Process

This is what having to deal with new tickets in the middle of a sprint feels like

The only thing worse is when you complete those additional tickets and all management does is exclaim “That little droid did it!”

Here’s the relevant clip from The Phantom Menace for context: