Hello, Tampa Bay techies, entrepreneurs, and nerds — here’s this week’s list of area events with your expertise and interests in mind! I hope things for you are going as well as possible given our current situation. As I write this, we’re a dozen days into the Florida general stay-at-home order, and five weeks since I’ve been doing the social distancing thing (following the recommendations of the best damn public health official I personally know). For the foreseeable future, I’m listing only online events. I’m looking forward to the day when we’ll all be able to meet up in person, but in the meantime, go online and #MakeItTampaBay!
The power of community is what will see us through this crisis. It’s the spirit of cooperation, camaraderie, and community that helped build the tech scene in my old home town of Toronto, and it can do the same here in Tampa Bay. Let’s take what we can from the current situation and use it to rebuild and move forward. I’m happy to do my part and help out with my reach and resources, or even to lend an ear. Feel free to contact me at joey@joeydevilla.com!
This week’s events
Monday, April 13
- South Tampa Toastmasters — ZOOM! Into the fun as South Tampa Toastmasters Is Meeting Online every Monday! @ 7:00 PM to 8:15 PM
- Dunedin Beers & Board Games — Jackbox Party Pack 6 Virtual Meetup on Discord @ 7:00 PM to 9:00 PM
Tuesday, April 14
- Tampa Bay Agile — v-Lean Coffee @ 7:30 AM to 8:30 AM
- Clearwater Renaissance Speakers Toastmasters @ 12:00 PM to 1:00 PM EDT
- Thinkful Webinar | Intro to Data Analytics: Excel Basics @ 3:00 PM to 5:00 PM
- Linkedin Local Tampa Bay Virtual April Event @ 5:30 PM to 8:00 PM
- Virtual Meetup – Tampa Bay PHP @ 6:30 PM to 8:30 PM
- Plan Your Start LIVE w/ Special Guest Brian Kornfeld @ 7:00 PM to 8:30 PM
- Thinkful Webinar | Intro to Data Science: Python Fundamentals @ 9:00 PM to 11:00 PM
Wednesday, April 15
- 1 Million Cups St. Pete — Singles Pop Up / Saving Our Seniors @ 9:00 AM
- 1 Million Cups Tampa — Smart Edge Technologies @ 9:00 AM
- Thinkful Webinar | Build a Web App with JavaScript & jQuery @ 12:00 PM to 2:00 PM
- Digital Video Editing Class (ONLINE CLASS) -FREE for Hillsborough residents only @ 1:00 PM to 3:00 PM
- AMA Tampa Bay — Some Good News: Marketing Edition @ 4:30 PM to 5:30 PM
- Continuous Improvement Network (C.I.Net) — Implementing Continuous Improvement: A Case Study – Menlo Innovations @ 6:00 PM to 7:00 PM
- Geekocracy! — Book Club – I Am Legend @ 7:00 PM to 9:00 PM
- Learn Cybersecurity Tampa — Virtual Capture The Flag for All Levels @ 7:00 PM to 10:00 PM
- Carrollwood Toastmasters Meetings now conducted Online using Zoom @ 7:00 PM to 8:30 PM
- Thinkful Speaker Series || Secrets Every Junior Developer Should Know @ 9:00 PM to 11:00 PM
Thursday, April 16
- BYOB: Consortia for Entrepreneurs — VIRTUAL EVENT: Adopting the Power of Consortia in Private Enterprise @ 6:30 AM to 7:30 AM
- IBM / O’Reilly — Learn AI Day: Hands-on lab, leadership, lessons from AI experts @ 9:00 AM to 3:00 AM
- UiPath RPA Tampa — World’s Largest Virtual RPA Training Day @ 9:30 AM to 12:30 PM
- AgileThought Virtual Community — Kanban for Work and Home @ 12:00 PM to 1:00 PM
- Tampa Startup Founder 101 — The Future is Coming Fast: Big Changes to Expect in the Next 10 Yrs-Online Event @ 1:00 PM to 2:00 PM
- YouTube Basics (ONLINE CLASS) – FREE for Hillsborough County Residents @ 3:00 PM to 4:00 PM
- IIBA Tampa Bay — WE ARE CHANGE AGENTS, IT’S OUR TIME TO EXCEL | WEBINAR IIBA @ 4:00 PM to 5:00 PM
- Tampa Bay Digital Storytelling Workshop with Florida Climate Pledge @ 6:00 PM – 7:00 PM
- Brandon and Seffner area AD&D, Pathfinder, and Starfinder — AD&D 2e Against The Slave Lords Online via Fantasy Grounds @ 6:00 PM to 8:00 PM
- cYbor Security Meetup — “Hacking HTTP Requests with Postman” @ 6:00 PM to 8:00 PM
Friday, April 17
Saturday, April 18
- R-Ladies Tampa — Data Workflow and Transformation @ 10:00 AM to 12:00 PM
- ONLINE: Tampa Hackerspace Monthly Board Game Night @ 7:00 PM to 11:00 PM
- Geekocracy! — Connect 4 – Trivia @ 7:00 PM to 9:00 PM
Sunday, April 19
No events are listed for Sunday.
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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I may be out of a job, but from now until the end of next week, I do have work: finishing the revision of iOS Apprentice, Eighth Edition, a book that teaches you how to write iPhone and iPad apps, even if you have no prior programming experience.
In its 1200+ pages, the book walks you through building 4 apps:
- Bullseye, a simple game where you learn the basics of iOS programming,
- Checklists, a “to-do” lists app that teaches you how to make use of table views, one of the most common and useful interface elements,
- My Locations, which introduces maps and geolocation in apps,
- Store Search, a project that introduces iPad development and which uses networking to search the iTunes Store.
iOS Apprentice is a special book for me, because I learned iOS programming back in 2012 (when the iPhone 4S was the newest model) from an earlier edition. The book launched me into the world of iPhone development, and as a result of that, into the world of mobile and IoT development in general. Since then, I’ve always wanted to repay the book by writing a later edition. Last year, I got my chance when I interviewed to become one of its authors and was chosen.
For a taste of what iOS Apprentice is like, check out this video series below, which is based on the first 8 chapters of the book, which I wrote. It shows you how to get started as an iOS developer by walking you through the process of making Bullseye, a simple game:
You can get your hands on this book in a couple of ways. If you want the paperback edition, you can get it at Amazon.com…
…and if you want the ebook edition (which comes with free updates, including the one I’m working on right now), you can get it at the RayWenderlich.com site:
I’m also bringing back the Tampa iOS Meetup in the next couple of weeks, where I’ll use the programming exercises in iOS Apprentice as a starting point. If you’ve been meaning to learn iOS programming, keep an eye on Tampa iOS Meetup — it’s coming back!
Are you looking for someone with both strong development and “soft” skills? Someone who’s comfortable either being in a team of developers or leading one? Someone who can handle code, coders, and customers? Someone who can clearly communicate with both humans and technology? The first step in finding this person is to check out my LinkedIn profile.
Now that I’m looking for my next gig (my last one was a victim of COVID-19), it’s time to revive this video that New Relic released a few years back to promote their application monitoring service.
Titled We Love Developers, it features some of the brightest lights in the industry:
- Matz: Yukihiro Matsumoto, creator of the Ruby programming language
- Guido van Rossum: Creator of the Python programming language
- Linus Torvalds: Creator of the Linux operating system and the Git version control system
- DHH: David Heinemeier Hansson, creator of the Ruby on Rails framework
- Bill Joy: Co-founder of Sun Microsystems and creator of the vi text editor
- James Gosling: Lead designer of the Java programming language
- Sir Tim: Tim Berners-Lee, creator of the World Wide Web
- Marc Andreesen: Co-creator of Mosaic, the first widely-used web browser, co-founder of Netscape, co-founder of Andreesen Horowitz
- Woz: Steve Wozniak, creator of Apple
- Rasmus Lerdorf: Creator of the PHP programming language
- The Gu: Scott Guthrie, creator of ASP.NET, Executive VP of Microsoft’s Cloud and AI group
- Sergey Brin: Co-founder of Google
- Dries Buytaert: Creator of Drupal
At the end of the video, they wanted to use the image of a more “everyman” developer to represent you, their customer. Guessed who they picked:

My photographer friend Adam P. W. Smith (my old business partner; together, we were datapanik software systems and we worked on some pretty interesting projects back in the late ‘90s) took the picture back in August when I was visiting him in Vancouver. I’d arrived a day early for the HackVAN hackathon and was sitting in his kitchen getting some work done when he decided to get a couple of shots. He poured me a glass of scotch, set it on my accordion, which I’d set down on the chair beside me, and started taking pictures.

Are you looking for someone with both strong development and “soft” skills? Someone who’s comfortable either being in a team of developers or leading one? Someone who can handle code, coders, and customers? Someone who can clearly communicate with both humans and technology? The first step in finding this person is to check out my LinkedIn profile.
If you’re taking advantage of the stay-at-home order to boost your development skills, I have something for you: a FREE tutorial that shows you how to build augmented reality apps for the iPhone and iPad using Apple’s ARKit. This tutorial has a full set of materials: a 97-minute video of the tutorial, a written step-by-step guide for the tutorial, as well as starter and finished code for both tutorial projects.
In the tutorial, you’ll build two apps:
Happy AR Painter: A Bob Ross-themed AR painting app that lets the you use your iPhone or iPad to “paint” in 3D space using geometric shapes that can be animated. Think of it as a much less expensive version of Google’s Tilt Brush!
Raykea: IKEA Place was one of the hottest apps when ARKit first came out. It lets you see what IKEA furniture would look like in your home! Raykea is a similar app that you can build, and you’d be surprised how easy it is to put together (probably easier than putting IKEA furniture together).
Here’s the tutorial video, which was shot at RWDevCon 2018:
And here are the tutorial materials:
- Step-by-step written guide for the tutorial [317KB PDF]
- Xcode project files for Happy AR Painter [1.2MB Xcode project, compressed]
- Xcode project files for Raykea [18.7MB Xcode project, compressed]
Give the tutorial a try, and if you have any questions, feel from to put the in the comments or contact me directly at joey@joeydevilla.com!
Hello, Tampa Bay techies, entrepreneurs, and nerds — welcome to another week’s list of area events with your expertise and interests in mind! I hope things for you are going as well as possible given our current situation. As recommended by public health experts and mandated by the mayor and governor, I’m listing only online events for the time being. I’m looking forward to the day when we’ll all be able to meet up in person, but in the meantime, go online and #MakeItTampaBay!
Monday, April 6
- Thinkful Webinar || What is UX/UI Design? @ Online, 8:00 AM to 10:00 AM
- Tampa Social Media Enthusiasts — VIRTUAL Social Media Management Certification Boot Camp Class @ Online, 9:00 AM to 5:00 PM
- Thinkful Webinar || Intro to Data Science: Python Fundamentals @ Online, 12:00 PM to 2:00 PM
- Thinkful Webinar | Free Crash Course: HTML & CSS @ Online, 12:00 PM to 2:00 PM
- ZOOM! Into the fun as South Tampa Toastmasters Is Meeting Online every Monday! @ Online, 7:00 PM to 8:15 PM
- Thinkful Webinar | Learn Data Science with Thinkful @ Online, 8:00 PM to 10:00 PM
- Thinkful Webinar | Intro to JavaScript: Build a Virtual Pet @ Online, 8:00 PM to 10:00 PM
- Thinkful Webinar | Learn UX/UI Design with Thinkful @ Online, 9:00 PM – 11:00 PM
Tuesday, April 7
- Tampa Bay Agile — v-Lean Coffee @ Online, 7:30 AM to 8:30 AM
- The first virtual Coders, Creatives, and Craft Beer! @ Online, 6:30 PM to 8:30 PM
- WordPress St. Petersburg — Ask Us Anything: WordPress Support Crowdsourcing Meetup @ Online, 6:30 PM to 8:30 PM
- Tampa Bay PHP — Virtual Meetup @ Online, 6:30 PM to 8:30 PM
- Tampa Hackerspace Member Meeting @ Online, 7:00 PM to 8:00 PM
- Pints & Pixels Online @ Online, 7:00 PM to 11:00 PM
- Thinkful Webinar || Optimize Your Online Learning @ Online, 7:00 PM to 9:00 PM
- Thinkful Speaker Series || Interview Essentials for UX/UI Designers @ Online, 8:00 PM to 10:00 PM
- Thinkful Webinar | Intro to Data Science: Python Fundamentals @ Online, 9:00 PM to 11:00 PM
Wednesday, April 8
- Thinkful Webinar | What is UX/UI Design? @ Online, 12:00 PM to 2:00 PM
- Thinkful Webinar | Data Science vs. Data Analytics @ Online, 12:30 PM to 2:30 PM
- Thinkful Webinar || Learn Digital Marketing With Thinkful @ Online, 7:00 PM to 9:00 PM
- Thinkful Webinar | Learn Web Development With Thinkful @ Online, 8:00 PM to 10:00 PM
- Thinkful Webinar | Data Analytics: Diving Into SQL Joins @ Online, 8:00 PM to 10:00 PM
Thursday, April 9
- Thinkful Webinar | Data Science: Tools Of The Trade @ Online, 12:30 PM to 2:30 PM
- Tampa Bay Azure User Group — Azure Search in 15 minutes @ Online, 6:00 PM to 7:30 PM
- Tampa Hackerspace — ONLINE: Electronics Breadboarding Demo and Class Planner @ Online, 7:00 PM to 9:00 PM
- Learn Cybersecurity Tampa — Virtual Workshop: Introduction to Application Security @ Online, 8:00 PM to 10:00 PM
- Thinkful Webinar | Beginners Guide to JavaScript: Array @ Online, 8:00 PM to 10:00 PM
- Thinkful Webinar | Learn Product Management with Thinkful @ Online, 8:00 PM to 10:00 PM
- Thinkful Webinar | Intro To Data Analytics: Tableau Basics @ Online, 9:00 PM – 11:00 PM
Friday, April 10
Saturday, April 11
- Thinkful Webinar | Product Management vs. UX/UI Design @ Online, 1:00 PM to 3:00 PM
- Thinkful Webinar | Intro to Data Science: The Art of Visualizations @ Online, 4:00 PM to 6:00 PM
- Thinkful Webinar || Intro to JavaScript: Build a Virtual Pet @ Online, 8:00 PM to 10:00 PM
Sunday, April 12
No local online events are listed. This might be a good time to check out Pluralsight’s courses, which are free for the month of April.
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!
Pluralsight is making its 7,000+ video courses completely free for the month of April! If this is the first time you’ve heard this news, you still have 27-ish days to take advantage of this opportunity.
One of the nicest things about this deal is that you don’t have to provide a credit card number to sign up. They could’ve easily asked for it and counted on you to forget to cancel your account, allowing them to charge you on May 1st. Instead, they’re just letting you create an account with very little info and are hoping that you’ll like your course so much, you’ll choose to become a subscriber in May:
In case you’re curious, here’s a sampling of the Pluralsight courses I’m interested in:
- Android development:
- iOS development
- Other programming:
- Conferences:
- “Data” path:
- Security:
- Unity:
Between the day job at Lilypad and finishing the next version of iOS Apprentice, there’s no way I’m going to be able to do all the courses I want over the month. I’m pretty sure that I’ll play sessions from the conferences in the background while working, and perhaps see what their Unity courses are like.
Be sure to sign up and see if there are any courses that you’d like to take for free!