None of these methods is perfect, and there’s still a chance that someone who plans to throw a party gets past their filters. They’ll need some technological solutions that can kill a party in its early stages, and I have a Python-powered solution.
With a Raspberry Pi connected to the internet and tucked safely away in the the attic or locked closet and hooked to in-wall or in-ceiling speakers, you can remotely run this simple Python script that will stop any party dead in its tracks:
# party_killer.py
import webbrowser
# Open YouTube and play Bread’s greatest hits
webbrowser.open_new_tab("https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3A-5qocjnoY&t=0")
Don’t believe me? Just give this a listen:
If you’re not Airbnb but a beginning Python programmer, you just learned how to use Python to open a new browser tab to a specific web page.
Update
It took a trip down memory lane, but I found it: the skit where I got the idea that Bread’s greatest hits will kill a party. It’s the “Party Stoppers” ad from the old Seattle-based comedy show, Almost Live:
If you watch only one YouTube video today, make it Elon Musk: Visionary FutureMan, a fantastic take on the “Broligarch” done only the way The Daily Show can, and made even better by narrator William Shatner:
LT3 Labs — where “LT3” is short for “Learning Tomorrow’s Technology Today” — is a brand-new space in the Rithm @ Uptown zone at Tampa’s University Mall with a program where young people not only learn the skills, but the confidence required to choose technology as a career.
The 8-week program, called PATH, is geared toward high schoolers who typically wouldn’t pursue careers in coding. CEO Chris Morancie says that the goals are to help students discover a love for tech beyond merely using it, address the skilled worker shortage, and ameliorate income inequality. They’re graduating their first PATH program cohort next week.
Need something to listen to this afternoon at 3:30 p.m. Eastern (UTC-4)? Hop onto Twitter and check out the upcoming Twitter Space where Okta’s/Auth0’s Ceora Ford and Jess Temporal — my teammates on Okta’s/Auth0’s Developer Engagement team — will chat with AWS’ Wesley Faulkner about building developer communities.
Whether it’s a device, an operating system, a programming language/framework.tool, or scene, it doesn’t really take off until a developer community forms around it. That requires people with the unusual combo of people and tech skills — developer relations / developer advocate people — who know how to help build these communities. Give this a listen and get a look at the kind of work that my colleagues and I do. You might find that it’s work that you’d also enjoy!
If the name Adam Neumann isn’t familiar to you, let me sum him up for you as quickly as I can: he’s the grifter behind what Jacobin aptly described as “the biggest, dumbest scam in American history.” That scam is WeWork, a millennial high-concept version of the office space rental company Regus, that marketed itself as a Silicon Valley-style tech company with Fyre Festival-like hype (in fact, Fyre Festival founder Billy McFarland rented office space from WeWork).
By hyping themselves as more than just an a company buying and renting expensive office space to the generation that could least afford it (but with free beer and wine — at least for a little while), and despite hemorrhaging wheelbarrows of cash, they managed to con their primary investor, SoftBank, out of about $10 billion in investments and into a $47 billion valuation. That fell apart after they filed for an IPO, the mandatory disclosures for which revealed their financial fakery.
Neumann’s antics cost its big investor, Softbank, so much that they considered selling one of their companies: Arm, as in the chips that power just about every smartphone, a whole lot of IoT devices (including the Raspberry Pi), a fair share of Chromebooks, and Apple Silicon computers.
The IPO was cancelled 33 days after it was launched and all the WeWeirdness came to light.
SoftBank took over WeWork.
Neumann’s reward for screwing up? SoftBank would give him about $1.7 billion to step down from WeWork’s board and dissociate himself from the company.
What was Adam Neumann’s follow-up act?
What do you do when you’ve been exposed as the bozo behind the “biggest, dumbest scam in American history?” You look for even dumber people to fleece. So Neumann got into Web 3.0.
Neumann’s Web 3.0 venture, Flowcarbon, a company that purports to “use blockchain technology to put carbon offset credits on-chain, accelerating the creativity and scalability of climate change solutions.”
And so we come to Neumann’s third big questionable business outing: this “residential real-estate management” startup, which took his previous venture’s name and shortened it to Flow.
Feel free to steal this joke: Creating the new company name from the previous one is probably Neumann’s only success in carbon removal.
Backing Flow is — once again — Andreesen Horowitz, who this time threw even more money at Neumann and company: $350 million, which the New York Times describes as “the largest individual check Andreessen Horowitz has ever written in a round of funding to a company.” a16z value Flow at $1 billion.
Neumann has purchased more than 3,000 apartment units in Miami, Fort Lauderdale, Atlanta and Nashville. His aim is to rethink the housing rental market by creating a branded product with consistent service and community features. Flow will operate the properties Neumann has bought and also offer its services to new developments and other third parties. Exact details of the business plan could not be learned.
I fear this idea has legs, but I also take comfort in the fact that Adam Neumann is at the helm. Why? Because he’s one of my south-pointing compasses.
The importance of south-pointing compasses
You’ve probably been told about the value of having mentors and role models, because they provide us with a “horizon” — a direction to move towards, something to strive for, and examples to follow.
But what’s equally valuable is the type of person I refer to as a “south-pointing compass,” or what others have called an “anti–rolemodel.” It’s just as important to know what not to do, which is why we in tech like to look for antipatterns. In fact, south-pointing compasses are antipattern practitioners.
I’ve found it very helpful in my career to maintain relationships with a number of south-pointing compasses because they’re so useful. Some of these relationships are parasocial (I know them, but like I know characters in a book, not personally) or arm’s length (I know them, but keep things at the cordial acquaintance level). All of them have at least one valuable thing to teach, even if that lesson simply is don’t do what they do:
That striver who always follows the latest flavor-of-the-week management trend, and executes it poorly, only to dump it for the next trend? South-pointing compass.
That person who keeps hopping onto the next big language/framework/platform and starts but never completes any projects with that thing? South-pointing compass.
That coworker who constantly performs what HR kindly calls “career-limiting moves?” South-pointing compass.
