Category: Tampa Bay

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Current Events Tampa Bay

What’s happening in the Tampa Bay tech/entrepreneur/nerd scene (Week of Monday, January 11, 2021)

Take me to this week’s events

Welcome to the second week of 2021! Here’s your list of tech, entrepreneur, and nerd events for the Tampa Bay area for the week of Monday, January 11 through Sunday, January 17, 2020.

By “Tampa Bay”, 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, this list will include only those events that can be attended online because…

  • 1 in 15 Americans has contracted COVID-19 (22.3 million cases out of a population of 328 million)
  • 1 in 880 Americans has died from COVID-19 (373,000 dead out of a population of 328 million)

…and we’re experiencing a post-holiday spike that has a number of ICUs across the country running at maximum capacity.

We live in the age of broadband and ubiquitous computing — make the best use of it. Stay safe, stay connected, skill up, and #MakeItTampaBay!

This week’s events

Monday, January 11

Tuesday, January 12

Wednesday, January 13

Thursday, January 14

Friday, January 15

Saturday, January 16

Sunday, January 17

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, January 4, 2021)


Take me to this week’s events

Happy New Year!

If you’re reading this, it means that you’ve survived 2020 and made it to a whole new year! I know that the current situation doesn’t really pay attention to arbitrary calendar divisions, but there’s a reason why we celebrate birthdays and anniversaries. If you haven’t done so yet, take some time to reflect on 2020 and tink about what you’d like to accomplish in 2021. Global Nerdy is here  to help the people in the Tampa Bay tech scene meet their goals!

Sad new Meetup! (Or: Why this list even more useful than ever)

Over the holidays, Meetup.com changed their home page format, and it’s now even harder to find out what’s going on this week.

To see what I mean, go to Meetup.com and try to see what’s happening in Tampa this week. You’ll see something like this:

Events for any groups that you belong to will still be listed in chronological order. But everything else? It’ll be a mish-mash, with an event scheduled for next week followed by one taking place tomorrow, and all of them subdivided into sections to maximize your clicking and viewing pages instead of finding events.

This sort of mess is why I made this weekly list in the first place. Between our geographical spread, our limited time, and the pandemic, it was already hard enough to find tech, entrepreneur, and nerd events in Tampa Bay. Meetup’s new home page makes things worse. This list is meant not only to fix that problem, but to help facilitate Tampa Bay tech gatherings and help grow our scene.

Casting a wider net

I’ve tweaked the list a little — you’ll see that it now covers events within 100 miles of Tampa Bay, which includes some Orlando-based events. Howdy, neighbors!

I’m still listing only online events for the time being

I’m tired of the “new normal”, and I’m sure you are as well. But we’re not out of trouble yet:

  • 1 in 16 Americans has been infected with COVID-19 (20.5 million cases as of Sunday, January 3, out of a total population of 328.2 million).
  • 1 in 1000 Americans has died from COVID-19 (350,000 deaths as of Sunday, January 3, out of a total population of 328.2 million).
  • 1 in 16 Floridians has been infected with COVID-19 (1.35 million cases as of Sunday, January 3, out of a total population of 21.48 million).
  • 1 in 980 Floridians has died from COVID-19 (21,889 deaths as of Sunday, January 3, out of a total population of 21.48 million).

These numbers, coupled with the recent holidays — where a lot of people threw precautions to the wind — are why I’m doing my part and not promoting any in-person events just yet.

This list covers events from Monday, January 4 through Sunday, January 10, 2020.

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!

This week’s events

Monday, January 4

Tuesday, January 5

Wednesday, January 6

Thursday, January 7

Friday, January 8

Saturday, January 9

Sunday, January 10

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, December 21, 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, December 21 through Sunday, December 27, 2020.

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!

Have a safe and happy holiday!

This week’s events

Monday, December 21

Tuesday, December 22

Wednesday, December 23

Thursday, December 24

Friday, December 25

Merry Christmas!

While a number of events appear to be scheduled for this day on Eventbrite, Meetup, and other sites, they were probably posted on “autopilot” and most likely aren’t happening.

Saturday, December 26

Sunday, December 27

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, December 14, 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, December 14 through Sunday, December 20, 2020.

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!

This week’s events

Monday, December 14

Tuesday, December 15

Wednesday, December 16

Thursday, December 17

Friday, December 18

Saturday, December 19

Sunday, December 20

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
Security Tampa Bay What I’m Up To

The Undercroft and their cybersecurity course, UC Baseline

Photo: The Undercroft sign, featuring the Undercroft’s “mascot” — a stag standing upright in a suit, leaning jauntily against an umbrella, walking stick-style.One of the silver linings of my job evaporating due to the pandemic is that I suddenly had a lot of free time to try some new things. The best of those new things by far was my five weeks in The Undercroft’s inaugural UC Baseline cybersecurity course.

What is The Undercroft?

The Undercroft was recently featured in the Tampa Magazine article, The Latest on Tampa’s Tech Scene. Here’s the relevant excerpt:

Over the past year, a number of notable out-of-state tech companies have chosen to open offices in or relocate to Tampa. Last December, Tampa beat out other up-and-coming tech hubs like Denver and Atlanta as the new home of Boston-based Drift, a marketing technology platform. Information technology training franchiser New Horizons moved its headquarters from Pennsylvania to Tampa in January. And that same month, D.C.-based technology company TheIncLab expanded to Ybor City. TheIncLab opened an “Artificial Intelligence Experience Lab” in The Undercroft, a cybersecurity incubator that launched last summer with the hopes of turning the historic Ybor into a tech industry hotspot.

“At The Undercroft, we’re focusing on the supply side of cybersecurity,” says CEO Adam Sheffield. “How do we support more talent in this community and more people who have passion for the field?”

Initially conceived as a co-working type space where startups and members could connect, The Undercroft launched a training program, UC Baseline, in response to layoffs during the coronavirus shutdown. The UC Baseline program is designed to help educate people moving into the cybersecurity workforce or transitioning from traditional IT roles. Ten participants have signed up for the six-week program that offers courses in networking, software, and hardware, according to Sheffield Incubators and accelerators are behind much of Tampa’s recent tech growth, as nonprofits like the Tampa Bay Wave and Embarc Collective offer resources and networking opportunities for local startups, including two recent programs that focus on boosting the  representation of women and diversity in the tech industry.

To describe The Undercroft as Tampa Bay’s security guild and cybersecurity coworking space is fair, but that description doesn’t capture the spirit of the place.

A better way to paint the picture would be to call it the 21st-century cybersecurity counterpart of coffeehouses in 17th- and 18th-century England. Like those coffeehouses of old, The Undercroft is a place in a beautiful old building that functions as the home for the (often boisterous) exchange of ideas, the advancement of specialized fields of knowledge, a little deal-making, and if you pay attention, a great place to learn.

(Thankfully, The Undercroft departs from those old coffeehouses in one important way: Women are welcome in The Undercroft.)

How I ended up in UC Baseline

Back in mid-July, I’d heard about scholarships for The Undercoft’s then-upcoming cybersecurity class. I posted an article about it, which ended with this quip:

(I’ll admit it: Although I’m not likely to qualify, I applied.)

I applied, and to my surprise, I qualified, which meant that I was in this classroom a couple of weeks later:

What I did in UC Baseline

And thus began five intense weeks, which comprised the following…

Hardware 101 — Gain a thorough understanding about the devices on which all our software runs and through which all our information flows:

Networking 101 — Learn how our systems are connected and the ways in which they communicate through these connections:

Tap to view at full size.

Linux 101 — Covers the foundations of security in Linux environments, the OS on which the internet runs:

Tap to view at full size.

Windows 101 — Here’s a big challenge — learn the foundations of security for Windows environments:

Tap to view at full size.

Information Security 101 — Covers everything from core IT concepts, to cybersecurity principles, methods, and practices:

Tap to view my set of links from Infosec Week at UC Baseline.

Python 101 — If you’re doing security, you should have some coding skills to automate your work and build tooling, and Python’s an excellent language for that task:

Tap to view at full size.

 

This is not for someone who’s casually curious about cybersecurity. It’s a lot of work. As I wrote midway through the course:

If you take The Undercroft’s five-week cybersecurity course, UC Baseline, you will have to absorb a lot of material.

After one particular day, I felt like the cat in this video:

The course was taught by a team of instructors who work in the security industry when they’re not teaching. They’re also a personable bunch, and all of them went above and beyond in their efforts to ensure that we students were getting the most out of our classes.

The course ended with a career fair featuring presenters and recruiters from local and national cybersecurity organizations…

and then a Capture the Flag competition and socially-distanced barbecue:

The payoff

Did it pay off to devote 5 weeks, 5 days a week, 8 hours a day, to attend UC Baseline? I think it did.

I’m really a programmer and developer evangelist by training and experience. There’s a tendency in both these lines of work to think of security as an afterthought. Attending UC Baseline, learning from actual security professionals, getting my hands on the actual hardware and software used by the pros, and even just being in The Undercroft helped me refine my security mindset.

That in turn helped me bring my A-game when it was time to apply for a job at Auth0 and then go through their rigorous interview process (which I wrote about here).

I’m not alone — 8 out of 10 of the inaugural UC Baseline class got work around a month or so after completing the program.

My thanks to the instructors for the excellent courses:  , Koby Bryan , Michael Dorsey , George Bilbrey , Jon B , Zoran Jovic, as well as my fellow students, who made the classes more enjoyable: Hawley , Danielle True ,  , Melissa Bloomer , Alyssa Kennedy , Nicolas Claude,  , Ryan Butler, and Anthony Davis!

And of course, special thanks to Team Undercroft, for making such a special place — the Tampa tech scene just wouldn’t be same without you: Joy Randels, Adam Sheffield, and Chris Machowski!

Another UC Baseline in 2021!

If UC Baseline sounds interesting to you, and if you think you’re up to the challenge, there’s another one taking place in early 2021. Visit the UC Baseline page to find out more!

Find out more

Categories
Current Events Tampa Bay

What’s happening in the Tampa Bay tech/entrepreneur/nerd scene (Week of Monday, December 7, 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, December 7 through Sunday, December 13, 2020.

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!

This week’s events

Monday, December 7

Tuesday, December 8

Wednesday, December 9

Thursday, December 10

Friday, December 11

Saturday, December 12

Sunday, December 13

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, November 30, 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, November 30 through Sunday, December 6, 2020. Yup, we’ll be in December by the end of the 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!

Why this list doesn’t feature any in-person events

It’s because I’m trying to promote responsible behavior in the face of news stories like the ones below:

With a good number of people still having Thanksgiving-as-usual, we may see a spike just like the one Canada had (Canadian Thanksgiving is in October). You may want to take some extra precautions over the next couple of weeks.

This week’s events

Monday, November 30

Tuesday, December 1

Wednesday, December 2

Thursday, December 3

Friday, December 4

Saturday, December 5

Sunday, December 6

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!