Category: What I’m Up To

Categories
Meetups Tampa Bay What I’m Up To

See my new talk, “It happens every 13 years” at TBTLA’s Tech Day this Saturday!

TBTLA — Tampa Bay Technology Leadership Association — is the longest-running technology group here in “The Other Bay Area,” and they’re holding their annual Tech Day this Saturday afternoon at Feeding Tampa Bay!

The tl;dr

  • What: TBTLA (Tampa Bay Technology Leadership Associations) Tech Day
  • When: Saturday, December 14, 3:00 – 6:00 p.m.
  • Where: Feeding Tampa Bay (3624 Causeway Blvd., Tampa)
  • Find out more and register here

What’s TBTLA’s Tech Day about?

TBTLA’s people have been active in the Tampa Bay tech scene for literally decades (they’ve been around since 2001!). Their gatherings have been bringing leaders in information technology together since their inception, and they’ve been great!

Case in point: they put on an amazing AI “fireside chat” last year at the St. Pete Shuffleboard Club…

This year, they’re doing the same at the offices of Feeding Tampa Bay.

The event will feature the following speakers:

Michael Raj, Vice President – Artificial Intelligence & Data (CDO Organization),  Verizon
Chad Hage, Sr. Cloud Solution Architect, Microsoft
Santiago Echeverry, Professor, University of Tampa
Joey de Villa, Supreme Consultant, Atypical Consulting LLC

My talk: It happens every 13 years

The book “Thank You for Being Late,” by Thomas FriedmanI was invited to talk at TBTLA’s Tech Day about tech trends and how you can find local resources and groups to learn how to take advantage of these trends. As the person who publishes the “official unofficial” weekly list of tech, entrepreneur, and nerd events for Tampa Bay, I have some knowledge of this domain.

I’m going to do so by framing my talk in an observation of mine that I made after reading journalist Thomas Friedman’s book, Thank You for Being Late: An Optimist’s Guide to Thriving in the Age of Accelerations. I will aim to make it informative, informal, entertaining, and even amusing.

Join us at TBTLA’s Tech Day this Saturday!

Join us this Saturday and hear what I and the other speakers have to say about this particularly exciting time in technology. lt’ll be a great opportunity to network with people in Tampa Bay’s tech scene. Feel bring to bring your partner, and enjoy the late afternoon with lively talks, interesting conversation, and free food and drinks!

Find out more about TBTLA’s Tech Day and register here!

 

Categories
Deals Training What I’m Up To

Get my “Intro to Python for AI” course (and many, many others) for half price at Kodeco’s Black Friday Sale!

I’ve been writing for Kodeco (formerly RayWenderlich.com) on and off for the past seven years, and my latest work for them — the Python for AI course, part of their Artificial Intelligence APIs with Python program — is just one of several training programs available to you with a Kodeco subscription. And until Monday, December 2nd, they’re selling annual subscriptions for only $299, which is half price!

In addition to the courses pictured above, a subscription gives you access to all these books:

A subscription also gives you access to all 4000+ screencasts and video courses in their library!

Want to find out more? Check out their promotion: Black Friday Sale: Huge Discounts on Subscriptions, Bootcamps, and Books!

Categories
What I’m Up To

What does YOUR workspace look like?

Tap to view at full size.

Mine’s going through its greatest era. (And no, there’s nothing secret or security-compromising on my laptop screen in these photos — in fact, it’s documentation that I wrote for Writer, and you’re supposed to see that.)

Tap to view at full size.
Tap to view at full size.
Categories
Programming Tampa Bay What I’m Up To

It’s that time of the week again…

Since March 13, 2017, I’ve posted a weekly list of tech, entrepreneur, and nerd events happening in Tampa Bay and surrounding areas. I’ve continued to do this to this day, with me typically assembling the list on Thursday and posting it on Friday.

Today is Thursday, so I’m assembling the list — or more accurately, a Jupyter notebook running some Python code I wrote is scraping various sites and creating a checklist like the one you see in the screenshot above.

Back when I first started the list, I used to put it together manually, but as Tampa Bay’s tech scene and events grew, so did the list. It wasn’t long before assembling the list was eating up the better part of an afternoon, and that’s when I decided to add some automation to the process.

The checklist contains likely candidates for inclusion in the list, and each item in the list is checked by default. The checklist is there to allow me to apply my final judgement as to what goes and doesn’t go into the list.

There’s a hug “deny” list of key words and phrases that cause an event to not make it into the checklist because it doesn’t fall under the umbrella of “tech, entrepreneur, or nerd.” For example, events with the words “real estate” don’t make it into the list — they often contain the word “developer,” which my code is looking for, but that’s not the right kind of developer event for the list.

Would any of you be curious as to what’s in my tech events list-creating code and how it works? Would you like me to do a presentation at a local meetup or on YouTube explaining how it works? Let me know.

 

Categories
Programming What I’m Up To

GitHub Copilot: A free trial that actually worked

There aren’t that many free trials that manage to convert me into a paying customer, but GitHub Copilot is now one of the exceptions. I don’t think I’ve seen a programming add-on tool that’s been this useful or beloved by developers since…well, maybe ReSharper back during my time as a Microsoftie (2008 – 2011).

It’s pretty good — but far from perfect — at generating Python code I’m thinking of writing as I type it in, which has resulted in a speed boost for me. Between Copilot (which I’ve had for free for a bit) and Claude Sonnet (which I’ve been paying for), I’ve been enjoying the new assisted world that I’ve been coding in.

Your mileage will vary with the programming language you’re using and the sort of application you’re working on. If what you’re doing matches lots of examples in Copilot’s training set, you’ll get lots of good suggestions. However, if you’re coding in a more obscure programming language, or writing a kind of application for which there would’ve been few examples to add to Copilot’s training set, you’ll get fewer suggestions, and a good number of them will be wrong.

But for me, Copilot’s a very helpful programming tool that I’ve harnessed in order to do more. Pardon me while I go pull out Atypical Consulting LLC’s credit card…

Categories
Humor Programming What I’m Up To

I don’t remember my book having THIS cover…

Amazon page for “iOS Apprentice (Eighth Edition),” co-authored by Joey de Villa. The book image is incorrect and shows a young woman modelling a crop-top and miniskirt outfit.
Tap the image to see the page on Amazon.

I was pointing someone to the Amazon page for the book I co-wrote a little while back — iOS Apprentice, Eighth Edition — and I saw what you’re seeing in the screenshot above.

I like to think of my technical writing as sexy, but I didn’t think it was this sexy!

In case you’re curious, here’s what the actual cover looks like:

Cover of “iOS Apprentice, 8th edition”
Tap to see the book’s page on the publisher’s site (Kodeco.com).
Categories
Conferences Tampa Bay What I’m Up To

Scenes from DevOpsDays Tampa Bay 2024

DevOpsDays Tampa Bay 2024 took place last Thursday, September 19th, and I’m pleased to report that it was a success, with 230 attendees, great talks, an enthusiastic audience, and a lot of participation, all in my favorite conference venue!

DevOpsDays is a worldwide series of community-run technical conferences covering topics of software development, IT infrastructure operations, and the intersection between them.

DevOpsDays Tampa Bay is “The Other Bay Area’s” edition of DevOpsDays, organized, produced, and executed by volunteers from Tampa Bay and beyond, for the benefit of the tech scene here on “The Other West Coast.”

Here are my photos from the event…

Andrew Clay Shafer opened the conference with his keynote, The Ghost of DevOps Past…

…which was followed by PJ Hagerty’s presentation, DevOps — Philosophy vs. Practice. Unfortunately, I didn’t get any photos of his talk, as I was getting ready to give my talk, Python Meets DevOps!

Photo by Maria Seenarraine.

I was followed by Aman Sharma’s presentation on what he termed “GenOps” — in other words, DevOps for Generative AI applications:

After Aman was Omer Farooq, who gave his talk, Modernized Approach to Container DevSecOp through Software Development Lifecycle.

And then: lunch!

One of the best things about last year’s and this year’s DevOpsDays Tampa Bay was that they took place at Armature Works. It’s not just a great conference venue, but also a great place to eat!

Rather than feed us standard-issue tech conference food, we were each given a $25 coupon redeemable at any of the food vendors.

I decided to try out a new-to-me place, Bap Bap and selected their Korean fried chicken and kimchi fries. I definitely would order it again:

Immediately after lunch was Micahel Levan’s presentation, Production-Ready Platform Engineering: From Conception To Build To FAIL, followed by Gwyneth Allwright’s Escaping the Legacy Infrastructure Labyrinth:

Next up was Al Rodriguez, with DevOps Like a Dev:

…follwed by Luis Hernandez with In The Deep End: My Experience as a Linux Kernel Mentee:

The final talks of the day were:

  • Mike Butler, who introduced the Open Space portion of the conference with his quick talk, Open Spaces – The Greatest Thing about DevOpsDays,
  • Ed LeGault, with Optimizing Software Delivery with DORA Metrics and EBM, and
  • Josh Lee, with Modern Application Debugging: An Intro to OpenTelemetry.

Afterwards, we had 90 minutes devoted to Open Space discussions — I pretty much stuck around the AI-related discussion.

At the end of the Open Spaces portion, the conference came to a close with a quick curtain call by the organizers (listed from left to right, as they appear in these photos):

  • James Gress
  • Troy Koss
  • Obie Muzon
  • Seni Aguiar
  • Chris Ayers

Assisting them were a number of volunteers, all of whose names I don’t have — but my thanks to them for keeping things running smoothly.

DevOpsDays Tampa Bay was a fun conference to speak at, attend, catch up with old friends, and make new ones. I’m looking forward to next year’s event!