Is that an attention getting headline or what!! SNAP!
But I digress. Let’s hit on each of those topics. The first thing, is that everybody and anybody in the Seattle Metropolitan area should head out to Bellevue and have Pizza and talk PaaS with myself and others at Tier 3. We’re going to show some Node.js, Ruby on Rails, Java, and ASP.NET MVC Demoes running on Cloud Foundry & Iron Foundry, how they interoperate and answer any questions that come up.
A techster got “checked” by the TSA exactly like they seem to want everybody. Nude. He gave em’ exactly what they wanted by stripping down right there in the airport. Ironic how sometimes, people don’t want what they ask for. hmmmm… anyway.
The More… Part.
Late this week I’ve got a cool write up of how and why I’ve setup my workspace the way I have. Lots of gadgets. After that I’ll be hitting the “OS-X Development Environment vs. Windows 7 Development Environment” review. Again, there will be gadgets and software gadgets. Until then, cheers!
As promised, the Coder Society is kicking off! There will be more information at the Coder Society Site, but I wanted to get information posted here too. The first meeting for Coder Society in Portland will be this coming April 7th. The Seattle meeting will be on May 5th. Our first meetings will cover the following get things done goals! So bring your skills, your passion to learn, and your desire to do!
Primary Goal: PolyGlot Systems
For this we would do a simple project where we pick technologies using at least two different programming languages and have them perform different roles in an application and share information across something neutral like ZMQ or Redis. Some of the options would be to implement with C# + Node.js/JavaScript + Ruby/Sinatra is a good starting point.
Stories: We’re kicking off the meeting goal with a theme many software developers will be super familiar with. Coffee!
A coffee drinker wants to add a rating for the coffee beverage.
A coffee drinker wants to list the price of the coffee beverage.
A coffee drinker wants to review the Barista.
A coffee drinker wants to rate the Barista.
A coffee drinker wants to know where the beverage.
A coffee drinker wants to know where the Barista was working.
A coffee drinker doesn’t want to read huge reviews.
A Barista wants to be able to list their coffees they use.
A Barista wants to be able to comment on reviews.
A Barista wants to be able to list their prices for coffee.
A Barista wants to be able to select their specialty.
A Barista or coffee drinker wants to be able to add or view outlets, wifi, or other information about the coffee shop.
A coffee drinker wants to be able to “follow” their favorite Barista.
A Barista wants to be able to send an alert to all of their coffee drinkers.
Arbitrary Limits:
Coffee Drinks are limited to: Cappuccinos, Lattes, Mochas, Macchiatos, Espresso.
Server Availability: 6x Ubuntu Server 10.04 LTS
Frameworks: After splitting into teams, we’ll iron out which frameworks we want to use and implement using the choice frameworks.
Node.js + Express.js / Bricks.js
Ruby on Rails
Ruby + Sinatra
ASP.NET MVC
Java w/ Spring
Python
Django
Flask
Assembly. Ya know, for the insanely hard core. 🙂
Database:
Mongo DB!
Prerequisites:
Bring a Laptop (or computing device you can do development on).
Bring some familiarity for setting up and using your development platform. This could be .NET, Ruby on Rails, Sinatra, Node.js, PHP, or whatever.
Bring a spirit to learn about new frameworks, get all polyglot, and have fun.
Meeting Workflow:
The meeting will join.
Teams will form.
The kanban board will be explained and setup for use by the teams.
We’ll unpack the user stories, setup workflow, and idea behind the meeting will be reviewed.
Select team technology & domain element (barista or coffee drinker).
Setup tasks within teams.
Pick pairs to work on tasks.
Code… implement…
After implementation, we’ll review everything, and trade war stories.
New update and bits coming up in the near term. I wrapped up my work with AppFog’s Fort of Awesome and am now putting together blog articles & technical material for New Relic these days. They’re an extremely great company with an absolutely stellar team. However you may be asking, “Adron, YOU WRITE CODE ALL THE FREAKING TIME, you’ve got to be doing more than blog entries!!” and you’d be right. These blog entries are more than just opinions and such, I’ll be putting together demoes and some hard core examples of distributed architectures, trending against big data, node.js hackery, and all sorts of other stuff. But there is also my next update below that’s a lot of fun code…
Tier 3, Federated Clouds, and Iron Foundry
I’ve stepped in to take the lead on the Iron Foundry Project (so go sign up and fork it!!) and to work on the stability, governance, and code around Cloud Foundry too! It’s going to be a blast! In addition to that I’m helping to build some cool things at Tier 3. In the near future I’ll have a lot more information regarding what these things are.
At Tier 3 we have a massive Enterprise Cloud Infrastructure offering. It’s a pretty impressive setup, so much so that I’m leading some of the efforts there, so I’m not just saying that! Keep an eye on us too, because we’ll have some very cool things coming up (did I say that already?) 🙂
Cloud Foundry Hackathon PDX, Cloud Foundry Open Tour, and Coder Society
Cloud Foundry Hackathon PDX
The Cloud Foundry Hackathon is on April 14th at Puppet Labs. Check out the Lanyrd Site and Calagator for calendar and RSVP. This is going to be an awesome event which will also be in partnership and extension of some of the work we’ll start at Coder Society on April 7th. So if you’re into hacking on the Cloud Foundry core bits or if you’re interested in hacking on apps deployed to Cloud Foundry come and hack with us. In addition I’ll be putting on two workshops:
On Premise, Off Premise Cloud Foundry => We’ll dive into, and get hands on, with identifying and connecting Cloud Foundry Environments regardless of their premise. Removing boundaries, that’s what this is about.
Cloud Foundry + Iron Foundry and Bridging the Gaps => Now we’re talking FULL stack across every major stack. Iron Foundry, the missing linq in Cloud Foundry. Adding .NET & having it play nicely with Node.js, Ruby on Rails, and more. We’ll also dive into SQL Server, Mongo, and how to make the best use of RDBMS + NoSQL bits. Making the most of the abilities with PaaS.
The VMware sponsored Cloud Foundry Open Tour has a stop lined up epic Portlandia! There will be a pretty bad ass crew there of people you’ll want to meet and talk to about Cloud Foundry’s direction, design, enterprise cloud offerings such as Stackato, Tier 3, and others. On twitter, if you don’t follow these people and you’re stepping into the future with PaaS, you should follow them (click their names for their respective twitter account):
Oh yeah, the Coder Society, I’ve got the info on the Coder Society Inaugural meet up announcement coming tomorrow first thing in the morning at 5am. If you haven’t checked out Coder Society yet, hit the site and join the list. No, don’t get up that early, I’m just guessing that’s when I’ll be done with it and click on the publish button! 😉
Call it a hackathon, coder session, workshop, or whatever. What it is not, is a presentation. What am I talking about? A user group effort that I’m working, and mentioned recently regarding coders uniting, on with others that will be centered around doing something, a range of things, during a specific time frame, to expand one’s knowledge, skills, or help mentor on the specific thing that is being worked on. Instead of me going on and on with an explanation, I’ll describe a scenario from this new user group.
Vote, Group, Create!
First a conversation kicks off a thread (sign up to kick off a thread yourself). From that thread a topic arrises that people want to work with, work on, learn more about, and try to implement. Recently one of these topics that has come up is Continuous Deployment. The idea has been batted around now for a few weeks and it is ripe for a meet up and for a group to get together and actually implement a solution. This is a perfect example of something that can be implemented in a set time, with a group of people, individuals can then take that knowledge and go forth to make their development shops better.
So join the e-mail list, help us come up with ideas, and we’ll see you at an upcoming meet up and we’ll build something awesome!
Alright… deep breath. The last few weeks, no wait, the last few months have been hella busy. I finally got my act together and have set some real goals. One of them is stepping up to bat in the Cloud Computing/Utility Computing Industry, instead of just being a mere critique, writer, and sideline gazer I’ll be in the full battle on Monday. The reason Monday, is because today is my last official day at Russell Investments.
Beautiful Russell Investments Building in Seattle
Working at Russell has been awesome. The team I got to work with regularly used advanced practices (which I like to think of as practices that everybody uses, but I’m aware of reality) – such as TDD, BDD, and Pairing. We did a mild form of Scrum, mostly to help leadership manage to the even higher up management. It works really well. We have happy customers, solid products, a deployment success rate that never had us at work late, and to top it off I got to work on net profitable projects. I love seeing success across the board!
The the guys I worked with the most pairing, TDDing & BDDing, and generally making the math work – Jeff Schumacher @codereflection & Scott Koon @lazycoder – cheers, beers on me in the near future (like at 2:00pm!). To the host of others…
Kelly – Thanks for that whitty sardonic 5-year old humor that I love and adore! You kick ass!
Don – Thanks for keeping the QA ship headed in the right direction and helping me coordinate, get things out the door, and providing comraderie every day.
James – Test, QA, thanks for destroying any hope that a bug may make it to production. Keep throwing out those lines of Russian to scare the passersby, superb indeed!
Chris Sjoholm – Thanks for troubleshooting JavaScript, enjoying the TekPub jQuery Videos, and hacking the jQuery/JavaScript until it works. …and I had to use your name because nobody can say it! mwhahahahaahahaa!
Castle – Thanks for confusing me by having the name Castle, since we use Castle Windsor, and oh yeah, thanks for being a very knowledge domain person ( <- Note I’m not in HR, I didn’t call you a “resource” ). Your random jabs, jests, and relaxed vibe always brought ++ to the work day.
Lane – Dude, seriously, boss++, awesome, ski dude, punk rocker, gets wooed and honored in Seattle Coffee Works, great guy, rock star, Scrum King, Lean Advocate, Get Shit Done Well guy… I think I summed ya up. Thanks a billion! You going to bat to destroy the insanity that is TFS I will never forget!
Jeff – Thanks for the coding, helping me think, and the death metal, black metal, Deicide show (along with attempts to make other shows, which I fail miserably at), etc… You rock dude, keep it up, never stop, stay a little crazy, it’ll make those bus rides all that much more fun. 😉
John & Terry – You guys were like the silent brain trust, with Terry piping in with the announcement that Corp IT does some inanely illogical things, for the whole floor. I seriously have enjoyed your public service announcements! John, thanks for all the awesome food suggestions over the last year +.
Sree – Rock that Mac dude, enjoy your family, and stay that happy guy you are. Keep hitting the code and love the coder life.
Sai – Hey wait, where’d you go? Oh yeah, enjoy the Bellevue. It was fun, I learned that there are only like 5 countries that have people driving on the wrong side of the road because of you!! 😛 But seriously, great working with you, see ya around for sure!
Skoon, Scott, I mean Scott Koon – Ok, had to use your whole name because of all the iterations we’ve used over the many months. Needless to say, Herding Code rocks…
Cefe – You, the invisible power that be, to right wrongs and keep the ship sailing, we didn’t get to work together that much, but I always felt a very positive morale with you at the helm. Cheers, will miss working under your command.
Hassan – Again, like Cefe, thanks for commanding the ship from the strategic command center on high. You also, kept our morale up, kept the alignments clear, and led us to the battle.
Michael O’Shea – Thanks for the zillion great conversations, the breaks, music chit chat, OS-X & Android utilizations & hacking, Star Trek knowledge beyond Gene Roddenberry himself. Hats off!
Scott S. – Thanks for the NSFW jokes, connections, networking knowledge, etc. You’ve been a great comrade, will miss ya… and yes, I’m still working on the logistics around Alaska, keep me abreast in Facebook if ya would. Cheers! Thanks for those other things too. 😉
Aeden – Sucks we didn’t get to pair together, we’ll do that soon, at a conference or something! Keep it wild, stay adventurous, and enjoy the Indian Food.
Lisa – Thanks for the NSFW moments, the Shadow IT, and the snarky comments. The whole team enjoys your input into the kittie cats these days, so don’t stop. Cheers! …and thanks for the chance to further infect the company with the awesomeness that is Shadow IT!
Ok, I’m sure I missed somebody, I’ll owe them double beers! It’s been great, absolutely wonderful time….
…but where am I going?
There are some secrets that will remain. Such as what specific companies I’m going to work with, who, where, what, and why, that will stay a mystery at this point. There are a few things that are happening that I can and will elaborate on right now. (if you were waiting for something technology related, this is the part, sorry for all the sobbing and tearful moments above). For the others topics, I’ll provide a juicy update in the near future (I’m thinking in about 1-2 months).
Cloud Foundry
Over the coming months I will be doing extensive work with, and maybe even on, Cloud Foundry. Will it be with Ruby, C#, or JavaScript? Well, actually it will be a little of all three. Yes indeed.
Cloud Architecture
This is an area where I’ll be doing a ton of work, related almost entirely to PaaS (Platform as a Service). I will have blog entries coming about this topic through various medium, which will include my ongoing series on New Relic’s Blog (Part 1 & Part 2 of Removing the OS Barrier with PaaS which is up now). In addition, there will definitely be a lot of open source software in my future!
TriMet Light Rail
Community
One of the things that is hugely important to me is community. Local community, tech community, neighborhood community, and city community. With that there are a few other changes that will be pretty big for me over the next few months. I’m making a huge shift where and how I’m going to be living. I’ll be spending a whole lot of time in San Francisco, Portland, Seattle, and likely Vancouver BC, Amsterdam, and Copenhagen. There is a strong connecting fiber for all of these cities around livability and building strong communities, something a lot of other cities lack. But one slight change, since my home base is in Seattle currently, is that I’ll still be very active in Seattle but will be making my home base Portland again, with living arrangements for my frequent visits available in Seattle and San Francisco. To summarize, I’ll be swapping some bus commutes for light rail & streetcar commutes! 🙂 Thx to all who are helping me out with this complexity!
Panoramic Portland - Click for a massive full size image
Tech Community
Along with this slight shift in geographic location & traveling a lot more I’ve been pushing forward (you might have realized from the string of speaker introductions) on getting events organized. I’m thinking that this will become a recurring habit of mine since I sincerely enjoy the work I do and meeting, coding, and helping people to build a larger community of technology mega-awesomeness!
Which brings me to my last mention, go RSVP for Node PDX, it’s going to be a good time!
So all in all, cheers, and on to new great things and working to making a little dent in this universe. 😀
Is that an attention getting headline or what!! SNAP!
We’ll all of course eat some pizza too! 🙂
Coder Society…
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