 |
Originally, we were planning to have a WordPress 2.5 release party. Rumor was that there was a complicated problem that might take another month to solve. Rumor also was that Andy Skelton was working on it. To everyone’s surprise, 2.5 was released at WordCamp Dallas. So instead of a release party, we’re having a WordPress Fest. |
Our co-hosts for this party will be Refresh Austin and the Austin WordPress Meetup Group. I credit the folks at Refresh Austin with helping me make the change to, and learn how to take advantage of, WordPress. Paul Menard, leader of the Austin WordPress Meetup Group, was the one who converted the GeekAustin slashcode template to WP. Whether you are considering making the move to WordPress, want to meet some local WordPress gurus, or just want to toss back a few drinks with the Refresh and GeekAustin folks at Union Park, you’re invited.
A note about the venue: There is plenty of room at Union Park. You won’t be standing in line to get in. The drinks at Union Park are generous and reasonably priced. They have a food menu so you can come straight from the office, and although parking is not difficult to find on W. 6th, valet parking will be available.
The details:
WordPress Fest - Hosted by GeekAustin and Refresh Austin
Wednesday, May 21, 2008
6:00 PM - 10:00 PM
Union Park, 612 W Sixth St. (map)
For those of you who use them, we have event pages on Facebook and Upcoming.
To get on the email list for future GeekAustin events, send an email to linearb@gmail.com.
 |
I first found out about Bryan Menell’s Austin High Tech Happy Hour when he and I both scheduled an event on the same day. Ooops. A few months later, I discovered AustinStartup.com (get the RSS feed), and found that Bryan is responsible for that as well. Recently, Bryan gave me a sneak peak at a new site he was working on — the Austin Emerging 100. Bryan has clearly been a very busy guy.
Before reading this post, go check out the Austin Emerging 100. If you’re looking for work with a startup, this should be the first place to check. |
Lynn Bender: Bryan, The Austin Emerging 100 is going to be a tremendous resource for all of us. It looks like a considerable amount of work went into it. How many folks were involved in the development of the site? Did you have any corporate sponsorship?
Bryan Menell: The website will be a great resource for the many people who ask me every week about what technology companies are hiring, who they are, and what they are up to. It started as a spreadsheet that Bryan Jones (CEO of Moximity) put together, and we collaborated to grow the list. At various points I asked for input from friends who are angel investors, PR professionals, and other members of the tech community. At first I thought it would be difficult to even come up with 100 companies, and then it became even more difficult to limit it to just 100. There haven’t been any sponsors of the project, but I would certainly welcome some!
(You can read Bryan’s own post on the Austin Emerging 100 here).
Bender: You also manage AustinStartup.com and the Austin High Tech Happy Hour. Did you originally envision this suite of sites, or did you create each as you discovered a need? Do you have any future plans that you can share?
Menell: Each one kind of came up independently, and each has it’s own support system. AustinStartup was intended to promote and expose all the cool technology stuff going on in Austin, and the happy hour was my wife’s idea. At the first happy hour over a year ago there just weren’t many social events for technology folks. I wish I could say there was a grand plan behind it all, but it all just sort of happened. My future plans include taking a break from dreaming up little side projects. Although I think it would be really neat to create something like TechCrunch’s CrunchBase just for Austin technology companies. Anybody want to collaborate on that project?
Bender: You are on the Board of Advisors of Texchange. Could you tell me something about the organization?
Menell: Texchange is a great organization for C-level executives in Austin technology companies, and for entrepreneurs. The quality of the networking is amazing, and the content in the monthly programs is top notch. In June Geoffrey Moore (who wrote Crossing the Chasm) is speaking, and that will cap off a tremendous year for Texchange. I encourage anyone who is interested to attend as a guest of mine to try it out.
Bender: Hardly a day goes by that someone doesn’t say: “Austin could be another Silicon Valley. if only we could…..”.
Yet, every day I see folks turn down opportunities to move to the Valley because they love Austin. How are we doing? What are we doing right, and what are we missing?
Menell: I lived in the valley for a few years, and it’s been 12 in Austin now. We don’t want to be like the valley because Austin is so much better. One of the things we do lack is a great support system that helps entrepreneurs get from idea stage to an investable stage. One of the ways we could do that is to pull entrepreneurs who have seen liquidity back into the startup community. I think we need higher levels of venture investment in more diverse areas like mobile, B2C, social media, and cleantech. Today we’re more diverse than ever before, but we could definitely use more.
 |
Over the last few weeks, there has been an increasing amount of talk about the upcoming ProductCamp Austin. I asked Paul Young, one of the organizers, if he could give us the background on the event. |
Lynn Bender: You’re a local guy. Where did you get the idea to host a ProductCamp Austin. Have you previously attended one in another city? Have you attended a BarCamp?
Paul Young: I’ve been in Austin for 10 years, and had several opportunities to move out to the Valley, but always turned them down because we love Austin. One aspect of the Bay Area that I’ve always had a jealous eye towards is that their critical mass of technical and marketing people really lends itself to organization of great events.
Aside from the various BarCamps, the first ProductCamp (called P-Camp) was held in the Valley back in March. I looked at what they did and thought “we need that in Austin.” I sent out some feelers to people I’ve met through my Product Management blog (Product Beautiful) and away we went.
I’ve never done a BarCamp before, so this is a new experience for me as an organizer as well. We’ve set some ambitious goals for sessions and attendance, and I know this is going to be a great event because whenever you put smart, capable people together in a room, good stuff happens.
Bender: GeekAustin recently interviewed Jason Cohen of SmartBear (interview). Jason mentioned that he was using Agile practices in his marketing programs. I notice that many of the people involved with, and blogging about, ProductCamp Austin have a knowledge of Agile, Design Patterns, and similar tools. Even the word Pragmatic hints at the classic text The Pragmatic Programmer by Andrew Hunt and Dave Thomas. What’s going on? Are the marketing folks getting hip to engineering methodologies or are the engineers taking over the marketing dept?
Young: Both! “Big M” Marketing, which includes Product Management, is very interested in solutions to the customer’s problems and not just ordering t-shirts and making their YouTube video “go viral.” Agile has some great aspects about turning code in fast iterations and not over documenting, but the beauty of Agile is that it injects a greater understanding of the customer and her problems into the company. There are a lot of reasons why Agile is catching fire, and whichever one you like, they all get back to “how can we solve a problem that’s real?”
Interestingly, most Marketing teams still perform their positioning in a very waterfall-like manner: go in a room, position, output documents…redevelop a year later when the Sales team says that the message isn’t working. Can we position a product like we develop in Agile? Develop, test, refine continuously? Sounds like a great session for ProductCamp!
Bender: What kinds of sessions do you expect ProductCamp to cover?
Young: ProductCamp will have sessions covering all aspects of the product management and development lifecycle. John Milburn from Pragmatic Marketing will lead a session about technology assessment and where to put your development dollars. Bjorn Aannestad has signed up to facilitate a discussion about different methods we use to do feature prioritization. I’ll be leading a roundtable about working with offshore manufacturing and development. Proposed sessions include how Product Managers can work effectively in an Agile shop, career planning and transitioning into and out of Product Management, and dealing with GUIs in requirements.
Bender: How many folks do you expect at the event? I’ve noticed that a few barcamps have attracted upwards of 1000 people. Do you think that there is a limit to how big a barcamp type event can scale before it ceases to be an un-conference and turns into a traditional conference?
Young: Because ProductCamp is focused on more specific topics than BarCamp, I doubt we will see 1000 people. We’ll probably have less than 100; our goal is to have a high quality group who are dealing with the pressing problems in the product development process every day. The sessions are going to be interesting and thought provoking, and participants should come ready to be challenged - and challenge one another. Product Management is still poorly understood in technology companies, so it is up to us to help define what is a critical role that will shape the software and products we use in the future.
As far as keeping the spirit of the event, I strongly believe that no one wants to come out to hear a bunch of talking heads droning about process and continuous improvement. The un- in un-conference means that the rule of 2-feet applies: if you don’t feel like you’re getting value in a session - find another! ProductCamp is participation driven, and the day will go where the participants take it.
Bender: Is this a free event? I see that Pragmatic Marketing is one of the sponsors. Who are the other sponsors? Are you still seeking additional sponsors? Do you need additional volunteers?
Young: This is a 100% free event and everyone is welcome! The only cost is participation.
ProductCamp is sponsored by Pragmatic Marketing, Austin Ventures, St. Edwards University Professional Education Center, The Association of International Product Marketing and Management, and NetStreams - and we are seeking more (email pt.young@gmail.com).
We will never have enough volunteers! If you are interested in ProductCamp, first go sign up as a participant. Then list yourself on the wiki under “Volunteers” and we’ll find a job for you! Finally, if you feel like you have something to share about Product Management or Marketing, or the way products and software are being developed, sign up to lead a session as a speaker.
Bender: When and where will ProductCamp be held?
Young: ProductCamp will be held Saturday June 14th, 2008, 8:00 AM - 6:00 PM at St. Edwards University’s Professional Education Center on 9420 Research Blvd., near Mopac and 183. To sign up, and learn more, go to the official site for ProductCamp Austin.
 |
I first met Jim “Decibel” Nasby at Nuclear Tacos. Jim was one of the early members of distributed.net. He was also the one who introduced Whurley and I to each other (”You guys need to trade phonebooks.”) Jim was an early adopter of, and is considered a top expert in, Postgres. Following his announcement of a Austin Postgres User Group, I interviewed him on the state of Postgres and the job outlook for Postgres pros. The Austin Postgres User Group will be meeting Tuesday, May 6th, at Sun Microsystems. More details here. |
Lynn Bender: A few years back, I searched Dice/Monster and found only three job postings in all of Texas which contained the keyword Postgres or PostreSQL. what is the job market for Postgres experts in Austin nowdays?
Jim Nasby: I see two distinct markets for people with knowledge in Postgres; there are companies that (generally) past the startup stage, have money to spend, and want someone that has a substantial amount of Postgres and database expertise. There are very few people in the world that have that skill set, so demand is very high relative to supply. This is a market that experts in other databases should pay attention to.
The other market is companies that are using Postgres, but don’t think they need an expert. This is where you will find people who don’t do database work for a living, but have experience with Postgres. In cases like this, having Postgres on your resume will give you a decided edge over a similar candidate that doesn’t have Postgres experience.
Something else that I’ve noticed is that a lot of Postgres jobs don’t get listed through channels like Dice or Monster. A lot more of this hiring seems to be via word-of-mouth. So I don’t think low numbers on Dice or Monster are very representative. One data point that I can throw out is that until recently I’ve averaged one serious inquiry from a recruiter per month. This has fallen off in the last 6 months or so, possible due to my reduced involvement with the community.
Bender: Almost every database has a certification program — Oracle, DB2, SQL Server, and even MySQL. Is there any equivalent yet for Postgres. What are some of the ways prospective Postgres DBAs can distinguish themselves?
Nasby: There are many benefits that come from being involved in the Postgres community, and distinguishing yourself as an expert is just one of them. So let me address all of them in one answer.
First, simply reading the mailing lists is a great way to learn about Postgres, as well as good database practices. pgsql-general, pgsql-novice and pgsql-sql are good places to start. Even better than just lurking is participating. Asking questions about things you’re not clear on, as well as answering questions from others when you can.
Second, reading pgsql-hackers is a good way to learn about how the database actually works on a nuts-and-bolts level. This is an important step up… understanding how the database functions takes you to a much higher level than just being able to write queries; you can start understanding how database design must consider how the database actually functions.
Finally, there is the level of actively participating in the development of Postgres. This doesn’t have to be in the form of code, either. There is plenty of room for help with things like documentation and advocacy. You can also contribute at a technical level even if you’re not writing code.
Bender: For someone just starting out with, aside from a knowledge of SQL, what are most critical skills for a Postgres DBA to have? and what is the best way to obtain them?
Nasby: I’m glad that you mentioned “knowledge of SQL”. SQL is nothing more than a language, and a very simple one at that. I think this is a point that many people fail to grasp. Working with databases is very different than working with procedural code; it requires a different mindset. I constantly see SQL that was clearly written by someone who was thinking in terms of “first I do this, then I do this, then I do this”; they were thinking procedurally. Databases aren’t procedural engines, they’re set manipulation engines. In order to actually be proficient with databases you have to think in terms of sets of *data*, not sets of *operations*.
Also, I want to point out that there are 3 different areas of database expertise: administration, development, and architecture. A database administrator (DBA) is generally concerned with keeping production databases up and running. They are similar to systems administrators. Database developers are concerned with writing code that interacts with the database; queries, stored procedures, as well as portions of client-side code. Database architects work with the structure of data in the database, as well as higher-level considerations. Things like table design, materialized views, designing replication environments. Of course, it’s very common for people to wear many of these three hats.
The key to success with a particular database is understanding how it differs from other databases. For Postgres, this means understanding what MVCC is and how Postgres implements it. When you understand that, you’ll understand how critically important vacuuming is. It also means you don’t have to worry very much about lock contention issues, something that can be a huge pain in other databases. It’s also important to understand what most of the different configuration parameters do (there are a few that can generally be ignored). Understanding that means understanding some of how the engine actually works. There’s some good references for this information available.
There are also things that aren’t Postgres-specific. for DBAs, it’s good to understand how the different backup and recovery mechanisms work. For developers and architects, understanding how to think in terms of sets is critical. Understanding of how the engine works is also useful for developers and DBAs; it’s pretty critical for architects. Replication is something that DBAs and architects should also know.
Bender: Senior level folks and decision makers often ask me “Why is Postgres better? Why should I switch from MySQL?” What would you tell these folks?
Nasby: With Postgres, data integrity is the number one driving factor behind everything. Right behind that is stability. Performance is 3rd. MySQL tends to do things “the easy way”. The trade-off here is that Postgres can be seen as being “hard” compared to MySQL, and there is a bit of truth to that. MySQL can be a bit easier at the very beginning. But once you get into a larger environment, those initial differences become meaningless, but data quality issues are huge.
People like to point to MySQL’s customer list and get a warm fuzzy that since so many other well-known companies use MySQL it must be good enough for us. What they fail to understand is that MySQL is a commercial company with a commercial product, and that list is marketing material. The list for Postgres isn’t as big and impressive because the community focuses effort on the database itself and not as much on marketing.
So, if you’re starting from scratch, I think there’s a very strong case to be made for Postgres. If you have existing code it becomes a bit trickier, because there is the cost of actually migrating. What I can say is what I’ve seen time and time again, and that’s people who finally bit the bullet and migrated and are much happier, or people who are still on MySQL and hating it, but perceive the pain to be just below the pain of migrating. I’ve yet to find someone who’s regretted migrating to Postgres.
Bender: MySQL seems to have a wide variety of storage engines available. Each seem to be suited to a particular type of task. Is there an equivalent to this in Postgres?
Nasby: I think multiple storage engines is MySQL’s Achilles heel. It sounds great in theory… give people the flexibility to use the right storage engine for the job. But the reality is that the storage technologies are too different to work well in one product. For example, there are serious caveats with transactions in InnoDB because of MyISAM. And you find pieces of MySQL technology that only work with one storage engine.
I think a far better approach is to look at what *database* engine is best suited for a given task, or if a database engine is even the right answer. There are options built on Postgres, like Greenplum’s MPP that scale well into many terabytes for data warehouse applications.
Having said that, there are efforts in the Postgres community to add options that will make it’s storage format useful in a broader range of cases. One example is being able to mark a partition as read-only. That allows for covering index scans. It also potentially allows for stripping out a lot of per-row overhead. There are also different indexing methods being worked on.
Bender: I realize that the Austin Postgres user group has not had it’s first meeting yet, but can you share a bit of your vision for what you would like to see? Programs? Speakers?
Nasby: My personal goal for the user group is to promote Postgres and to provide a resource for people in Austin / central Texas that are using Postgres. Ultimately, I think it’s those users who will determine what the user group looks like.
The Austin Postgres User Group will be meeting Tuesday, May 6th, at Sun Microsystems. More details here.
 |
Many of my friends consider Caroline Valentine, of Valentine And Associates, the first person to call when they have high-level HR/staffing needs. The last few times we’ve had lunch, I wished I had a recorder with me. Following a recent conversation about insurance, I wrote some of my questions down, and Caroline responded. |
Lynn Bender: Last time we met, you had mentioned several strategies which startups can use to reduce their per employee health insurance premiums. Could you elaborate?
Caroline Valentine: The most common strategy is to provide a plan or plans with higher $ deductibles and copays. For this to work and not result in a mutiny of the current employees on increased out of pocket expenses or higher salary offers to prospective employees to compensate, it must be accompanied by some form of pre-tax savings account – either an FSA (Flexible Savings Account) or HSA (Healthcare Savings Account). There is a third type, HRA, which is not commonly used, so I wont elaborate on it.
The difference is pretty simple. An FSA allows for pre-tax deductions to be used within the calendar for any healthcare related expenses. The catch of course is within the calendar year – it’s a use it or lose it plan. An HSA allows for pre-tax deductions to be used anytime needed. The employer and employee can both make contributions to the account. It grows over time and eventually can be transferred to a mutual money account (from simple savings) and then can operate as a retirement fund, participants are forced to pull money out after a certain age – but not just for healthcare related expenses- check out the links below for additional details on how both plans work -
http://www.ustreas.gov/offices/public-affairs/hsa/
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flexible_spending_account
If your company doesn’t already offer one, ask about it – the plans save $ for companies as well so your HR or accounting departments should be happy to hear you are interested.
Bender: Many of my friends work as independent contractors. Some are employed through a headhunter/recruiting firm, and have their insurance included through the firm. However, some firms provide no such coverage. Do you see any trends?
Valentine: As we all know, insurance costs are continuing to escalate upwards. For most firms, the solution is higher deductibles and co-pays, which I discussed in the answer to the previous question. As it becomes more difficult, we might see fewer firms willing to deal with the headache. On the other hand, if more consultants and contractors request (or even demand) access to benefits as a condition, the firms might reconsider. The size of the firm, types of clients and the firm’s financial stability are also factors to consider.
Bender: For IT pros who must seek coverage on their own, what do you suggest? I know that BCBS was offering individual plans, but for individuals over 45, the cost becomes prohibitive. Is it always better to find a group plan?
Valentine: Most of the major/national healthcare providers do offer individual plans – BCBS, Humana, United Healthcare, Assurant, Cigna, and Atena. Additionally, there are local and regional providers including Scott & White. It is important to research all of the available plans in your area and get a quote if you can. The process of determining rates is not an exact science and can varying greatly from provider to provider. It is not always better to find a group plan, but most of the time it is. Many organizations are providing members with access to healthcare plans – IEEE being one of them. There are many more – first step is identifying organizations focused on independent consultants as a core membership and it being a group you are interested in joining.
Bender: The idea of coworking has been getting a lot a press recently. For those starting or participating in a co-working venture, are there any special considerations?
Valentine: Coworking is different from simply renting space in a “business office suite” type of environment with a desk, door, receptionist, and conference room. The underlying intent of co-working is to create and foster community and communication – my advice would be to know that is a guiding principle, know yourself and how much community and communication you are seeking, and know what you want to give to and get from the arrangement.
 |
Omar Gallaga is the author of the popular technology blog Digital Savant on austin360. I caught up with him on blogging, improv, and sneaking up on Sarah Lacy. You can follow him on Twitter at http://www.twitter.com/omarg. |
MICHELLE:
Your Digital Savant blog allows you to diss the addition of a Motley Crue song to the video game “Rock Band”. Did you sell your soul to the devil or something? How did you score a gig that PAYS you to blog about video games?
OMAR:
I KNOW! That’s always the biggest revelation when I speak to students about journalism. It really started when I began working on the Statesman business desk way back in 1997. I’d always been big into video games and whenever there was an opportunity to write about a local game company (like Origin Systems), I always took it. After a while, I began writing more about personal tech and keeping up with the games industry became a larger part of my job.
Now, it’s probably only about 15 percent of my job, but I still try to keep up with what’s going on and play as much as I can. People forget, though, that sometimes you also have to play the really awful, worthless video games.
Surprisingly, not a lot of other people in the newsroom had a lot of interest in writing about the subject. I think a lot of people still think video games aren’t worth writing about unless you’re talking about the industry of interactive entertainment. I tend to think that there’s a lot culturally going on and that people my age (33) or younger have a lot of memories and cultural references built around games.
At the very least, it’s kind of nice not to have had all those hours I spent growing up playing video games be a complete waste. Now I also run a Web site about video gaming culture and history called Videogamey and I’m finding that I have more video game memories floating around in my head that I ever thought.
MICHELLE:
Your Digital Savant archives go all the way back to April of 2005. How did blogging and your blog in particular come about at Austin360.com?
OMAR:
It’s actually been even longer than that. Before Digital Savant, we all contributed to an “XL Blog” that was much more general. I would write about DVDs or movies or whatever else was happening. At the time, it was very experimental and only pertained to entertainment. Over time, we realized we should probably break them out into separate blogs and make them more thematic.
People in the newsroom knew that I had a pretty popular personal blog at the time that I’d been writing since 2000, so it was a natural fit for me. And technology is something I’ve always enjoyed writing about, even when I was editing our Spanish-language newspaper, ˇahora sí!. I kept “Digital Savant” going even as I was doing a whole other full-time job.
MICHELLE:
You were recently named “Employee of the Month” at the Austin American Statesman for your comprehensive coverage of your SxSW Interactive coverage. Do expand on your coverage of the conference, the disastrous Zuckerburg keynote and your run-in with Sarah Lacy.
OMAR:
It was very much a mix of good planning, long hours and some luck. My editor Sarah Lindner and I had been planning our coverage of South by Southwest Interactive for months. We’d shot videos of Hugh Forrest way in advance and had made plans to record a video of the Zuckerberg keynote. For a while, we weren’t even sure we were going to be allowed to do that and I was wrangling with SXSWi PR people over whether we would have any problems doing that or not. As it turned out, there was a whole crowd of people videotaping. But I got there an hour and a half early just to make sure I’d have a seat in the front row.
We taped the whole keynote in HD and had someone on staff waiting back at the newsroom to edit the video and post it as soon as possible. I handed the camera over when the keynote was done and we had a four-minute version of the keynote up within a few hours. As it was happening, I kept a log of interesting things that were said and things that happened and e-mailed that to the video editor so she knew exactly which clips to pull.
A few hours later, I was hunting for food and someone helped get me into an invitation-only event. Sarah Lacy happened to be there and I had my little Canon point-and-shoot. I overheard her talking to someone about the keynote and kind of laughing the whole thing off. I introduced myself and asked her if she wouldn’t mind saying what she was just saying on camera. She was very friendly and agreed.
As soon as I had the footage, I called my editor to tell her. By this time, Twitter and online blogs were already buzzing about the keynote and I knew we needed to get it up online. Our video editor had already left for the day, so I edited the footage myself on my Macbook and uploaded it to YouTube. Then it spread all over the Web after I posted about it on Twitter. It was just pure luck that I happened to run into her and that she agreed to be on video. By the next day, it seemed like the video was everywhere.
As for the rest of the conference, several of us kept in touch via text message or Twitter and we covered the conference in blogs and videos. We learned a lot. It was the first year I’d really thrown myself into SXSW in a while since coming back to covering technology and it involved commuting from New Braunfels every day and working 12-14 hour days. It was exhausting, but also really exciting. We want to do a lot more video next year and to find better ways to get updates out more quickly and efficiently.
MICHELLE:
Does the Statesman provide you will all the cool products you write about, and if so, do you get to keep them?
OMAR:
Companies send us videogames and tech products for review, but generally they ask if we want to review something first and I try to keep it very limited so we don’t get flooded with stuff we’ll never get to and have to mail back. Products that companies don’t want back (like video games or promotional junk) gets put in a company sale charity to benefit local schools.
I keep some video games for reference in case I think I may need to go back and play it again for an expansion pack or for future downloads. (Say, “Rock Band” or stuff on Xbox Live.) It’s not any different than what a music critic deals with: tons of CDs that end up in bins that you’ll never have time to review. Games usually end up in the charity sale or in a drawer, sadly.
MICHELLE:
How long do you think you’ll be on Twitter before someone throws your phone out a window?
OMAR:
My wife wants to throw my iPhone across the room sometimes. I haven’t gotten bored with Twitter yet, mostly because it went from being entertaining to useful for my job. I love it when big news spreads through Twitter or somebody posts something short, but profound.
MICHELLE:
Where are the best places to find you online?
OMAR:
My blog is at Digital Savant and I also write for Television Without Pity, Videogamey and a comic I do with my brother called “Space Monkeys!” at actiongravy.com.
I know of no one in Austin who knows more about Postgres than Decibel. For quite a while, he has been threatening to start a Postgres user group. He’s finally done it. Here is the scoop:
Event: Austin Postgres User’s Group - First Meeting
Date: Tuesday, May 6th at 6PM-8PM
Location Sun Microsystems (Map)
Building 8 - Longhorn Conference Room
5300 Riata Park Ct
Austin, TX 78727
The rough agenda will be:
6:00 - 6:30 Meet ‘n greet
6:30 - 7:15 Discuss goals for the AustinPUG
7:15 - 7:45 Presentation: What’s new it 8.3?
7:45 - 8:00 Wrap-up
Everyone who is attending will have to register as a visitor; to make this as efficient as possible, please RSVP to austinpug@decibel.org. There will be free Pizza from Mangia’s. When you register, please specify pizza preference: spinach, pepperoni, or Chicago style, etc.
 |
Cody Marx Bailey and his colleagues in College Station have been executing successful projects and events in rapid succession. While asking Cody if he would consider playing DJ at the upcoming Get Agile event, I took the opportunity to discuss some of the recent projects he has been involved in. |
Lynn Bender: It seems in the last year, Bryan/College Station has really established a reputation as a city with a strong, well-connected, technical community — not just as a place where people talk the talk, but rather where people put plans into action. Bryan/College Station was host to a very successful BarCampTexas II. It’s the location for the first co-working facility in Texas — The Creative Space (thecreativespace.org). You seem to be one of the main instigators. Tell me how this all came about.
Cody Marx Bailey: It really started about a year and a half ago when some friends of mine and I would all carpool to Houston for Refresh. We would leave work at 5, barely make it there on time, and make it back home around 1am. One night, on the way back, we decided that it was about time that we held our own Refresh in Bryan/College Station. We weren’t sure if it would go over, but we figured if we could get a few new faces out we would at least be that far along. We ended up with 40 or so folks coming out to hear Erica O’Grady give a talk on “The Flight of the Creative Class“. A few months later, I was able to schedule Google to come and give a talk. We had over 200 people attend and it was then that we realized that we had a real community in little old Bryan/College Station.
My friends and I were meeting after work at coffee shops, residence, and bars to get work done when it finally occurred to me that we were very close to catalyzing and forming the Creative Space. We opened up in August 2007 with 5 anchor residents that quickly grew to 10 and more recently expanded to 15 with the addition of more space.
Once the coworking office was established, the community was strong and energized, we decided that it was about time we held a BarCamp. We had attended a few BarCamps as a group so we knew what the expectations were. Our collective goal was to throw on a BarCamp and invite folks from around the state to come in and see what we had been up to. It was sort of our coming out party for our community and we knew we had to pull this off. We made several trips around the state to promote BarCampTexas II and let folks know that it was going to be awesome… and it was.
Bender: Your company, Downtown Cartel (downtowncartel.com), is one of the companies who operate out of The Creative Space. Can you tell me a bit about how The Creative Space functions, the services it provides, and how such a space benefits Downtown Cartel.
Bailey: Downtown Cartel is a direct result of The Creative Space’s opportunities. I was doing freelance work out of the space along with three other guys when it sort of dawned on us that we should work together and form a single entity to get behind. A couple of ruby developers, a python guy, some javascript and a little bit of magic later, we were official — working with some great clients out of both Austin and Houston. There’s a plethora of talented folks in The Creative Space that are all looking out to help one another and are interested in watching everyone grow. It sometimes feels like a family more than a company, but that’s because we’re a bunch of honest, good natured young professionals with tons of passion for doing great things with our customers and community. Downtown Cartel’s first product was hashtags.org, a tagging application for microblogging/twitter.
With respect to how The Creative Space functions, it is a rather loose organization of individuals. The goal is to provide a community space for anyone to come collaborate and innovate in all the creative type occupations. Since office space is never free we have several anchor tenets who have permanent desks in the space. However, anyone is welcome to borrow a spare desk when needed.
Bender: I keep hearing about a company called Fibertown, and how all you folks have fiber to the office. What’s the scoop?
Bailey: Fibertown is the development company that is transforming historic downtown Bryan into a modern technology campus. We’ve been fortunate enough to work with Fibertown to ensure the viability of the space and our businesses. The energy that we bring to downtown has already made a large impression on the professional culture in downtown.
We are situated on a fiber crossroads for five of the world’s nine Tier I internet carriers which gives us some of the best internet connectivity in the United States. We also have access to a brand new Tier IV data center just 300 feet away from our offices. With rent being a fraction of what it is in downtown Austin, Houston, and Dallas we’ve found Bryan/College Station to be a great place to live and work.
Bender: BarCampTexas II was a huge success. You managed to bring a large contingent of folks from Houston, Dallas, and Austin. Can you tell me about the event?
Bailey: Sure thing! We wanted to have a good sized BarCamp in Bryan/College Station and being nearly equi-distant from the big three we felt that it would provide a great place for everyone from around the state to come and geek out together. Folks from The Creative Space all made it out to events like GeekAustin, Houston Startup Happy Hour, RefreshDallas, etc to make sure that those communities saw that we were eager to host them. I think inviting people in person was a big factor in having 180 people show up from out of town.
Honestly, I think the kegs of Shiner may have played a big part in the success. Nothing like good beer, great people, and lots of bandwidth. Good things happen when kindling like that is provided.
Bender: I’ve wanted to go to the TED conference for years. Aside from the fact that it is 10K to attend, you have to be invited — and I am not expecting an invite in the mail. You did something about it and started the BIL conference and attracted a broad list of well-known speakers. You pretty much disproved that someone has to be in a place like Austin or Silicon Valley to put together an event of this caliber. Were there any special considerations or complications organizing the event from College Station?
As part of the Bryan/College Station contingent, we don’t let stuff like that prevent us from doing anything. We think big and execute our ideas. If you listen to every reason why not to do something, you’ll never get anything done. Once we decided we were going to do this, we got to work and reached into our social networks and started working the wiki.
What was originally going to be a few guys hanging out in Monterey became a 250 person unconference across the street from TED. We planned it so that BIL would be hitting it’s stride right when TED finished up. This allowed for about 10% of the attendees from TED to come to BIL and experience a community driven, distributed two-day unconference in the spirit of TED. I’ll admit, it was probably one of the most amazing events I’ve ever experienced. The intelligent minds that gathered that weekend in Monterey, California was nothing short of amazing.
Bender: With the rise of Social Media, there has been considerable talk about the notion of community. You and your colleagues have been able to move beyond talk and motivate each other to action. What advice can you share with folks in other cities.
Bailey: I think that leading by example is the best way to motivate others. Getting people excited about a vision and then leading them through the first couple of times really builds a track record they can trust. At first, there were probably quite a few doubters in the area. They said things like “it’ll never happen”, and “we’re too small to be legitimate”. If you sit around and listen to those people, nothing good ever happens.
The best advice I can give is to ignore the pessimism and focus on making things happen. The power of community and being able to rely on and trust them is priceless.
Cody Marx Bailey will be spinning as DJ SuperPhly at the upcoming GeekAustin Get Agile party.
Stop me if you’ve heard this one before….
I am really looking forward to the Get Agile event this month. I went through my big phone book and found about 550 Austin fans of agile technology. Add the core GeekAustin folks (and subtract those that would rather stay home and download their girlfriend) — and we’re looking at a pretty good bash.
The co-host for this month’s event is Agile Austin. These folks are doing great things — sponsoring workshops, providing continuing education for software, project, and management professionals, as well as bringing industry leaders to town for speaking engagements. As far as I can tell, only about half of my friends are aware of them. I hope the rest of you can make it to the party and meet a few of these folks. If you’d like to learn more about agile in an informal environment, while tossing back a few drinks, this is your opportunity.
A note about the venue: There is plenty of room at Union Park. You won’t be standing in line to get in. And when I say that there will be valet parking, I actually call the valet company to send extra drivers. So you want to take advantage of it, you won’t have to wait to get your car parked either. The drinks at Union Park are generous and reasonably priced. For those of you who want to see how agile you are after a couple of drinks, we’ll be in the BoomBoom room.
Here’s the details:
Get Agile with GeekAustin / Agile Austin
Tuesday April 29th 6PM-9PM
at Union Park 612 w. 6th street (map)
Upcoming: http://upcoming.yahoo.com/event/433148/
We have a few surprises in store as well — but we’re not going to tell.
To get on the invite list for future GeekAustin events, send email to linearb@gmail.com
Hope to see you there!
-Lynn
After outgrowing the last few venues, it became necessary to find something a bit larger for the upcoming GeekAustin Agile and WordPress events. Michelle had been telling me to check out Union Park, next to Katz’s, telling me what a great place it was. So, next time Jana and I had one of our whiskey and paté nights, we stopped by for a few rounds of Maker’s Mark. The drinks are very reasonably priced, there is a beautiful view from their upstairs patio, and Greg Bodle, the owner, is a great guy. Then we saw the Union Park BoomBoom Room:
It’s decided. Union Park is the place. Hope you can join us at the next event.
 |
Martin Galway, longtime veteran of the Austin game industry, sent me an note yesterday to let me know that his latest company, Certain Affinity, is seeking a IT manager. I took the opportunity to catch up with Martin on the latest news — including Plunder. |
Lynn Bender: So, how long has CertainAffinity been around? You’re one of the founders, yes?
Martin Galway: I am a co-founder along with the Max Hoberman, the company president. Max is the chap who designed all the multiplayer features of the Halo games. Max is an austin native who, after working in Chicago and Seattle for decade, decided he had to come back. When Max met a few of us ex-Digital Anvil folks, we decided to start a company together.
Bender: Martin, it seems like you’ve been in town since the early Origin days. Are you an Austin native as well?
Galway: A school friend of mine had moved over to Austin and was working at Origin. He recommended me to come over in early 1988 for some freelance audio work. I immediately fell in love with the place - and Origin, who happened to have no audio staff at the time. They liked my work, so we started to talk employment. After some visa wrangling, I finally made it over at the end of 1990, and started Origin’s audio department. In 1996 a group of us left Origin and started Digital Anvil.
Bender: How did Certain Affinity get started?
Galway: In mid 2006, I was picking up the pieces after Microsoft had closed our beloved Digital Anvil studio (what a soap opera!). At a July 4th party, I was introduced to Max Hoberman who, while still on the Bungie payroll and still working on Halo 3, had finagled his return to Austin after ten years in the Bungie wildernesses of Chicago and Seattle. Max said he needed to come back to Austin - understandable! We formed Certain Affinity soon after, with Max as president, and by November we were off and running with nine staff and our first project, a map pack for Halo 2. That came out in April 2007, by which time we’d begun some original IP designs. We got Valve interested in us enough to land XBOX360 co-development work on their upcoming action-horror title Left 4 Dead, but continued work on the original stuff, and you’ll be seeing the fruits of both this year.
Bender: Everyone is talking about your new game, Plunder. What is the scoop?
Galway: That’s one of our original IPs - due out in the middle of this year from Capcom. It’s an easy-to-learn, action strategy title featuring pirates - basically you have to keep the other ships away from your stuff while you build up your empire. There’s tons of cannon fire and sinking ships everywhere, but it’s all viewed from hundreds of feet away so we don’t think of it as a violent game. Plunder is enjoyable for all ages, and we’re working to make sure it has depth enough for hard-core players, while people who don’t think they’re up to a conventional action title can still feel comfortable playing it. As one example of the simplicity - there’s no aiming, and no fire button! You just sail your ship up alongside the enemy, and a thrilling sea-battle automatically ensues. Anything you sail up to that you can fire on, you fire on. Sail away to stop the battle. In our play tests, all the non-gamers love it because they’re able to feel equal to the hardcore gamers.
Bender: I noticed that your games are geared mostly for the xbox. Do you have plans to extend to other platforms?
Galway: We are mostly an XBOX360 company, since that’s our recent background. Plunder will be on XBOX360, Playstation 3 and Windows.
Bender: In your email, you said that Certain Affinity needed an IT person. Can you tell me about the position?
Galway: We’re up over twenty staff now and I’ve been overloaded for some time. We’ve started to hire infrastructure people that make the company tick over in a much more professional way than me trying to do it all myself. The IT person will help solve our communications inside the company as well as with external partners, improve security, backups, and keep all our software and systems in peak condition. If they have other skills closer to development, there are always opportunities to get stuck in and help out. And - play our games of course, that’s important.
Bender: Do you have a jobs page that we can link to?
Galway: Sure. It’s: http://certainaffinity.com/jobs.htm
Bender: Thanks for giving me the latest news. I’ll be calling about that playtest. ;)
To get in the mood for the upcoming interview with Gordon Montgomery of Neudesic, I scanned Google for podcasts dealing with UX. I stumbled on to Gerry Gaffney’s User Experience Podcast (UXpod). This is a real gem. UXpod has over 30 high quality interviews with leading figures in User Experience including Luke Wroblewski, Joel Spolsky, Elizabeth Rosenzweig, Steve Krug and many others.
You might have paid to hear some of these folks speak at conferences. Thanks to UXPod, you can experience them in your car on the way to the office. If one of the lectures isn’t interesting, just fast forward to the next. It’s not like being at a conference where everyone sees you leave the room. You can stop them while you head in to UpperCrust for coffee, and you can make them start all over again if you get distracted by the driver next to you. Not even Tim O’Reilly can do that at a conference.
Happy listening, and see you on Mopac!
 |
Julie Gomoll is the president of Launchpad Coworking, which will be the first official coworking space in Austin, TX. Currently Launchpad is in the exploratory demolition phase, but but you can track its progress as well as read more about coworking on the Launchpad Coworking blog. |
MICHELLE: How did you learn about coworking, and what originally piqued your interest?
JULIE: The idea started in my twenties — I wanted to open a cool bar where smart people hung out and had great conversations. Then I realized I didn’t need to hang out in bars and that people who were hanging out in bars all day weren’t having such interesting conversations after all. I realized my dream was really about building good community. So I started thinking about a coffee shop. Now I’m in my forties, and I like to hang out and work in coffee shops, but find them lacking. I started to think about doing something using the coffee shop model, but in a way that would better facilitate work.
I was talking to Tori Breitling about the idea and she said told me about a coworking group and said, “Look what these people are doing.” I thought we could do that — a coffee shop with extra room for coworking. We got so into the whole coworking idea that we flipped the idea around, and it evolved into a coworking space with an attached coffee shop.
I’ve always been a big fan of collaboration. I’m of the mind that sharing information makes us smarter and stronger. In the eighties, I ran my company Go Media, the company I eventually sold to Excite, that way. One of my philosophies was that I wanted everyone I hired to be able to teach me something. I hired people who knew things I didn’t. I like people who work with me instead of for me. For example, back then I was doing production on the Mac but I wanted to know about design so I hired a designer.
I applied this philosophy to working with clients, too. I might say to a client, “You don’t need me to do this, I can teach you how to do it yourself.” Telling my “secrets” not only didn’t lose me work, it got me lots more work.
With LaunchPad Coworking, I get to learn about architecture, IT stuff, café stuff… I’ve never done anything in food service, that’s not my world, so I hire people who know what they’re doing and it’s great, I get to learn a ton. So we’re not just building a coworking space, we’re also coworking within our company and learning from each other.
MICHELLE: Your team ranges from UI experts, to designers, to an ex-manager at Jo’s, to entrepreneurs and marketers. How did y’all meet and then decide to start Launchpad?
JULIE: I’ve known Tori — now our user experience architect — since ’85. She’s one of the first people I met when I moved here. We’ve worked together at Go Media, Excite, Halsoft and now LaunchPad Coworking. Marie Hwang I met through Tori. And Tina Rosenzweig I met through Marie. Susan Price is someone I’ve known since my job at TypeThree, my first job in Austin. Susan and I have been in some ways coworking since we met. We’ve often run our companies from shared space so we could be around each other’s smart clients and smart coworkers.
I’m the one who decided to start LaunchPad Coworking, and I put the team together, but making it happen certainly has been a collaborative effort.
MICHELLE: When do you open, and what’s going down when you do?
JULIE: We’re opening in July. Before we open we’ll do a couple of days of dry runs — get people from the local community to come in and see how it works. It’s a different kind of space and a different business model so we want people to come in and test the design of the space and the software that we’ve developed.
We’ll have an opening party a couple of weeks after we’re open. We have more people interested in that party than I can fit, though, so perhaps we’ll have several parties :)
I’m eager to see what works and what doesn’t once we’re open and to make necessary adjustments. I think it’s going to be a massive learning experience from day one.
MICHELLE: Right now I am cooped up in my dark duplex writing these questions. If Launchpad was open right now, how would it make writing this post a more pleasant experience?
JULIE: You’d be in the nice, spacious, light environment around other people, some you know, some you don’t know. It’ll be an inspiring place, a comfortable place, with access to great coffee and food. You can still work alone if you want — put on your headphones or put up a Do Not Disturb card — or you can talk to people around you, ask for advice, ask for ideas, get to know your other coworkers and build community. And you’ll be around other people who want the same thing.
Do you have any other ingenious events planned to get internet geeks like me away from their desks at home and coworking at Launchpad?
JULIE: As far as ingenious events, we will have some. We’re just getting our event strategy in place, but we know for sure we’ll have Nova Science Now Science Cafes, for example, (www.sciencecafes.org) — these involve conversations with scientists on current science topics. But day-to-day this is about a good place to work and a good place for community.
MICHELLE: If someone wanted to follow Launchpad’s progress, what should they do?
JULIE: We’ve already got a lot of interest, people are already wanting to make reservations. I can’t wait to get our software up so they can start doing that online!
 |
Jason Cohen founded Smart Bear Software on a bet. The bet paid off. Profitable and cash-flow positive since Q4 ‘03, Smart Bear was recently acquired by the software testing firm, Automated QA. During a recent conversation about agile practices, Jason mentioned that Smart Bear was employing agile practices in their marketing strategy. I asked if I could interview him for GeekAustin. |
Lynn Bender: Jason, it seems like only a few years back when GeekAustin saw the first Smart Bear job posting.. Since then, you’ve gone on to win the Jolt award for Code Collaborator. I believe, however, that Code Collaborator wasn’t your first product. Could you tell me about your suite of tools and the market they serve?
Jason Cohen: Yeah, it was just a few years back when GeekAustin ran our first posting. By the way that’s also where I found employee #1!
Code Historian was our first product — a version control system data-mining tool. Version control is used primarily to keep developers from stepping on each others’ toes, but there’s a lot of useful data in there that’s generally hard to get at. We had everything from a “time-line diff” where you could get a diff of a file between any two points in time with one click to a system that transferred version control data to an RDBMS for real reporting.
Code review wasn’t in the original game plan. I stumbled into this hole in the developer tools market because people were abusing Code Historian in order to do reviews. By listening to my customers I made my way into code review.
Sounds agile already doesn’t it? Morphing yourself based stakeholder input rather than sticking to some pre-determined long-term master plan. If I hadn’t done that, we would certainly not have the same success.
Bender: When we last discussed agile methodology, you mentioned that Smart Bear employs agile methods in business and marketing. Could you elaborate on this?
Cohen: The traditional business plan looks out 2-4 years. Marketing — especially in print and events — takes months to plan, expects targets to be met months in the future, and campaigns often run 1-2 years.
These time-lines are as far-sighted and pre-planned as traditional waterfall software development, and at Smart Bear we don’t have them. Our marketing efforts can last 1-2 months, and can be set up in less than a month. We measure the response and adjust accordingly.
Bender: Traditionally, it seems that marketing has been driven by that elusive quality called inspiration. Once found, this is usually followed by pre-launch preparation, and then a massive launch. This is a heavyweight approach. Are there ways to insert agile practices into these steps — or do you simply have to discard this approach entirely?
Cohen: It’s a tricky answer because some things in marketing are beyond your control.
For example, print ads have a 2-3 month lead-time, and often you have to sign up for 6-12 months. Tradeshows can have a 12-month lead-time to get involved and 6 months lead-time for preparation. You can’t change these timelines, so to some extent they exert non-agile control over your efforts. For example, if the new print ad talks about features in v4.0, it’s going to come out 3 months from now and you’d better have released those features by then!
However the majority of our marketing efforts are, in fact, very different from the usual approach you described. We don’t talk about artsy-fuzzy things like ‘inspiration, we start early, and we fail-fast. We throw out the traditional model completely except for these issues of timeline.
Bender: Your book on code review is prominently advertised on the Smart Bear website. How does this fit in to your agile marketing strategy?
Cohen: We give away something of real value — a book about code review. It’s a physical book and and we print and ship it for free. There are sample chapters on-line so you can see that it’s full of genuinely useful information, not a sales pitch. We ask where you heard about us and people tell us. We know they tell the truth because if they came in from a web page we save the referring URL and we can see that the text they type in does match the referring site, so we assume it’s accurate for the other marketing efforts too.
We know books lead to trials because in our live demos the potential customer has always gotten the book. Over 50% of people who get a live demo end up purchasing, so there’s a direct and substantial correlation between getting books and purchasing.
We use the book to determine which marketing efforts work. Sure, it costs money to print and ship books, but what’s the value of not only promoting your product and earning trust in your company, but simultaneously measuring the efficacy of every marketing campaign?
Bender: Programmers have a suite of pre-built tools to drive the development process. Can you tell me a bit about how you manage test-driven marketing? I am guessing that there is nothing like JUnit for marketing.
Cohen: Ha, yeah there’s not.
The idea of test-driven development is to set up the conditions for success, then write code until the conditions are met. It also implies that you continue to measure continuously in the future to make sure you don’t regress.
We approach our marketing the same way. It’s only a question of time and money to get a print ad in 7 magazines, to get a booth at 20 tradeshows, and to spend $10k/month on Google ads. But you don’t have infinite time or money, and you know half those marketing efforts are a complete waste. So you have to measure which ones work and only spend money there.
So first set up the test cases. Maybe it’s “We get an average of 100 leads/month from this ad.” Or “We get 5 sales from that tradeshow.” Then you try it, and measure it (measurement is the hard part). Then it either passes or fails. If passes, we might spend more money but we’ll definitely stay with it. If it fails, we’ve spent a known amount of money, that’s OK.
Then there’s the “continuous testing” part. We’ve found that in marketing it’s often true that an ad can work in a magazine for 2 years and then stop being effective. So there’s the regression bug testing aspect as well.
We just use a single table in a database for book orders. We have a bunch of regex’s that look through user-supplied “how did you hear” (it’s fill-in-the-blank to prevent people from selecting an item at random) and mapping it into a set of 30+ fixed categories. Then we just “group by” that and count the books, usually grouping by date etc.. We use MS Access to generate a few reports.
One of the neat reports is “ROI.” Here we have a little table (updated by hand in Access) with how much money we’ve spent in each campaign, then we link that to the book orders. So it’s “Cost per book” on the advertising side; add in the cost to print and ship times the number of books and you have your total expense.
Bender: Can you tell me a bit more about the test metrics?
Cohen: It’s often difficult to link a sale to a marketing campaign, which is ultimately what you want to know. That is, if I spend X dollars on campaign C, I eventually get Y dollars in revenue. Most people are happy if Y > X, even if Y isn’t much bigger, even with overhead. We’re like that.
But tying the X dollars to the Y dollars is a lot of steps. When they got from your ad / booth / mailer / phone call to your web site / sales rep, did you record that fact? When others in the same group try out your software, do you link that to the original guy who found you? When you get the purchase order from accounts payable, can you link that as well?
Often even the first step is hard. Print advertising is notoriously difficult. You can try a fancy URL, but techie people know that’s unnecessary. Print-ad sales reps tell you you’re buying a brand, but that’s not my experience.
Bender: Putting the stakeholders first is considered to be one of the core agile values. Can you tell me a bit how this works in marketing / business development?
Cohen: It’s tautological to say that marketing should be driven by customers’ desires, behaviors, pains, etc., bu
