-An accidental series of discoveries-
I have found that one of the biggest hurdles in hosting an event is to find the right venue — one that people feel comfortable at, one that is suitable for the type of event you are hosting, and one that doesn’t require me to break the budget. Any decent venue up in North Austin — like Cool River, NXNW, etc — already does a booming business during the week. They don’t need the 200+ people I’ll bring. In fact, they’ll most likely want me to sign a contract guaranteeing that a certain amount of money will be spent. After 8 years of GeekAustin events, I have a pretty good idea of how much folks drink at an event — and it’s generally it’s 3-7 dollars less per person than what I’ll need to guarantee for x amount of space up North.
Contrast this with downtown. I can walk into pretty much any club downtown on a weeknight, saying : “Can I bring 200 of my friends here next Tuesday?”, and immediately I’ve got a new friend. No contracts. No guarantees. Just “thanks.” There are clubs of all sizes downtown. One can find multiple venues for groups of 20 to 600. Bear in mind, I am not talking about getting a venue during a club’s bread and butter nights — Friday and Saturday. I am talking about Monday through Wednesday, and for some venues, Thursday as well. This is why GeekAustin events are almost always downtown. I try to never displace a club’s regular customers. I simply bring them additional business they wouldn’t have had otherwise.
This is the same reason why so many of the BarCamp and BarCamp type events are held downtown. During the week, and during the day, there are a multitude of spaces available for little or no cost.
-From BarCamp to BarCollege-
When Daniel and I announced that we would be offering free SQL classes to individuals, an interesting but not unexpected thing happened. In addition to 100+ folks who asked to be included in the SQL classes, we had folks sending queries like “Will you be teaching JavaScript classes?“, “Do you know where I can get Python classes?“, etc. The following idea hit us over the head like a two by four:
With all the the available space during the day and during the week, we could easily turn 6th street and the warehouse district into a campus, where the tuition is a two drink minimum!
Imagine what a cool thing this will be for Austin. Instead of following the valley, here’s something we can take the lead on. I don’t know a city that has done this. Do you? Imagine downtown clubs filled during weeknights with people learning JavaScript, CSS, Linux, system administration, shell scripting, Cisco IOS, SharePoint, Java — whatever someone is willing to teach and share.
This whole idea is too big for Daniel and I alone. We decided to offer the classes because we like meeting new people, sharing our skills, and love talking about SQL. We don’t want to become coordinators for some massive enterprise. Fortunately, this does not need to be a massive enterprise. It does not need to have a organization to make it happen. For all the folks who use every opportunity to make themselves the hub of all things high tech Austin, your Grand Marshall services will not be required at this time. All that is needed are folks who are willing to share their skills.
There are already examples in Austin of similar skill sharing going on. Damon Clinkscales has done a tremendous amount to educate folks about Rails and build a strong Rails community in Austin. Scott Killen, Boris Portman, and all the folks at Agile Austin are doing the same to build a community focused on good programming practice. RefreshAustin does a great job of keeping members abreast of best practices in design and usability. I’m am merely suggesting that we take this a step further. In addition to presenting topics for those who have already acquired sufficient skills to be included in a particular tech community, let’s offer basic instruction so that new folks can hop on board.
You might be asking yourself: “What will I get out of it?”. Here are a few thoughts. Most computer book authors wrote their first book not because they hoped to make money off it, but rather because the recognition would allow them to increase their hourly rate. Similarly, as soon as Daniel and I announced the free SQL classes, we gained several new corporate clients. Everyone wins. You help strengthen the downtown economy, you help folks acquire new skills, and you expand and grow your community.
Thinking of stealing this idea? Please do. I want you to steal this idea. If you have a skill that everyone wants, share it. With LinkedIn, Facebook, and all the other tools at your disposal, you won’t have any problem finding takers. Want to teach in Austin but don’t know how to go about finding a venue? I’ll be posting more about that soon. Until then, feel free to send me an email at linearb@gmail.com.
For those don’t live in Austin, go ahead. Copy us. Steal this idea.
-Linear
As many of you know, because we have some new things coming up, the 8th Anniversary Bash was to be our last party for a while. I want to give a special thanks to RefreshAustin and the Austin Electronic Music Grid for co-hosting the party. Extra special thanks to Michelle Greer for introducing me to Union Park. This club keeps getting better and better.
Tech Diva Kimberlie Dykeman and Paul Walhus were doing interviews on the roof in between musical acts. Among the folks interviewed were Michael Witbrock of Cycorp (interview), Chris Lamprecht, Lead Architect of Indeed.com (interview), and Mauricio Piña of tseg.com (interview)
Watch GeekAustin 07 - Michael Witbrock - Cycorp in News Online
De facto chronicler of Austin tech events, Eugene Hsu, dropped by to photograph the party. You can see his photo sets on facebook (photo set 1, photo set 2). I have been hosting parties for about 17 years now, and I have to tell you Eugene is one of the best. The Austin tech scene is fortunate to have this guy shooting the parties. When you see him, buy him a drink.
Kristen Sobieray, April Kyle, Eugene Hsu
Erica O’Grady, Michelle Greer, and Sara Dornsife are here. Now the party can get started!
One of my favorite parts of the party was the music provided by the artists of the Austin Electronic Music Grid. At several points later in the evening, we had 3 different artists in three different rooms. (I hope you knew that the party was going on in 4 spaces.) Dubnautica started at 7:30 in the BoomBoom Room Refresh Lounge.
At 8:30, Carbon Theory played in the main room.
At 10:00, Happy Panjoma did a great set on the roof, followed by Rage Ranger.
I hope to do more things with the Grid in the future. These are really a great bunch of folks.
How many of you new about the new bed on the back upstairs patio? What a perfect place to cap off the evening!
After a few last glances at the skyline from the Union Park patio, it’s time to go home. Thanks to everyone for a great party.
This is our big GeekAustin bash of the year, and because I honestly love you, there is no cover. The event is free.
To help amp up the celebration, we have invited our friends at Refresh Austin and the Austin Electronic Music Grid to co-host. RefreshAustin represents some of the sharpest web and design pros in town, and the Grid represents some of the most interesting electronic music artists in town. I am pretty excited about getting them together in the same room. The Geeks meet the Grid.
The event begins at 6PM with drinks and conversation downstairs. At 7PM, Dubnautica performs in the Boom Boom Room Refresh Lounge. Beginning at 8PM, there will be performances by Austin Electronic Music Grid artists including: Gobi, Carbon Theory, Happy Panjoma, and Rage Ranger.
Union Park is a big club. We’ll have some rooms set up for performance, and some rooms set up for conversation. Union Park also has an excellent menu, so there is no need to head home before the party.
GeekAustin 8th Anniversary Party
Tuesday, September 30, 6PM - 11PM
Union Park, 612 W Sixth St (Next to Katz’s)
Please RSVP at Facebook
(this helps us determine how many bartenders have on hand)
Hope to see you there! - Lynn
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Intro: Every company in the tech space that I’ve worked for has had a QA dept. However, it wasn’t until I worked with Troy Waldrep at Pervasive that I heard about code review. The next time I heard about it was from Jason Cohen (blog), founder of Smart Bear Software, whose company offers a tool called Code Collaborator. Recently, I’ve been increasingly interested in software quality and process. So, I decided to ask Jason to talk to me about code review, and its role in the software lifecycle. |
Lynn Bender: I recently asked a head developer at a software company if his team had a formal code review process. He immediately got defensive and replied: “yes”. When I asked him to elaborate, he began to explain their QA process. So to begin, what is code review?
Jason Cohen: Everyone’s had to write a page of prose for school or work. Have you ever done it without making any mistakes? I’m not just talking typos — what about points that could have been clearer, paragraphs that didn’t make sense, missing segues, etc..
Bender: As a matter of fact, I pretty much always pass my important business communications by a colleague to read before sending out. It’s amazing what I miss.
Cohen: Of course you can’t do it, which is why most everything in the publishing industry is reviewed by editors. It’s not because writers are careless or incompetent. It’s because with any sort of creative knowledge work we’re “too close” to our work to see the problems. It’s normal and unavoidable.
So if no one — not even top-notch professional writers — can write a page without needing an editor, why do we expect software developers to write code alone?
That’s all a code review is: reviewing someone’s work.
Note that, as in writing, often the errors are things the author would have seen had the author been reviewing someone else’s code. It’s the “you’re too close” problem most of the time, not the “you’re incompetent” problem.
Bender: This would seem to have a larger scope than that of QA — encompassing programming style and method.
Cohen: People often think of code review as a process to “find bugs.” Although this is an important result — the one management is perhaps most interested in — there’s many other purposes. Finding maintainability issues (e.g. documentation, organization, architecture) saves time for the next developer and prevents bugs in the future. Sharing knowledge about programming in general and about gotchas in the code base helps everyone write better code. Overseeing new hires means noobs can get their hands in the code as fast as possible while ensuring they don’t break anything.
Bender: Can you tell me a bit about what the code review process looks like, and how does it fit into the overall dev process?
Cohen: There are many types of code review, all of which are useful and have trade offs. At one extreme you have the over-the-shoulder walk-through, performed whenever the author is uncomfortable about their work. On the other extreme is the Formal Inspection where participants must be trained, a seven-phase process requires four separate meetings, and reviews take two man-days to complete.
Typically the less formal processes have a better chance of succeeding, unless you’re a CMMI-Level-5 DoD contractor or some such and your employees don’t mind (or are used to) paper-pushing.
Code review comes after the code is written but before QA. Some like doing code reviews before code is even checked into version control, so “checked-in” also means “reviewed.” Others say that causes too much developer down-time waiting for the review and therefore prefer reviewing just after check-in. There’s no right answer to that one.
Bender: Is there much difference in how one would implement code review for an agile team?
Cohen: No. I don’t think e.g. Scrum means you don’t need to design, architect, review code, or do QA, it just means you need to do it in a compressed time-frame.
The exception might be pair-programming, which you could argue is an in-depth, continuous code review situation. In fact, I sometime argue that other code review techniques get you some (not all!) of the benefit of pair-programming at a small fraction of the time, and is therefore a better time/result trade-off for people who don’t want to go all the way.
Bender: Where is the optimal place for code review in the life cycle of a project?
Cohen: Clearly at the end of the lifecycle, during “feature freeze,” code review makes a lot of sense. By definition you’re trying to be extra careful about every check-in. In fact, in past companies we used to self-impose code review during those times.
However it’s just as useful earlier in the cycle. If you only review at the end, mistakes made long ago might be too embedded for change. Sort of the same problem as waterfall development!
If you’re religious with unit tests and constant refactoring, then it may not make sense to code review early on because it’s so safe to change later. In practice, few development groups are zealous enough for later major restructuring to truly be safe and fast.
Bender: With so many startups in Austin, we’ve had the opportunity to watch many software shops go from one or two people to a group of ten or twenty developers. At some point, most of these groups implement a bug tracking process, and half will have a formal QA process. However, I am surprised how few actually implement code review as part of the dev process. Has this been your experience as well? When is the right stage to begin a code review process? And for companies that already have a few hundred thousand lines of code, where do they begin?
Cohen: You’re right that code reviews are often the last quality process to be introduced, perhaps because it’s so social.
If a team is not already doing code reviews, I would strongly suggest reviewing only a little bit of the code. For example, have optional reviews, done just when the author is unsure, or just on a stable code branch, or just on the 10 files voted “scariest to change.” Stuff that everyone would agree is worth some extra effort. Going from zero review to reviewing everything is too much of a change to do at once.
If you have a large code-base, you could pick out files you know are trouble and review them first. Or, just do incremental reviews — reviewing each check-in — and find the problems as you go. If you do this you’ll naturally notice problems around the code being changed — even in code that wasn’t relevant to that check-in — and you can fix it then.
Bender: Your company, Smart Bear, is widely known for it’s code review tool called Code Collaborator. Can you tell me a bit how it facilitates the code review process?
Cohen: The most important part of the review — human beings thinking critically about code — is something no tool can help with! However there’s also lots of mundane aspects of code review where a tool can help, and that’s what Code Collaborator tries to do.
First, Code Collaborator integrates with version control so with a single click you can do things like “create a review with all the files I’ve modified but not yet checked in.” It can grab the files along with the content as it appears in version control and make diffs.
Second, Code Collaborator displays diffs together with chat in a web browser. The chat is live (or works like a newsgroup if you’re separated by lots of timezones), and is threaded by the line of code. This saves you from tedious notes like “on line 723 of //depot/project/foo/bar…” and emails with quote-carets all over the place as you try to make sense of everyone talking.
Third, Code Collaborator automatically collects metrics like time spent in review, number of lines of code, and number of defects found, so managers get the reports, audit trails, and numbers they need while developers don’t have to lift a finger. No forms, no stopwatches, no meetings, no rubrics.
Bender: I sometimes get this comment from developer friends: Because the dev environment in most startups tends to be fast paced, implementing processes like code review are often viewed as a “frill”. How would a developer best make a case for implementing code review?
Cohen: If you’re in an early stage of development, you might not be able to make the case! Early on, just getting something out the door is more important than bugs.
At some point though, your company turns the corner and keeping customers happy and having a solid platform becomes more important than the number of features you can spit out per quarter. It’s at this time — when you start talking about static code analysis, QA departments, integration tests, etc — when code review should be part of the discussion.
I think the best argument is a combination of common sense and measurement. The common sense part is the author/editor argument I gave earlier. It just doesn’t make sense that anyone could write perfect code in a vacuum, and it’s just as obvious that another pair of eyes could help. Just as spell-checkers are useful but not a substitute for a personal review, static code analysis is useful but not sufficient.
The other side is measurement. Code review is something you can prove has value! Just measure the number and type of defect you’re finding and the amount of time you’re spending in review. Then just divide and see if it’s worth it! The usual number is that you find AND FIX a defect every 10-15 minutes. So ask yourself, can you do that with QA? Shouldn’t you at least try to do it with review?
Bender: That’s a strong case. Jason, thanks for taking the time.
You can read more of Jason Cohen’s writing on software at his blog: A Smart Bear.
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I just found out from Darren Peterson about the first meetup of Joomla users in Austin. I’ve been hearing about Joomla quite a bit recently — mostly as an alternative to Drupal. I decided to contact Darren and get the details on the meeting as well as a status on Joomla. |
Lynn Bender: Have you been using Joomla long?
Darren Peterson: Not long at all. I stumbled on Joomla about three years ago when a client asked me to customize his Mambo site. I wasn’t familiar with what Mambo was, so I started researching it and found that Joomla had essentially taken its place in the open source CMS world.
Bender: For a local person building a Drupal-based site, there seem to be a lot of local developers with experience in Drupal. What about Joomla?
Peterson: Austin has a great base of talented Joomla developers. There are more Joomla users than there are developers and I’ve found that most Joomla developers are also Drupal savvy. Over the past few years, I’ve attended several Joomla conferences in different cities around the US and have met hundreds of developers and I’d have to say that Austin and Central Texas have some of the best.
Bender:What are some of the local austin websites that are currently using Joomla? What about nationally-known high profile sites?
Peterson: There are so many, its hard to distringuish a Joomla site from other types of sites. You can’t tell just by looking because it is possible to customize every aspect of the framework. Three years ago I developed Twin Liquors (www.twinliquors.com) on Joomla, as well as many other local business sites. On a national level Joomla.org has listed that the United Nations (http://www.unric.org) , MTV Networks Quizilla (www.quizilla.com) , L.A. Weekly (www.laweekly.com) , Harvard University (gsas.harvard.edu) sites have all been developed on Joomla.
Bender:Can you tell me a bit about the licensing model? How does it stack up against other CMS software — like Plone or Drupal?
Peterson: Joomla, Drupal, and Plone are free, open, and available to anyone under the GPL license. I am not has familiar with Plone’s licensing, but Joomla and Drupal both permit users to customize, and contribute code as well as resell the software as long as you allow the purchaser to to modify and redistribute it as well.
Bender:I’ve heard that, unlike with Drupal, most of the modules are are not free. What’s the scoop on this?
Peterson: Some of the modules have commercial licenses attached to them. Some users don’t like this, but I think it’s a great thing. You get a better product, and better support when you pay for an extension. There are many developers who will never charge for their work, and I applaud them, but there are many extensions Joomla would never have if it weren’t for the development teams working hard day and night.
Bender:SEO functionality seems to be lagging behind Drupal. Are there any solutions in the works?
Peterson: The latest version of Joomla has many great SEO features. From SEF urls, individual article meta tags and titles, to turbo charged SEO extensions, the Joomla team has delivered a CMS that drives traffic.
Bender:For someone implementing a new CMS system or collaborative website, what do you consider the main advantages to Joomla?
Peterson: Ease of use, the Joomla community, the customization options, and oh yeah, the local Joomla Austin user’s group (www.joomlaaustin.org) who has their first meeting this Wednesday (http://webdesign.meetup.com/528/) .
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Managing social networks is a total pain. Fortunately for wannabe 2.0 rockstars everywhere, CEO Dewey Gaedcke and his team started Minggl, a tool for managing multiple social networks. I caught up with him downtown to ask him a few questions about it. |
Michelle Greer: Social networks are never static. We’ve all come to love or hate the new Facebook, and people adopt new Twitter clients seemingly monthly to keep up. Every week, some naive VC funds a social network of some stripe hoping it will actually get adopted. How does Minggl plan to keep up with the constantly evolving trends in the social networking sphere?
Dewey Gaedcke: Great question and this is Minggl’s sweet spot—-we believe that people want to participate in many communities and will frequently move between them. We’re not a site, or a tool, or a community—we’ve built a “relationship layer” that is embeded in the browser so we can facilitate all the social things you do, transparently between communities. You get to “do social” based on how you know someone and how much you care, instead of ‘where’ they hang-out, or which tools they use. If you think about it, “social” is relationship centric, not tool or venue centric, so the only sensible thing to do is to carry the relationship model with you, in the same way your brain does it. The only point of personal connection between Facebook, LinkedIn, and MySpace (for you, from a technology perspective) is your browser, so we modify the browser to bring relational/productive benefits to you, everywhere you go on the web. From a technical perspective (if that’s what you are asking), Minggl is an API abstraction layer—this means we have ZERO site-specific code in the product…..Minggl support for Facebook (for example) is defined by a little XML file that Minggl knows how to interpret and run. If we want to add support for Plaxo, we just have to create this little text file and ww don’t change the core program at all. It’s very elegant ;-)
Greer: Minggl allows users to filter statuses from the people you follow based on keywords. What are some applications for this sort of functionality?
Gaedcke: Out of the 400 “friends” you have online, very solid research shows that you can only be truly “friends” with about 150 of them. Of that 150, only about 40 are meaningful (you really care) in your life. And of those 40, it’s likely that only a few publish information that aligns with your goals and interests. Do you have time to read the daily menu consumed by 250 distant strangers??? If you do, then use minggl without filters (in this mode, our mStream feature works just like the news aggregators) and read everything. If you don’t, then Minggl will show you information from the people you care about first and not waste your time with the rest….or at least save it for when you aren’t so busy.
Greer: Twitter seems to be the social network of choice for many prominent people in the social networking sphere. Any plans to expand the Twitter section of Minggl to include the “replies” and “archives” sections?
Gaedcke: We already support replies and retweets. Archive will be coming in the next few months. But micro-blogging is only a fractional part of the social dimension—-we believe that people care most about the person and about the message, not whether it goes over phone, email, sms or pony express. So you will see Minggl shifting the focus from “where you hang” and “what you use” (to communicate) and making it about who, what and why—-the real essence of social
Greer: What is your platform built in? Should we expect to see Minggl FailWhales?
Gaedcke: Minggl is built on a massively scalable architecture. The app server alone is written in three (Java) tiers, including a clustered cacheing layer. The DB layer is partitioned, load balanced, multi-master and replication aware. You may see Minggl hickup because someone pulled the wrong plug, or a bug slipped through QA, but it won’t be for scalability reasons….that I can guarantee.
Greer: What is it like working with the Twitter API?
Gaedcke: Twitter API is great….it’s clean, simple and works (when their infrastructure is up)
Greer: I hate managing social networks and like that Minggl integrates them into one sidebar. Do you need more developers so as to appease my need for easier and easier tools to manage social networks? If so, how should they get in touch with you?
Gaedcke: We will be hiring experienced Java and Javascript developers aggressively beginning in the middle of November. They can begin experimenting with our API to build social apps that deal with the ENTIRE friend list (instead of just a slice). Experienced techs can send their resume to jobs@minggl.com (best wait till mid-November). They should also play with the product, and get involved recommending features and reporting bugs at: http://getsatisfaction.com/minggl
Greer: Minggl allows you to tag people with certain keywords. Did I get a “cool” tag and if so, when the hell are we going wakeboarding?
Gaedcke: you received a “genius” tag and this means that minggl will randomly inject pictures of Einstein and Tila Tequila onto your various online identities.
To see how Minggl can save you some social networking headaches, download Minggl here. If you have some ideas for the product, get satisfaction by letting their team know here.
While selecting musical artists for the upcoming anniversary party, we noticed that many of the artists we were considering had something in common — they are members of the Austin Electronic Music Grid. So, rather than contact all the artists individually, I sent a note to Mary Abshier at the Grid, and asked if she would like to host a Grid showcase as part of the GeekAustin Anniversary Party. She said: Yes!
Tentatively, starting at 7PM, we’ll have laptop musicians performing in the BoomBoom Room Refresh Lounge. Then beginning at 8PM we’ll have Grid artists performing in the main room and on the roof — most likely until midnight. We are currently making arrangements with the artists, and hope to publish the acts and schedule within the next week.
I encourage you to check out the artists on the Grid. Some of my current favorites are Canartic, Carbon Theory, Dubnautica, My Dark Side, Death is not a Joyride. That’s only the beginning though. Check out the full list of Austin Electronic Music Grid Artists.
Remember, the GeekAustin Anniversary Party is free. Hope to see you there!
I’m happy to announce that Refresh Austin will be co-hosting the GeekAustin 8th Anniversary Party on September 30th. If you’re on Facebook, you can RSVP here.
When asked to give an example of Austin tech groups have done the most to empower both their members and the greater tech community, a few come to mind. Refresh Austin is one. (Agile Austin and Austin on Rails are the others). Although Refresh Austin is grows by leaps and bounds in membership, it continues to succeed as “an organization of Web professionals working together to foster new ideas and refresh the creative, technical and professional aspects of their trade”.
For those of you unfamiliar with the group, the Refresh Austin monthly meeting is tonight. These are a great group of folks, and if you are in any way involved with design, I encourage you to meet them — either at one of their monthly meetings, or at the GeekAustin Anniversary Party.
I’ve noticed quite a bit of small layoffs in Austin tech over the last month. In most cases, it appears to be members of web teams that are getting laid off. Are local companies cutting back on web initiatives? I haven’t heard similar news among system/network admins.
The first of the free SQL classes that GeekAustin is hosting is full. We will most likely be doing a second class. If you haven’t received a reply yet, look for one later this week. Daniel and I will be putting the curriculum and reading list online.
There are 450+ recruiters on the GA mailing list. How many of them also sell real estate for Keller Williams? Should I be inviting these folks to the GA party? Do you know Java?
-Linear
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Photo from GeekAustin Semantic Web Austin Launch party, courtesy of Michelle Greer. |
Over the next few months, Daniel and I will be focusing heavily on teaching the SQL and other classes that we’ll be offering. We wanted to host one last big event before we jumped headfirst into the new endeavor. We’ll be inviting everyone from all the GeekAustin lists. Last time we did this was 2003. The party will be at Union Park, so there will be plenty of room. I’ll be announcing the musical guests later this week. Expect a few other surprises. The details are below.
GeekAustin 8th Anniversary Party
Tuesday, September 30, 6PM - 11PM
Union Park, 612 W Sixth St (Next to Katz’s)
RSVP at Facebook (strongly encouraged)
Hope to see you there! - Linear
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Following our launch party for Semantic Web Austin, I’ve been wanting to do a follow up interview with the group’s founder, Juan Sequeda. This interview was conducted by GeekAustin’s resident ontologist, Jana Thompson. - Linear |
Jana Thompson: What are the benefits you see to the business community in adopting semantic technology?
Juan Sequeda: Semantic technologies will allow data to be related. It is about serendipity and data reusability. So if the business community is interested in discovering relationships of their data and being able to reuse it, they should consider starting looking into semantic technologies. One of the main examples is data integration. The business community is interested in seeing how this new technology can finally (hopefully) solve the data integration problem. In my opinion, semantic technologies are focused on 1) creating a web of data (aka. The Semantic Web) and 2) data integration in different domains (business, life science, geospatial, pharmaceutical)
Jana: Do you think these benefits are great enough for businesses to adopt the changes?
Juan: The web is always evolving, and semantic technologies are going to be part of the next step of the Web. Therefore, if companies want to be up-to-date with this evolution, they need to get on that boat. In a way, if companies do not start to look into semantic technologies, they will be in a disadvantage, and by the time they do start working on it, it may be too late. In addition, if they are still not satisfied in their data integration solutions, semantic technologies could be something attractive that business should start looking into.
Jana: How large do you think this impact will actually be?
Juan: Right now, I don’t know. We have to wait maybe a year till the research community makes stuff that is more accessible to normal users. Hopefully in the next year we will know.
Jana: I’m imagining a scenario like the dot-com era, when everyone was convinced that everyone would be shopping online, and so there were a plethora of start-up dot coms, offering everything for sale online, that of course eventually failed for the most part.
Juan: Once several apps have been developed, this era is going to come. The research that needs to be done is how to make this easy for the user. For example, the semantic web community is just starting to think about this. Check this: http://km.aifb.uni-karlsruhe.de/ws/insemtive2008/. It’s the first workshop on Incentives for the Semantic Web. So the community has realized that it does need to do something to incentivsie the world. Let’s see what happens in October at the International Semantic Web Conference.
Jana: I’ve heard, from contacts in the Bay Area, that they are skeptical of how large this impact of semantic technology will actually be on the web itself, but that the best uses of the technology are for fields such as medical information, or as you mentioned, geo-spatial data.
Juan: The Semantic web and semantic technologies is in a research era. Medicine fields and others have helped in this research process, therefore they are receiving the best and first benefits now. But most of the research is done in Europe and the Europeans do not have a commercial mind-like. Companies are skeptical of the impact, because they are not knowledgeable about it, and it is still not easy because it is still in a research phase. Hence, no semantic web killer app exist yet. Twine.com is a US company that is starting to expose what semantic technologies can do. Paul Allen’s company, Vulcan is investing in semantic web companies in the US and Europe.
Jana: Are semantic technologies going to be part of the web because of people championing the cause or because it is actually a necessary step?
Juan: People don’t realize that they have a problem. When they search in Google, they get results that work.. but they don’t know that there is more stuff out there that can be even better. people have so much social data, and have become social slaves of updating their profile everywhere. things like that… are problems that people don’t see them as problems. I believe it will be a common ground that will meet up somewhere in the middle. Where people are championing the cause, and half way through, users will realize that it is necessary.
For example, in the venture weekend that took place at UT couple months ago, came up with a better search experience for live music in austin (turn2live). Believe it or not, call it semantic web or not…. its a problem that people are realizing that they have and Google is not solving it. So problems exist, but people just live with it.
Jana: In the early days of the web, there was an explosion of new websites, due to the ease of learning HTML, from a business to a person to some crackpot talking about aliens. Even today, CSS and XHTML are not so difficult to learn that a determined person can’t learn them from W3C or other tutorials easily. If OWL becomes the norm for websites, what do you think the effects will be on the web? Do you think it is easy enough to learn that it will be readily adopted as part of the standard toolkit for web developers for businesses?
Juan: OWL is an ontology language, and one of the important principals of the Semantic Web is that data should be reused. Furthermore, ontologies need to be reused. Why would you want to reinvent the wheel? For normal programmers and designers, the use of OWL is not necessary, to a certain point. For example, if you want to add microformats and RDFa to describe your website, all you need is to learn some specific options that goes into HTML tags. These options are actually part of the FOAF (Friend Of A Friend) ontology. Therefore, nobody had to create their own ontology, they are reusing FOAF. On the other hand, the knowledge of specific W3C standards like OWL is necessary if you want to do data integration. If your database data describes a specific domain, where an ontology already exist, you may use that. But most commonly, you would want to create your own ontology. This ontology is the semantic layer that describes the content of different databases schemas that share the same domain. So it would be necessary to know OWL to get this done. My personal research work is to automate this process.
Jana: Following the same theme, do you think this will lead to an internet full of corporate-controlled websites, with sites only written by developers rather than individuals?
Juan: It may seem like this right now, because these are new technologies. RDF is less than 10 years old. OWL became a recommendation 4 years ago. SPARQL became a recommendation this year. These semantic technologies are just starting. In my opinion, the semantic web community needs to start creating easy and attractive ways for individuals to be part of the semantic web. This includes creating cool UI’s to navigate data, easy ways to create linked data, etc.
Jana: So, you are imagining technologies such as Drupal or Wordpress, that allow users to manage sites without a great deal of knowledge of the nuts and bolts of current web technologies?
Juan: Drupal and Wordpress are not technologies, they are applications. And these applications will offer stuff that will make users life easier. And they have already started. They do have RDFa and microformats!
Jana: Given all of the buzz, and my own familiarity with ontology, I am just very curious if the semantic web is truly necessary?
Juan: Check this video: http://juansequeda.blogspot.com/2008/08/predicting-next-5000-days-of-web-ted.html
Yahoo, Reuters, New York Times.. they are all doing semantic web stuff. The web is evolving that way. Is it THE solution? I don;t know. Nobody can solve all problems and save the universe. Right now we give stuff to the web (web 2.0.. user content generation) next generation is that the web will give stuff to us.
Jana: Will it be worth it to most people to go away from the web in its current form, with keyword searches on sites like Google, to a richer and more interconnected internet with potentially better search technology?
Juan: Semantic Web and semantic technologies is not only about making a better search engine. It may be that adding semantic technologies to current search engines won’t better search results. But what it will do is allow serendipity. It will allow users to discover relationships, things they didn’t know that existed. Search engines like Google will connect users with documents. The Semantic Web will connect users with data. That is what it is all about: a web of data.
Jana: For our more technical readers, I have a few additional questions: If no standardization comes about for mapping relational databases to domain ontologies, how do you see that as influencing the decisions about adoption of semantic technology by businesses? After all, the success of technology often lives or dies on its ease of adoption.
Juan: It would mean that several different solutions will be offered. It will become a business race to see who can offer the best solution.
Jana: Do you have any specific thoughts on a potential solution for the two initiatives of RDB2RDF - any rough ideas that you care to share on sketching out a solution beyond what you discussed in the Nodalities article?
Juan: I presented two aspects: Database and Ontology mapping and Direct Mapping. Both solutions are needed. The case where you have a company that can invest in a person who can be specialized in semantic technologies, who know OWL and knows the mapping languages. That company can make specific mappings. But you also may have the case that you want a simple automated system because you can’t invest in creating personalized mappings.
Juan: I really liked your questions. I understand that is may all sound a bit evangelist (which is what I proclaim what I do)… but its nice to actually get the correct words and reality out of me.
Jana: Juan, Thanks so much for taking the time.
For more info on the Semantic Web in Austin:
Juan’s SemanticWebAustin blog
SemanticWebAustin on LinkedIn
SemanticWebAustin onFaceBook
Daniel and I have been planning this for a while, and are finally ready to launch. Beginning in September, GeekAustin will be hosting a series of free classes on various core skill sets for beginning tech pros. The classes will be held downtown, and will be free. The classes will vary in length, and will cover topics such as SQL, Java certification, and basic object-oriented design.
The first class will be on basic SQL, and will be team-taught by Daniel and myself. This is the same evening class that we taught at Data Junction and Pervasive. The SQL class will begin early in September, and will tentatively consist of one session a week, each Wednesday night, for eight weeks. All materials needed for the class, including sample database, will be supplied. So that attendees will not have to waste time on things they already know, we have a pre-class evaluation test to determine the right session at which to enter.
For more information, or to request a place in the class, send a note to linearb@gmail.com
This is a presentation and party co-hosted by GeekAustin and OWASP-Austin. In the front room at Union Park, we’ll have the usual drinks and shenanigans. In the boom boom room, Mando and whurley will have a presentation and discussion on openSIMS. Although openSIMS has a lot of complicated things going on under the hood, Mando and whurley have a knack for expressing it in layman’s terms. The recruiters probably won’t understand it, but they’ll be up front buying drinks for anyone who says they know Java.
openSIMS
If you have any friends/colleagues who do high-level security work, and tell you the tales, you’ve probably heard statistics to the effect that banks and similar institutions are cyber-attacked millions of times each week. You may also have heard that thousands of those attacks are successful. With the growth of hacking and phishing from bored teenager to organized crime groups, this is the reality.
An institution can have teams of the best IT security, firewall, intrusion detection, and forensics experts. They can employ a range of tools: snort, nessus, nmap, nagios, as well as costly enterprise tools. However, when attacked by an army of bots, it frequently isn’t enough. Some attacks succeed.
openSIMS provides a way to integrate Nmap, Snort, Nagios, and Nessus into a common event correlation framework. More importantly, it provides a way for enterprises to selectively share network threat data realtime. Most importantly, openSIMS is an open-source project that is free to install and implement.
OWASP-Austin
The Open Web Application Security Project (OWASP) is a worldwide free and open community focused on improving the security of application software. Our mission is to make application security “visible,” so that people and organizations can make informed decisions about application security risks. Everyone is free to participate in OWASP and all of our materials are available under a free and open software license. The Austin group meets monthly for a lunch talk. http://www.owasp.org/index.php/Austin
If you are interested in hearing about the state of network security (what the folks who hold your online information don’t tell you), and the emergence of the “Community Centric Security” model, I think you will find this an interesting discussion.
Then again, you can also just hang out up front and toss down drinks. Either way, I hope you can make it.
Rebirth of openSIMS - party and presentation
Tuesday, August 19th, 6PM-10PM
presentation at 7PM in the BoomBoom Room
Union Park, 612 W Sixth St.
RSVP (not necessary) at Facebook or Upcoming.
I launched GeekAustin, as an independent website, shortly after closing Desert Books in 1999. My intent was provide a place to keep in touch with all the programmers/admins/techies/hackers/crackers/wireheads who I had gotten to know over the 10 years that I ran bookstores along the drag. The original GeekAustin site ran on Slashcode, and was more or less an Austin version of Slashdot. Half a dozen people were involved in setting up and contributing to the original site. _fool and The Mighty Robbo helped configure the original server and schooled me on system administration. Orion helped configure Slash, set up the mail server, and contributed many of the original stories. Following the first dot.bust, many of the original crew left the velvet rut of Austin for higher pay and better opportunities. By 2003, I was more or less the sole contributor. In early 2008, because of security vulnerabilities in the ancient version of Slashcode I was running, I converted the site to WordPress. Most of the older stories are offline, but are archived.
Because the original purpose of GeekAustin was to stay in touch with the tech community around Europa/Desert Books, parties were always a big deal. Any significant event in the tech world was sufficient reason for a GeekAustin party: whether it was the release 1.0 of Mozilla, the one billionth second of Unix, or Donald Knuth’s birthday. We hosted a somewhat infamous Adult Webmasters’ Party at SXSW (Does anyone have pictures?), and before Brad sold it to SixApart, we hosted an annual SXSW Live Journal party each year, where Brad would fly out to be the guest of honor. We also had the pleasure of co-sponsoring Symbiot’s Linux Top Gun events — which gathered the largest group of network hackers ever seen in Austin.
My fondness for throwing tech parties actually pre-date GeekAustin by about a decade. It can pretty much be traced back to Bruce Sterling’s first visit to Europa Books in 1990. Soon after his visit, Bruce began telling his friends about the store, and over the next few years, Bruce introduced me to Paco Nathan, Steven Levy, Bill Gibson, Lebkowsky, Mark Frauenfelder, the staff at Wired… and the list goes on. Whenever one of these folks came to town, we’d have a booksigning/party/whatever at the store. We hosted events for Boing Boing (when it was a print magazine) and the EFF, among others. It wasn’t until this week, while on my morning walk, that it occurred to me what a huge effect Bruce had upon the direction of the store, as well as my migration into the tech sphere.
The early GeekAustin parties were attended by a pretty hardcore tech crowd. There was a nice mix of brilliant and crazy folks along with the expected zealots, misfits, and CTOs. I did have to ban numerous males who didn’t know how to act around women. I also had to ban the recruiters whose vocabulary consisted only of “Do you know Java?”. But if you knew how to navigate the crowd, you could always count on fascinating conversations.
I’m making a conscious effort to move the GeekAustin website, and the event themes, back into a more tech heavy direction. Call me selfish, but I would rather have a discussion about grid/cloud computing with someone who understands parallel algorithms, than have a conversation about the Semantic Web with a group of advertising/PR people who have no concept of the difference between relational and hierarchical data models.
The next GeekAustin event is a return to roots.
On Tuesday, August 19th, GeekAustin be hosting, along with OWASP-Austin, a presentation on openSIMS — a radical new way to deal with network security threats. Presenting will be Mando Escamilla and whurley of the openSIMS project. Although some extremely complicated things go on under the hood, Mando and whurley have a knack for explaining it at the street-level. The event will be held at Union Park. Presentation in the boom boom room, and drinks in the main room. Details will be on GeekAustin Monday. For Facebook users, the facebook page is here.
It is good to be excited.
-Linear
I don’t normally do job posts on GeekAustin anymore. However, I make exceptions. Chris Bernard, (blog) (geekaustin interview), one of the sharpest guys I know, just sent me this job rec:
I know, it sounds like a joke right? But think about it, who needs it more than Microsoft? Think how boring this gig would be at a place like Apple, it would be like being the Maytag repairmen. At Microsoft you’ll be challenged everyday and get a chance to play a role in events like our global PhizzPop Design Challenge, SxSW and support local groups that support the design community in the US, like Refresh and the IxDA.
You’ll meet some of the best Web shops, design agencies, designers, user interaction designers, experience architects and technologists in world all from the comfy headquarters of Austin, TX. You’ll have to do some traveling for this job but mostly in the US and in the Midwest with the occasional cool trip overseas.
If you’re passionate about UX, tinkering, building, and teaching folks about rich technology formats such as AJAX and Flash and have an interest in things like Silverlight and want to work at a place where you can have tremendous influence around design, the standards-based Web and simply making cool stuff this is a GREAT opportunity for those that are passionate about design and technology.
In addition to Austin we’ve got opportunities in LA, DC and NYC too. We’re moving fast so give me a shout at chris.bernard@microsoft.com if you are interested and you can check out www.designthinkingdigest.com to learn more about my own experiences in this role.
I have the pleasure of knowing and working with several of the regional UX folks at Microsoft. This is an exceptional gig for an exceptional person. Chris told me that they will be acting fast on the position. So if you think you are what they are looking for, take a look at the job post and send a note to Chris (chris.bernard@microsoft.com) today.
