This afternoon, I’m going to be at what I consider to be one of Accordion City’s best toy stores: Function 13 (156 Augusta Avenue), a place in Kensington Market that is part tech store, part art shop and part gallery.
I’ll be there for It’s Alive!, an open house featuring the work of Sheridan College’s Interactive Multimedia program. The event is open to all, and judging from some of the stuff I’ve seen on display at Function 13 and from Sheridan, it should be pretty interesting.
This article also appears in Global Nerdy.
That’s half-a-versary as in the celebration of something that took place half a year ago. It’s been half a year since I joined this organization:
…and I have to tell you, it’s been quite good.
The two things I value most about my job as Developer Evangelist for The Empire are the freedom and the ability to make a splash. The only working situation where I’ve had even more freedom and control of my destiny was back in the late 1990s at a consultancy that was just me and one other guy, and I’ve never had the reach nor the opportunities that I now enjoy as a Sith Lord.
As a mobile worker, they cover my transportation costs too.
They’ve been pretty cool with my wacky ideas, from my re-appropriation of their image as “The Empire” to the stunt at Richard Stallman’s GNU auction at CUSEC to starting Coffee and Code, a weekly happening that most companies might dismiss as an attempt to loaf on company time.
I’ve been free to inject my offbeat, earthy sense of humour into my work, from celebrating InPrivate Browsing in Internet Explorer 8 to the time I made Bob Muglia – then a Senior VP, now President of the Server and Tools division — run away from me at a Los Angeles rooftop party when I serenaded him on accordion with a song about InPrivate Browsing, sung to the tune of Tina Turner’s Private Dancer:
I’m your private browser
A browser for po-orn
One-handed surfing for you…
And maybe, just maybe, I’ve either helped a software developer get some piece of information or consider using some Microsoft tool or technology. Maybe.
I’ve enjoyed my return to using Microsoft tools and tech, and there sure is plenty of that! It may take me another six months just to be able to say I’ve done a reasonable review of the stuff that I’m supposed to specialize in – the web and mobile spheres — and that’s just a piece of a much larger pie.
I relish the challenges of being an evangelist for The Empire. It’s easy to fling poop at Microsoft, and there are cases where the poop-flinging is warranted. It’s often harder to see that Microsoft is also behind some solid tech that drives our industry and is undergoing an interesting “sea change” in both its tech and its approach.
And most importantly, I enjoy the opportunities to make connections with people, both inside and outside Microsoft, from the students I met at CUSEC to developers I’ve met a various conferences and gatherings to my manager John Oxley and VP Mark Relph and especially with the Developer Evangelism team to which I belong, from:
…I’m very honoured to be “Howling Mad Murdock” for this A-Team.
Yesterday’s Coffee and Code – the weekly gathering where I leave the home and Microsoft offices and work in a cafe where I’m very accessible – was held at Le Gourmand in the Queen/Spadina neighbourhood. We were 13 people all told, not including the passers-by who wondered about a large gathering of people with laptops and with whom we started a conversation.
For more details, see this entry in the Coffee and Code blog.
My first Coffee and Code day – a day when I work at a wifi-equipped cafe rather than my home office or the Microsoft offices in order to be very accessible – was a success. For more, check out my article on the Coffee and Code blog.
Coffee and Code is an idea I’ve been meaning to try out for some time. Every so often – perhaps once a week – I plan to work somewhere other than my home office or Microsoft’s offices but instead spend the day working in one of Toronto’s wifi-equipped cafe.
The idea is to make myself available to you, to answer your questions and talk about Microsoft, programming, the tech job market, games, accordions or whatever topic strikes your fancy. I’ll be pretty easy to spot: just look for the guy with both a laptop and an accordion.
For this inaugural Coffee and Code session, I’ll be at Urbana Coffee (1033 Bay Street, a couple of blocks north of Wellesley, at St. Joseph) from 11:00 a.m. to 6:00 p.m. I’ve picked the place for a number of reasons: a central location near parking and transit, friendly staff, free wifi, power outlets aplenty, recommendations from friends and a glowing review from Torontoist. If you’re in the neighbourhood, please drop by!
Since I live and work in Toronto, I’ll be holding most of my Coffee and Code days there. However, my job does involve a fair bit of travel, and it’s quite likely that I’ll hold Coffee and Code days in other cities. Some of my coworkers are also thinking about holding their own Coffee and Code days in their own cities as well.
If you’d like to know more about upcoming Coffee and Code days, keep reading this blog, or check out Coffee and Code’s site at coffeeandcode.org.
This article also appears in Canadian Developer Connection.
Starting tonight (Pacific Coast Time), John Bristowe, I, and a few other folks from Microsoft Canada’s De veloper & Platform Evangelism team, will be in Seattle all next week to attend Microsoft’s 8th TechReady conference. TechReady is a Microsoft internal conference where ‘Softies from all over the world gather to get briefed on upcoming releases. The coming months promise a bumper crop of Microsoft goodies – Windows 7, Internet Explorer 8, Visual Studio 2010 and Azure to name a few – so the sessions should be very interesting. (I think I’ll actually be taking a lot of notes during the presentations rather than checking my mail or looking at that video of kittens riding a Roomba.)
We’re going to try to take advantage of this gathering to get some interviews with some of the big brains at Microsoft from Redmond and all over the world, as well as show you some of the sights and sounds of Seattle. Watch this blog for updates!
Are you in Seattle? Want to catch up? Talk about Microsoft, software development, accordions. Zardoz or anything else? Drop me a line or give me a ring (416-948-6447)!
[Seattle photo by Andrew “papalars” Larsen and licenced under Creative Commons. Click here to see the original.]
Once again, it’s time for another Developer Lunch here in Accordion City! This is going to be the ninth in the series of lunches organized by Kristan "Krispy" Uccello, and it will be held at the usual location, Sky Dragon restaurant (on the 5th floor of Dragon City mall at the corner of Spadina and Dundas).
These lunches give Toronto-area developers and other techie types to get together for some delicious dim sum and conversation. I’ve been to several of these, and they’ve always been fun. The bill gets split on a per-table basis, and it’s typically worked out to about $12 a person, and everyone leaves full.
If you’re a developer – and that means anyone who practices or is interested in programming – you should come on over to Sky Dragon and join us for lunch! I’ll be there, and you’ can ask me about anything, whether it’s development, Microsoft, accordions, whatever!
The Developer Lunch takes place today (Tuesday, January 27th) at noon and runs until about 1:30 p.m.. Just look for the tables with the geeks!