Category: It Happened to Me

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Geek It Happened to Me Life Toronto (a.k.a. Accordion City) Work

Mesh Conference: Toronto, May 18th – 19th

mesh conference

The 2010 Mesh Conference – the fifth one – takes place at Toronto’s MaRS Collaboration Centre on Tuesday, May 18th and Wednesday, May 19th. Its organizers call it “Canada’s Web Conference”, and it is: it’s this country’s premier get-together for creatives, techies and “suits” to share ideas about the internet and how it affects how we work, live and play.

This Year’s Keynote Speakers

This year’s keynote speakers are:

Chris Thorpe, Developer Advocate for the Open Platform at The Guardian

His background as a research scientist and his early involvement in Open Access publishing, makes him fascinated and passionate about what happens when data, content, platforms, identity and pretty much anything opens up. He spends his time at The Guardian working on the best ways to integrate The Guardian’s content, data and APIs with other people’s technology and businesses as part of the drive towards building the distribution and engagement channels of a mutualized newspaper.

Joseph Menn, author of Fatal System Error: The Hunt for the New Crime Lords Who are Bringing Down the Internet

Fatal System Error: The Hunt for the New Crime Lords Who are Bringing Down the Internet, Menn’s third book, was published in the US in January 2010 and in the UK in February 2010 by PublicAffairs Books. Part true-life thriller and part expose, it became an immediate bestseller, with Menn interviewed on national television and radio programs in the US, Canada and elsewhere. Menn has spoken at major security conferences on his findings, which include hard evidence that the governments of Russia and China are protecting and directing the behavior of some of the world’s worst cyber-criminals.

Scott Thompson, President of PayPal

Scott Thompson is president of PayPal with overall responsibility for establishing PayPal as the leading global online payment service. Scott previously served as PayPal’s senior vice president and chief technology officer, where he oversaw information technology, product development and architecture for PayPal.

Arvind Rajan, Vice President, International at LinkedIn

Arvind Rajan leads the company’s initiatives in markets outside the United States and Europe. Prior to joining LinkedIn, Arvind was the CEO of Grassroots Enterprise. Also a co-founder of the company, Arvind developed pioneering online grassroots communications programs for a wide variety of Fortune 500 companies, trade associations and nonprofit organizations. Arvind began his career with the Boston Consulting Group, and has held a wide range of leadership positions in emerging growth technology companies.

This Year’s Topics

Mesh will have two days’ worth of sessions covering a number of topics, including:

  • Open Government
  • Mobile phones and computing
  • The Pirate’s Dilemma
  • Privacy in the age of Facebook
  • Real-time
  • Social media in the Olympics, in the newsroom, as used by Médecins Sans Frontières and your business

For more, see the schedule.

Who’s Behind Mesh?

Mesh is a great example of the sort of thing that engaged and enthusiastic communities can create. It wasn’t created by a professional conference-organizing company, software vendor or government program, but by these five individuals known through the Toronto tech scene:

  • Mark Evans: Digital marketing and social media consultant, former VP at my old company, b5media, worked with the startups PlanetEye and Blanketware, and former tech journo with the National Post and Globe and Mail.
  • Mathew Ingram: Senior writer with GigaOm, former tech journo with the Globe and Mail and supreme tech blogger-about-town.
  • Mike McDerment: Runs Freshbooks, one of Toronto’s most successful start-ups.
  • Rob Hyndman: If (or more likely, when) I get sued, I’ll haul ass for Rob’s office! Considered by the Toronto tech scene to be its unofficial legal advisor, Rob runs Hyndman | Law, a boutique law firm catering to tech companies.
  • Stuart McDonald: Runs Tripharbor/Tripharbour; in a former life, he brought Expedia to Canada.

And of course, there are the sponsors, which includes Microsoft Canada. I’ll be there, representing The Empire along with my coworkers David Crow, Barnaby Jeans and John Oxley.

Get Your Tickets Now!

There’s not much time left before Mesh, and tickets are going quickly. The student tickets are already gone, but a few regular tickets — CAD$539 each – are still available at the registration page.

This article also appears in Canadian Developer Connection.

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Geek It Happened to Me

“Developer Junior” on Webnation

Joey deVilla and "Junior" from "Developer Junior" on Webnation

Last night, “Junior” and I went on Amber MacArthur’s show, Webnation, to talk about our show, Developer Junior. You can watch the clip by visiting Webnation’s site and clicking on the “Webnation May 06 – PT 3” link.

This article also appears in Canadian Developer Connection.

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Geek It Happened to Me

Developer Junior: Making Your Own Movies with Live Movie Maker / Appearing on “Webnation”

Here’s episode 2 of Developer Junior, the show where “Junior” the puppet (played by Brian Hogg of Hoggworks Studios) and I show kids how to make the most out of their technology. In this episode, Junior and I go Hollywood and make a quick little movie using Live Movie Maker, which runs on Windows and you can download for free.

In case you missed the previous Developer Junior episode, in which Junior and I build a video game using Kodu, you can watch it here.

Webnation: Amber Mac, Joey deVilla and "Junior"

Junior and I are headed to CP24’s studios tonight to do an interview with Amber Mac and Maurice Cacho on their show, Webnation, where we’ll be talking about Developer Junior, technology, kids and how they all fit together. If you’re in the Toronto area, tune in tonight to CP24 at 7:10 p.m. to catch our interview live; if you’re, you can see the interview online when they post it to the Webnation site.

This article also appears in Canadian Developer Connection.

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It Happened to Me Play

Scenes from Last Night’s Bombay Sapphire Rooftop Party

A little life hint: if someone invites you to a rooftop party where a celebrity chef is cooking and they’re serving gin, always RSVP with “yes”.

joey devilla accordion shaker 1

The party was a Bombay Sapphire promotional event featuring Food Network Canada chef Rob Rainford, who cooked some delicious dishes using gin as an ingredient. Co-presenting with him was Merlin Griffiths, Bombay Sapphire’s “Global Brand Ambassador”.

When this computer fad blows over, I think I’ll become a brand ambassador for a liquor company – it looks like fun!

joey devilla accordion shaker 2

These photos feature Yours Truly shaking up a “Southside”, which is essentially a mojito made with gin instead of rum, and it’s pretty nice.

There are more photos, including Rob Rainford cooking delicious dishes on my Flickr set of the event.

joey devilla accordion shaker 3

If you want to try out the recipes we were shown, they’re posted here.

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It Happened to Me

Uh-oh…

Screen capture from Twitter: "Hi, Joey deVilla. Karl Rove (KarlRove) is now following your tweets on Twitter."

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Geek It Happened to Me Toronto (a.k.a. Accordion City)

Toronto Code Camp: Saturday, May 1st!

Toronto Code Camp logoThe 5th annual Toronto Code Camp takes place next Saturday, May 1st, in the SEQ building on Seneca College’s York Campus (Seneca@York). If you’re a developer who builds or is thinking of building on the .NET platform, you want to catch this free event!

Last year’s event had over 350 attendees who caught 25 sessions, including the infamous “Data Bondage with Silverlight”, which opened with the equally infamous “assless chaps and accordion performance”. I make no guarantees this year, other than that I’ll be there and that this year’s event will be the biggest and best one yet, with a whopping 40 sessions arranged into 8 tracks.

Seneca@York campus at night

Code Camp happens because of Chris Dufour, .NET community guy extraordinare, who’s been making it happen for the past few years. It’s a free-as-in-beer event, a labour of love carried out by Chris and a team of dedicated volunteers and funded by generous sponsors including The Empire.

Here’s a run-down of Toronto Code Camp 2010’s agenda:

Time What’s Happening
8:30 a.m. – 9:00 a.m. Registration
9:00 a.m. – 9:30 a.m. Keynote
9:30 a.m. – 10:45 a.m. Sessions

10:45 a.m. – 11:00 a.m. Break
11:00 a.m. – 12:15 p.m. Sessions

12:15 p.m. – 1:30 p.m. Lunch
1:30 p.m. – 2:45 p.m. Sessions

2:45 p.m. – 3:00 p.m. Break
3:00 p.m. – 4:15 p.m. Sessions

4:15 p.m. – 4:30 p.m. Break
4:30 p.m. – 5:45 p,m. Sessions

5:45 p.m. – 6:00 p.m. Break
6:00 p.m. – 6:30 p.m. Closing
6:30 p.m. “The Hive” Afterparty
If you want to attend this event, please register!
Later After the afterparty, a tour of York University’s astronomy observatory!

 

I’ll be present at the event, making myself useful as an official Microsoft representative and as a Windows Phone 7 Champ and Azure go-to guy.

Toronto Code Camp takes place in the SEQ building at Seneca’s campus at York University, which is at 70 The Pond Road. Click the map below to see a Bing map and get directions:

Map to Toronto Code Camp (70 The Pond Road)

See you there!

This article also appears in Canadian Developer Connection.

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Geek It Happened to Me Work

EnergizeIT Academic Visits

Ah, student life. While waiting to do a presentation at Fanshawe College in London, I had a quick student lunch, pictured below:

Slice of pizza, glass of coke and a flyer for a "Rock/Paper/Scissors tournament"

Damir and I have been touring all over the country over the past couple of weeks for EnergizeIT. Two weeks ago, we were in Kelowna and Victoria, last week we were in London and Kitchener/Waterloo and this week, we’ll be in Fredericton and Moncton. We’re “Team Rover”, one of three teams visiting 20 cities, large and small, across Canada, with John Bristowe and Rodney Buike making up “Team West” and Christian Beauclair and Rick Claus comprising “Team East”.

EnergizeIT’s main presentations are about what’s possible with the Microsoft platform, with a focus on those parts that lots of people use to help them get work done and make their businesses go: Visual Studio 2010, Azure, SharePoint 2010 and Office 2010. In those presentations, we’re demoing these tools and technologies in action with live code and live data, and yes, we’re promoting Microsoft stuff.

In addition to the main presentations, we’ve been doing academic visits, which are quite different. They’re about helping students make the transition from school to the working world. In these presentations, I make very little mention of Microsoft, leaving it just to:

  • Hey, I work for Microsoft!
  • A quick story about how I landed my job at Microsoft
  • At the very end, I point them to a couple of sites:

The academic presentation focuses on the sorts of things that one should do to have a career in technology that’s rewarding in every sense of the word. The core message is that you, the student about to enter the working world, are in charge of your own future, and that in this industry and time, there’s a lot you can do to shape it.

Each of the teams has been working from a presentation created by Qixing Zheng, who used to be with the Microsoft Canada Developer Evangelism team and has since gone on to join the Windows User Experience group, but we’ve been pretty free to add our own twists to it. Our team’s version features a lot of interesting stuff, including:

  • The story of my first client meeting, which was a disaster
  • The importance of an online presence of some sort
  • How to get experience when you’re not yet in the working world
  • The value of “soft skills”
  • Why operating on just your “left brain” isn’t going cut it anymore
  • Ideas from a number of books, including:

So far, Damir and I have done presentations at:

and we’re going to present next week here in Toronto at:

I’d love to do these visits to universities as well as colleges, but the EnergizeIT tour takes place just as universities are going into final exams. I hope that TechDays, which happens from September through December (fall semester in universities) gives us a chance to present at universities across Canada, including my beloved alma mater, Queen’s.

I enjoy doing presentations of all sorts, but I have to admit that there’s a special place in my heart for presenting to students. It’s partly because students are a fun crowd to present to, and partly because there’s the notion of me – of all people, given my checkered academic history – standing at a college or university lectern, presenting ideas to students is rather funny. I love doing the academic visits, and I still have trouble believing that I’m getting paid to do something that’s this much fun.

This article also appears in Canadian Developer Connection.