I’ll be at the Make Web Not War web development conference taking place in downtown Accordion City this Wednesday. For more details, see my post on Global Nerdy or Canadian Developer Connection.
Category: Toronto (a.k.a. Accordion City)
In case you’re:
- a programmer who works with the Ruby programming language
- looking for work
- available to get down to Toronto’s “West Queen West” neighbourhood soon
you might want to do what I’m doing in a couple of minutes (as of this writing): heading down to the Gladstone Hotel (1214 Queen Street West, at Dufferin) to get a look at employment.nil, which bills itself as “the first Toronto Ruby job fair”.
Organized by the fine folks at Unspace, who are also organizing the upcoming FutureRuby conference and FailCamp (where I’ll be the MC), employment.nil isn’t your typical computer programmer job fair. No computers are allowed! They’re going to be strict about it – even the use of iPhone applications is verboten. Bring printouts of your resume and some scratch paper to do “live coding”. I’m going to bring my mini-whiteboard and dry-erase markers.
See you there!
For years, I’ve been singing the praises of Accordion City, which some of you like to refer to it by its nickname, “Toronto”. Yes, it’s a little short on the kind of attractions that make it a big tourist destination, but as my friend Cory Doctorow says: “It may be short on things that make it a great tourism spot, but it makes up for it with things that make it a great place to live.”
And he’s right. Things like solid, stable banks, the fact that everyone bikes, same-sex marriages, the salmagundi of ethnicities, cultures and cuisines, contributions to medicine, community-mindedness, quirky locals and the fact that our film festival saved Slumdog Millionaire from direct-to-DVD purgatory are hardly the stuff of breathless tourism pamphlets and travelogues. But if you’re planning to stay here for a stretch longer than the typical vacation, you’ll soon discover that this city is North America’s unrealized gem, one of the world’s best places to live, work and play.
I plan to write more about this great city in an upcoming series of guides for people coming to town to attend the FutureRuby conference, but in the meantime, Toronto Life is picking up the slack with the cover story of their current issue, titled 50 Reasons to Love Toronto Right Now. If you don’t feel like shelling out ducats for the dead-tree edition, you’re in luck – the article also appears online.
One of the nice things about my job is that they actually ask me to incorporate the accordion into it. Yesterday, we shot this video featuring me on accordion promoting the upcoming Make Web Not War event happening next week right here in Accordion City. Think of it as another of my contributions to Accordion Awareness Month:
MAKE WEB NOT WAR – VIDEO FOUR – TORONTO from The Biz Media on Vimeo.
There’s only one mistake in the video – “accordion” is misspelled. If you’d like the follow me on Twitter, the correct ID is AccordionGuy, not AccordianGuy.
For more details about Make Web Not War, see:
- The Make Web Not War site
- Canadian Developer Connection
- Global Nerdy (my personal tech blog)
- David Crow’s blog
Tomorrow at the George Bell Arena in Accordion City’s west end, I’ll be playing (and singing) Canada’s National Anthem at the start of the Toronto Roller Derby match between the Gore-Gore Rollergirls and Chicks Ahoy! I’m working on a rendition that respects the proud heritages of both Canada and roller derby.
If you’d like to hear my rockin’ accordion rendition of O Canada and enjoy some roller derby (the motto is “Real Women. Real Hits. Real Heart.”), it’s all happening at the George Bell Arena (215 Ryding Avenue, in the “Junction” neighbourhood). Tickets are $12 in advance, $15 at the door and kids under 7 get in free. The doors open at 6:30 p.m. and the game starts at 7:30, which is when I figure I’ll be playing.
For those of you who can’t remember or don’t know the words to our anthem, here they are:
O Canada!
Our home and native land!
True patriot love
In all thy sons command.With glowing hearts
We see thee rise,
The True North strong and free!
From far and wide,
O Canada,
We stand on guard for thee.God keep our land
Glorious and free!
O Canada, we stand on guard for thee.
O Canada, we stand on guard for thee.
I’ll post my chord arrangements later.
And, as further enticement, here are the Gore-Gore Rollergirls:
Yes, Toronto Coffee and Code returns today! It’s a day when I make myself (and by extension, Microsoft) very accessible by working out of a cafe and answering your questions, getting your opinions and sharing ideas. Once again, it’ll take place at the Dark Horse Cafe at 215 Spadina, near the lights between Dundas and Queen.
I’ve got some stuff to do at Microsoft Canada HQ in the morning, so I’m declaring tomorrow’s schedule to run from 1:00 p.m. to 6:00 p.m.. I might be there earlier, but I thought I’d give myself extra time in case traffic decides not cooperate. I’ll see you there!
This article also appears in the Coffee and Code blog.
I’m a bit swamped with work and other things, so the Toronto Coffee and Code events are taking a hiatus for a couple of weeks. Worry not, it’s a temporary thing, and in a couple of Fridays – May 29th, to be precise, Coffee and Code will make a triumphant return, all phoenix-like, to the Dark Horse Cafe at 215 Spadina on Friday, May 29th from 11:00 a.m. to 6:00 p.m..