conferences

There have been a number of things I've been mulling over posting about recently, but none have quite percolated up to a full post yet, so I'll instead post about a number of goings-on of note to me, my apps, and some other current work. Read on for a dose of Code Sorcery Workshop updates!

iPhone work

I've recently completed work with the local Portland powerhouse Small Society on two different iPhone apps. Check out the two most recent projects listed on their site -- one for a large coffee retailer and one for a nationwide car-sharing company. I've really enjoyed working with the Small Society team on these projects!

Regarding my own iPhone apps, I'm still in a wait-and-see mode, much like a number of solo developers. Mostly it's an issue of the difficulty of solo developers being able to sustain revenue in a market that's currently driven downwards in price. I may post more on it in the future, but in the meantime, feel free to weigh in on whether you'd like to see iPhone apps to complement my current Mac offerings.

C4[3] conference

The weekend before last I was lucky enough to once again attend C4, the independent Mac & iPhone developer conference. I've now been to all four, and the first one nearly three years ago was the major impetus for me striking out on my own and making Code Sorcery Workshop my full-time job. Once again, I had a great time learning, meeting new people (and meeting in person people I already knew online), and seeing a bit of Chicago. C4 can't be beat!

Welcome back, Ma.gnolia -- err, Gnolia!

The innovative social bookmarking service Ma.gnolia has been relaunched after their major incident earlier this year, and has been rebranded as Gnolia. This service will once again work with Pukka, just as before. Welcome back and best of luck!

Meerkat beta

Lastly, I've just released a public beta of the next release of Meerkat. The headline feature will be much more robust automatic reconnection of tunnels, adding to the existing support for reconnect due to sleep, wake, and network change. If this is a feature you've been waiting for (and it sounds like quite a few folks have been), go ahead and check it out. Just be sure to backup your data first, as this is a testing release!

That's all from the home office for now. Thanks for reading!

I'll be attending the Open Source Bridge conference later this week here in Portland. I'm very much looking forward to it, partly because I love to use and contribute to open source software, but also because the conference itself has been run in an open source manner -- by volunteers, building open source conference software, and with the overarching goal of trying to answer a question: "What are the rights and responsibilities of an open source citizen?"

Before I moved to Portland, and before I was more regularly attending conferences, I had always wanted to attend OSCON, which was held in Portland every summer from 2003 to 2008. Part of this was to visit Portland and to feel the conference vibe in this city. Now that OSCON is moving back to California, and Open Source Bridge is here (as am I), I'm ready to help make this conference an awesome reason to explore open source in Portland.

Hope to see you there -- there's still time to register!

I wanted to get the word out about BarCampPortland this Saturday at CubeSpace here in Portland. BarCamp is an "unconference", an ad-hoc gathering of tech enthusiasts over the course of a day to jam on ideas, implementation, personal networking, and whatever else they want, all unplanned and take-it-as-it-comes.

Tonight was the kickoff, which involved some registration (which is free, by the way), some food, some meeting folks, and some proposing of sessions for tomorrow.

Inspired by an excellent session at this year's SXSW, plus the fact that I've now been working at my own business for two-and-a-half years, I proposed a session called Solo Shops (and how to stay that way). I hope to facilitate a discussion about how to get going, but more importantly, how to manage a business entirely on your own whilst staying sane, profitable, and engaged.

There are a whole host of awesome sessions up on the big board, so I can't wait for the events to begin.

Hope to see you there!

Just a quick note -- I'm in Austin, Texas at South By Southwest Interactive (for the fourth time) trying to tap into the current happenings in tech & design culture. If you're here as well, let's try to meet up -- I love to meet new folks.

I hope to write more after the conference about both SXSW and Drupalcon from last week, so stay tuned!

I'm currently at the biannual Drupal worldwide conference, Drupalcon, in Washington, DC. I hope to write more later about the amazing people and innovative technologies that I'm seeing here this week, but for now I just wanted to post an entry for folks arriving here looking for information about the talk I gave yesterday: Beyond The Web: Drupal Meets The Desktop (And Mobile).

I will be posting more information later on the resources & projects mentioned in the talk, but for now, watch this page for that info as I'm able to post it. I covered a number of technologies that can connect Drupal websites to desktop and mobile applications, be they in Cocoa (for the Mac & iPhone) or any other language that you might want to integrate with a PHP-based Drupal site.

Hope to see you at Drupalcon!

I wanted to take a moment to help promote an upcoming Mac developer conference. Scotty over at the excellent Mac Developer Network (a podcast network that I've participated in a couple times) is organizing a Mac developer conference in the UK in April that looks simply amazing.

The speaker list looks fantastic: Bill Dudney of Pragmatic Programmer iPhone book fame, Matt Gemmell (he of of the custom Cocoa controls), Mike Lee (World's Toughest Programmer), Fraser Speirs of iPhoto & Aperture plugin fame, and several more, plus workshops and what I'm sure will be excellent networking amongst Mac & iPhone developers.

Unfortunately, due to a lot of travel and moving in March, I won't be able to make the trip to the UK for the conference, but I'm hoping it becomes a regular thing as I would definitely like to in the future.

If you are looking to jump-start your Cocoa development skills, NSConference looks like it would be a great way to do so.

Best of luck NSConference!

I'm happy to help announce that the next Drupalcon will be March 4-7, 2009, in Washington, DC! As a former member of the awesomely rocking Washington, DC Drupalers, it will be a real thrill to get back to the city as part of our biannual pilgrimage to the hub of all things Drupal.

Expect this to be the biggest Drupalcon ever -- the first 100 tickets sold out in ten minutes, but others are still available. I've attended Drupalcon Barcelona and Drupalcon Boston in the past, but I'm looking forward to this one especially as DC is where Code Sorcery Workshop got started. Plus, we'll have a new president and the whole town will be abuzz.

In addition, I'm proposing a session entitled Beyond The Web: Drupal Meets The Desktop (And Mobile). If you're interested in seeing this session, please head over to the Drupalcon DC site and vote for it. Here's the abstract:

We all know that Drupal is a robust self-contained system for running a social website, but what about when you want to hook it up with the desktop or mobile devices? This session will take a look at the capabilities built into Drupal core, as well as contributed modules, for combining Drupal with desktop and mobile clients. The presenter is a Mac & iPhone developer and the co-maintainer of the DAV API, File Server, Boost, and Trace modules, and inadvertently had code in Drupal core in 2001.

Whether you are a Drupal veteran, a web developer who's been meaning to try it out, or a newbie (technical or not) who's wondering what all the talk is about, Drupalcon is a great (and relatively affordable) way to tap into the vibrant Drupal community. There's no better place to be if you are, or want to be, involved with Drupal in any way.

Hope to see you there!

For the third year in a row, I'm headed to Chicago this weekend for the C4 Mac indie developer conference. C4 has been a great way to meet new folks, learn about the state of the independent Mac software industry, and get recharged for the coming year.

If you're headed to C4 this weekend, be sure to try to find me if we've never met. I love meeting new people -- and especially Mac developers!

Another conference update -- I'm at SXSW in Austin, Texas. If you'd like to follow my whereabouts, hear what I'm up to, and/or would like to meet me, you can follow me on Twitter. I can't promise that it will always be coherent as time is limited and my sub-iPhone-quality SMS messaging is not the easiest, but it seems to be what all the kids are using and it's helping me out in a big way to figure out where people are headed and what sessions are good or bad.

So again, meet me at South By Southwest -- I hope to see you here!

Though I'm headed to SXSW in Austin later this week, I'm in Boston right now for the twice-annual Drupal conference, aptly named Drupalcon. If you're around, say hi -- this is a fairly good representation of what I look like, though sadly I do not have my hat, or at least a non-winter hat. It's kind of cold up here!

Today, the first day, was pretty engaging and inspiring. I'm excited to see the roadmap for the future of Drupal, and I'm always on the lookout for knowledge that will benefit me both in the Drupal services that I provide as well as some cross-pollination of ideas between both web services and Mac desktop software, be they data storage, user interface, industry trends, or any number of other issues. Not to mention meeting & hanging out with some great folks!

Probably the most interesting session so far for me was the last, on Drupal in China, covering issues as varied as outsourcing & off-shoring, governmental technology initiatives, software piracy, language barriers & internationalization, community involvement, and lifestyle & free-time activities -- which of course, if you look at them, are all integral to China's current standing and future trajectory in the technology scene. Really interesting and fascinating stuff!

Though it's of course easy for me to hang out with the large DC representation up here, I do need to meet some other folks, so again, don't be shy -- come say hello. And enjoy Drupalcon!