Atlanta Python Rocks

I attended Sept Atlanta Python meetup last night. As usual this meetup is packed with info on the latest and coolest in computing...Adobe Flex (as a front end to python of course), an intro to Amazon Web Services, and a Google App Engine app for an iphone. The AWS talk focused on EC2 and the new elastic block storage (think virtual hard drive). And the flex talk highlighted PyAMF which provides the integration between Adobe Flex/Flash and most popular python frameworks.

This meeting everyone introduced themselves...good to see many people were new to python. And I'm always encouraged when I see a bunch of old guys (like me) still hanging in there staying in the game. As a bonus I learned about a cool video training site for python and ruby called ShowMedo and a new blog to follow on cloud computing by a local (to Atlanta) guy, John Willis, who heads up the local Atlanta cloud computing meetup, AWSome.

.NET University comes to Atlanta

Today I had the opportunity to attend .NET University at the Microsoft offices in Alpharetta. .NET U is a free one day class on new and emerging Microsoft technologies like Biztalk, .NET 3.0, and Sharepoint. The class I attended today was on ASP.NET. I continue to be amazed at the quality of training available free of charge from Microsoft. The two instructors for today's class were both top of their field who you will see presenting in events that cost hundreds of dollars. Microsoft also provided a nice lunch free of charge. The concept of .NET University is to provide all the course materials, handouts, labs, and powerpoint and to encourage it's reuse by anybody willing to take th e time to present. So it's a great resource for internal training or user groups. I look forward to future offerings of .NET U in Atlanta.

Python Is Coming

Yesterday evening (7:30 til 10:00) I attended the Atlanta Python user's group meeting held at Georgia Tech's Food Processing Center. The main presentation was about Google's new App engine...a complete application development and hosting environment utilizing Google's infrastructure. Right now the only development language supported is Python and App engine is in beta limited to around 10,000 developers. Last week I received my app engine developers account from Google and so was excited to see a presentation on it at the python meeting. The most important insight I gained from the presentation is that the apps database engine supports flat tables only...no joins between tables (arrrrrgh). Although tables can be linked and there is good referential integrity between tables. So the take away is think lists not tables…denormalize your data structure…and put everything you need to deliver a record to the web into a single record. Well this is just the beta...wonder what Google's plans are moving forward? Hopefully we'll get a better db at some point. Wish I was attending Google's I/O conference in two weeks in San Fran...where all questions regarding the app engine will probably be answered. For more information on the Google App Engine here's a presentation on youtube on how to create and deploy an application using the app engine. And it's very interesting that Python is now number seven on the Tiobe programming index, one position ahead of C# and two positions up from Ruby. Python seems to be on the rise as the language of choice in the web 2.0 hacker community.

Microsoft Heros 2008 Launch Event

Today I attended Microsoft's launch event for Windows Server 2008, SQL Server 2008, and Visual Studio 2008 held at Georgia's International Convention Center in College Park. This event was completely sold out with thousands in attendance. It makes me realize just how large and dominant Microsoft really is. The keynote kicked things off in the morning. Followed up by breakout sessions on all three of the new products. I was excited to find the giveaway was free production copies of Windows Server 2008, Vista Ulitimate, and Visual Studio 2008...very cool. I also snagged a free video training DVD for Windows Server 2008 that should help me through the install. The big news on Windows Server 2008 is virtualization and a smaller attack surface...and built-in support for PHP...I suppose to make it easier to migrate from Linux to Windows. Visual Studio just keeps getting better...IMHO the best IDE on the market. (I've even heard James Gosling, father of Java, practically say this before). One nice new feature of 2008 is a split window when editing pages so the rendered view is available in one window while code is seen in the other. Now to see if Windows Server 2008 will even install on my old Dell (pre 2003) servers *sigh*

Clouds on the Horizon

Clouds aren't always a bad thing as often they bring a much needed resource to a thirsty environment. Today I attended the Tour de force roadshow by Salesforce.com, an all day event focused on their new "on demand" cloud (PaaS) solution Force.com. Force.com is a high end version of the new cloud application builders like Quickbase, DabbleDB, Google App Engine, and Coghead where the entire application runs on hosted services and is accessed completely inside your browser thus eliminating the cost of buying and maintaining on-premise technology stacks like servers, databases, etc.

I like the Force.com byline of "Innovation not infrastructure" which makes alot of sense nowadays in this world of "always on" network computing. One issue I'm always hearing with regard to the cloud model is that of data security. "How can I trust someone else to keep my data secure?" Salesforce addressed this concern extensively citing customers in financial and healthcare industries using force.com (which is SAS 70 certified).

I'm always struck by the large numbers of people drawn to these Salesforce events. They are always packed. As usual for a Salesforce event this one was first class. Held at the downtown Hyatt they provided real force.com development books for each attendee...hands on labs....partner booths....keynote...and three different breakout tracks (1) force.com basics, (2) apex language programming for experienced force.com developers, and (3) SaaS startups based on the force.com platform. This 3rd track for startups was of particular interest. They paraded several startup software companies across stage with testimonials of bringing new products to market in record time (months not years) with little risk all based on the Force.com platform. Innovation not Infrastructure.

And I can't forget to mention the nice lunch and post event reception with free drinks and yummy hors d'oeuvres.

Atlanta Code Camp

I just got home from the 4th Atlanta Code Camp attended by approximately 350 dedicated passionate IT professionals evidenced by giving up their entire Saturday to be there. The venue host was DeVry University Decatur campus just a few miles from my home.

I've attended all four Atlanta Codecamps and this was definitely the best yet. Codecamps tend to be a full day affair beginning at 8:30 and ending around 6pm. And you have to stay until the end to participate in the highlight...a grand giveaway of the best prizes and swag you will ever see at any technology event. At every past codecamp I've always been the "Charlie Brown" as one of the few there winning absoutely nothing (almost everybody wins something). But this year I won a 4 gig Zune and a 5lb book on ASP.Net 3.5 development. I couldn't believe how my luck has suddenly changed for the better.

The day started off well when I attended my first session on how to setup 3rd party hosted ASP.Net sites and found the presenter is a fan of WebHost4Life the same hosting service I signed up for last week. He gave us a good set of tools like Filezilla and tips for 3rd party hosting that will save me much time and many headaches. Another good session was on the Community Kit for Sharepoint an open source initiative to "fill in" some needed sharepoint functionality around blogs, wikis, and forms based authentication. I can't wait to install the new enhanced blog solution on our sharepoint 2007 portal.

Codecamp is a wonderful learning event with a full money back guarantee (it's free). The only bad part is the lack of a wireless connection all day. This year they fed us grilled burgers and dogs with all the trimmings or veggie pizza for lunch.

Some of the new tools I gained from camp were Filezilla ftp client, WSPBuilder, Sharepoint Skinner, Sharepoint Manager 2007, .Net Reflector, and how to create a 12 hive toolbar. Guess I can't ask for a refund this year :)

Virtual Worlds are Getting Real

Virtual Worlds New Realities Conference was held Feb 11th at Emory University. Co-sponsored by The Claus M. Halle Institute for Global Learning, Goizueta Business School, and the Federal Reserve Bank of Atlanta. This was an impressive event. Everything was well organized starting with free parking and a shuttle bus from the parking lot at Emory's Briarwood campus to the main campus at the Goizueta Business School where the conference was held. I knew I was on the right bus when I boarded and heard comments like “I’m used to teleporting” and “leave now you have 5 minutes until the region shuts down”.

It was a full day event starting at 8:30 ending at 4pm.

Topics covered were

(1) Virtual Worlds Evolving
(2) Emerging Virtual Institutions in Business and Politics
(3) Mirrored Influence of Virtual and Real-World Elements
(4) Possible Futures of Virtual Worlds and Society

by four outstanding panels throughout the day. The panel members were an impressive mix of both academic and business professionals. Most virtual world discussion centered on Second Life and the majority of attendees had experience in Second Life. A portion of the conference was broadcast live into multiple Second Life venues where it was viewed by groups of avatars including mine. It was fun and interesting being at the conference live while also watching as an avatar from inside Second Life.

Speakers included the new CFO for Linden labs, John Zdanowski and Chris Klaus, co-founder of the Atlanta based virtual world Kaneva. Intellagirl was in the audience along with other numerous high profile citizens from Second Life.

Some of the highlights for me included hearing a VP at the Federal Reserve Bank of Atlanta talking about the recent Ginko banking scandal that occured in Second Life. The Federal Reserve is studying how new banking models emerge and evolve inside virtual worlds. IBM has 5000 employees working on virtual world technology to create a better way for IBM customers to work and collaborate inside the firewall. And I have to mention the lunch was fantastic with ceasar salad, stuffed turkey rolls, wonderful selection of grilled veggies, spagetti and meatballs, and amazing deserts.