BarCamp is an unConference, organized on the fly by attendees, for attendees.

There is no registration fee, but you don’t just attend a BarCamp — you can participate in discussions, demo your projects, or join into another cooperative event.

Topics may include, but are not limited to: open source software, startups, UI design, entrepreneurship, AJAX, hardware hacking, robotics, mobile computing, bioinformatics, RSS, Social Software, programming languages, and the future of technology.

More information at http://barcampboston.org/. Hope to see you there!

Writing a program is fun. Like writing an essay, the endeavor has two kinds of results: stuff that gets written down, and stuff that changes the way you think. Sometimes you’re aiming for the written product, to fulfill some external obligation. But other times, you’re aiming for enlightenment. The end product is irrelevant next to the understanding you developed in making it.

Most computer book authors wouldn’t claim to be writing about enlightenment. They’ll tell you that if you learn their language, framework, or methodology, you’ll win clients and impress coworkers. In this category there are a lot of useful introduction and reference books, along with a lot of buzzword-laden crap. But there’s another genre altogether, that doesn’t make these claims; it reflects the geek tradition of explaining interesting because they’re interesting. Looking back on experiences that really shaped my thinking as a hacker— a great algorithms course in college, a talk on “Tricks of the Perl Wizards” by Mark-Jason Dominus, Philip Greenspun’s book on web publishing— it’s clear that the most profound things I’ve learned spring from that tradition. Practical Ruby Projects is an exceptional book because it does, too.

Topher Cyll, author of the book and Cambridge resident, is a friend of mine. In college, Topher and I worked together on a community website for students as well as spending a lot of time in the same computer lab. In both roles, he was always full of clever and thoughtful ideas. Practical Ruby Projects is full of such ideas, expanded to project form and in an approachable buffet layout. The projects are indeed eclectic, from computer-generated music to gaming to genetic algorithms, but their common strand is the curiosity they all reward. If you’re one of the unusual folks who maintained this curiosity beyond school, or perhaps if you’re a professor who wants to assemble an intermediate projects course that will appeal to the most curious and passionate of students, this book is for you. With books like this and an open, curious mind, enlightenment might still be unreachable but at least you’re getting closer.

We have regular monthly Boston Ruby Group meetings (every 2nd Tuesday of the month). In fact, there’s one tonight.

boston.rb has also been started recently, largely inspired by seattle.rb. The idea is that we get together on the 1st and 3rd Tuesday of the month, hack on some code for a couple of hours, and eventually produce something worthwhile.

Some of the things we’ve done at these hackfests so far:

• Made test-unit backtraces quieter
• Learned about submitting patches for rails, and hacked on rdoc
• Played with merb, datamapper, and haml
• Started an ambition adapter for sphinx

I myself only started getting involved in the past few months. It’s pretty surprising though, because I feel like I’ve grown a lot as a rubyist in just this short time, all from getting to know other locals, and learning from their ways.

If you’ve living in isolation from your Ruby community, I highly suggest you check it out. Who knows what you might learn?

I’m happy to see even the slightest hint of freedom in mobile software, although I think the best is yet to come in Android. Sure, they can have a nice Java application SDK, but in a world where most important apps are web apps, mobile phone programming will always be a second priority. Why not focus instead on building a really kickass mobile web browser, with something like Google Gears integrated in order to allow connectionless operation?

Maybe I’ll go and ask that question in person.

DreamIt Ventures is a new pre-seed venture firm launched last week by three Philadephia-area tech entrepreneurs. DreamIt basically takes the Y Combinator approach to funding with the noted difference of providing the entrepreneurs (if they choose) with strategists to help run their new businesses. [press release; discussion on hacker news]

Boston-and-Silicon Valley-based YCombinator pioneered the “buncha dudes make a company over the summer” approach to funding, and as far as one can tell from outside, they’re doing pretty well. They’ve got Paul Graham’s recruiting cachet, plenty of industry connections, and a few years of experience. The clones (Techstars in Boulder, CO; SeedCamp in Europe; LaunchBox in DC; and now DreamIt in Philly) throw in a few variations, touting their own strategists or connections. The ones that advertise teaming with the local lawyers start to scare me — the last thing most 3-month-old companies need is a business prevention department.

But let’s put aside the pursuit of innovation here. Regular VCs don’t try to compete by developing innovative ways to invest; they compete for capital and deal flow and try to pick winning investments. YC may be famous but, with only 25-35 investments a year, must be turning down some good candidates. Can’t our clones fund the best of the rest and do almost as well?

Maybe. Venture investments are very risky; people often guess that 10% perform well and 90% tank. If all the founders apply to YC first, and if YC has a very good nose, they could cherry-pick virtually all of the promising investments before the clones ever get a chance.

On the other hand, seed investments aren’t a sophisticated nation-wide market. If an investor knows a kid who’s got some energy and brains, a little motivational nudge can turn that geek into a business. Getting better connected in schools and companies, especially around a specific industry or in an underserved locale, can probably help a lot.

On the other other hand, though, lowering barriers doesn’t always serve the investor well. Aren’t people who’re willing to move to Silicon Valley more likely to work hard and sacrifice for the business? I mean, we’re talking about an environment useful for running computer companies and playing frisbee, but virtually nothing else (maybe In-N-Out Burger). What about the “strategists” that DreamIt plans to offer? Who’s a better founder: one who will learn accounting so he can understand all parts of his business, or one who thinks an outsider with some stock and a salary can handle that “while I focus on the big picture”? A friendlier investor may be inviting more extra losers than winners. Perhaps the goal should be to tear down social barriers (risk stigma, family expectations, getting taken seriously in deals) while preserving barriers that test competence and perseverance.

In any case, it’s great to see this kind of venture firm growing. Despite the competition, Paul Graham et al. must feel at least a little vindicated to see their hack so widely duplicated. But some–perhaps most–of these firms are bound to fail. How many can succeed? What will the next round of successful “summer-stage” firms look like?

Please tell us about the time you most successfully hacked some (non-computer) system to your advantage.

That’s just a fun discussion question, with a few good stories in the responses. My answer, still kinda computer-related, is that time in high school that my friends and I built a computer lab so we could study Computer Science AP. (Although my treadmill desk and simulation of a door using a paperclip also came to mind.)

What’s yours?

Venue selection is always the biggest hurdle, but once we’ve got a date and place we’ll be in good shape for an excellent BarCamp.

Sunday marked the concussion of No Fluff, Just Stuff for the Boston Fall 2007 event. To put it simply: it was a truly amazing experience.

If you aren’t familiar with NFJS, it was started just over six years ago by Jay Zimmerman out in Denver, Colorado. After many discussions with members of the Boulder Java User’s Group, it was decided that there weren’t any local conferences that focused on Java and agility, and that were strictly technical. Shortly thereafter, NFJS was born with a three-day symposium format. It was decided to cap the attendance at 250 in order to keep a high level of interaction between speakers and attendees. Each day has five concurrent tracks with a total of eleven 90 minute sessions with top-notch speakers from around the country.

I had the opportunity to speak briefly with Jay, and one thing I had asked was if much had changed over the past years. Apparently it had not. The particular format of the symposium works amazing well, with the small number of attendees, great speakers, and a high level of interactivity. Changing any of these would detract from what makes it so good, and would violate the original intent in which the event was started. Sure venues change, more schwagg is introduced, and technology continues to plow ahead, but at the heart, it’s really the same as it has ever been, and that’s a good thing.

The Sessions

There were a lot of great talks this year. Here is a list of sessions I had the opportunity to hit up:

• Friday
  • JavaServer Faces: A Whirlwind Tour by David Geary
  • OSGi: A Well Kept Secret by Venkat Subramaniam
  • 10 Ways to Improve Your Code by Neal Ford
  • Keynote: No, I Won’t Tell You Which Web Framework to Use, or The Truth (with Jokes)
• Saturday
  • Productive Programmer: Acceleration, Focus, and Indirection by Neal Ford
  • Productive Programmer: Automation and Canonicality by Neal Ford
  • The Busy Java Developer’s Guide to ClassLoaders by Ted Neward
  • Leveraging Annotations with AOP by Ramnivas Laddad
  • Birds of a Feather: Dynamic Languages with Neal Ford
• Sunday
  • Software Development Risk Analysis Techniques by Mark Johnson
  • Adding Behavior to Java Annotations by John Heintz
  • Experts Panel with all speakers present
  • REST: The Basics and Not So Basic… by John Heintz
  • Refactoring Ant Builds with Ivy, Groovy, and Good Old Fashion Common Sense by Andrew Glover

If I can find public copies of any of these presentations, I’ll update this list with links.

Some future posts…

I found a few of the talks to be particularly fascinating, so I hope to follow up with several posts:

• Productive Programmer
• ClassLoaders
• Annotations + AOP + Behavior
• A summary of tips, resources, etc from everything

If you don’t see something about these in the next week or so, feel free to hassle me a little

Pseudo random thoughts, observations, and feelings

• Things were pretty swagtastic this year
  • A pleather binder that zips close, came in extremely useful
  • A nice backpack, but I won’t likely use it…
  • A CD with all the presentations
• The venue was the Framingham Sheraton
  • Great food
  • Great service and staff
  • Maybe a little overzealous on the AC in a few rooms
• Being around smart and passionate people definitely rubs off
• Definitely feeling
• Each day felt much longer than it was, in a good way
  • Amazing amount of new material
  • Constantly experiencing paradigm shifts
• All the speakers I spoke with were very approachable
• A lot of people didn’t seem quite as engaged, as much as I was at least
  • Sitting leaning back during talks
  • Not taking notes
  • Not asking questions, or talking to the speaker afterwards
  • Not engaging in conversation with other attendees between sessions or at meals
• Survey says…
  • Most people are on Java 1.5 now
  • Most of the people still on Java 1.4 are there because of WebSphere
  • WebSphere sucks
  • A majority of people are doing automated testing
  • More people are doing continuous integration
  • More people are using not struts, including JSF, Tapestry, and Spring MVC
  • Most people are pretty psyched about Groovy, JRuby, and Grails
  • Overwhelming majority of people are using Eclipse
  • Most of the speakers are now Mac users
  • Most of the speakers are using IntelliJ IDEA

Advice for potential attendees

The most significant piece of advice I can give is this: be engaged. You have an amazing opportunity to interact with experts in the fields. You are surrounded by feels geeks and hackers who take time off to go to these kinds of things. Talk to them! Take notes! Absorb!

Wrap it up, B

I really can enumerate enough how awesome of an experience it was. I’m feeling pretty pumped up to get back to development to put this new knowledge to use. If NFJS is coming to a city near you, take the plunge; you won’t regret it.

Tuesday, September 11th

• PHP Meetup
• Java Meetup

Thursday, September 13th

• Web Design Meetup
• Python Meetup
• Web Content Management Systems Meetup
• Weblogger Meetup

Friday, September 21st

• Red Hat Meetup

Monday, September 24th

• MySQL Meetup

Thursday, September 27th

• Plone Meetup

Monday, October 1st

• Search Engine Optimization Meetup

Thursday, October 4th

• Mobile Web Technology Meetup

Monday, October 8th

• Wikipedia Meetup
• Enterprise Web 2.0 Meetup

Unscheduled thus far

• Podcasting Meetup
• Drupal Meetup
• User Experience Meetup
• Second Life
• Webmasters Meetup
• Computing Review Meetup
• Information Architecture Meetup

If you haven’t been to one before, here is the general jist of it. A few people give 10-15 minute long demos, typically of a startup they are working on. This is the main dish. Then several more people talk briefly (1-5 minutes) on their startup. All have booths setup on the perimeter of the area for you to check out. From there, it’s networking, schmoozing, and what have you. It’s a good sized crowd, with several hundred at the last meeting.