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Slide 1: Community, Career & Coding Jonathan “Wolf” Rentzsch Friday, February 6, 2009
Slide 2: Three Topics • Community • Career • Coding Friday, February 6, 2009
Slide 3: Community Friday, February 6, 2009
Slide 4: Friday, February 6, 2009
Slide 5: PSIG Friday, February 6, 2009
Slide 6: PSIG • TIP Start your own group • “Programming Special Interest Group” • Started in 1996 • Unbelievably naïve • Undeniably the reason I’m standing in front of you today • “Unprofessional” Format Extremely welcoming and friendly ■ Roundtable ■ Everyone Shows & Tells ■ Think: Cheers but with Geeks ■ Easily function without a main presentation at all ■ ■ Chronically late meeting notices Friday, February 6, 2009
Slide 7: PSIG • Advantages: ■ ■ ■ ■ ■ ■ Developed presentation skills Learned how to gently keep a meeting on-track. Kinda Alpha-geek cred Invaluable flailing Camaraderie (Pizza Jaunt) Professional give and take Friday, February 6, 2009
Slide 8: Friday, February 6, 2009
Slide 9: Chicago Cocoaheads Friday, February 6, 2009
Slide 10: Chicago CocoaHeads • TIP You don’t have to start your own group • Joined in 1999 ■ Started by Bob Frank ■ Made C4 possible Valuable lesson infiltrating a group & installing puppet regime ■ Currently co-lead the group ■ • TIP Volunteer to give talks Highly valuable to frazzled organizers ■ 10 minute stand-up ■ What are you working on? ■ No need to be an expert ■ Friday, February 6, 2009
Slide 11: Friday, February 6, 2009
Slide 12: C4 Friday, February 6, 2009
Slide 13: C4 • Indie Mac conference ■ 100th PSIG meeting; born in the ashes of MacHack • Small • Single-track • Hand-picked presenters • Tons of schmooze time • Hack contest • Assumed failure • Nearly knifed the baby • TIP do big things – just harden against worst-case Friday, February 6, 2009
Slide 14: You, Superstar • Know yourself Is fame for you? ■ Prefer “man behind the curtain?” ■ • Build a reputation Blog ■ Trademark ■ Meatspace and online groups ■ Join an open source project ■ Non-code: ■ Website, icons, design, UI ■ Documentation ■ Mailing list support ■ Friday, February 6, 2009
Slide 15: Let’s not call it Marketing • A natural programmer aversion to marketing? • Become famous enough so you can do Important Work • You have a blog, right? No, really ■ I mean it ■ • Blog: Learning ■ Sample code ■ Small free apps ■ ■ Walking resumé • Control your “Google Image” Friday, February 6, 2009
Slide 16: Community • Online Twitter, Facebook ■ Student Dev ■ Iron Coder ■ • Internet ≠ Meatspace substitute ■ WWDC, Bar Camp, iPhone Dev Camp, C4 Friday, February 6, 2009
Slide 17: Secret Societies • Get enough of a (good) reputation, and you’ll get a call • Kind of goes against common coder ideals • Mostly harmless, just a desire for better Signal vs. Noise Friday, February 6, 2009
Slide 18: Career Friday, February 6, 2009
Slide 19: General Career Directions • Big company • Small company • Aside: Apple’s hybrid structure • Venture-backed Startup • Indie Mac and iPhone indie ■ Web indie ■ • Contractor/Consultant • Live at home in parent’s basement Friday, February 6, 2009
Slide 20: Going Indie • Most romantic • Spend “too much time” writing great software • Best routes to indiehood: Contracting ■ Big company (build up cash reserves and networking) ■ ■ TIP beware intellectual property issues Probably not traditional small company ■ Though indie small company rocks ■ Friday, February 6, 2009
Slide 21: Coding Friday, February 6, 2009
Slide 22: Coding • Non-negotiable: use version control Even for your small personal projects you never intend to share ■ Changes the way you program ■ Sample code hacking ■ Probably use a popular modern DVCS (git, mercurial, bazaar) ■ Friday, February 6, 2009
Slide 23: Coding • Use Assertions Design-by-contract > assertions > unit testing ■ Automatic bug detection ■ • Understand Unicode No such thing as “plain text” ■ Or cheat and just always use UTF-8 for everything ■ Friday, February 6, 2009
Slide 24: (Carpe diem) x 5 • TIP Network, network, network Break out of your clique ■ Career fair tonight ■ Inter-session all week ■ After-hours parties ■ After-party pub crawls ■ Official beer bash ■ • Participate in Hands-on Sessions • Bring a buggy project to the labs • Get a human interface review • TIP Go deep on a favorite tech • TIP Start or Join a (Group|Project) Friday, February 6, 2009
Slide 25: Friday, February 6, 2009