For those unaware, a civic hackathon combines software developers with engaged citizens of all backgrounds to leverage open data sets into solutions for civic services, lifestyle improvement, etc.  Stakeholders will pitch their ideas to the general attendees in the hope that a team will form around their proposal.  The types of solutions generated could be pothole reporting apps, improved online billing interfaces, emergency notification solutions… you get the idea.  Essentially, government agencies and departments from city to federal stand to benefit from citizens freely helping overcome bureaucracy and modernize public services.

Open solutions require open data, and this is where the greatest challenge lies.  Often, government data sets are designed without openness in mind, to address highly specific needs.  This leads to closed silos of isolated information.  To be fair, this issue is just as common in the corporate world.  The difference is that in civic situations, the taxpayers own the resources.  In an ideal world, they would have at least some say in the development and deployment of these data sets.

Fortunately there’s a growing trend to pry these information stores open, and provide public access via APIs and web services.  NASA and other federal agencies are leading the charge, while state and local governments are seeing the value and working to follow suit.

Many cities are ahead of the curve here, driven often by desperate need to do more with less and solve drastic problems.  Extreme weather damage, water shortages, transit issues and other civic disasters drive desire to open data sets to armies of skilled volunteers.

But for cities wanting to get started with civic coding events when lacking experience, there are some steps to consider:

• Get informed.  Follow the activities of organizations like Hack for Change and get a feel for what these events entail.
• Get empowered.  Most cities already have a person or department tasked with public engagement.  Common events include trash pickup days, park picnics, etc.  Civic coding events just become one more to add.  Public liaison personnel need not have a grasp of the technical details; that’s for IT and engineering departments.  And if you don’t have this sort of liaison capability, create it!
• Get involved.  Chances are you have local citizen groups (hacktivists) already active in necessary components of a civic coding event.  Data experts, programmers, bicyclers, geocachers, urban design enthusiasts, Makers, gardeners… this is just a short list of the clubs you will want to connect, and odds are many exist in your locality.  Check sites like meetup.com to find them.
• Audit other hackathons.  Odds are there’s a municipality nearby that has one or more civic coding events under its belt.  Sign up, sit in and learn!

There’s more to it of course but there are the fundamentals.  I’ll explore further in upcoming articles.

As some of you know, I’ve been working the past two months to bring a Hack for Change event to the Dallas-Fort Worth area.  There have been moments of triumph, such as when Pepsi and Frito Lay kindly agreed to donate snacks, and there have been periods of epic frustration.  Following is a letter I reluctantly just sent to those who had been helping me with this:

Greetings Data Liberators,

After struggling to get widespread DFW buy-in for the Data Libre DFW Hackathon 2013, I have had to accept that it isn’t going to happen this year, at least not for the Hack for Change time period of June 1 to 2.  We don’t yet have the awareness and interest in DFW at large for civic coding events.  More on that in a bit.

After discussing this with Karen Siddall of Irving Public Works, I decided to scale down to a brainstorming workshop specific to the City of Irving.  To their credit, Irving is the only city out of several directly contacted that stepped up with solid interest in this sort of activity.  Fort Worth is also interested but not quite ready (they may audit the Irving workshop to get a better understanding of what this entails, for a later event).  Expected total participant limit has been reduced to about 30.

On one hand I am highly disappointed.  Other cities, including Austin and Houston, are fully onboard for the June event.  DFW is just a bit behind the curve on this sort of civic engagement.  I encountered a lack of understanding that cities generally take the lead on these events, and most don’t really need the activities explained at this point.  We have an educational challenge (opportunity) in front of us: get DFW informed and engaged for the 2014 event.  If Dallas and/or Fort Worth get behind it, other municipalities will follow suit.

To that end, I have established a Data Libre Meetup Everywhere group.  The idea is to hold meetups over the next several months geared specifically toward whipping up local enthusiasm for this movement.  I will conduct as many meetups in as many locales as I can, focusing for now on Irving since they are stepping up.  But I will need help; feel free to create a meetup listing for your area and join me in cultivating interest!  And spread the word!

Of course, kudos to Irving for taking the lead here.  I was thrilled that Karen called me back after my query.  It’s just unfortunate that several other cities blew it off.  However, we will make the most of the opportunity we have, and hopefully other cities will realize they missed out on something cool.

I have updated event listings and will refine the scope further soon.  Input welcome.

• Hack for Change event listing: http://hackforchange.org/data-libre-dfw-code-irving-workshop-2013
• Eventbrite: http://datalibredfw2013.eventbrite.com/#
• Date Libre meetups: http://www.meetup.com/Data-Libre/

Note: we are still looking for a venue in Irving.

Thanks all!

While I’m still disappointed with the outcome of my efforts, I remain optimistic that sooner or later the Dallas-Fort Worth coding and enthusiast communities can make a large-scale civic coding event happen here.  It will take a broad coalition of people from all backgrounds, with the common interest of improving city services, public access, and lifestyle opportunities.

Let’s do it.

The last time I did a “Where I’m At” post was too long ago, so let’s get this thing going without much preamble.  And no, this isn’t about US college basketball playoffs.  Just feels like it sometimes.

Nokia Stuff

As many if not all of you know, I returned to Nokia on a part-time contract basis in late 2012.  I still have a full-time day job, and commit a large part of my other hours to sharing the Nokia Lumia story with current and hopeful developers in North Texas… with some virtual forays into neighboring states.

Here in DFW there’s been a steadily growing increase in interest, something I’ll blog in more detail about later.  But it’s still a mostly Apple world in these parts, at least from a user perspective, while the local developer community largely feeds on Android.  The Dallas-area Windows Phone developer crowd has reached a respectable size, though, to the point where this part-time gig feels more like full-time.

That last part has been mitigated through cultivation of additional community leaders.  For instance, Bary Nusz in Amarillo, Texas and Patrick Hefner of the Nashville, Tennessee area have been phenomenal in growing the Nokia developer and enthusiast base for their regions.  They’re being rewarded with Lumia phones and something maybe even more useful: Nokia Developer Champion nominations.  The Champions are volunteers recognized for some form of advanced leadership– technical, community-oriented or both.  The perks are very nice.  I have not heard yet if Bary and Patrick will have their nominations approved [update: Bary was, still waiting to hear on Patrick's nomination], but they are both deserving in my opinion.  I’ll be spending a great deal of time this year on Champion development.  If you’re interested, contact me!

And if you haven’t checked out our DVLUP incentive program, what are you waiting for?  It’s out of private beta so no registration codes required now.  The challenges have been updated and cool new rewards added.  If you’re an existing Windows Phone developer and haven’t joined, you’re already cheating yourself out of some really cool stuff.  If you’re new to the experience, you’ll find helpful people there and at Nokia’s core developer community as well (our wiki is legendary).  So get engaged!  Some lucky DVLUP participant and Cowtown Code Camp attendee stands to win big– more on that in a following post.

The Maker Space

Being a founder and director of the new and rapidly-expanding Fort Worth Makerspace community keeps me pumping as well.  To minimize conflicts and make it easy on this old body, I’m focusing on areas where Makers can play in the Nokia product ecosystem.  This goes beyond simple app development into some really cool areas, like 3D printing.

As I shared over at post404, I helped kickstart Nokia’s involvement in crowdsourced 3D printing and have been assisting John Kneeland as he promotes this venture into even bigger proportions.  The project started with the sexy Lumia 820 and has recently been expanded to include the newer 520 model.  It remains to be seen if calls for supporting unibody devices like the 920 prove feasible.  I’ve formed a mobile technology special interest group at our local makerspace for those interested in participating.  See Nokia’s developer wiki for more details.

I’m trying to get some sort of contest developed around 3D printing of Lumia back covers, and hope to share something soon.  Meanwhile, Shapeways has announced a 3D printing API and I’m very excited about the possibilities it presents!  Check it out.

Before 3D printing took off in the consumer space, the Internet of Things was largely about mobile and embedded devices.  Sensors everywhere would feed data to the web, turning the Internet itself into a rich field of environmental I/O.  Arduino and Netduino devices are especially designed to participate in this space, and I plan to bring the latter into my Nokia outreach efforts.  Ideas welcomed!

Perceptual Computing

As if all that wasn’t enough, I’ve been asked by Intel’s awesome Bob Duffy to whip up local enthusiasm for their perceptual computing challenge.  How could I resist?

In a nutshell, Intel is promoting the development of novel interactve solutions built around Ultrabooks and Creative’s Interactive gesture camera.  Consider the latter as a laptop-scaled analog to Microsoft’s Kinect camera and you get the picture.

This article at Venture Beat provides an introduction to what Intel is trying to do:

The latest laptops, known as Ultrabooks, will have multiple ways to interact.  Nuance-based voice controls will let you talk to your computer to run Google  searches, start playing music, or share links on Twitter. Perlmutter, who is  from Israel, said the technology will eventually be able to understand even his  accent.

Intel is also working with SoftKinetic to bring 10-finger gesture recognition to the PC. With it, you can wave your fingers in front of the camera of a  computer, and it will recognize your gestures. [Intel executive vice president Dadi Perlmutter] showed how he could use his  fingers to control a catapult game demo and hold a crystal ball, by waving his  hands in front of a computer and not touching it.

I’ll be using my Maker channels to organize activity around this one, although I have also been informing the local Nokia outreach community of the opportunity.  I have developer devices available for loan and session work; I’ll have something more formal to announce soon for the next phase of the challenge, but feel free to hit me up via email if you’re at all interested in learning more.  First, however, get familiar with the program and tools.  Note that my direct support of this activity will be limited to the immediate Dallas-Fort Worth area.

Bob has an analysis of where the challenge is currently, and it’s worthwhile reading.

Getting Qt

Sadly, I have not had much time for Qt lately.  I do want to rectify that, but at the moment I don’t see how.  I’m still interested in the platform, especially where Jolla is concerned, and even in coding for my coveted N9… but overcommitment is a bad habit that I’m working hard to break.  I’ll still share Qt news, mostly on twitter, and continue trying to make time for learning it.  I’m thrilled at its prospects and assured by its recent advances.

!Spam

As noted before I have a lot of work to do with this site.  Most of it has been invisible: theme-searching, plugin-testing, etc.  The necessary grunt work that feels like time wasted.  I definitely need to add some resource pages, and that’s in the works.

One of my goals is to push content to your preferred channels so you don’t have to subscribe to MY preference(s).  So besides this site, here’s a list of outlets where you can expect updates:

Twitter

Texrat (general)
NokiaDevNorthTX (Nokia outreach specific)

Facebook

Texrat (general)
Nokia Developer Outreach North Texas page
Nokia Developer Outreach North Texas group
Mobile Monday Dallas

Google Plus

Nokia Developer Outreach North Texas community

Meetup.com

Windows Phone App Developer Group – DFW North Texas

LinkedIn

Develop with Nokia
Windows Phone Community
MobileMonday
IdeasProject
Windows App Developers
Developer Evangelists

Nokia Developer

Windows Phone App Developer Group – DFW Dallas Texas
3D Printing and Nokia Developer Outreach North Texas

Website(s)

Fort Worth Makerspace

Up Next

I’ll be attending a Board of Directors meeting for the Tarrant County Maker Community Foundation this week.  If you have anything you want me to raise there, let me know!

Here are some upcoming events:

Cowtown Code Camp 2013
Mobile Monday Usability/Accessibility Brainstorm DFW

Much more to come!

This needs to be a community-oriented site, supporting the three areas in which I’m involved (Make, Windows Phone, and Qt in no particular order).  But I’m unable to find a ready-made WordPress theme, free or premium, that works.  I’ve tried several dozen with varying degrees of dissatisfaction.

I don’t have time or skill to develop anything, nor can I afford to pay for custom development, so that limits the possibilities.

Essentially I’ll need management of events, developer resources, contests and communications.  I’ve found plugins I believe will support those but I still need a site framework that does.

So… suggestions?

Going forward, I wil transition the bulk of my community support activity to this blog, as well as two twitter accounts: @NokiaDevNorthTX (was @DFW_WPDEV) and my old generic account, @texrat.  The latter is blessed with the most followers, but they’re so diverse (and include many people disinterested in Windows Phone) that I will use @NokiaDevNorthTX for highly-focused Windows Phone activity.  Still, expect at least few retweets on the @texrat side!

Last year I sponsored and otherwise supported some fun meetups and events, and 2013 will be no different.  January starts off with the North Texas Smartphone App Competition 2013, followed closely by a local instance of the 2013 Global Game Challenge.  Both events will also have preliminary meetups.  We’ll also be holding regular group meetups at Nokia’s Irving site starting in January.  The first meeting will cover many topics, and my hope afterwards is to have one major topic for each meetup.  We’ll have a really exciting one for April oriented around usability and accessibility, and I’m also putting one together (probably for March) with the theme of creating compelling apps.  I’ll be bringing in guest speakers from various companies and organizations, and looking for volunteers!

Speaking of meetups, the DFW meetup group grew fairly well in 2012, finishing the year at 107 members.  Out of that number, there were about 20 or so really active participants, some of whom have flirted with the Nokia DVLUP Leaderboard (must be registered to view; ask me about that if you aren’t) and quite a few winning prizes and awards for their work.

One thing to note: for reasons unclear to me, I have lost co-organizer status at the DFW meetup group.  This means I can no longer organize meetups or events on that site, or even update resource pages I created.  I will therefore be exploring other options… possibly Eventbrite.

I was also a little discouraged at low participation in certain community challenges, so I’m looking for feedback on how to do better this year.  Let me know any ideas you have for incentives and contests.

As for DVLUP… it’s still a Canada/USA program only for now and I know that frustrates those of you outside those countries.  Nokia of course recognizes the need to expand this opportunity so I hope you’ll be ready to jump in when it’s available to you.  It’s become quite popular and the development team has been hard at work fixing bugs and implementing new features.  Participant feedback is key!

Of course, while Windows Phone consumes the bulk of my community work these days, I’m still involved in other initiatives.  I’m on the board of directors for a local Make organization, still interested in 3D printing, and helping Digia as I can with local Qt meetups.  But I did drop some other activities due to time constraints.  I can only be stretched so thin, unfortunately.

Anyway, there’s going to be a lot going on this year and I have my work cut out for me.  Soon I hope to beef this site up a bit and make it a truly useful resource for you.

Thanks everyone for your support!

Only it hasn’t been boring for me.  Far from it!  Here’s why, explained by what I am and will be doing, in order of priority:

• Full time job and family.  Hard to say which really comes first, since I could only go without a full-time job if I had no family.  But I’m stuck with both, and regardless of pecking order they come before all else.  I love working for BNSF Railway and hope that continues as long as I need it to!
• Nokia developer outreach.  As many already know, since 2005 I have supported Nokia’s business in some form or fashion, and it just got real again.  I am now officially working part-time for my former favorite employer, as a project coordinator with the cooler-sounding label of Nokia Developer Ambassador.  The goal is to get developers cranking on Windows Phone.  I’m currently working on getting my embassy in order.  That would be home office (corner of our bedroom and a tiny spot on a living room table), this website, twitter account, a local meetup site, and various coffee shops around town.
• Qt.  I can’t give up on this platform, even though I sadly retreated late last year and set it aside.  I’ve been asked by Digia to help with Dallas-area meetups and I believe I can fit that in.  I just hope there’s enough interest!  I’m also eager to find out what’s brewing at Jolla; the new mobile phone manufacturer may offer renewed hope to mobile Qt developers.
• Tarrant County maker community.  Since returning from the Devaamo Summit in Finland some months ago, full of fire and foolishness, I have been trying to pull together a local maker community.  There’s no shortage of talent and interest in my home county; just little in the way of Big Picture Organization.  That hurdle appears to have been crossed, thanks in large part to Sherry Huss of O’Reilly Media and the visionaries at http://DFWI.org.  A makerspace website has been constructed by the hardworking Robert Bradbury, and the community is taking shape!  There’s synergy with Qt and Windows Phone efforts, which will help minimize my time.
• Hildon Foundation Board.  This is a new organization chartered to find a future for Nokia’s Maemo assets and community.

I’ve also been helping Scarlet Motors on community-building.  But you’ll notice no specific mention of 3D printing or Tribal Method in that list.

Where the former is concerned, I’m not stopping activity– just reducing it.  3D printing will be a large part of maker community activities, and I’ll still putter with my inventions as I find time.  But it won’t be as high a priority as it has been… unless something changes in the list above.

As for my ventures, aka Tribal Method, I’m putting that on a distant back-burner.  I still have big ideas, and strongly believe one or more of them could create many millionaires, but I continue to struggle in selling my business ideas and building the teams necessary to bring them to life.  Yes, for those in the know that includes Kintegrity, Conkin, unfolo, Resuflex, Cocoa Labs and others.  Maybe at some point I’ll be able to get something going on one or more of them, but it isn’t now.

I’m busy enough.  ;)

Crazy, right?

(FYI: you will likely see a lot of theme changes as I experiment.  Feel free to suggest themes!)

As many of you know, I’ve been a Nokia Developer Champion for a couple of years now.  Technically I was one (in deed only) since 2006; Nokia just formalized that with a certificate and a few very nice perks starting in late 2010.

I was brought into the official fold not for coding prowess but rather for Maemo community development.  Which was cool, because that’s where I found the bulk of my volunteer efforts going; there were plenty of others fighting on the coding front and too few fretting over community growth and outreach processes.  And as I explained to some Nokia developer relations guys after a pre-Nokia World get-together last year, there are champion developers, and developer champions.

While I’ve certainly performed my share of miraculous programming feats, these days I’m more of the latter.

Coders have enough to occupy their time without concerning themselves with outreach and evangelism.  Many, I’ve found, have for whatever reason not fully developed the networking skills so necessary to project and product success.  I was a late-bloomer myself, so I understand.  But someone has to act as liaison between the more exceptional programers and the movers/shakers who can make things happen for their creations.

And as Tom Symkowski in the movie Office Space learned, the “go-between” is an often misunderstood and unappreciated role.

While Maemo looked to have a future, and then the same with its successor MeeGo, my form of “meddling” was at least tolerated and sometimes even embraced by the mostly-European community.  Even technical cynics will accept The Devil (aka Marketing) when it’s clear, honest, and useful.

And on that note…

Maemo is gone as a platform.  MeeGo survives in a Nokia-customized form on the N9 and N950, but has no future unless Jolla pulls off a miracle.  And there is nothing in the Nokia pipeline to replace them.

So I’m left with a choice: follow Symbian champions out of the program, or get behind Windows Phone.

While some of my well-meaning friends in Europe see the choice as easy, it isn’t for me.  For one, I’m not so antagonistic toward WP.  Would I prefer to keep supporting Maemo or MeeGo?  Oh HELL yes.  But I’ve been developing for the Windows desktop and server worlds for about two decades now and I’m comfortable there.  That said, Windows Phone development is not as open so I do admit to wrestling with that issue.  If I am patient enough to stick with MeeGo, then that will be in whatever community may develop around Jolla, and Nokia dev champ membership has no relevance.

But here in the US, there are three mobile platform choices: iOS, Android, or WP.

I don’t intend to get into the first two and I’m not going to get into the reasons here.  So that leaves the last (and last place) option.

I’ve helped organize a local (Dallas area) Windows Phone developer group and it’s been steadily growing… so there’s definitely interest.  Even if I don’t write a single line of WP code, I can still help this group with support and networking while I’m an active Nokia Developer Champion.  I’d love to do the same for Qt, but I’ve had no success with that effort so far.

My NDC term expires in October, and what’s announced at this year’s Nokia World event may well determine whether or not I pursue another one.  Of course acceptance is really up to Nokia anyway.

No matter what, my hope is that friends who are opposed to Windows Phone can read this and understand that, although I completely understand and respect their position, I’m hoping they can grit their teeth, hold their noses and at least tolerate mine.

I’m really not sure where I go from here with regards to the mobile landscape.  Maybe I’ll abandon it altogether and put volunteer work into 3D printing wholeheartedly.  Maybe I’ll see what I can do for friends involved with Scarlet Motors.  At this point I’m playing it by ear… and ideas are welcome.

Well, after some amount of begging, finagling, stock-selling and unusually good luck I managed to make it to Devaamo Summit 2012 in beautiful Tampere, Finland. And after some amount of procrastinating and blathering about other subjects, I’m finally managing to share the experience with you.

The Trip Out

Of course not all luck was good. A delay in getting the funds from the stock sale led to less-than-ideal air travel tickets. Which in turn led to being stranded on the DFW airport tarmac for an hour as a hail storm pelted the plane. Which finally resulted in an overall delay of three hours since my connecting flight out of Atlanta ran into equally aggravating weather. Then in Amsterdam my gift to good friend Timo (timoph/timorph) Härkönen of a bottle of Texas hot sauce was confiscated because their security didn’t trust ours. Finally, when I landed at Helsinki Vantaa airport, I realized my new travel guitar had not yet made the trip.

Sigh.

Ultimately it wasn’t all bad, though, as Timo (along with his gracious better half Niina and our mutual friend Carsten Munk) was kind enough to make a two hour trip by car to pick me up at Helsinki Vantaa airport. That was cool. It certainly beat a solo train or bus ride, and if I remember correctly I paid something like 8 euros less for refueling their car than I would have for a train ride. That’s, like, a whole beer.

Timo had taken time off of work, and Niina went off to visit friends and family, so we did the bachelor thing for a few days. Minus strippers and alcohol-induced stunts that is. In all seriousness, Timo is not only a great friend but a truly wonderful host. He made sure I got where I needed to go at all times. And his cool cat Rog kept me good company at night.

Friday

The first day we enjoyed a lazy breakfast during a beautiful morning. Then Timo and I trekked the short distance to New Factory to help set things up and then enjoy a Mer Project “birds of a feather (BoF)” talk conducted by Carsten (stskeeps) along with David (lbt) Greaves. It was a great way to begin as this sort of highly-interactive session loosens participants up and gives them an idea of event nature. A relative to Maemo, the Mer open source mobile device core project is a favorite of mine so it was good to see that it still plugs along (and as we later discovered, will be at the heart of Jolla‘s efforts).

Saturday

The next day was the event proper, and I got roped into session moderator duties by the hard-to-resist Carol (cybette) Chen for the first half. I was a bit nervous at first because I had never done that before and was concerned about what I would say. Those who know I rarely shut up are surely surprised to read that, but it’s true: if I’m not prepared I tend to stutter or blank. Fortunately I made it through without catastrophe.

At lunch time several of us went out to enjoy some delicious Italian fare at the Bella Roma restaurant in the complex. I have to say that the food and service here have been excellent all three times I have been. I really recommend the monster calzones.

I had my own session to conduct after lunch. Intro to 3D Parametric Design had been rejected at first but they managed to find room for me at the last minute. Which meant that I had neglected to put anything together until just before I flew out. That turned out to be an issue; as one reviewer noted, I didn’t cover enough material. We had 30 minutes and I actually wrapped up in 20, unwittingly skipping a few parts of the demo I had planned. I had hoped the audience would ask more questions then the one from the illustrious Henri (bergie) Bergius; what I should have done when none were forthcoming was go back to the demo and play around some more. Ah well… point learned the hard way.

I don’t really need to go into more detail about the event itself, because the reviewer who (rightfully) panned my talk does a really good job of sharing what he experienced.  So does Timur Kristóf.

Party!

After the event wrapped up the traditional party commenced. There was plenty of beer and a local comedian regaled us with some pretty decent jokes. He started in English for the sake of the multinational audience but had to beg off into Finnish after a just a few jokes. Judging from the native response, he did fairly well. Meanwhile I had some great conversations with Lucian (ltomuta) Tomuta, Timur (venemo), Jenifer (msjen) Hanen, Thomas (tbr23) Rucker and others.  See some pictures here.

Henri spent the bulk of the evening trying to get me drunk it seemed. He came close but did not quite succeed. Better luck next time, Bergie!  I just hope your motives are pure. 

Once the party wound down and we had to leave the facility, a good number of us headed off to a park along the river where we battled advancing inebriation and tough Finnish mosquitoes. By this time my travel guitar had completed its traveling and we were reunited. I had brought it solely for songwriting purposes since I’m actually a crappy player, but as it turned out some guy named Sakari (shyoty) Hyöty was highly skilled and entertained a few of us with his playing. I was impressed that he was able to pick up some of my original songs so quickly. He seemed like someone I would love to work with.

Timo and I both tired before most of the crowd so we headed back to his apartment to watch Iron Sky. It was a bit campier than I had thought it would be, but overall I’m impressed with what the low budget production team managed to accomplish with this partially-crowdsourced effort.

Sunday

I had nothing personally scheduled for Sunday so Timo and I took it easy again in the morning. That afternoon we headed back to New Factory for post-event cleanup and a delicious Thank You dinner at Plevna Bewery and Restaurant. Afterward Matti (smoinen) Saastamoinen was kind enough to take me by Timo’s to collect my things and then drop Carol, Timur and I off at the train station. The latter two saw me off as I headed to Helsinki, where I planned to catch a few hours’ nap at Jens (jnwi) Wiik’s apartment before catching a plan out of HEL at the ungodly hour of 6:30 AM. But Jens and I were too wired so we chatted about music, games and Maemo memories before I walked the several blocks to the bus station.

I was sad at the shortness of my stay and how swiftly departure time came, but so glad for the opportunity. Thanks so much to Carol Chen for tirelessly soliciting travel funds for me (I promise I’ll start paying people back soon!) and of course to Timo and Jens for their hospitality. My appreciation also to Timur, Henri, Attila, Jenifer, Thomas, Carsten, David, Lucian, Jukka and other friends for making me feel so welcome! I want to bring you all over here! During cooler weather of course.

There and Back Again

Once back at home and settled into my usual groove, I immediately began missing the Devaamo experience. Here in Texas I’ve attended numerous events of a related nature, but none with quite the same spirit. So I’ve been on a mission the past few years to share that spirit everywhere I go in the hope that it will catch fire here. Texas has lost quite a bit of industry to outsourcing and employees to hotbeds of innovation like Silicon valley; we need to get creative if we are to recapture any of that and take advantage of exploding opportunities like 3D printing.

One of those efforts involving transplanting New Factory itself. To that end, I’ve proposed a local “pre start-up” hackerspace (i.e., collaboration center) as part of a Fort Worth improvement project called Plan 2023. So far it’s been very well-received. But I’m not stopping there: this venue may not turn into anything so if we can’t make this happen via Plan 2023, I’m open to any other means of accomplishing this goal for the Fort Worth area. And I’m looking for help! We held a recent meetup to brainstorm possibilities and that was a good start– let’s keep the momentum going!

There’s no reason the “Devaamo experience” should be limited to Tampere. But I’m looking forward to returning next year!

In all seriousness, it’s been way too long since since I filled this space with meaningless patter so I’ll try to catch up.

This has been an interesting year.  I came up with more business ideas the past several months than I had the previous several years.  So many that I couldn’t stay focused on any one.  Nor could I find anyone interested in taking any off of my hands.  So Google Docs fills up with billion-dollar brain farts that someone else will likely make happen.  C’est la vie, c’est la guerre.

As I posted a while back, I had decided I would form this thing called Tribal Method to 1) get my own $#|+ under control and 2) develop processes and resources for modern idea cultivation, collaboration and project management.  Not long afterward I discovered that others were well ahead of me on the same course so I figured it makes more sense to watch and/or contribute to their projects.  More on that in a post404 article or two to come.

On that last note, I had *almost* given up on post404 just a few months ago.  Low readership was the main reason.  I love writing but not solely for my own sake; readers are a necessary blessing.  I was also (and still am) discouraged by the inability to get any contributor articles.  But a funny thing happened: in July I posted My Nokia Maemo Story and suddenly I was getting views from everywhere.  Which mystifies me.  I put significant effort into A Geek’s Tribute to Jack Tramiel and it garners 38 views.  I post my own personal ramblings and get over 2000.  Folks, Jack Tramiel was a major reason we are doing what we’re doing.  He definitely deserves better!

So I guess I still don’t get this tech blogging thing.  Especially since I keep seeing people subscribe to my old WordPress site, Tabula Crypticum, when I don’t even write there any more.  Guys, seriously: http://post404.com.  I promise, more content is coming!

Oh, and in June I did make it to Tampere, Finland for Devaamo Summit thanks to many friends who loaned me part of the airfare.  Thanks to a new job with a US railroad (just started two weeks ago) I should soon have the funds to start paying people back.  There’s also an article in draft that I need to finish…

Circling back to Tribal Method, time management has always been a pain for me.  My idea-to-time ratio sucks.  I either need to generate fewer of the former or find more of the latter.  Neither seems to be happening, so I’ll fight the urge to mania-task (multi-task just isn’t the word) and focus on a select handful of items.  They are:

• Downtown Fort Worth Plan 2023 improvement/renewal project.  I’m mainly looking to get a Hackerspace started (help?).
• post404 of course
• 3d printing community work.  I may be helping Shapeways with a Dallas event soon.
• Nokia Developer Champion stuff.  We have a meetup group of around 50 people for Windows Phone development.  Yes, I would prefer working in Qt and on N9 or N950.  Things are what they are.
• unfolo.  I have an idea about temporary contacts.  Under development.  Follow @unfolo on twitter.

That list leaves out several projects I would really like to get going… some of them potentially huge game-changers.  Millionaire-making stuff.  But I’m just one guy and need to find people interested in making them happen.  I will be discussing them at a high level at post404 soon.  If something piques your interest, I’m ready to help make you rich.

 ;)