Events

I shall be on 3CR radio tomorrow afternoon to talk about my Antescene nights, it's the 'Activate' show and is on from 5.30 - 6pm...

I am honoured, happy and excited to have been asked to speak at a Web Directions event, <a href="https://code13melb.webdirections.org/" target="_blank">Web Directions Code</a>, here in Melbourne on the 2nd and 3rd of May.

I love pitch events, I love hearing ideas good and bad and watching people's passion in what they do… This will be the first I attempt to summarise and my first attempt at live blogging, of sorts.

One of the challenges of my new attempt to blog about all the events I attend is that some events are hard to write about there and then on the spot. Networking events being one of them, you can't keep whipping out a notebook/tablet to jot down conversations and, well, you may not find anything you want to write about.

Tuesday was a productive day capped by two intriguing events. A stupendously early breakfast session with <a href="https://www.graniteconsulting.com.au/" target="_blank">Granite consulting</a> at their networking breakfasts, with Dan Weis of <a href="https://kiandra.com.au/" target="_blank">Kiandra IT</a> covering 'Security and Real World Threats' and the <a href="https://uxmelbourne.org/category/movie-nights/" target="_blank">UX Melbourne movie night</a> covering 'Lean UX' with Jeff Gothelf.

The <a href="https://www.ted.com/tedx" target="_blank">tedx</a> model is a slightly strange one, fraught with as many positives as negatives for organisers, however it does create a fascinating ecosystem around the world. Tonight had a packed room, but was unfortunately fraught with technical issues and joins several other local tedx events around Melbourne.

One of the things that frustrates me the most in the non profit sector is the lack of collaboration between organisations and the duplication that often occurs instead.

The Web Directions - <a href="https://wdyk-melb-sept13.eventbrite.com/" target="_blank">What do you know events</a> are always a fun night and tonight was no exception with many running 'jokes' about some of the appalling policy decisions just announced by the coalition that will affect our industry, one which has been a boom area for Australia, but largely unrecognised on the larger national scale. Anyway, enough of Politics, what were the talks? Bear in mind there were 10, so this will be very brief...

There seem to be more events not running free catering, is this due to a lack of sponsors or a change to methodology? A thought to ponder on…

<b>Drupal 8 won't kill your kittens - Lee Rowland</b><br />There have been a lot of discussions around changes in the Drupal core team and that many old names are leaving for a variety of reasons, however there have been many new people coming on board and any community should be able to move on from it's originators. I'm currently going through the same process myself right now with Green Renters and it can be a difficult but worthwhile process. This was a  great oversight of what is new in D8, watch presentation<br />Remember Lee's final words… _"We will accept any help"_<br /><a href="https://previousnext.com.au/blog/drupal-8-wont-kill-your-kittens" target="_blank">See the presentation here</a>

<a href="https://www.facebook.com/MobileMondayMelbourne" target="_blank">Mobile Mondays Melbourne</a> has been running for 8 years, which in the tech event space makes it something of an elderly character and with the plethora of new events happening around town all the time, I have had the increasing feeling that some of these older events are wondering how to keep themselves relevant.

There was a slightly strange feeling to this meet up, in some ways it felt a little insular (I guess those who are actively involved with BitCoin are a small and intriguing community), but it could also just be because it was for once a crowd of folks I didn't recognise. There was an underlying feeling of "Everything old is bad" and "Everything new is good", which isn't always completely true or as black and white as that. I find Bitcoin interesting technically and as a concept, if you think about the history of money, then bitcoin is no different really, it's an agreement to trust that a concept has a mutual value between people. The money we use everyday is no different from BitCoin really, it's just decentralised. This could be an entire post in itself, so take a read of <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_money" target="_blank">Wikipedia's History of Money article</a>. Back to tonight, which contained several interesting discussions:<ul><li>BitCoin Point of sale units - These are emerging in a couple of places, such as <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/technology/shortcuts/2013/jun/23/britains-first-bitcoin-pub" target="_blank">pubs in the UK</a>, but also soon to arrive here thanks to Mikey Nelson.</li><li>How useful BitCoin could be for foreign travel and exchange</li><li>A Bitcoin association is being founded in Australia</li><li>The BitCoin ATM, a <a href="https://lamassu.is/" target="_blank">Lamasu</a></li><li>If you want BitCoins to be accepted in certain stores, then ask for it, if more ask, the more chance it will happen.</li><li>Apparently Elsternwick high st may be attempting a street wide acceptance of BitCoin.</li></ul> Interested in knowing more, then join the Melbourne BitCoin meet up - <a href="https://www.meetup.com/BitcoinMelbourne" target="_blank">meetup.com/BitcoinMelbourne</a>

This was a great session with a myriad of conflicting opinions and points of few, that always sparks a good debate :)</div>&nbsp;</div>First up a great set of introductory resources for startup founders from Scott Handsaker, with a lot of new initiatives arriving in Melbourne. His slides will be available on the <a href="https://www.meetup.com/Lean-Startup-Melbourne/events/160212272/" target="_blank">event&#39;s meetup page</a>.</div>&nbsp;</div>Secondly was a very constructive talk on outsourcing that actually gave some great constructive advice on best practise in this sometimes thorny field. Advice covered finding, briefing and using outsourced workers as well as more details on creating a brief, making sure they follow it and how to evaluate their work coping with time differences and other infrastructure and culture differences. Finally, in a nice positive twist, the speaker recommend being generous and encourage to your workers.&nbsp;</div>&nbsp;</div>Final came a panel with a mixed bag of local and international entrepreneurs, Susan Wu, Leni Mayo and Brendan Lewis. They discussed the Melbourne startup ecosystem and how it compares with others around the world, especially in the UK and US. Here&rsquo;s a few tidbits I garnered and remembered to write down.</div>&nbsp;</div><ul><li>People only look for success, not necessarily actions when weighing up the impact of startups and/or a city. Connections and support for these startups are equally as important.</li><li>Those individuals and organisations who are successful should give back.</li><li>London had been a recent case study of government encouraging growth through backing and legislation, but London scale is vastly larger than Melbourne.</li><li>Melbourne&#39;s lack of size and geography makes us look more outward, also our lack of plan B if you fail, there are no massive employers Like Google or Apple who will value you.</li><li>Australia is too full of safe investors, non risky investing.</li><li>Lean and tech startups aren&#39;t the only startups in Melbourne, there are many others participating in different scenes such as medical.&nbsp;</li></ul>

This was a strange event for a couple of reasons, firstly it didn't run very smoothly with lots of minor technical issues and delays that made the event run very long and late, with the main event not really starting until 8pm after a 6:30 start. Secondly the pitches (I saw, see later) were generally a little unsure and not in the traditional pitch style, I spent a lot of time thinking 'and...?', it was never very clear why the pitchers were pitching, what did they want to win for, what did they need the money for? A lot of the pitches had references to 'how awesome' eLance was, feeling more like a pitch for eLance than their own products some of the time.

I just took part in my first rally in Leipzig (and Germany), The '<a href="https://www.gso-le.de/" target="_blank">Global Space Odyssey</a>', representing refugee rights this year. I'm not sure if this is how every rally in Germany happens, I doubt it is, I think this was something special that happens on a yearly basis as local news and social media was awash with reports on the event.

<p class="p1"><span style="line-height: 1.538em;">Phew, quite a week! I started throwing myself into a few meetups in Leipzig and learnt a great many things about the event culture here (and other things) that I would like to share with you&hellip;<p class="p1"><strong><span style="line-height: 1.538em;">Toastmasters, Leipzig Chapter</strong><br /><span style="line-height: 1.538em;">I have never been to a <a href="https://www.toastmasters.org/" target="_blank">Toastmasters</a> event before, mainly because I&rsquo;ve never been invited, but also because I had always assumed it wouldn&rsquo;t quite suit me.&nbsp;<span style="line-height: 1.538em;"><a href="https://reports.toastmasters.org/findaclub/searchresults.cfm?Country=Germany&amp;State=&amp;City=Leipzig" target="_blank">Leipzig has two chapters</a>, one German and one English, unsurprisingly I went to the English one and they were pleased to have a native speaker to lend a hand.<p class="p1"><span style="line-height: 1.538em;">Toastmasters in an International organisation that through its network of clubs helps develop people&rsquo;s presentation and public speaking skills. I&rsquo;ve always been slightly suspicious of these &lsquo;chapter&rsquo; type organisations, mainly because they&rsquo;re quite American in style and that always rubs an Englishman the wrong way. But also because I&rsquo;ve have often felt uncomfortable with bureaucracy and extraneous formality.<p class="p1"><span style="line-height: 1.538em;">However as the evening progressed I started to realise the benefits of some of these formalities and started to like them. I have plenty of public speaking experience and whilst I&rsquo;m not always great at it, I have the confidence to just do it without much thought. Not everyone does though and the enforced formalities about how proceedings should run, constructive feedback and a course structure (optional) help encourage and develop those who lack confidence to just plunge in the deep end.<p class="p1"><span style="line-height: 1.538em;">I don&rsquo;t know enough about how German associations are legally run, but it seems to me that Toastmasters chapters are run on very US/UK lines so it was also an interesting insight into the inner workings of an organisation.<p class="p1"><span style="line-height: 1.538em;"><strong>Leipzig PHP User Group</strong><br /><span style="line-height: 1.538em;">One of my general observations about events here is how late they start, I wonder if that in Melbourne meet up groups where what people did between work and others things and that here they are people&rsquo;s main event of the evening. So often an event wont start until 8/8:30 which is taking a slight adjustment for me.<p class="p1"><span style="line-height: 1.538em;">The group was a little different from a group meet up in Melbourne, smaller (of course) but more casual. There were no formal talks but more of a casual discussion around PHP news and then the topic of the month, Project Management. Keeping up with the discussion was a lot of work for me, but I quite enjoyed it and people made me feel welcome.<p class="p1"><a href="https://phpugl.de" target="_blank"><span style="line-height: 1.538em;">phpugl.de</a><p class="p1"><span style="line-height: 1.538em;"><strong>BUND Harvest bike ride</strong><br /><span style="line-height: 1.538em;">The <a href="https://www.bund.net/" target="_blank">BUND</a> is the German branch of Friends of the Earth and in Leipzig runs a lot of land protection programs. I went on a fairly epic bike ride with them around some of their sites which also had lots and lots of fruit (mainly Apple and Plum) trees. Even better, we were invited to take as much fruit as we liked from them. Interestingly, several of these cites were owned by the city so were public access for people to pick fruit to. Again I had a couple of interesting broken German discussions learning about the first day of school, Allotments (Small gardens) and much more.<p class="p1"><span style="line-height: 1.538em;"><a href="https://www.flickr.com/photos/chrischinchilla/sets/72157646641788879/" target="_blank">See photos of the ride here</a>.

Today Apple held one of its signature events in its home town of Cupertino, California, announcing a new range of iPhones, a long-awaited wearable device, and a new payment system.

I apologise for the delay in this installment of the Weekly Squeak, I let various things get the better of me in the past weeks and am annoyed that I did. First the madness of a series of events, conferences and travel and then I got hit by a crippling cold-flu thing that has made me struggle to get even the work I needed to get done complete, let alone the things I wanted to do. I had a topic I wanted to cover in this post, but I think I will save it for the future and instead talk about some of the questions and issues that have arisen as a consequence of these past weeks.

I make no pretense that I am a generalist and get bored quickly. I have written before about how this sometimes makes you feel left out, or worse, an idiot who has wasted their life. I want to explore this topic in more detail, and that of 'tech tribes', that I feel it relates to.

I go to a lot of events. Firstly because I get bored easily, but mainly because I like hearing what people are working on and their ideas. I have noticed an increasing amount of companies and events that label themselves as 'tech', and I challenge if they actually are. To me it feels like some older phrases that are slowly dying and losing their meaning.

Silicon Allee asked me if I would like to contribute some posts to their Medium publication and I thought what better to write than resurrect something I used to do back when I was living in Melbourne. I go to a lot of meetups. I enjoy meeting people, hearing what they're working on and being exposed to new ideas. Writing something about every talk I see each week would take a long time, so instead I will just tell you who I saw, what they spoke about and what you can do to find out more.

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I'm sat at an Apple event in Berlin and there's not many people here, which says something about what people feel about Macs vs iPhones, or something. In a week when IBM became one of Apple's biggest clients and Microsoft announced more interesting products. It feels like there is growing disappointment and boredom in what Apple is offering.

53,056 people from 166 countries descended on Lisbon for this year’s Web Summit. I’m not sure if this makes it the world’s largest startup event, but it’s damn big. I have attended startup events around the world and have often found them obsessed with nothing but raising money. Whilst the topic was in abundance at Web Summit, it also had enough of something for everyone, with discussions on technology, design, ethics, futurism, and more. If you’re not interested in discussion, but would rather just network and party, you will also have a full schedule.

Android finds itself in interesting times. Google has begun creating it’s own ‘premium’ versions of the operating system (OS), Cyanogen have ceased development, and many feel that Android will change name or shape in the near future.

Creating a modern and feature-rich mobile app has never been a simple task, but is now more complex than ever. There are a plethora of platforms, programming languages and strategies to consider, and knowing where to start and what path to follow involves understanding and appreciating a lot of interconnected components.

2016 was quite a year for technology and its impact on the world. Subconsciously or not, nestled amongst the booths of generic Chinese handsets and app marketing companies were many projects and people at MWC that sought to accomplish something more meaningful. Here are some of the themes and concepts I feel will shape 2017 and 2018.

There is a lot to see, hear, and discover at Mobile World Congress (MWC) and its many side events. From helping the developing world, to brain imaging, and sensors on seals, these are some of my highlights.

Cloud Next is Google’s regular conference that covers all their cloud-related products. That’s something of a vague and overarching classification, but I squeezed into the Google office in Berlin to watch a live stream of the event and will get you all up to speed.

\#UNIT runs regular meetups in Berlin aimed at those working in tech who identify as Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgender, and Intersex (LBGTI), but with an overarching message of providing a space for speakers who you might not always see at more mainstream events. I personally don’t identify as any of these, but I always enjoy the diverse messages and fun atmosphere I hear at the meetups, and this was my second time attending the yearly conference.

Around me are dozens of vintage cars in an old warehouse, tucked into a corner of Berlin’s north west. Those into cars are in heaven, dashing around the vast building, snapping photos of shiny vehicles as old as most attendees. I on the other hand head straight to the coffee and snacks.

On a cold Friday December night, with a Christmas market buzzing

Take a look at this developer's reflection on African involvement in technology and the challenges that African entrepreneurs and technologists face.

I wasn't at Berlin Blockchain week in 2018, so can't directly compare the two events, but this year seemed busy to me, others mentioned they thought it was quieter. However, the venues used for the events were large and sprawling, so it was hard to get a complete picture of how many attendees there were, but the crowd felt enthusiastic to me. Especially considering the sweltering heat for most of the week.

2021 was a difficult year for many. That's not to say that 2020 was any

Four years into a full-scale invasion and a decade after Russia’s annexation of Crimea, Ukraine’s tech ecosystem continues to flourish at home and in exile around the world. After celebrating its 10th anniversary in 2024, Ukraine’s premier tech event, IT Arena, returned to the Arena Lviv Stadium for the first time since 2019.

I speak with Greg Fawson, CEO of Mobile Seasons, about how droidcon grew into next.app devCon, why mobile developer communities are merging, and what it's like to run a developer event in Berlin in 2026.