Coding Across America

Max Richman, Statistician and Data Scientist at GeoPoll

2013-11-15T00:00:00-05:00

Max Richman (@richmanmax) is a statistician and data scientist currently working with GeoPoll in Washington, D.C. and volunteering for DataKind.

Max Richman on "bowtie Thursdays" while out to lunch at Mai Thai in Dupont Circle, Washington, D.C.

There's a wide spectrum of when software developers learn to program. At one extreme of the spectrum there are programmers who learn to use computers when they are very young. One the other end there are programmers who learn later in life out of necessity. Max's path into progamming begins closer to the second extreme while working on his Master's degree in statistics.

Learning to Program

Max's first exposure to programming came during undergrad at George Washington University with a course that was taught in Delphi Pascal, but it wasn't until his Master's program at the London School of Economics (LSE) that he fully engaged with software development. At LSE Max did significant programming with Stata, SPSS, and other statistics-first languages. He also wrote web scrapers to collect unstructured data from the web.

After LSE, Max shifted into to the open source world of statistics languages, primarily R. Max also used Python for data processing and geospatial mapping software such as Quantum GIS for displaying resulting data sets.

Max now combines his statistics, geospatial information systems (GIS), and software development experience with his interest in emerging global markets for GeoPoll and DataKind.

GeoPoll

GeoPoll is Washington, D.C.-based research and firm that conducts surveys through mobile devices. The mobile approach is particularly useful for collecting data from third-world countries where mobile phone adoption rates are high but other communications infrastructure is sparse.

Although overall mobile adoption rates are high in third world countries, many phones are feature phones instead of smartphones. Therefore it is critical that surveys can be conducted through text messages and interactive voice response (IVR) because mobile apps are rare on feature phones. GeoPoll uses Twilio's telecommunications platform combined with their custom software to collect survey results through text messages and IVR answers.

Volunteering for DataKind

DataKind is a volunteer organization based in New York City that pairs data scientists and non-profit organizations together to create data science solutions to problems those organizations face when working to achieve their missions.

One recent project Max was involved with at DataKind was for DC Action for Children. The specific project combined poverty data with geospatial mapping tools to visualize childhood well-being in Washington, D.C.

The combination of data science, geospatial mapping, and the latest software development tools with a philanthropic mission is still rare. Hopefully efforts like the one Max undertook with DataKind and DC Action for Children will inspire others with the capabilities to take on similar positive causes.

Learn more about Max's projects on his blog and on GitHub.

If you liked this post you should check out my interviews with Python software developer Andrew Baker and Fletcher Heisler of TrackMaven.

Andrew Baker, Python Developer at Excella and CFPB

2013-10-30T00:00:00-04:00

Andrew Baker (@andrewtorkbaker) is a Python software developer at Excella Consulting currently assisting the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau.

Andrew Baker while out to lunch in the Farragut West area of Washington, D.C. at Breadline.

Latest Technologies

Andrew is currently working on the continuous deployment pipeline at the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB). Significant technical debt accrued in CFPB's technical infrastructure over the past several years while standing up the agency. Reducing that debt and enabling future projects to deliver faster are the main goals for Andrew's most recent work.

Developers at CFPB are using several tools to figure out where the technical debt is located in their code and the development process. The CFPB team has Jenkins continuous integration set up to constantly check syntax with pep8, perform static code analysis with pylint, and determine code complexity with radon. Andrew and the rest of the the team can then use the output of those tools to determine where to spend their efforts refactoring the code to reduce the debt.

Docker

Andrew says he's recently had a lot of fun playing with Docker on side projects. He found out about Docker through a talk he saw at DjangoCon given by Ken Cochran (@KenCochrane). From there Andrew went through the Docker "Getting Started" tutorial and Python examples to get his own hands on experience with the software.

While there are still a few rough edges the software holds a lot of potential for opening up programmatic manipulation of lightweight virtualization to mainstream developers.

Learning to Program

While at the University of Virginia (UVA), Andrew double majored in Computer Science and Foreign Affairs. He also served as Editor-in-Chief of The Cavalier Daily, UVA's award-winning student-run newspaper. It was at The Cavalier Daily that Andrew was first exposed to Django, which at the time ran the newspaper's website (it was later migrated to a different tech stack).

After college Andrew worked for Accenture programming Java and SQL applications. That experience combined with his Computer Science degree from UVA allowed him to be successful programming with Python after moving to Excella Consulting. He now works with the Python stack full time as well as with side projects such as his technical blog.

CFPB's eRegulations and Regulations Parser

A quick plug for a couple of open source projects from CFPB: eRegulations and the regulations parser. While Andrew only indirectly supported these projects at CFPB he's been very impressed by the interest from the broader open source community so far. Great job by Shashank Khandelwal and C.M. Lubinski for their programming and their roles engaging with the broader open source community.

If you liked this post you should check out my interview with Fletcher Heisler of TrackMaven and my post on the four types of cities' startup tech scenes

Why Does Building Software for the Government Cost So Much?

2013-10-29T00:00:00-04:00

The latest US government software project under the news media spotlight is the healthcare.gov website. The "at least $350 million" project has let few visitors complete the sign up process. When the sign up process actually is successful, the wrong data is often being sent to insurers. The New York Times covered how technical issues turned into political difficulties:

For the first time in history, a president has had to stand in the Rose Garden to apologize for a broken Web site. But HealthCare.gov is only the latest episode in a string of information technology debacles by the federal government.

Clay Johnson and Harper Reed NY Times Op-Ed

Despite the current issues with healthcare.gov, at least the website launched on time. The same cannot be said for many expensive government projects, such as the FBI's Virtual Case Management System.

Why are these high profile failures and massive cost overruns so common in government software development projects? This is a list of the most significant issues that arise on these projects from my personal experience in software development across several government agencies (US Army, FBI, CFPB) and commercial and non-profit organizations (Marriott, Freddie Mac, The Motley Fool, NTI, GWU).

Those Holding the Purse Strings Are Not Users

The government has a formal title for the guy who's in charge of the contract and related financial decisions: Contracting Officer Representative (COR). The COR is generally not an actual user. In a worst case scenario there are multiple owners, none of whom will actually use the software, and everyone has to put their stamp on every decision. Non-users are inclined to approve flashy features and functionality that have no mission value but look good during a demo.

There needs to be a better way to determine what value is provided to actual users. However, even in this case there are often problems. Many end users do not want a new software system. They sometimes do not want to retrain on a new system or are concerned that their jobs will be replaced once the new system is up and running.

Time (Money) Is Needed to Justify Every Choice

Justifying the use of common software libraries can often take multiple weeks over periods of several months. Software developers are often asked to create lengthy white papers and extensive documentation for simple code reuse scenarios. Often this culture discourages software developers from reusing proven, tested code because it would take longer to justify their choice of library, than to rewrite the code from scratch.

In addition, the developer is accepts responsibility that if there are any future issues with that reused code, justified or not, she is to blame. Essentially the development process takes much longer than expected so that everyone can cover their ass with documentation in case of failure.

Budget Process

All budget must be requested up front, often in multi-year estimates. The software development estimation process is impossible on such long time scales. Projects literally set themselves up for failure and inaccurate budgets before they even begin.

The flip side of this budget process situation is that even if a company believes it can solve a problem cheaply, they are incentivized to pad estimates because no further funding can be requested in the future.

No Third Party Services

Third party services are near and dear to my heart because when properly leveraged developers can build applications orders of magnitudes faster than by building everything from scratch.

The value proposition of third party services is clear. By paying New Relic $24 a month for instantly integrated, powerful application-level monitoring, I don't have to rebuild that functionality myself. New Relic has invested millions of dollars into their platform. There's no reason for me to duplicate that functionality, or the features of other platforms like Dropbox, Twilio, CopperEgg, Heroku (the list goes on and on) except to comply with often arbitrary government data regulations and information assurance questionnaires.

In some cases these regulations are justified. In other cases, there is no logical reason why data cannot be stored on an existing third party platform. Explaining why though goes back to the justification problem explained above.

"I Want Everything, or Nothing"

The culture around government projects remains skewed towards "big bang" project introductions. Gradually rolling out a new system to users is rare. The idea is that "unless every piece of functionality is there, it is useless" prevents systems from quickly getting into users' hands. Only when users are actually working with a system can they can determine what functionality is actually useful to them.

Government project phases are not iterative because they are often several months or years long. Agile software engineering demands short feedback loops on the maximum timescale of several weeks between production deployments.

In addition, government employee software developers and consultants often recommend reasonable approaches to solving problems iteratively but culturally there is significant resistance to those ideas.

No Quick Fixes

The above problems are difficult issues to solve. Anyone with a "silver bullet" for how government can easily build large complex software project is selling snake oil. Increasing success rates on major government software development projects will only come about through a combination of cultural changes, greater technical understanding (by everyone involved in projects, not just software developers), and a budget process that allows project funding on less expensive iterative engineering methods.

Fletcher Heisler, Author of Real Python and Developer at TrackMaven

2013-09-17T00:00:00-04:00

Fletcher Heisler (@fheisler) is the author of the Real Python lessons and currently a Python developer at TrackMaven, based in Dupont Circle, Washington, D.C.

Fletcher Heisler while out to lunch in Dupont Circle at Raku.

Latest Technologies

Fletcher's currently working on scaling TrackMaven's increasingly popular competitive marketing analysis service. Much of TrackMaven's processing is done on Heroku's PostgreSQL database servers. He's evaluating how much of that processing can be moved to in-memory datastores such as Redis or NoSQL options such as Basho's Riak.

Much of TrackMaven's service is powered by Python / Django web applications running on Heroku. Heroku makes scaling a web application easy initially but can become cost prohibitive with a large number of dynos, addons, and databases.

Fletcher also works with a few Linode instances that are part of TrackMaven's infrastructure. He and Matt Camilli are working with and evaluating AnsibleWorks AWX for deploying, scaling, and maintaining more traditional LAMP servers that could in some cases replace Heroku.

Learning to Program

Fletcher took an interesting path into programming and has only begun started web development in the last couple of years. Fletcher began using Python while in academia, but not in a computer science department. Learning the basic syntax and how to cobble together various libraries provided a "gateway drug" into the web development world.

Real Python

Real Python started as a wildly successful Kickstarter campaign. The initial funding goal of $800 was far surpassed by the eventual $21,150 worth of pledges.

Real Python now has four parts: Python syntax, web development, tool and topics, and projects. Further sections on data analysis or interesting projects with Arduino and Raspberry Pi may be added in the future.

TrackMaven

At a hackathon in D.C., Fletcher met Allen Gannett, TrackMaven's founder. Although Fletcher considered working full-time on Real Python, the opportunity to get in as a developer at the beginning of a very promising startup seemed too great to pass up. Since then Fletcher's been working on building out the TrackMaven product and meeting the scaling challenges due to high customer demand for their competitive marketing intelligence product.

Be sure to check out TrackMaven's Pembroke Welsh Corgi mascot Maven, probably the best tech startup mascot I've seen anywhere in the US.

If you liked this post you should check out my posts on the four types of cities' startup tech scenes and my offer to fellow software developers visiting Washington, D.C..

DjangoCon 2013... Go!

2013-09-03T10:00:00-04:00

The main DjangoCon 2013 conference is kicking off this morning. Here's a quick couple of pictures as people are getting settled down before the keynote.

I will be speaking Thursday morning on Making Django Play Nice with Third Party Services. Come find me or hit me up on Twitter if you're around this week!

Main conference room before everyone got settled.

Steve Holden kicking off the conferene and introducing Russell Keith-Magee.

Russell Keith-Magee introducing the upcoming Malcolm Tredinnick Memorial Award.

If you want to see more of Chicago, check out my pictures from the last time I was in Chicago.

Debate on the "Autoworkers" of Our Generation

2013-09-03T08:00:00-04:00

Recently on Hacker News there were two blogs debating whether software developers are the autoworkers of our generation. The first post was aptly enough entitled "Autoworkers of Our Generation." The post's argument was that although software developers generally enjoy great salaries now, there are looming "threats" (aka, solutions to the current demand problem) on the horizon that could change the equation. For example, The Starter League in Chicago turns out qualified Rails developers who can be hired by companies instead of talent already on the market. The takeaway is to not get comfortable and keeping learning and growing your skillset.

The second post was a response entitled "Not the autoworkers of our generation." The argument in this post was that autoworkers were granted a higher standard of living for several decades due to labor unions' strong bargaining power and because the work could not yet be automated to a significant degree. That dynamic was destroyed particularly by automation (as well as other forces such as manufacturing approaches and bureaucracy at GM, Ford, and Chrysler). My guess is that the decreasing power of labor unions was driven not by generational forces but instead by the weakening demand for unskilled labor.

The argument is that software development will not suffer such a fate because developers perform highly skilled work that cannot be automated. Also, any automation gains are quickly swallowed by a corresponding increase in the complexity of systems attempting to be built. Put another way, software development automation does not go towards building the same systems for less money, it generally goes towards making new and existing systems with more business rules, features, and interconnections to other systems.

My Perspective

As usual, I'm in the middle, although I lean towards the latter argument. It's possible there will be much more entry-level talent to satisfy existing demand if developer bootcamps are successful at turning out large numbers of qualified developers. But there's so much work to be done at the high end, such as teaching, mentoring, and reviewing those entry-level developers. Then there's the building of the frameworks such as Rails and Django that developers leverage to create the web applications in the first place (to say nothing of mobile apps, embedded systems, etc etc), which is something developers only get comfortable with after several years of experience. No bootcamp today (or my guess, for the foreseeable future) can teach that type of work.

I do agree with the first post's sentiment that if you want to justify increasing your salary you need to constantly learn, grow, and challenge yourself. Also, not just in the technical realm but also improving your social intelligence, communications with team members, writing, and understanding of business. I've unfortunately seen far too many "architects" in big enterprises get laid off only to find they have no useful skills because they failed to improve anything other than their domain knowledge about their employer.

Generally though I don't currently see automation as much of threat to our field. In fact automation is a value-add if you know how to use increasingly sophisticated tools to accomplish your job that previously would have taken several entry-level developers to complete.

If you found this post interesting check out my thoughts on hacker houses as underutilized resources and the four types of startup tech cities.

Commissary in Washington, D.C.

2013-08-28T00:00:00-04:00

Commissary is a coffee shop, restaurant, and bar a half block from Logan Circle on P Street NW in Washington, D.C.

Commissary's logo.

The P Street location for Commissary is right near Logan Circle. The inside is large although on weekend during brunch it fills up quickly. I found that sitting at the bar during the weekends with my laptop was fine. During the week I could sit at a table and get service without feeling like a nuisance.

There are two wifi hotspots in Commissary. I found the first one's connection was spotty but when I switched to the second connection it was fast enough for most use, including pushing image files to remote servers. There were not many electric outlets so I recommend having a full charge on your laptop battery before you come here.

Music and ambient noise was moderate. You can use headphones without turning the volume up too loud. With a packed crowd the noise ratchets up quickly so you may want to look for an alternative location if that bothers you.

Commissary, 1443 P Street Northwest, Washington, DC

Awesome statue just down the street in Logan Circle.

Inside view of Commissary. Picture came out a bit dark so I'll retake at a later date.

Another inside view of Commissary.

Outside Commissary with view of P Street NW.

For more information on this spot check out Commissary's website.

If you this post's interesting you should check out my post on Vigilante Coffee and Busboys and Poets.

Busboys and Poets in Washington, D.C.

2013-08-27T00:00:00-04:00

Busboys and Poets is a large coffee shop, bar, and restaurant on the corner of 5th and K Street Northwest in Washington, D.C.

Busboys & Poets sign outside their 5th and K Street NW location.

The 5th and K St Busboys spot is one of two locations they have in downtown Washington, D.C. This place is huge, with two floors and a large outdoor patio. On weekends it can get extremely crowded for brunch. During the week there's a relaxed atmosphere and you can pretty much hang out on your laptop all day without anyone minding.

This is a great spot for getting some coding done. There is fast, open wifi with great coverage. Electric outlets are plentiful under the bar and near some tables - particularly the booths against the back wall.

The music loudness varies. Sometimes I found I could easily listen to my headphones at normal volume while other times I had to turn the sound up. On weekends the place is loud with large crowds talking so it's less comfortable to sit and work for hours at a time.

Busboys and Poets, 5th Street Northwest, Washington, DC

Outside the patio area at Busboys and Poets.

A view of downstairs inside Busboys.

Upstairs bar, usually not manned during weekday regular hours.

Patio seating. Canopy cover allows you to work outside on a laptop easily if it's a cloudy or rainy day.

For more information on this spot check out Busboys and Poets' website.

If you found my writing in this post interesting you should also check out my post on Vigilante Coffee. Also read my perspectives on the four types of software development communities for startups.

Vigilante Coffee in Washington, D.C.

2013-08-25T00:00:00-04:00

Vigilante Coffee is a pop up cafe on 7th Street Northwest in Washington, D.C.

Vigilante Coffee pop up cafe sign.

The place feels similar to coffee shops in the Pacific Northwest, which is difficult to find anywhere in Washington, D.C. The inside is sparce but there are plenty of tables to work at. The coffee is made one cup at a time in pour over fashion and there are several rotating beans to choose from.

I found Vigilante Coffee to be a good spot for coding. The music isn't too loud so you can put your headphones on and not be distracted by anything going on around you. There are only a few easily accessible electric outlets depending on where you sit. However, the cafe is dark enough that you can have your screen brightness low to conserve battery power.

I was able to jump on a password-less wifi connection easily enough while there. Next time I stop by I'll make sure that's actually their Internet though.

1017 7th St NW, Washington, D.C.

7th Street outside Vigilante Coffee.

The back room of Vigilante Coffee.

For more information on this spot check out Vigilante Coffee's website.

If you found my writing in this post interesting you should also read my perspectives on the four types of software development communities for startups.

An Offer to Developers Visiting D.C.

2013-08-19T00:00:00-04:00

This is a short post. I'm settling back into downtown Washington, D.C. now that I have been back for about a week and a half.

I am extending an open invitation to software developers visiting D.C. who want help getting connected to the tech scene here. If you are coming to town for a conference or vacation and are interested in checking out the software development community, please shoot me an email at matthew.makai@gmail.com.

I'm happy to make introductions as a way of paying it forward. It's the least I can do after such warm welcomes by so many people and organizations I met with while on the road and the widely generous software development community across the U.S.

A view from inside the Arlington Courthouse metro station.

If you found my writing in this post interesting you should also read my thank you post and about my perspectives on the four types of software development communities for startups.

Thank You!

2013-08-13T00:00:00-04:00

After five months and thirty cities, I've returned to our nation's capital. My time on the road was a tremendous opportunity to spend significant time outside the D.C. bubble and learn from amazing people that I otherwise would not have had an opportunity to interact with.

I want to use this post to highlight and thank all the organizations I met with around the country. In addition, I want to highlight some exceptional people who really went above and beyond to help me learn from their local tech community.

People of Immense Help Along the Way

Memphis: Brad Montgomery and Cliff McKinney (Work for Pie) & Eric Mathews (Seed Hatchery)
Dallas: Andrew Jacobson (Uber)
Austin: Keith Casey (Twilio)
San Diego: Matthew Wilberger (Growth Hack Labs & Antengo)
Kansas City: Luke Norris (Code for America)
Des Moines, Kansas City, and Omaha: Geoff Wood & Megan Bannister (Silicon Prairie News)
Boston: Nate Aune (Appsembler)

Organizations

HumanGeo (DC)
WiserTogether (DC)
Uppidy (DC)
AgilityFeat (Charlottesville)
WillowTree Apps (Charlottesville)
IdeaVillage (New Orleans)
mSchool (New Orleans)
4.0 Schools (New Orleans)
Work for Pie (Memphis)
Seed Hatchery (Memphis)
Boosterville (Memphis)
Screwpulp (Memphis)
Launch Memphis (Memphis)
Startup Texas (Dallas)
The Gravity Center (Dallas)
The Common Desk (Dallas)
Tech Wildcatters (Dallas)
Continuum Analytics (Austin)
CopperEgg (Austin)
Capital Factory (Austin)
Startup America - Regional Summit (Phoenix)
Seed Spot (Phoenix)
CO+HOOTS (Phoenix)
MistoBox (Phoenix)
Antengo (San Diego)
EvoNexus (San Diego)
Barefoot Solutions (San Diego)
nulu (San Diego)
ForwardMetrics (San Diego)
Saambaa (San Diego)
Downtown Project (Las Vegas)
SocialGlimpz (San Francisco)
Code for America (San Francisco)
Twilio (San Francisco)
Banjo (Bay Area)
Palo Alto Software (Eugene)
Concentric Sky (Eugene)
Portland State Business Accelerator (Portland)
Socrata (Seattle)
Factor.io (Seattle)
Maker Space (Seattle)
Silicon Praire News (Des Moines)
Dwolla (Des Moines)
StartupCity (Des Moines)
Pongr (Des Moines)
BitMethod (Des Moines)
Hatchlings (Des Moines)
GForce Group (Des Moines)
Kaufmann Foundation (Kansas City)
KCSourceLink (Kansas City)
Entrepreneur KC Radio (Kansas City)
SightDeckKC (Kansas City)
Leap2 (Kansas City)
Hacker Village (Kansas City)
EyeVerify (Kansas City)
One Million Cups KC (Kansas City)
directEDGAR (Omaha)
Omaha Python (Omaha)
Startup Genome (Omaha)
Drifty (Madison)
The Starter League (Chicago)
1871 (Chicago)
Matchist (Chicago)
Boston Django (Boston)
Appsembler (Boston)
Schrodinger (NYC)

Talks

Also a huge thanks to the organizations and meetup groups that invited me to give talks. While I often speak in DC, it was amazing engaging in discussion with communities from coast to coast.

MemPy (Memphis, Tennessee)
EvoNexus Community (San Diego, California)
Omaha Python (Omaha, Nebraska)
Django Boston (Boston, Massachusetts)

I also have an upcoming talk in Chicago at DjangoCon on September 5 and another talk in DC on Sept 25. After that, I'm hoping to cool it a bit for a couple of months.

There's been so many people along the way that have been incredibly helpful and generous. Thank you all for helping me with my Coding Across America project.

I will be writing a post on what's next, but the gist of it is to apply what I've learned along the way to the DC tech and startup community. I have many meetings set up with organizations here in the DC area and I look forward to spreading the knowledge, making connections, and generally paying it forward as I was able to do throughout my trip.

If you found my writing in this post interesting you should also read about my perspectives on the four types of software development communities for startups and hacker houses as an underutilized resource.

Four Types of Software Developer Communities for Startups

2013-08-08T00:00:00-04:00

After traveling to 30 cities over the past 5 months as part of my Coding Across America project, I've discovered that entrepreneurs can categorize cities into one of four types of software development scenes.

Software developers with a full stack skill set are necessary as a "raw input" to an entrepreneurial culture. Over time, a startup scene without access to software developers will wither and die as the entrepreneurs move to cities with better tech scenes.

Type 1: Severely Limited Tech Community

Entrepreneurs in some cities find themselves with severely limited access to software development talent of any type. To build and scale a business with software as a major component (which most businesses today need for differentiation), the business will likely have to move or open another office in a different city.

For example, from my trip I found this issue to be the case in New Orleans. NOLA has a thriving entrepreneurial community with IdeaVillage, 4.0 Schools, and events such as New Orleans Entrepreneurship Week. However, the raw input pool of software developers is simply not large enough to sustain an entrepreneurial community. I'm not trying to take away from the software developers who are there - certain events like NOLA Hack Night show that there are developers. However, there are simply not enough of them given the size of New Orleans.

Morning skyline in New Orleans.

Cities with a severely limited tech community should first incentivize companies to hire software developers for local positions. In addition, local leadership who run tech meetups are key to building a strongly bound tech community. Once a small community is established, tech startups should consider banding together to create hacker houses.

Type 2: Primarily Enterprise Development

The second type of city has software development talent, although the talent is geared towards narrowly scoped enterprise software skills, such as SOAP web services. A developer can stay in a position for years generating XML schemas for web services and not learn any other parts of a technology stack! That type of developer would struggle mightily in a startup environment where developers share responsibilities for all parts of the product until the team scales to a sufficiently large size.

Non-technical entrepreneurs with a fledgling business are looking for "full stack" developers who can build an entire product from the back end database creation to the front end CSS design, as well as run the application (or mobile app) in production.

Another challenge in these cities is that the culture often discourages leaving an established job to take a risk at a startup. If a startup fails, large enterprises are often reluctant to hire workers back due to the mistaken view that time at a startup is similar to being unemployed.

Examples of this type of city are Memphis, TN, Charlotte, NC, Dallas, TX, and Omaha, NE. Note however, Washington, DC is not included in this category even though it shares many characteristics (DC falls in type 3, next).

Main Street in Memphis, Tennessee.

Entreprise development type cities have a huge potential source for great developers: pick out the best developers who are bored in their jobs and have a passion for learning more. Hooking those developers into local tech meetups with entrepreneurs and full stack developers provides an opportunity to over time get them the broad skill set they'd need to succeed at a tech startup.

Type 3: Consulting Skewed

As I traveled and talked with tech startups and software developers around the country I realized Washington, DC is an oddity in this list. That's either a good or a bad thing depending on whether you think what matters is entrepreneurship, or startups meant for rapid growth.

Entrepreneurship is common in Washington, DC. But the easiest business to start is a consulting firm. Think of the advantages: hire when someone else is willing to pay for that person's salary (plus extra), minimal office overhead since most consultants are on client site, and downsize headcount if necessary when projects end. Yet these same forces that make it easy to start a consulting business also push up the salaries to a point where jumping to a scalable product-based startup creates too much risk versus reward from a individual's financial standpoint.

Sure, some developers are attracted by the startup environment, a laid back atmosphere, and the trendiness of working at a tech startup. But if you're a great developer who's into that, why wouldn't you just move to Austin, Texas? Without any other limiting factors, it would be silly to deal with the high cost of living in D.C. and work at a tech startup.

Washington, DC.

I'm still on the fence as to whether Washington, D.C. can or should change the consulting firm culture. I'll have more to say on this after I meet with more members of the tech startup scene now that I have returned from my trip.

Type 4: Extensive Talent, Massive Demand

The final type of scene I found in the United States was where there was extensive talent throughout the city. However, massive demand by both startups and large established tech companies such as Google, Amazon, and Facebook creates significant upward salary pressure.

Examples of these cities are San Francisco (and the whole Bay Area), Seattle, Austin, and to a lesser extent, New York City.

New York City skyline viewed from the East Village.

Extensive talent, massive demand type of cities need ways to train new technical talent. A great example is The Starter League in Chicago. Programs like The Starter League take people who have little to no programming ability and in several weeks getting them over the steep initial learning curve. Over time these types of programs create an influx of tech workers with practical full stack skills. One area for improvement will be engaging program alumni to make sure they are continuing to build their skills after they graduate.

Those are the four broad categories I found. I'm sure some aspects will change as I have time to reflect and discuss this subject further with various tech communities. For example, I did not address the tech communities found in university-centered cities such as Charlottesville, Boulder, Eugene, and Madison. If you find the subject interesting or have a comment about it, send me an email at matthew.makai@gmail.com.

If you found my writing in this post interesting you should also read about my perspectives on hacker houses as an underutilized resource and my post on why doers help doers.

Django Boston Talk

2013-07-31T00:00:00-04:00

I was fortunate enough to be able to give a technical talk at Django Boston on Wednesday evening. The presentation was created in reveal.js, an HTML5 and JavaScript framework. Here are some pictures from the event as well as links to the video of the presentation and associated slides.

This talk is based on a blog post I published which provides a checklist for evaluating existing Django projects.

Akamai office entrance where the talk was held. Nice venue!

Title slide of my Django Boston presentation on how to take over an existing Django project codebase.

Here I'm discussing the project structure variations between 1.3, 1.4+, and customized projects.

Awkward shot... I must talk with my hands a lot.

Thanks for the speaker t-shirt guys!

There is a video of the talk. These are the talk slides and the source code is on Github. Thanks again for having me Django Boston and being a part of my Coding Across America project!

Hacker Houses Are An Underused Concept

2013-06-13T00:00:00-04:00

I have often been asked during my Coding Across America project if I know software developers willing to relocate to the areas I visit.

The attracting talent problem is most acute in cities with smaller tech communities such as Charlottesville, Eugene, and Memphis. Larger cities with smaller than expected tech communities such as Dallas and LA can also suffer from the same issue.

Hacker houses, such as Chez JJ in San Francisco and Ben Barreth's Hacker House in Kansas City are an underused concept for attracting software developers to a city. It's surprising that I have not seen groups of tech companies band together to create hacker houses and market them to developers outside their communities.

A picture of the bunk beds in one room of the JJ Chez San Francisco Hacker House where I stayed while on my trip in May.

Here's an example. Let's say in Eugene, Oregon that Concentric Sky, Palo Alto Software, and other organizations in the Silicon Shire bought a house close to downtown. They then administer and market that house to software developers outside the area. They create a quick website for it and put it on Airbnb. Developers both from outside the area and those new to town can stay for $25 a night (whatever it takes to just barely make a profit), walk to downtown, and get tours of the tech companies in town.

I guarantee that software developers in Silicon Valley who are tired of the 12 hour workdays at some startups would be interested in getting out of town for a week. Some of those software developers will want to leave the Valley for the Shire after spending time up in Eugene. Ditto for Charlottesville, Memphis, New Orleans, and so on. Hacker houses, done right, are a way to enable that type of talent transfer.

Thoughts After Two Months

2013-05-09T00:00:00-04:00

I've been on the road for two months today. Here are a few of my thoughts to date.

At the one month mark I wrote my thoughts on meeting startups. I still agree with what I wrote in that post. This post is a little different - more ad hoc topics in each section. Some of these topics I've been thinking about for awhile. Others I've just realized in the past day.

Home Run Skepticism

Mainstream media primarily covers "home run hit" startups such as Facebook, Google, and Tesla. The media focus on the home runs obscures that there are a huge number of self-funded companies creating value for their customers.

Companies that are not venture capital backed can be less risky because they are not trying to generate outsized returns for their investors. To keep with the baseball analogy, a bunch of singles and doubles are great. It's important to not take venture capital if you want to build a company that provides you and your employees with good incomes and sustainable lifestyles.

Here are a dozen examples of such companies:

DC Won't Be A Startup Hub, But...

I don't think DC is a good place to build a startup. I am using Paul Graham's definition of startup as "a company design to grow fast". But it is a hotbed of entrepreneurship.

Entrepreneurs in DC start consulting companies. There's low overhead when your consultants on on-site, hiring is driven by clients' willingness to bring another person on-board, and it's a tried and true model that DC people understand.

When you create a startup you need to fight against the high salaries that consulting firms offer, the lack of decent, cheap space downtown, and the fact that people interested in startups move away from DC to places like San Francisco, Seattle, and Austin.

I'll need to elaborate futher on this topic later.

Our Education System is Fucked Up

This isn't an original idea. It's amazing to me how our education system prepares us for the 20th century. We're churning out students like we churn out widgets in a factory.

Yet the jobs in the 21st century requiring creativity and skills such as software development. We don't teach that. Instead we have a glorified prison system where students are held hostage for the formative years of their lives. And we have a massive bureaucratic system preventing any sort of positive change. We're all to blame for this incredible failing in our society. It's sad. We're failing the next generation even though everyone wants to talk endless how much we supposedly care about our children.

Adobe MAX 2013

2013-05-06T00:00:00-04:00

I'm at Adobe MAX 2013 in Los Angeles, CA for the next three days.

There should be some product unveilings as well as updates to the Creative Cloud Suite, which includes Photoshop, Illustrator, Indesign, Edge Reflow, and many other tools used by graphic and web designers. This venue fits a few thousand people. Adobe is definitely going big and commercial for this event.

Inside of the venue before the start of the Adobe MAX keynote on Monday morning.

MicroConf 2013

2013-04-29T00:00:00-04:00

I'm in Las Vegas, Nevada for MicroConf 2013 today and tomorrow.

MicroConf is a conference focused on bootstrapped startups and single founder software companies.

The conference organizers' perspectives is one of the best parts. Their attitude is dismissive of the idea that if your startup doesn't take venture funding or rise to a billion dollar valuation, then it's a failure. Success instead can be defined by solving real problems for your customers and making a good living building a business you love.

The videos from last year's MicroConf 2012 were incredibly insightful. So I figured I'd make attending a tech conference the purpose of my first ever trip to Vegas. Further updates on MicroConf 2013 coming later.

Coding Across America @ EvoNexus

2013-04-26T00:00:00-04:00

I gave a talk about relevant topics on startups and startup ecosystems on Friday afternoon at EvoNexus.

I spent a few minutes showing some pictures and telling stories from what I saw in other cities that could be relevant to San Diego. Check out the slides for more information.

ForwardMetrics

2013-04-25T00:00:00-04:00

ForwardMetrics is a San Diego-based startup about to launch its new strategic planning web application, FM Navigator.

ForwardMetrics is located about thirty minutes of downtown San Diego in Encinitas, CA. The San Diego startup scene has loosely-affiliated networks developing in various locations in and around the city. ForwardMetrics is an example of a startup outside the EvoNexus-centered downtown area.

Ozzie DiVinere and Scott Warner founded ForwardMetrics in 2011.

Left to right, founder Ozzie DiVinere, marketing director Andrew Hard, and founder Scott Warner.

Ozzie and Scott saw a need for a flexible, easy-to-use strategic planning tool where non-technical users could simply drag-and-drop items to reorganize their plans. Their tool, called FM Navigator, will be coming out of beta and into public release within the next few days.

The team built a significant amount of custom code to create a uniform user experience across many devices. They found that existing drag-and-drop libraries could not provide a consistent experience across desktop browsers, tablets, and mobile devices.

ForwardMetrics' development team, led by Scott, built a custom JavaScript library for the user interface. The library connects to a PHP backend on their servers. All items on the screen that are dragged and dropped are immediately synced with the servers and then between all browsers with the same plan open. If a user one browser and her colleague is working in another on the same plan, you can see each others' changes in real-time.

Screenshot of tasks in the FM Navigator web application

Another focus of the application is the metrics' visualization. Visualizing plan projections and milestones is important to the tools' target market.

Metrics graph screenshot in FM Navigator

Another aspect of the software I found impressive during the demo Scott gave me was the language translation. Language translation is one of those nasty, time-consuming, big problems that's hard to get right. The market for strategic planning tools needs language translation because there are many international customers.

FM Navigator handles this problem by translating an initial set of languages. Then as users work through the application in a different language, their users can vote on which translations are appropriate, essentially crowdsourcing the solutions. More information can be found about ForwardMetrics' FM Navigator product on their FAQ page.

If you liked this post about ForwardMetrics, you should also check out these other San Diego posts on Antengo and EvoNexus.

EvoNexus

2013-04-24T08:00:00-04:00

EvoNexus is a startup incubator located in downtown San Diego.

EvoNexus is the incubator under the umbrella organization CommNexus, a non-profit focused on increasing the prevalence of high tech startups in San Diego. Companies in EvoNexus obtain free office space and access to a network of fellow companies and investors in the area.

One of EvoNexus' current companies is Antengo, which I previously wrote about. EvoNexus has an array of companies in its current incubation class and graduated alumni.

EvoNexus is working to become a hub of entrepreneurial and tech activity downtown, similar to Capital Factory in Austin and Seed Spot in Phoenix.

Most companies that graduate from EvoNexus move a few blocks down the street. Having the current incubation class and alumni companies in the same vincinity helps cohesion for the downtown San Diego startup community.

One final note, I gave a talk at EvoNexus on some of the lessons I've learned while traveling for Coding Across America. I've posted my slides with the caveat that I tend towards using slides as enhancements to a talk instead of information repositories.

Antengo

2013-04-23T18:00:00-04:00

Antengo is a location-based classified ads mobile app startup located in San Diego, California.

Antengo logo in their office.

In July 2010, Marcus Wandell (@antceo) and Hunter Jensen launched their mobile app called "Anttenna." They relaunched and rebranded to Antengo a few months later in September 2010.

Antengo is a mobile-first company, meaning they design and implement their product to have a full experience on a mobile phone through their app. Some alternative products, such as Craigslist, were originally designed for the web and are therefore less convenient to use on mobile phones.

Technology

Antengo has native apps for both iOS and Android.

The backend services running on remote servers that store data and interact with the mobile apps are built in PHP.

Matthew Wilberger (@mjwsd) rocking the Antengo Ant Head.

Team

In 2010, Marcus Wendell discussed his idea for a mobile-first classified ads startup with Hunter Jensen, founder of Barefoot Solutions. Hunter had prior interest in classified ad services having worked on ULoop and Barefoot Student. He agreed to help Marcus build the app that became Antengo in exchange for equity.

Part of the Antengo team, from left to right, Matthew Wilberger (marketing), Marcus Wandell (founder), Hunter Jensen (founder), and Kiet Lam (Android and PHP development).

Antengo is one of several companies based out of the EvoNexus incubator in downtown San Diego, which is partially funded by the city. It's great to see free office space offered to qualifying startups since their capital is limited and should primarily be spent on building a great team.

The Antengo team at work in their corner of the EvoNexus space in downtown San Diego.

Check out Antengo's location-based mobile apps in the Google Play and Apple App Stores. You can also find out more information about these guys in these articles on TechCocktail, TechCrunch, and Xconomy.

Add Kansas City, Missouri

2013-04-23T14:00:00-04:00

I'm officially adding Kansas City, Missouri to my destinations list.

A picture of downtown Kansas City I took while in town last summer.

I will be in KC from Tuesday, June 25 through Thursday, June 27 with the option to add an extra day before or afterwards.

What's in Kansas City?

Quite a bit even without taking into consideration the excitement over the Google Fiber rollout.

I'll be meeting with Luke Norris (@norrisluke) and some of the Code for America fellows, the Kauffman Foundation, some local startups, co-working spaces, and incubators. More info to come as the dates get closer.

MistoBox

2013-04-18T12:05:00-04:00

MistoBox is a curated coffee delivery subscription service based in Phoenix, Arizona.

MistoBox started as a University of Arizona Entrepreneurship Program project during the founders' senior years. The founders, Samantha Meis and Connor Riley, launched a successful Kickstarter project in 2012 to obtain the initial funding for their business. Upon graduation, Samantha and Connor had to make a decision whether to get plain old jobs or continue building their business.

Sam and Connor fortunately chose to carry MistoBox forward. In fact, they just hired their first employee.

Connor and Samantha hard at work.

MistoBox works out of the "warehouse district" area of downtown Phoenix. Their offices are right next to another Phoenix startup, WebPT, and a short walk from the DiamondBacks stadium.

The entrance to the renovated warehouse where MistoBox currently works.

Interior of one of the warehouses.

Samantha gave a quick introduction to MistoBox on the final morning of the Startup America Regional Summit. Everyone in the room was impressed by what Samantha and Connor have already accomplished. It's hard not to cheer for these guys. They are a great part of the small but thriving entrepreneurial culture in Phoenix.

Samantha speaking at the Startup America Regional Summit breakfast.

For more information about MistoBox, check out these articles on TechCrunch and Lifehacker about them. MistoBox was also recently on Shark Tank and received a $75,000 investment from Mark Cuban.

If you're a software developer in Phoenix, get in touch with Samantha and Connor because they would greatly appreciate technical advice as they continue to grow their business.

CO+HOOTS

2013-04-17T21:30:00-04:00

CO+HOOTS is a co-working space located in downtown Phoenix, Arizona.

CO+HOOTS was started by Jenny Poon about three years ago. Before starting her co-working space, Jenny worked on independent graphic design contracts at home. She was bored without social interaction and it negatively impacted her design creativity. Jenny got a group of fellow entrepreneurs and started CO+HOOTS.

I was introduced to Jenny and CO+HOOTS through Gabe and Blaine on the Phoenix Uber team. Uber's Phoenix operations, as well as many other companies and independent designers and developers, work out of CO+HOOTS.

The Phoenix Uber team working at CO+HOOTS.

Their current space just opened three months ago. As the picture below shows, it's already filled up close to capacity.

There are not a lot of working space options besides coffee shops for creative professionals in Phoenix. CO+HOOTS fills an underserved need in the downtown area. The space felt like a more polished, smaller Vuka in Austin, Texas and similar to The Common Desk in the Deep Ellum area of Dallas, Texas.

Independent designers and developers are unlikely to purchase traditional office space because it is expensive, boring, and disrupts social interaction. Cities that lack a strong design community such as Washington, DC would benefit from having more co-working space like CO+HOOTS.

CO+HOOTS website provides further information on their space, membership rates, and current member companies.

Seed Spot

2013-04-17T20:45:00-04:00

Seed Spot is a nonprofit incubator located in downtown Phoenix, Arizona. The incubator supports startups focused on social applications.

Seed Spot's logo at the entrance to their office.

In 2012, Seed Spot accepted sixteen organizations for its inaugural Venture Program class from a pool of 191 applications. The overwhelming number of applications for an as-unproven incubator program shows the demand by early stage ventures in Phoenix for initial structure and direction for their organizations.

Seed Spot's Downtown Location

Seed Spot's office is located in Phoenix, Arizona.

Seed Spot currently has a temporary space while building out a larger office in the same building. The new space will allow a larger number of resident startups to work in the same location as well as engage with the greater Phoenix community by hosting events.

In the meantime, the current office worked very well for hosting the Startup America Regional Summit reception on Monday night. Plus the view from the balcony is amazing as these pictures show.

Startup America Artwork

2013-04-16T00:00:00-04:00

At the afternoon sessions on April 16 during the Startup America Regional Summit in Phoenix, Arizona, Autumn Farrell (@autumndawnf) drew artwork to visually capture the advice from panelists throughout the afternoon.

Autumn drew each concept with her own flair as the panelists discussed how to hire people smarter than yourself, seek mentors, and find creatives to combine art with technology.

I was impressed enough to grab this snapshot of the board Autumn drew on. If you're interested in learning more about Autumn's design process and artwork, check out her site where she wrote about her drawing at the Startup America Regional Summit.

Why the Hell Are You In [small city]?

2013-04-12T00:00:00-04:00

I've spent the past few days in Los Alamos, New Mexico (population 12k) and before that Lubbock, Texas (pop. 234k, 83rd in the country for cities). I'm spending the weekend in Moab, Utah (pop. 5k) before driving to sunny Phoenix, Arizona.

Suprisingly, the most common reaction with regards to smaller cities is "why the hell are you going there"? I found that reaction surprising enough that I wanted to write my thoughts on the topic.

Why...

Yes, I know I've sold this entire trip as meeting with software developers, startups, and entrepreneurs across the United States, and then writing about what's going on. But there's a couple of really good reasons to look up from my computer screen every once in awhile (I know that statement may come as a surprise to some of my colleagues. See, I am learning).

What's Normal?

What is normal in life is driven by the people and environment you surround yourself with. We're all social creatures influenced by social norms. In some cultures you are successful if you get a job at a big company, sign your life away, and work 80+ hours a week (hello Japan and much of corporate America). In that type of culture you're going to have a very difficult path ahead of you before you even launch your business.

Why does that matter? Well, it would be damn easy for me to do the opposite. I could surround myself only with entrepreneurs for five months and fool myself into thinking this is the only way people think in our country. In reality, the entrepreneurial population is still a minority compared to the majority of people who work an hourly or salaried job.

Besides, as Steve Blank says, you need to get out of the building. We can't all be entrepreneurs just solving each others entrepreneurship-related problems. Seeing different snapshots from a range of cities clearly shows that what's normal is context dependent.

Roadtrip Reflections

There are also some amazing things to see in America.

It's a road trip. I don't want to miss awesome views like this one.

Stopping in a few out of the way places helps me reflect, try to catch up on my writing (yes, I know, I'm way way behind), take in the sights, and program ideas that are bouncing around in my head.

A Month of Meeting Startups

2013-04-09T00:00:00-04:00

I have been on the road for one month meeting with startups, software developers, and organizations dedicated to creating a greater entrepreneurial ecosystem in the United States.

Twenty percent of my time and cities are behind me. I have driven just over 2600 miles of my projected 10k+ miles according to my aggregated daily mileage totals. This post contains my initial thoughts and paints some broad themes from what I've seen firsthand so far.

During my time in DC, Charlottesville, Charlotte, New Orleans, Memphis, Dallas, and Austin I've met with sixteen organizations (see the "Who Have You Already Met With?" section) in addition to attending many meetups and hanging out with individual software developers.

Here are three themes consistently appearing so far:

Startup communities are generous and open
Intercity connections are ad hoc and arbitrary
Startup entrepreneurship is a long way from being a "normal" thing to do

Startup Community Generosity

The startup communities for most of my destinations, particularly New Orleans, Memphis, Dallas, and Austin, have been very generous and open about their cities.

I'm amazed by the amount of time that startups, accelerators, incubators, co-working spaces, and independent developers have been willing to spend with me. We talk for hours about not only their own ventures but their cities in general. Everyone has also been extremely forthcoming about what weaknesses they perceive in their respective locations.

There are weaknesses to each location. Only by being open about them and learning from what other cities are doing well can we hope to improve. I will lay out in detail both the strengths and weaknesses in a future post.

Intercity Connections

Connections between entrepreneurs and software developers between cities are ad hoc and arbitrary. There is a tremendous amount of knowledge sharing that could benefit entrepreneurs and developers that is not currently taking place.

There's an opportunity here to do a better job of connecting entrepreneurs, and those running accelerators, incubators, and co-working spaces with their counterparts in other cities. Part of the lack of intercity connections are being addressed by Startup America and its regional champions and summits.

Publications like Nibletz and Tech Cocktail will help to spread knowledge. As will books such as Startup Communities by Brad Feld.

Conferences that work to be inclusive of other communities like the Everywhere Else Conference (organized by Nibletz) will allow organizers in each city to connect.

Entrepreneurship Normalcy

Entrepreneurship, even in the technology industry, is a long way from being the "normal" thing to do. We have a long uphill climb before a majority of software developers, designers, marketers, and others start their own companies or join early stage ventures.

I do not yet know how to make entrepreneurship open to a larger audience without dumbing it down. The answer may lie in education.

We must educate a wider audience to show that entrepreneurship is not born through crazy ideas that suddenly appear in the minds of brilliant, but rare individuals. Instead, entrepreneurship is a difficult but repeatable process. A process of solving other people's problems by listening to them and meeting their needs while working within your own vision.

Stripping the mystery from entrepreneurship while reinforcing the understanding that is a long, difficult road may help to make it "normal" to a wider audience.

Highs and Lows on the Road

I am often asked "what's been your favorite part of your trip?" I can't pick one specific high. In no particular order, my New Orleans favorite was working with the MBA teams at New Orleans Entrepreneurship Week, as well as and hanging around the IdeaVillage and 4.0 Schools spaces. My Memphis favorite was spending my first time in the city going out to dinner and drinks with Seed Hatchery. Speaking to a great group at MemPy and talking to Work for Pie is up there as well. Austin was just beyond any expectations for what I was hoping for. The time I spent at Continuum Analytics, CopperEgg, OpenCoffee, Capital Factory (blog posts for these coming soon) was fascinating. No wonder Austin is getting Google Fiber.

The biggest low so far was driving out of Austin on Sunday afternoon. That was a difficult day. But I made it to Lubbock and now I've had some time to reflect on my previous six cities. It's wild to think I have another four months of this ahead of me.

If you liked this post you should email me at matthew.makai@gmail.com. Let me know what topics I should elaborate on further or if you're interested in meeting up in any of the 23 cities I'm traveling to next.

CopperEgg

2013-04-04T00:00:00-04:00

CopperEgg is tech company based in Austin, TX that provides a software-as-a-service platform for software infrastructure monitoring and management.

CopperEgg's service started as a product for analyzing network traffic. The team realized after building the initial concept that they could apply similar methods to other valuable infrastructure metrics, such as CPU utilization, memory usage, and storage performance.

Monitoring server infrastructure is simple in theory, but measurement quickly becomes complicated when scaling to thousands of servers. CopperEgg is designed to solve that problem by giving continuous near real-time feedback to systems administrators and DevOps teams.

One of the use cases we talked through is when development teams apply infrastructure changes to their production environments. The teams can then immediately see the results of those changes through CopperEgg's metrics and understand the impact of those changes. Writing similar monitoring software in-house would be an enormous undertaking which is why CopperEgg's software-as-a-service value proposition is an easy justification in infrastructure environments with many servers.

The "EggQuarters" sign at CopperEgg offices.

While at first it would appear that CopperEgg's offering is similar to New Relic's platform, the companies are attacking monitoring from two different perspectives. New Relic's platform is geared towards helping application developers figure out bugs in production application code. CopperEgg's service on the other hand is classified as infrastructure monitoring, similar to Nagios, and is geared towards improving the tech stack below the application code.

One great marketing trick CopperEgg does is take their mascot, "The Egg" with them to events while traveling to tech conferences and events. Here's the latest picture with "The Egg" headed to the Amazon re:Invent conference.

Me next to CopperEgg's logo at their office while holding "The Egg"

The CopperEgg team moved into a new office since I visited with them earlier this year. Below is a picture of their old space downtown. Here's a picture of the current team before moving out of their old office.

CopperEgg's previous office space in downtown Austin, Texas.

To learn more about CopperEgg, check out their launch articles in InfoWorld and ReadWrite.

If you liked this post, you should also check out my posts on Capital Factory and HumanGeo.

Capital Factory

2013-04-03T00:00:00-04:00

Capital Factory is Austin's premiere startup incubation space and seed stage mentoring program.

Capital Factory started in January 2009 and has been at the forefront of Austin's momentum as Texas' startup hub. The incubation space is located downtown on the top floor of the Austin Centre building. The top floor spot provides some amazing views of the surrounding Austin downtown.

A couple well known startups such as WPEngine, Return Path, and Taskbox are in residence with as many as thirty employees.

Part of WPEngine's space in Capital Factory.

The space is stocked with snacks, drinks, and even a couple of kegerators with good beers on tap. The food availability alone is worth the price of admission for starving startup founders.

Shared space for co-working.

The space also serves as a hub for tech and entrepreneurship meetups. There are usually at least one if not two meetups going on at the same thing every weekday evening. Many people involved in startups in Austin are either working here or are at events in the evenings. The constant traffic of entrepreneurs and bright technical minds helps form serendipitous connections among disaparate members of the Austin community.

For more information on Capital Factory see these articles by CNN, TechCrunch, and Forbes.

Doers Help Doers

2013-04-03T00:00:00-04:00

I've been catching up on reading my book backlog while traveling over these five months on the road from March through August. During my time in Dallas I purchased Starting and Sustaining by Garrett Dimon. At $99 for the book plus spreadsheet it is quite a bit more expensive than the other books I have picked up recently.

But of course I fell for the social proof section titled "What are people saying?" where a bunch of other authors I've read mentioned how they'd gladly pay twice as much for this product. Plus Garrett has been in the trenches for the past five year building Sifter. I'd be shocked if he didn't have some really useful advice for developers aspiring to launch their own web application.

Anyway, one particular paragraph in chapter 3 particularly resonated with me:

One of the most common excuses that I hear is "So and so was able to launch something because they had thousands of Twitter followers—I can’t do that." That’s a pretty shortsighted way of looking at it. Yes, they have thousands of Twitter followers, but that’s usually after years of work. That doesn’t happen by accident. If you think there’s a chance that you may want to launch something two or three years from now, you should start blogging and sharing today. Contribute to open-source projects. Give away information and build an audience. The rest will take care of itself.

I had to read that section a few times to think through what it was that concisely summed up what I've expressed to people in the past.

Some people always have excuses for why they can't accomplish what's supposedly important to them. There are always external factors preventing them from taking that next step. I can't help those people. Whether they are clients, friends, or casual acquaintances, they have to learn to help themselves first.

Then there are the doers. That person you know that if you give her one quick introduction or work through one technical problem, she will take that inch and go miles. She'll work for months or years slowly building up a network to make a goal happen. Then one day after all that hard work other people will call her an "overnight success."

You can look at the world either way. But doers recognize other doers. We help each other out to make things happen.

The Gravity Center

2013-03-29T00:00:00-04:00

The Gravity Center (@gravity_centre) in Plano, Texas is an early stage incubator funded by Alcatel-Lucent and supported by corporate innovation programs AT&T Foundry and ng Connect. The incubator's space north of Dallas provides entrepreneurs who live in Plano with an attractive local alternative to obtaining an office downtown (known as "Uptown" in Dallas).

AT&T Foundry building, where The Gravity Center used to reside in, and is now next door to.

Jennifer Conley (@jenniferconley), The Gravity Center Director, heads the incubator's effort to recruit and evaluate startups for the space. Jennifer has been connecting entrepreneurs and software developers in the Dallas for several years. She worked to bring the Joomla, Drupal, and .NET communities together for OpenCamp in 2010. Jennifer also started and runs the well-known I Live in Dallas blog.

Entrepreneurship in Plano

The two most precious resources for startup companies are time and money. Time is always scarce. Spending hours stuck in Dallas traffic every day driving to and from the office is a "luxury" that founders cannot afford. For founders who already live in Plano they can eliminate wasted hours traveling to and from downtown Dallas by working in Plano.

The Gravity Center also provides indirect help on the monetary side by providing free office space and resources to accepted startups. AT&T and Alcatel-Lucent also evaluate startups in the space for investment or funding through contracts to build products.

MemPy

2013-03-27T12:05:00-04:00

On Monday night I gave a talk on Git and Github workflows to Memphis Python. The venue, the Fedex Institute of Technology, at University of Memphis was great. The turnout was fantastic with about 35 developers. I was pretty happy with how the talk went.

A slide from my talk on one possible arrangement for multiple Git repositories with a single canonical organization repository.

Thank you to Brad Montgomery for getting everything arranged months in advance, Douglas Starnes for the introduction, and the Memphis Python community for having me in town!

Here are a few pictures from the event, thanks for taking them Douglas!

Setting up for my talk. I promise I don't always look this serious.

Plug In To New Orleans' Growing Entrepreneurship Scene

2013-03-23T00:00:00-04:00

I just spent the past week in New Orleans (NOLA) at IdeaVillage's New Orleans Entrepreneurship Week (NOEW). This is only my third city of thirty over the next five months so I can't yet draw any big picture conclusions. However, it feels like something special going on down here in "Silicon Bayou". Here's how you can plug into the growing entrepreneurship and tech scene.

NOEW Judges' panel, including investor Jim Coulter and Archie Manning, asking questions of three entrepreneurs who pitched that afternoon.

News and Who To Know

Silicon Bayou News. Reach out to Julia Ballard (@juliaballard). Julia covered the major events at NOEW and writes extensively about the NOLA scene.
IdeaVillage on Twitter (@IdeaVillage). IdeaVillage put on New Orleans Entrepreneurship Week and has extensive reach throughout the community. Get in touch with Tim Williamson, Sara Thomas, or someone on their team.
4.0 Schools. Design thinking for the nexus of education startups in the area working with the extensive network of NOLA charter schools and Teach for America alums. Contact Matt Candler (@mcandler), founder of 4.0 Schools. 4.0 Schools also has an open couch for technical folks to drop in and work from.
Launch Pad New Orleans. There's a hub of interesting companies in the building on Magazine Street.

Sampling of Local Software Companies

What NOLA Needs

There are not enough talented technical people in NOLA. Technical co-founders and software developers are very difficult to find here. One YCombinator alum, Kumar Thangudu, who just moved to New Orleans said "tech folks down here are treated like gods."

4.0 Schools' Coder Couch in NOLA

2013-03-22T14:00:00-04:00

4.0 Schools in New Orleans is a design lab for startups and innovators working to transform education. I have been hanging out around the 4.0 Schools office throughout the week during IdeaVillage's New Orleans Entrepreneurship Week (NOEW). Part of my time here was spent meeting with local startups, some of whom pitched yesterday at NOEW, learning about the local tech scene, and writing about the enthusastic building of an entreprenurial culture here in New Orleans.

I also needed a home base to to do a bunch of tech work for my clients back in DC. Luckily, the founder of 4.0 Schools, Matt Candler, allowed me free use of their space and wifi throughout my time here.

4.0 Schools coder couch and office

If you're a developer passing through New Orleans, shoot an email or tweet @mcandler. He's opening up his space and couch to us developers in exchange for the occasional answer to a technical question. In addition, you can find out more about the companies 4.0 Schools are working with, such as mSchool, Haystack EDU, and enrichED (among many others). These companies are solving interesting, difficult problems here in New Orleans with applications across the United States.

NOEW IDEAcorps Pitch Challenge

2013-03-22T11:00:00-04:00

Eight MBA teams worked with local entrepreneurs during New Orleans Entrepreneurship Week. The teams were advised by employees from Google, Salesforce, Silverline, and Excella Consulting on subjects where they had gaps in experience, such as developing software platform roadmaps. Overall though it was the teams' extensive work throughout the week that created value for the entrepreneurs. This morning was a chance for each of the schools to pitch the entrepreneurs' ideas to a panel of judges from venture capital firms.

The schools and the companies they represented, in order they pitched, were:

Tulane - eTax Credit Exchange
Harvard - Gotointerview.com
Columbia - Zlien
Cornell - Bissap Breeze
Dartmouth - Clothes Line
Loyola - Pierce Industries
Stanford - Education Everytime
Yale - Your Nutrition Delivered

Sara Thomas and Tim Williamson of IdeaVillage provided an introduction.

Tulane University

eTax Credit Exchange is an anonymous online marketplace for buying and selling tax credits. The tax credit exchanges can occur both within a single state and across multiple states. eTax Credit Exchange hopes to bring liquidity to the tax credit market which is currently underused by organizations that can benefit from the credits.

Tulane University pitching eTax Credit Exchange.

The revenue model is based on taking a percentage of each transaction that takes place on the platform.

Harvard University

Gotointerview.com is an online platform with pre-recorded videos of job seeking candidates for prospective employers. The Harvard Business School team posited and tested hypotheses about the pain employers and prospective employees feel. The team then determined how Gotointerview.com could position itself to best solve the problems around hiring hourly employees.

Harvard University pitching Gotointerview.com.

The revenue model is based on charging employers a fee when job candidates are hired. Other revenue streams are being considered as well but would be based on growth of the platform.

The Harvard University team.

Columbia University

Zlien helps construction contractors get paid through mechanics liens through a simplified online platform. Each state has different regulations for mechanics liens so Zlien eliminates the necessity for contractors to involve lawyers in the process.

Columbia University pitching Zlien.

The revenue model for Zlien is based on taking a percentage of each transaction, similar to how payday loans work.

The Columbia University team.

Cornell University

Bissap Breeze is a traditional African drink called Hibiscus that Bissap produces in the United States to sell locally. The company had early success with Whole Foods and Rousses. Unfortunately, Bissap then found itself with unsold inventory from premature scaling, which created monthly losses. The Cornell team helped stablize Bissap's finances and put in place structure for accurate accounting going forward.

Cornell University pitching Bissap Breeze.

The revenue model for Bissap Breeze is a traditional markup over product cost to create a profit.

The Cornell University team.

Dartmouth

Clothes Line has a software product for retail trade show product orders. Currently purchases at retail trade shows is done entirely by paper. The current process is error prone. The order amounts written can be incorrect. There can be insufficient product by vendors to fulfill orders. Clothes Line software creates virtual purchase orders that can be processed more efficiently than paper-based purchase orders.

Dartmouth pitching Clothes Line.

The Dartmouth team recommended a rebranding to minimize confusion over the Clothes Line name. The revenue model is based on charging vendors a percentage fee based on each transaction conducted through the software.

The Dartmouth team.

Loyola University

Pierce Industries has a product known as Wave Robber that collects sediment from waves that can be used to rebuild shorelines. Wave Robber works through the energy of the waves and does not require an external power source. Many modular Wave Robbers can be placed and hooked together to cover a large area of shoreline.

Loyola University pitching Pierce Industries' Wave Robber.

The revenue model for the Wave Robber is to sell the product at a profit to private landowners, state governments, and oil and gas companies that are major land owners.

The Loyola University team.

Stanford University

Education Everytime is a musical system designed to help teachers with better engage their students and control their classrooms. The product was used by the founder to improve his own classroom during his stint at Teach for America. Education Everytime is now in use in classrooms in New Orleans to help classroom management and prove the product creates positive results.

Stanford University pitching Education Everytime.

The distribution and sales strategy for Education Everytime is to directly target and sell to teachers. The revenue model is to profit from each sale to teachers for the product. The pricing will be determined based on a beta program later in fall 2013.

The Stanford University team.

Yale University

Your Nutrition Delivered is a service for healthy home delivery of meals to customers. The founder has a background in nutrition and uses that as a differentiator over competing services that are "pseudo-healthy."

The core customers for the business are busy professionals who do not have time to cook as well as overweight individuals do not have enough knowledge about what is healthy to lose weight. The core business service is provided through home delivery and a catering service, instead of vending machines. The service is positioned as a high-end differentiated service instead of a low cost model.

Yale University pitching Your Nutrition Delivered.

The revenue model is based on selling a subscription to customers.

The Yale University team.

All the business school groups did a great job, especially considering the tight time constraints. The judges will announce the winning team of the IdeaPitch competition tonight. The two winning teams were Stanford Graduate School of Business with Education Everytime and Tuck School of Business at Dartmouth College with The Clothes Line. Congratulations to both teams!

NOEW 4.0 Schools' Companies Pitches

2013-03-21T00:00:00-04:00

This afternoon was pitch day for companies in the 4.0 Schools' incubator. Matt Candler provided a great introduction for why these companies matter to the learning community.

Matt Candler, founder of 4.0 Schools, introducing the pitch session.

These are quick summaries of the problems the companies aim to solve and their revenue models. Founders, if you want me to add a note from any of you to any of these summaries, please tweet @makaimc or email me at matthew.makai@gmail.com.

Haystack EDU

Haystack EDU is an online platform built to solve the problem of teachers not being properly matched up with schools. The problem of mismatch between the teacher and the school is hypothesized as the primary reason teachers leave the profession. The company uses partnerships with Teach for America to draw teachers to the website. The revenue model is for schools to pay for teacher placements or an annual subscription fee.

The founder of Haystack EDU, Tom Hayes, pitching his startup.

Overgrad

Overgrad is a web platform built to solve the problem of students not applying to colleges that are the best fit for them. The platform creates connections creates connections between high school students with colleges. The site monetizes by charging universities for student leads. The site is launched at four high schools and has a university as its first customer.

Ryan Hock, the founder of Overgrad pitching his startup.

enrichED

enrichED is an online website for schools to obtain high quality substitute teachers. The company aims to eliminate wasted student learning days due to underqualified substitute teachers. The revenue model is a pay-per-use model with an annual subscription fee for access to the site.

The founder of enrichED, Andre Feigler, pitching her startup.

read nimble

read nimble is an online product that solves the problem of a lack of information and alignment on reading and common core standards, which are currently in use in 46 of 50 states. The site uses close reading to enable student learning. The revenue model is unclear as the product has not yet launched.

The founders of read nimble, pitching their startup.

mSchool

mSchool (micro school) helps local community centers open accredited classrooms with technology that combines multiple adaptive personalization learning software. The software solves the problem of (mostly underprivileged) students being dramatically behind their peers in other communities from a grade level standpoint. The revenue model is to obtain state funds as accredited institutions to pay for the services provided.

Elliot Sanchez, the founder of mSchool, pitching his startup.

imagiLabs

imagiLabs provides a product to combine exploration and educational content through a virtual story and creation of physical objects. The revenue model is to sell and then send the pieces of the physical product to parents for their children to use.

Founder of imagiLabs, pitching his startup.

The winner of the event was mSchool, who received a $25,000 prize. Haystack.edu was second, with a $5000 award.

Walter Isaacson: Diversity Nutures Entrepreneurship

2013-03-18T20:30:00-04:00

New Orleans native Walter Isaacson gave a keynote speech this evening at the New Orleans Entrepreneurship Week (NOEW) keynote. Walter's talk focused on how diversity nutures entrepreneurship. He provided historical context for the two distinct waves of entrepreneurial movements in New Orleans' since the city's founding in 1718. He then elaborated on how entrepreneurship is enabled by diversity and how New Orleans can use its diversity to "ride a new wave" of entrepreneurship-driven growth.

Walter Isaacson speaking to a captive New Orleans Entrepreneurship Week (NOEW) audience this afternoon at Gallier Hall in News Orleans, Louisiana.

Historical Context

Business driven by new technology defines New Orleans' history. In the early 1800s, Eli Whitney's cotton gin created great fortunes for entrepreneurial city residents. During the 1830s and 1840s New Orleans was the wealthiest city in the United States with the third largest population. Walter defined this era as the "first wave" of entrepreneurship.

The New Orleans Cotton Exchange, migration of Italians to the city, and the rise of literary culture during the late 1800s drove the second boom. The literary culture created a mythology around the city as a place to capture the imagination. Novel cuisines were created and the modern cookbook was invented in the city. Writings of the era created visions of what New Orleans could become and defined ideas about the city's exceptionalism.

20th Century Decline

The Industrial & Cotton Centennial was the peak event of the second entrepreneurship era. The Centennial also represented the beginning of New Orleans' decline compared to where it had been. Isaacson highlighted that the city's history during the 20th century was marked by segregation. Wealthier residents moved out to the suburbs and the migration accelerated with the creation of the interstate highway system.

The core NOLA integrated diversity experience was disrupted by urban flight. Segregation destroyed much of the unique diverse culture in the city.

The Third Wave Is Now

The phrase both spoken and written across clothing during NOEW was "ride the third wave." After Hurricane Katrina in 2005 there was an outpouring of support volunteers and non-profits from across the United States.

Walter brought up a specific example from when he was running Teach for America. There were 250 Teach for America fellows in New Orleans when Hurricane Katrina hit. The public school system was devastated. Out of 250 fellows offered positions in other cities, 250 declined the offers. They instead stayed in New Orleans to help the rebuilding process.

That enduring spirit, as well as many of the original volunteers, remain in New Orleans today. Isaacson warned though that a key piece of the third wave is to not only rebuild the education system but make it better in every way.

Education is critical to the city's third entrepreneurial wave. Fortunately, organizations such as 4.0 Schools are working to innovate in the education space.

Art and Engineering

Isaacson told a story about when he talked to Steve Jobs during research for Jobs' biography. Steve said that engineering without art creates cold, emotionless products. Only when engineering intersects with art can beautiful products that enhance people's lives be created.

"Creativity will never be automated." - Walter Issacson

Art is made from combining diverse influences. New Orleans' history and its recent resurgence after Hurricane Katrina provides an opportunity for the city to use its rich art scene with engineering.

Diversity Nutures Entrepreneurship

When groups from diverse backgrounds come together to tackle a problem, each person brings a different perspective for solutions. Diversity prevents groupthink and vets ideas from multiple angles.

New Orleans' diverse population groups, like its rich history of art, create the potential for a culture where entrepreneurship is common. IdeaVillage and Launchpad New Orleans provide an initial foundation for New Orleans to make the dream of the third wave a reality.

For additional perspective on Walter Isaacson's talk, see nola.com's coverage.

If you liked this post, see my posts on how to plug into New Orleans' entrepreneurship scene, and 4.0 Schools' companies pitches during NOEW.

New Orleans Entrepreneurship Week

2013-03-18T06:45:00-04:00

Yesterday I arrived in New Orleans, Louisiana after a long twelve hour drive down from Charlotte, North Carolina.

I am here participating in IdeaVillage's New Orleans Entrepreneurship Week (NOEW).

New Orleans' skyline at 630am in the morning the day after my arrival.

There are teams of MBA students helping local entrepreneurs work on their business ideas. I will be assisting the groups, including one this afternoon. Keynote speakers will give their input throughout the week, including Walter Isaacson, a New Orleans native, who authored the Steve Jobs' biography. There are also many learning sessions on both technical topics and entrepreneurial subjects.

My primary goal here is to help out teams from a technical perspective since the conference often has a dearth of that expertise. I am also talking to as many New Orleans natives to find out more about their experiences in entrepreneurship here.

PyCon

2013-03-16T00:00:00-04:00

Hey PyCon!

My friend Andrew Baker was awesome enough to present a lightning talk on Coding Across America this morning.

If you're a software developer or organization in one of the thirty cities I'm planning to visit, please contact me at matthew.makai@gmail.com. I'd love to hear from you, either to meet up or just to find out more about what you love and hate about working in software in your city.

I also write feature posts on organizations solving interesting problems with software. HumanGeo and WiserTogether are a couple of examples. Uppidy, AgilityFeat, and WillowTree Apps will be up in the next few days once I finish those posts.

If you're a prospective organization and would like to meet, I wrote an FAQ specifically to answer some of the initial questions that might come up on your side. After you read through that, shoot me an email at matthew.makai@gmail.com. I look forward to hearing from you!

WillowTree Apps

2013-03-12T19:05:00-04:00

There are over 800,000 apps in both Apple's iOS store and Google's Play store.

If you want to build a mobile app, why would you pay a development team significant money to create it? Surely you can hire a smart teenager down the block to "build it for a few hundred bucks," right?

Or maybe you can build the app yourself. How hard can mobile app development be when there are ways to create apps without coding?

Hold on. Software development is hard. There is no silver bullet for translating the ideas in your head into quality software that people want to use. The key word here is quality.

Mobile apps are a particularly difficult type of software to develop because apps require many parts. Some parts run on your phone while others are housed in distant computing centers that your phone accesses over its data connection. Most of the time a user is completely unaware of the interactions between these myriad technologies.

It's possible to throw together a mobile app with pre-built tools or by hiring someone on the cheap. But the poor results can frustrate your users and damage your brand.

Creating a cohesive user experience requires tight interaction between programmers, designers, and the person or group with the ideas for the mobile app. Firms that specialize in mobile app development bring together software developers with expertise in mobile platforms, such as Android and iOS, designers who specialize in creating mobile app user experiences, and facilitators who can translate customers' abstract ideas into concrete details.

WillowTree Apps

WillowTree Apps builds mobile apps for organizations that know a poor mobile experience for their customers is unacceptable. The Charlottesville, Virginia-based company has built the Android and iOS mobile apps for well-known organizations such as the Brooklyn Nets, The Verge, The University of Virginia, and, as much as it pains me to say this, the Philadelphia Eagles (I'm a NY Giants fan).

WillowTree Apps is also branching out into development for embedded systems, which is based on the recent incorporation of Android into computing areas typically dominated by low-level and proprietary programming languages.

Employees of WillowTree Apps and myself at lunch. From left to right, Eric, Jon, me, Michael, Christy, Max, and Andrew.

During our conversation in their office and over a Thai food lunch, something became apparent to me as I asked questions based on my software development knowledge: these guys are passionate about iOS and Android development like I'm passionate about Python development. Understanding the nuances of these platforms requires developers to have a passion for learning outside a 9-5 job. That passion for building on mobile platforms combined with designers equally passionate about user experience is a valuable combination.

The development team is split between iOS-focused developers who program in Objective-C and Android-focused developers who program in Java. Designers work with each team interchangeably.

Software Development in Charlottesville

Recruiting software developers in Charlottesville can be difficult because it is not a major metropolitan area. Washington, DC is the closest major city and Richmond, Virginia is about an hour away.

There are some advantages to Charlottesville though. First, WillowTree Apps' office on the Downtown Mall is about a mile away from The University of Virginia. Charlottesville is an attractive city to live after graduation or to return to when raising a family. The Downtown Mall is a hub of great restaurants, outdoor concerts, and eclectic independent stores.

WillowTree Apps also runs a local tech meetup for mobile app designers and developers called ChoMobile to foster tech relationships in Charlottesville.

Inside WillowTree Apps' office on the Charlottesville Downtown Mall.

Charlottesville is a city of about 43,000 people. Yet here's a company building high quality mobile apps for some of the biggest organizations and sports franchises in the United States. That's a testament to the amount of interesting technology work going on everywhere in the US.

If you liked this post you'll also want to read about Uppidy's mobile app for saving text messages, pictures, and video from your phone or AgilityFeat which is also based in Charlottesville.

AgilityFeat

2013-03-10T00:00:00-05:00

Outsourcing was once the biggest trend in the information technology world. The World is Flat by Tom Friedman explained that while the United States was focused on fighting terrorism after 9/11, the rest of the developing world was passing us by. Global information access through the Web meant that soon you would be better off born a poor but brilliant child in India than a B-student in Minnesota.

Information technology outsourcing was one facet of a larger trend that technology would break down geographic barriers. Students in the United States, myself included, who were interested in software development were advised against studying computer science since "those jobs will all be shifted to India soon anyway."

Globalization is real but outsourcing all software development was undone for several reasons.

First, the business landscape shifts so quickly that by the time an organization writes an extensive requirements document and throws it over the wall to developers in India, the software being built no longer matches the current needs of the business.

Second, small teams of 2-5 developers and designers can now achieve orders of magnitude greater output than decades past. The productivity differential comes from code reuse through leveraging open source and a reduction in waste from iteratively programming working software through agile software development.

Finally, time zone differences still matter. Working in a time zone ten to twelve hours removed from the rest of your team causes friction. Friction slows down the software development and allows competitors to pass you by.

AgilityFeat

AgilityFeat began as an agile consulting firm with Arin Sime (@ArinSime) as the sole founder. Arin worked with software development teams to either transition to an agile model or optimize their team's existing agile workflow.

Over a period of about six months, Arin thought through what it would take to incorporate overseas development into the services he offered his clients. But he knew that outsourcing to far away overseas countries was unlikely to provide enough value to his clients to make it worthwhile.

Arin, AgilityFeat's founder, and myself at The Virginian in Charlottesville.

Nearshoring

There is a variation of outsourcing, known as nearshoring that mitigates risk due to major time zone discrepencies. The software development team is located in the same time zone as the business' location. Cost is reduced by taking advantage of the lower cost of living in a different latitude.

For example, Washington, DC's cost of living is much higher than in Richmond, Virginia. Business owners in Capital One's headquarters in McLean, VA just outside DC works with developers located in Richmond to build their finacial systems.

Similarly, many of Excella Consulting's clients work with a consulting team partially staffed by staff and students at the Virginia Tech extension center in Blacksburg, Virginia. The mix of on-site consultants combined with off-site developers creates a lower blended hourly rate than purely on-site staff with the same results.

Business Model Pivot

How does nearshoring relate to AgilityFeat? Arin knew his business' scalability was limited when it was just him doing agile consulting. Over time Arin built relationships with partners in Costa Rica. Costa Rica's low cost of living, relatively low crime compared with other Latin American countries, and its proximity to the US (a three hour plane ride from Miami) made the country appealing for nearshoring.

AgilityFeat pivoted from a purely agile methodology consulting company to a nearshoring development shop that also offered agile consulting. The combination of consulting and development services works well because the development teams in Costa Rica also use the agile methodology to build software. AgilityFeat also focuses on the Lean Startup model when building products for businesses trying to find their appropriate customer base.

The combination of agile software development, nearshoring, and lean startup methodologies works well for bringing software to market quickly and validate hypotheses for how customers actually use a product.

If you want to learn more about software development in Charlottesville, check out my post on WillowTree Apps, who do mobile app development from their office on the Downtown Mall.

To Prospective Organizations

2013-03-10T00:00:00-05:00

You've received an email from me asking if we can meet at your office or go out for lunch so that I can tell your story about solving interesting problems with software. This post attempts to answer some of the initial questions that may immediately come up on your side.

After reading through this post I am sure you will have further questions. When you reach that point please email me with those additional questions at matthew.makai@gmail.com. I will update this post throughout my trip with the most frequently asked questions.

What is Coding Across America?

Coding Across America is a five month road trip from March until August 2013 to tell stories of people solving interesting problems with software. I am traveling to thirty cities to meet with people in both large and small organizations.

Who Have You Already Met With?

I have met with and written up many organizations in the cities I've visited:

HumanGeo (DC)
WiserTogether (DC)
Uppidy (DC)
AgilityFeat (Charlottesville)
WillowTree Apps (Charlottesville)
IdeaVillage (New Orleans)
mSchool (New Orleans)
4.0 Schools (New Orleans)
Work for Pie (Memphis)
Seed Hatchery (Memphis)
Boosterville (Memphis)
Screwpulp (Memphis)
Launch Memphis (Memphis)
Startup Texas (Dallas)
The Gravity Center (Dallas)
The Common Desk (Dallas)
Tech Wildcatters (Dallas)
Continuum Analytics (Austin)
CopperEgg (Austin)
Capital Factory (Austin)
Startup America - Regional Summit (Phoenix)
Seed Spot (Phoenix)
CO+HOOTS (Phoenix)
MistoBox (Phoenix)
Antengo (San Diego)
EvoNexus (San Diego)
Barefoot Solutions (San Diego)
nulu (San Diego)
ForwardMetrics (San Diego)
Saambaa (San Diego)
Downtown Project (Las Vegas)
SocialGlimpz (San Francisco)
Code for America (San Francisco)
Twilio (San Francisco)
Banjo (Bay Area)
Palo Alto Software (Eugene)
Concentric Sky (Eugene)
Portland State Business Accelerator (Portland)
Socrata (Seattle)
Factor.io (Seattle)
Maker Space (Seattle)
Silicon Praire News (Des Moines)
Dwolla (Des Moines)
StartupCity (Des Moines)
Pongr (Des Moines)
BitMethod (Des Moines)
Hatchlings (Des Moines)
GForce Group (Des Moines)
Kaufmann Foundation (Kansas City)
KCSourceLink (Kansas City)
Entrepreneur KC Radio (Kansas City)
SightDeckKC (Kansas City)
Leap2 (Kansas City)
Hacker Village (Kansas City)
EyeVerify (Kansas City)
One Million Cups KC (Kansas City)
Omaha Python (Omaha)
Startup Genome (Omaha)
Drifty (Madison)
The Starter League (Chicago)
1871 (Chicago)
Matchist (Chicago)
Boston Django (Boston)
Appsembler (Boston)
Schrodinger (NYC)

I also write a range of other posts on the general entrepreneurship and tech scenes in each city I visit.

Why Participate?

By holding up individuals and organizations doing amazing work we can inspire others to take interest in their own communities. Most of the technology press focuses on innovation happening in Silicon Valley, but there are fascinating stories in every city.

For about an hour of your time I can gather enough information and tell your story. It's good press for your organization and your city, especially as this blog gains momentum as I travel through the thirty planned destinations.

What Questions Are Asked?

There are several questions I ask to get the discussion started:

What are the most interesting problems you are solving with software?
What are the best and worst parts of developing software in your city?
What tech stack are you using? What technologies are you most excited about working with? What are you moving away from?
How does the greater tech scene in your city help or hurt your organizations' work?
Do the local and federal governments impact the work you are doing? What could government do to help you better solve the problems you are working on, such as rewriting or removing specific regulations?

The conversation usually becomes a free discussion towards the end based on your interests.

We do not talk about proprietary data. Our discussions are generally on the detail level of a tech meetup or a conference presentation.

I don't charge for the write ups. I'm self-funded through remote consulting work and my own savings.

Who Are You?

I am a developer from Washington, DC. I've been writing on software development for about three years on mattmakai.com (current) and mmakai.com (moved to mattmakai.com).

I'm hoping my experience as a developer enables me to tell stories from a unique perspective that a non-technical writer would not be able to provide.

I also have additional answers on my frequently asked questions page.

Uppidy

2013-03-08T16:30:00-05:00

92% of people in the United States use their phones to send text messages. We rely so heavily on text messaging that most of us take the service for granted. Texting is just part of our daily lives.

But what would you do if you unexpectedly lost all of the text messages on your phone? Could AT&T or Verizon retrieve that data at your request?

The answer, shockingly, is no. Your "personal" data is actually the property of your phone service provider. There is no way to retrieve the data unless you have a court subpoena. Even with a subpoena the service provider will only grant you one week's history of your own personal records.

For most casual conversations the potential loss of data is not much of a concern. But some situations are different. For example, what if one of the text message logs you lost were with a friend who died suddenly after your conversation? There is no technical reason why keeping data for sentimental, nostalgic, or business value is not feasible.

Uppidy in Washington, DC

There must be a better solution to the data retention problem. Our communications today outside face-to-face meetings are now almost entirely digital. Josh Konowe founder of Uppidy in Washington, DC, has a potential answer to the current lack of control over our own messaging data.

Uppidy is an app for Android, BlackBerry, and iOS phones that saves your text messages for later viewing. A user can then search through and read their text message archives. The Wall Street Journal detailed how Uppidy and another app, Calltrunk work early last year.

The Uppidy app saves your messages from your phone to its cloud service. The app then provides you a window into the stored data at your convenience.

Discovering the Business Model

The Uppidy team is working to find the right revenue model for its offering. One option in testing is a premium service for $1.99 to store pictures and video in addition to text messages. The free version of the app shows advertisements, similar to how Gmail works, as another form of income.

Another promising revenue source is from large enterprises that are looking to store employees' messages in a secure, private environment. Uppidy could provide value to enterprises by allowing employees view prior business conversations when their devices are lost, broken, or are upgraded. Ars Technica covered Uppidy's enterprise service early last year.

What's Next?

Josh and I had a wide ranging discussion not only about Uppidy as his most recent company (he started and sold two previous companies) but also about Washington, DC entrepreneurship in general. I will detail that part of our conversation in a future post.

If you liked this post about Uppidy you may also like HumanGeo and WiserTogether's stories.

WiserTogether

2013-03-01T00:00:00-05:00

How do people facing life-altering health care decisions make the right choices for their treatment? People turn to family, friends, and the web to obtain advice outside of the doctor's office. However, information available through these channels often creates more questions than answers.

In 2007, Shub Debgupta and his wife faced a nightmare scenario during the pregancy of their first child. They were told their child could be born with significant learning difficulties. Shub and his wife asked themselves questions they could not find answers to, including:

How did other people handle their situation?
What would doctors, themselves faced with such a situation, choose to do?
How should they weight myriad factors important to their decision?

Shub and his wife were fortunate. Their child was born healthy, without the complications they feared. Yet this agnonizing experience stuck with Shub. In early 2008, he founded WiserTogether to improve health care decision making for patients.

Shub's vision created a "learn, compare, connect, then decide" process aided by actual patient data collected continuously since the company's foundeding five years ago.

The process and data combine as the platform WiserHealth. WiserHealth is a suite of products for patients with varying situations, including pregnancy, arthritis, heart problems, depression, diabetes, and respiratory diseases. The products are sold to organizations that offer one or more of WiserHealth's services to its employees.

WiserHealth Development in Washington, DC

WiserTogether's main office is in Georgetown, Washington, DC, just off the classic M Street drag. Some employees also work remotely across the United States in California and Georgia.

I met with several members of WiserTogether's development team, including their Chief Technology Officer Erik LaBianca. WiserTogether uses a range of current technologies including Python, Django, and a combination of client-side HyperText Markup Language (HTML), JavaScript, and Cascading Style Sheets (CSS) to deliver the WiserHealth platform.

The team currently releases software updates two to three times a week and is moving towards daily updates. Eventually they hope to have a continuous delivery model in place for continuous updates certified with an extensive automated testing suite before being released to the public.

Lunch at Thunderburger with several members of WiserTogether's development team. From left to right, Erik, Kamalesh, Johnny, Jimmy, and Tareque.

One of the topics we discussed was how software development is impacted by being located in Washington, DC. Several development team members commented that the technology meetup scene far surpasses some other cities they've worked in. Washington, DC has well established groups such as DC Python and Django District that attract fifty-plus developers to monthly meetups.

However, a major disadvantage to working in software development in the District is the shadow of the Federal government. Government agencies and the military throw large sums of money around to "solve" problems. Investments are not ramped up gradually based on project success but are dumped all at once within a single fiscal year. This approach is a complete mismatch with how to develop quality software. Instead, a small software project using limited resources should prove that a real problem is being solved. Only then, if the solution proves successful based on user feedback, should funding gradually increase to build expanded features.

Two additional major issues arise from the amount of money that is invested in large software projects for federal agencies. First, these projects drain the local talent pool and increase developer salaries for competing non-government technology companies. Second, the excessive money leads to complicated, overengineered systems with vast arrays of features that are wasted.

What Can Government Do To Help?

How can federal and state governments help companies like WiserTogether so they can improve the health care quality in the United States? Our discussion coalesced around three aspects where government must improve:

Clarify HIPAA laws by making regulations testable
Explicitly declare platforms that are pre-audited and approved
Create an open National Institutes of Health (NIH) ontology application programming interface

Clarifying HIPAA was a central theme during our discussion. The laws are so convoluted that no one except lawyers can interpret the regulations. Audits by the Department of Health and Human Services (DHHS) are a nightmare. Fortunately, WiserTogether has not been been audited directly by DHHS, but other organizations they work with have been. Auditors are looking for a reason to "prove" their own worth by finding fault with something. This is a broken system that both prevents innovative companies from complying with the law (because no one can interpret it properly) and creates a powerful disincentive to not start a company that has to comply with these regulations.

Another issue is the need to clarify which platforms are HIPAA-compliant for audit purposes. For example, the Heroku platform-as-a-service could provide a great foundation for health care applications. Unfortunately, no one knows whether Heroku would pass an audit by Department of Health and Human Services. Heroku is not a niche service - it is owned by Salesforce and runs millions of applications for thousands of companies around the world.

Erik and his team also recommended that the National Institute of Health should create an open ontology open application programming interface (API). Companies in the healthcare industry could use the API to organize data in their applications.

I am certainly no expert in the health care industry and I could be wrong about the above points. If I am, please email me at matthew.makai@gmail.com so I can correct my misinterpretations.

What's Next?

On March 9, I will head out to Charlottesville, Virginia and begin my tour of 30 cities across the United States. I may meet with and write about one or two more companies in DC before heading out if I can fit it into next week's schedule.

If you enjoyed WiserTogether's story, you may also enjoy reading about HumanGeo's approach to product development for geospatial mapping software in the cleared intelligence space.

HumanGeo

2013-02-20T00:00:00-05:00

Is there a better model for building certain types of software products used by the federal government? With billions of dollars* in failed information technology projects over the last decade, there certainly seems to be room for improvement.

One of the issues with products built for government workers is that commonly users who will actually work with the system do not control how money is spent. Managers who will not be using the system are wowed by great demos and flashy features. Yet many of those features are useless to the real users.

HumanGeo (@thehumangeo), based in Arlington, Virginia across the Potomac River from Washington, DC, appears to have a better model. Experts in military intelligence at HumanGeo work directly with their top notch software developers. Together they create elegant solutions to hard problems.

Developers are granted freedom to use powerful technologies such as:

d3.js for dynamic visualization creation
Leaflet for cross-platform (both dekstop and mobile), interactive maps
HBase for storing and accessing massive amounts of data that can be feed into algorithms to create actionable information

These free open source software libraries are commonly used by start ups and organizations with effective software development embedded in their culture. However, the above technologies (among many others) are rarely used in government projects. Government employees and contractors are often hamstrung by a rigid set of pre-approved technologies that cannot solve problems in effective ways.

If the only tool available to you is a hammer, everything looks like a nail.

The rigid toolset is indicative of larger organization dysfunction. When the software development process does not work, well-meaning but non-technical supervisors add more procedures and checkpoints. The organization becomes content with failing in a structured way instead of succeeding with a flexible approach to software development.

Change the Approach

HumanGeo's approach to solving problems in the intelligence space breaks down barriers between real system users and software developers. Feedback is immediate and clear. Relationships and trust are built between the experts who understand their fields and developers who understand a wide swath of technologies. Once a product solves a problem, HumanGeo's well-respected intelligence analysts influence others in their community facing that problem. HumanGeo sells their products and consulting services around effective solutions to real issues faced by users.

HumanGeo's approach is not perfect, but it is a marked departure from how many large firms in the Washington, DC region operate. Traditionally, large federal government consulting firms sell a "butts in seats" model. Get contractors in the door and let them augment staff positions. Developers have limited freedom and influence to change the status quo. They are contracted to do as they are told even if that direction is a clear path to failure.

Many of HumanGeo's developers came from other DC consulting firms who follow the butts-in-seats model; some are my former coworkers. We saw first hand how we were shipped off to a government site and put in a seat. We railed against the inefficiencies from the inside without understanding the dynamic that it was in the best interest of our employer to maintain the failing status quo.

Clint and Mike, two developers at HumanGeo

Developers at HumanGeo are constantly experimenting with new technologies and sharing that knowledge among members of the team. They also reach out to the greater community through technology meetups such as Intel Analytics DC.

Government as a Platform

I asked HumanGeo's developers about Tim O'Reilly's ideas on government as a platform. They agreed having more raw data available through APIs would help private industry create new applications for citizens. In the military intelligence space there would need to be limits on access. Yet many principles of data sharing from citizen-facing agencies can make the security cleared sector more effective as well.

An interesting idea emerged from our discussion: how do you get large public datasets from the government onto platforms where innovative applications can be created? Downloading large data sets can take hours or days and then it often needs to be uploaded into another environment. Large data transfers incur a bandwidth cost that is often prohibitively expensive.

One idea is for the government to partner with cloud services such as Amazon Web Services, Red Hat OpenShift, and Rackspace Cloud to offer lower cost access to public data on platforms that developers can immediately use to do heavy data processing. With the data already on the platform data it would not require immediate transfer to become useful. It's an idea worth further exploration.

What's Next?

On Tuesday I interviewed a development team from a Washington, DC company with a platform for making informed decisions about many aspects of personal healthcare. My story about WiserTogether comes next.

*References

Tim O'Reilly on Open Government

2013-02-19T00:00:00-05:00

Tim O'Reilly came to the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB) on Thursday, February 14th. Tim discussed a range of topics centered on open government and transparency. I attended Tim's talk as part of the greater Technology & Innovation team although he primarily came to talk with our new design and technology fellows. I thought it would be interesting to share his ideas with a wider audience. I've grouped the topics together in this post around the ideas - the ordering here is not necessarily how the discussion was structured. There were a lot of questions that directed the conversation. Any errors and omissions are mine.

Government as a Platform

The US government can often create the greatest public benefit by building platforms that citizens and the private sector can extend. A widely-known example is GPS. GPS was initially built by the military and then later opened for public use. The applications that are now possible for navigation and positioning would not have been possible if the military alone created the end user applications.

Open source is a key part of government as a platform. Luckily CFPB has already open sourced applications on Github. The agency is hoping to open source even more software, particularly the internal communication and collaboration tools we've built over the past couple of years. I developed many of those projects so if they are open sourced I'll be sure to write posts about the best ways to build on top of them (they are written in Python and Django).

Serve and Create Heroes

Tim exhorted the Fellows and other CFPB public servants to always remember to serve the People. Sometimes we get caught up in daily tasks and petty inter office politics. Always take a step back and realize we serve a greater purpose.

CFPB should broadcast achievements as the agency executes its mission. Hold people up as examples and heroes so others want to be like them. The public needs to know and understand that great work is being done in many parts of the government. Stories about individuals that are relatable and memorable bridge the gap between nameless, faceless agencies and the public servants who work hard to achieve an agency's mission.

The "Next Big Thing"

One of the CFPB fellows asked "what's the next big thing" along the lines of Web 2.0. Tim explained that there is never just one major thing. Generally several novel or materially improved technologies combine to create "the next big thing." Today, the two technologies on the horizon that have the potential for great change are pervasive sensor networks and new techniques for large scale data analysis - "big data" is the term being thrown around.

One example of how sensors, data, and large scale analysis combine came from Tim's discussion with Peter Norvig at Google. Peter described Google's self-driving cars as a triumph of memory, not algorithms. The process of mapping the roads for Google Maps allowed large scale data collection that could be analyzed. The outcome of that analysis (which is ongoing, not a discrete one-time process) combined with brilliant engineering leads to capabilities for autonomous vehicles.

Legislation and Technology

Tim discussed how technologists have an opportunity to get ahead of policy makers. We in the software development community have a responsibility to show how technology can be used for good. We also must warning against the dangers that can arise from misuse.

I find topics of government as a platform and what the government can do to encourage technology entrepreneurship fascinating. These are major themes for this blog over the next five months as I travel to 30 cities around the United States and interview other developers. Within the next day I'll have Friday's interview with HumanGeo posted. Next up is WiserTogether.

DC Python Group Coding

2013-01-26T00:00:00-05:00

Washington, DC is most commonly associated with politics but it has quite a technology scene as well. I'm taking advantage of as many of the events I can attend before hitting the road in March. Today is DC Python's group coding session at SocialCode.

Developers are working on projects such as scientific and numeric analysis with NumPy and SciPy, geographic information systems, a Jenkins-based software-as-a-service platform that runs off Amazon Web Services, new Python commandline tools, and some PyGame projects.

I did writing on the web frameworks section of Full Stack Python.

Here are some pictures from the event.

Group hacking on a Jenkins software-as-a-service project.

Whiteboarding the Jenkins project user interface.

Groups discussing their projects.

Displaying and discussing documentation for scientific and data analysis.

Josh and Ryan.

Thanks to Ryan Day, Josh Ginsberg and SocialCode for organizing the event and providing us with an awesome space for the day.

Wikivoyage and a Bonus City

2013-01-16T00:00:00-05:00

I just found out about Wikivoyage today. I can't believe I did not know about it earlier. Wikivoyage is Wikipedia for destinations. I will use Wikivoyage extensively for this trip as it complements my cities pages.

I have a bonus city for this trip in April: Las Vegas. I am going to Microconf 2013 from April 28 through April 30. I'll probably spend one extra day checking out Vegas before heading off to Los Angeles. I'll also be at Adobe MAX the weekend following Microconf.

I'm also looking at attending UXMad while in Madison, Wisconsin. Lanyrd is a godsend for finding these types of events.

Two Months To Go

2013-01-09T00:00:00-05:00

With exactly two months until I hit the road my focus has now shifted to finishing my research on the cities I'll be visiting and communicating with tech groups and companies and I'll be meeting on the road.

I'm in the process of booking the hotels for the first ten cities I'll be in - that should take me through sometime in April. I'll book later destinations once I'm on the road so I can have more flexibility to move dates around based on interesting events. For example, the Adobe MAX looks great even though it was a few days off from when I was planning to be in LA.

On a side note, this article in Wired on 'How to Hack the Government is pretty interesting. I currently develop software for CFPB (one of my clients) and it's great to see Github and open source getting good press. Hopefully other areas of the government follow suit.

The often antiquated software development practices other agencies use need a serious upgrade so the government can stop spending so much damn money on technology and getting so little for it. There's a whole host of other government problems that would need to be addressed outside what this article discusses but it's an interesting start nonetheless.

Convictions

2012-11-26T00:00:00-05:00

"Some convictions are so strong that the world must break to accommodate them."

I strongly hold two convictions:

Software development is awesome - if you're stressed out and not delivering amazing new work to end users every day, you're doing it wrong
More young people need to be inspired to go into software development by showing them how amazing the work is

And that's a huge part of what my trip is about. Software development isn't about geeks sitting behind monitors in a dark room all day. It's not about people that can't socialize with others so they are relegated to a corner with a computer. It's not about brogrammers (don't even get me started on that shit).

Software development is about solving problems using technology. You can only solve problems that truly matter if you talk to people with problems. And that's part of why I'm traveling across the United States for 5 months - to prove that software development is more than just the stereotypical geek sitting behind a computer every minute of the day.

If more people are inspired to do great work in technology then this trip will be worth it for more than just myself and the world will be better off for it.

30 in 5

2012-10-30T00:00:00-04:00

The schedule is now set. Thirty cities in just over five months (exactly five months and six days). March 9, 2013 to August 15, 2013.

The final city additions include Detroit, Buffalo (NY), and Boston while I cut Pittsburgh and Indianapolis since they took me too far south to visit Boston.

I am currently finishing up my research on each city and planning individual days when I will be programming, meeting up with people, and exploring each city. I won't have every day planned exactly - it's better to leave some flexibility in case there are unexpected adventures along the way.

More details to come soon now that it's about four months until the trip begins.

Diminishing Marginal Utility of "Stuff"

2012-09-23T00:00:00-04:00

I found this post on the diminishing marginal utility of stuff climbing Hacker News yesterday morning and it resonated with me both in general and for my trip.

Particular lifestyles more easily lend themselves to having less things. For example, computer programmers without families can live in a cheap apartment with not much more than a laptop computer, some t-shirts and jeans. Other professions are not as easy to do with less stuff, such as working in the financial industry because you tend to need suits, dress shirts, and ties for both work and social events.

Yet certainly it's much easier today with the digitization of many products to do with less stuff. I use a Kindle and iPad for reading instead of keeping mounds of paper books around. I watch movies on-demand instead of storing a library of DVDs. My pictures are in digital albums instead of physical photo albums.

However, that's not really the point of the post. Really what the author is getting at is that after a certain point of comfort with food, water, shelter, and entertainment options, there are less useful things available to purchase if you are not interested in big-ticket luxury items such as expensive cars or big houses stocked with furniture. What would really be worth purchasing is enhancements to ourselves, such as cures for ailments. The author brings up a vision deficiency he has. Certainly he'd be willing to pay thousands of dollars to fix that issue but there is no available cure today.

It will be interesting to see if advances in biology and bioinformatics eventually lead to worthwhile purchases that allow people to fix or even "upgrade" themselves. Wealth would certainly flow from people with means to the companies that could provide those solutions.

Staying In Shape On The Road

2012-09-18T00:00:00-04:00

I work out almost every day and access to my gym in Arlington is convenient (a walk across the street). So figuring out how to stay in shape on the road has been a particular challenge. I don't think I'll have it completely figured out by the time I leave. It'll probably be something that evolves as I travel from one city to another.

Here are some of my thoughts outlining the approach I'll take when I start my trip.

Create a daily routine that can be done anywhere I'm staying, even if I do not have access to a gym
Rely primarily on bodyweight exercises such as push-ups, sit-ups, body-weight squats
Bring two 30-pound dumbbells, a resistant band, and a jumprope with me
If I see a gym nearby where I'm staying, take advantage of it if they have a short-term membership

An example of a daily routine that could be performed anywhere might be the following:

Light 15 minute jog to warm up
3x supersets of push ups, sit ups, and body weight squats to failure
3x supersets of 100x jumproping, calf raises holding 2x30 lbs dumbbells, and dumbbell curls
4x dumbbell lunges
3x dumbbell deadlifts to failure
Stretching to cool down

The main point would be to keep the intensity very high and eliminate resting periods, similar to a crossfit workout. Intensity is key since I won't have heavy weight to work with most of the time. Doing these types of workouts once or twice a day (the second time would be plain running or a completely different muscle group) should help me to keep in shape while on the road.

Living Out of Your Car

2012-08-29T00:00:00-04:00

I am not planning to live out of my car while on my five month road trip like this guy did while bootstrapping his start up. But his determination to spend as little money as possible to start his company is impressive in a weird way. His Quora write up includes a bunch of pictures that show how he was able to manage such a situation. Inc Magazine even wrote an article on his experience.

The guy really thought everything through - or at least fumbled into a working situation. What I found most interesting is that he did it out of a Honda Civic and not a minivan like some people consider doing.

Hotels, Airbnb rentals, and friend's residences are the way for me to go. Particularly since the old S2000's seats don't recline.

Archetypal Days

2012-07-28T00:00:00-04:00

There are several archetypal days I'll have over the course of four months on the road. Some types of days are more conducive than others for coding.

I need large blocks of time since it's difficult to context switch while deep diving into difficult problems while programming. Focused time just won't happen if I only have an hour here, 15 minutes there, to work. See Paul Graham's essay Maker's Schedule, Manager's Schedule for the clearest explanation of why large blocks of uninterrupted time are so critical in software development. Some days that won't be possible, so I'll just keep that in mind as I'm planning what to do.

Below is a list of archetypical days will look like over the course of my trip.

Travel days

8am to 10am. Run or workout. Shower, get dressed, have something to eat.

10am to anywhere from 3pm to 8pm. Hit the open road. I've spaced out the driving time between cities to five to ten hours at most. Ten hours of driving by myself won't be much fun but it's still manageable within a single day.

Late afternoon to evening. Arrive at destination. Check in or meet up with a friend. Explore surroundings to get my bearings. Get to bed early after a long day of travel.

Coding days

7am to 830-9am. Run or workout. Shower, get dressed, have something to eat.

9am through the evening. Find a coffee shop, library, cool restaurant, bar (or several of them to move throughout the day). Code! Eat when hungry. Walk when I need a break or to stretch out.

Meeting days

Meeting days I plan to break into two chunks - one in the morning, one in the late afternoon. That way I have two large blocks of time. I can use one or both chunks to meet with people, code, or explore the city.

Morning Meet up with a start up team, software developer, or someone involved in a city's local entrepreneurship scene and find out what they're working on and what makes their city unique.

Evening Same as the morning or use the time for writing blog posts on what I learned that morning or to do programming.

Tourist days

830am to 11am. Run or workout. Shower, get dressed, have something to eat.

11am through the evening. Explore the city, take pictures, and write blog posts.

Causal Attribution

2012-07-22T00:00:00-04:00

One of my least favorite quotes is "everything happens for a reason." The connotation is clearer if you append "but I didn't plan it out that way" onto it.

Events happen (or "shit happens" if you prefer that expression). It's easy to ascribe attributes and reasons to those events afterwards. The human mind works this way naturally. Ascribing reasons to events after they happen is similar but not exactly the same as hindsight bias, where events in the past appear more predictable than ones in the future. It appears that the actual term for explaining past events with reasons is causal attribution.

Why do I not like the expression? Because it's giving in to casual attribution afterwards instead of figuring out what you want ahead of time and going for it. The expression is demeaning to those who work really hard to achieve their goals. Those who use that expression are essentially saying, "I didn't do anything I wanted to do, but that's okay because these other things happened and I'll just say that's what was supposed to happen to me all along."

I say no thanks to that mentality. If I want something, I'm going to figure out how to get it and fuel my own relentless drive towards achieving that objective. When I get it I'm not going to say it was because it was just supposed to happen. I'm going to say I made it happen. I may have been helped by other people or fortunate circumstances (in almost all cases these are true), but I'm not going to discount the effort I put in to have things work out. The laissez faire attitude of "good things will happen just because" simply isn't for me.

That's why I'm going to make this trip happen. It's not just going to happen because it's what is supposed to occur.

Quiet

2012-07-07T00:00:00-04:00

I'm writing this post from Kansas City, Missouri. One of the things I find so striking here is how quiet it is downtown during the day on weekends. Part of the lack of people may be due to the 100+ degree weather, but my friend PJ who lives here says this is normal.

Compare the quiet here in Kansas City to the constant crowds that are out at all times of the day in Washington, DC or New York City. I often have trouble hearing phone conversations while on the main roads when I walk around Arlington or DC. Here there is a sort of calm settled over the downtown area until night hits and the bar scene picks up.

Downtown Kansas City. Pretty quiet until the sun sets.

One of the explanations for why it is so quiet on the streets is that there is a very car-centric culture in the Midwest. Actually, most of America is car-centric with the exception of certain large cities that have public transportation that works well. Most people just drive directly to their destinations instead of walking and biking around.

Another explanation might be that Kansas City is behind the curve with the trend in reverse urban flight. Perhaps it will take several more years of revitalization in the downtown area before there are more crowds during the day.

Anyway, this is just a quick observation of something I've noticed while out here that is different from my expectations based on living in East Coast cities. It'll be interesting to see how the 25-ish cities I'm visiting next year fit in this pattern.

Breadth Versus Depth

2012-07-04T00:00:00-04:00

One of the things I constantly struggle with in my software development consulting career is balancing breadth versus depth.

When I graduated from JMU in 2005, I was not deep in anything related to my career. I had a very broad knowledge of computer science, Java programming, and a few pointers for where I should look next to learn more. I started working in an enterprise environment developing software (a really disfunctional environment - but that's another story) at Freddie Mac. I expanded my breadth in learning about version control systems, configuration management, handling myself on a team of developers, and many other real world software development topics. I became deeper in my knowledge of Java and the Java Virtual Machine stack.

At the same time, I deepened my knowledge of computer science while taking classes at Virginia Tech to earn my Master's degree. I dove deep into the relatively obscure realm of genetic algorithms and their application to software testing.

Throughout my seven year career to date, I've bounced back and forth between depth and breadth. I made a conscious decision to focus on Python development once I picked it up in 2007 and ran with it. The tradeoff was a regression in my depth in the JVM stack (although I still find Clojure very interesting) for a depth in the Python ecosystem.

Above image: A really poor attempt at drawing what I'm writing about in this post.

This relates to Coding Across America in a direct way because I do struggle with how long to spend in each city. Certainly if I spent all four months in Austin, TX, I'd learn a lot about the city, the people who live there, the local spots to check out, and the technology scene there. I could inundate myself in Austin's culture. But that wouldn't serve the goal I'm trying to achieve on my trip.

A few weeks ago when I spent six solid days in Austin, it felt like a good amount of time to get to know the area. However, I had already been to Austin for long weekends a couple of times. On the other hand, I did not exhaustively research where to go in Austin before my trip. So I'm hoping a combination of research and discussing with people who've lived in cities before is enough to get me over the learning curve of understanding a location so that 5-10 days in most cities is enough.

Perhaps that's erring on the side of breadth, but that's the goal. This isn't a trip about Coding Across Memphis, TN. It's about the United States as a whole. Better to have more destinations with shorter stints in cities both large and small rather than a few longer stays in cities that may skew the results towards a vision that isn't accurate (say, Palo Alto, Seattle, Austin, and Boulder for instance).

Thoughts On Some Destinations

2012-06-30T00:00:00-04:00

I originally began writing posts for every city I planned to visit but halfway through I felt like I got out of the exercise what I wanted. These are the condensed and cleaned up versions of the original posts by city. Some of the posts are quick summaries of why I wanted to visit there while others get more into what I know and want to find out about the software development scenes there.

The cities included in this post are Charlottesville, Charlotte, New Orleans, Memphis, Austin, Lubbock, Los Alamos, Moab, San Diego, Los Angeles, and San Francisco.

Charlottesville, Virginia

I lived in Charlottesville, VA from 2007-09. Charlottesville's distance between DC and Charlotte makes it a good spot to spend a couple of days before heading South. Charlottesville is one of those small towns that really grows on you. Most UVA grads have a high opinion of Cville as a great location to be both during and after school.

Starting in Charlottesville will give me a couple of days to start my trip on the right foot. I can talk to some new people, take a lot of pictures, and make sure I'm really ready to hit the road.

Charlotte, North Carolina

Charlotte, North Carolina is the first destination on my trip outside of Washington, DC. Charlotte is approximately 400 miles from DC (about 7 hours) and several people I know have moved to Charlotte to escape the government-centric DC area for careers focused on commercial business. Charlotte is also the largest city in North Carolina, and the second largest banking center in the US. This is a summary of my pre-research reasons for why I'm traveling to Charlotte.

I read a lot of Hacker News which biases my opinions towards small start ups and against large firms. Charlotte may provide a grounding in what many US cities consider technology to be useful for. Tech can be a support function for an industries that were around long before the term "computer" was used to describe a machine.

I am unaware in my limited knowledge of any start up companies coming out of North Carolina. Is there a culture there that support risk-taking? If you try to start a venture or join a small company that fails, is there a stigma attached to that failure?

It appears that the financial industry heavily impacts the tech culture in Charlotte. Financial institutions are notoriously large, bureaucratic organizations with many policies, procedures, and controls in place designed (but not always successful) for protecting customers' investments. How does that impact the tech scene in Charlotte, NC?

New Orleans, Louisiana

New Orleans has a strong, unique city culture. I previously traveled to New Orleans in 2010 although I was there for only a few short days. I have a couple of reasons for returning and making New Orleans the fifth destination on my trip.

First, one of the Excella Consulting founding partners, Burton White, is from New Orleans. He told me about some of the most recent efforts by the state to create tax breaks for innovative companies to start and come to the area. I'm interested to see if that type of local government involved has positively impacted the area.

Second, I only had a few days to explore the French Quarter during the day and at night. My experience in the city is really limited. I want to expand my view of the city into other parts such as St. Charles Ave. The combination of gaining further insight into the technology of the city plus the interesting destinations in the area are an appealing mix.

Memphis, Tennessee

Several of my DC friends previously lived in Memphis and recommended that I visit the city while I am travelling through Tennessee. There's great BBQ, high recommendations for Beale Street, and a different Midwestern culture that an East Coast kid like me should find interesting. Memphis is only three and a half hours from my previous stop in Nashville. Plus it takes me further Southwest towards my next destination, New Orleans.

So a combination of convenience and interest combine to make Memphis stop #4.

Nashville appears to have the most momentum in the state for establishing a start up scene. But there are some interesting pieces to technology start ups in Memphis as well. Start Up Memphis has interesting, up to date articles on companies in the area. Launchpad Memphis is a coworking space for start ups and hosts some of the Memphis Python (MemPy) meet ups.

However, it's been difficult finding out exactly what start ups are in Memphis, particularly ones using Python. More digging is necessary in this area.

Austin, Texas

Austin was the first city I put on the map during my road trip planning. I knew there was no way I was going to skip it or just spend a couple of days there. Nothing less than a full week will suffice. In fact, much of my early planning and building of this website was done while visiting Austin for a week in June 2012.

I've been to Austin three times previously. Every time has been amazing and in different ways. There's something about the friendly culture, somewhat liberal attitude mixed with hipster weirdness and technology start ups that I find tremendously appealing. Plus Austin has some of the best bars anywhere with 4th & 6th Streets. Weather is perfect since I prefer hot summer days to cold dark winter nights.

I considered moving to Austin a few years ago but I nixed the idea since it is so far from my East Coast roots. I decided instead to visit as often as possible, but ultimately that just may not be enough for me once I finish up my fourth trip there. Regardless, it's a great city and there was no question it would be part of my trip.

Austin has a great tech scene. It's the home of the South by Southwest conference in March every year. Austin is often ranked highly on lists of best places to launch a tech start up along with San Francisco, Seattle, Boulder, New York, and Boston. The growth of Dell Computers in the late 80s and 90s helped the city to establish its silicon credentials.

Current growing technology companies with an office in Austin include Facebook, Google, NVidia, Indeed.com, Rackspace, and Zynga. University of Texas is located in the heart of Austin and is at the forefront of many areas in computer science and related disciplines. Smaller start ups include The Daily Dot, Evernote, RightScale.

There's a lot of technology work in Austin. It's the first destination that people who comment on my trip say "oh, that makes sense if you want to learn more about technology across the country."

Lubbock, Texas

Lubbock is home to the Red Raiders of Texas Tech University and is about seven hours Northwest of Austin, Texas. Lubbock will be the seventh city I visit during Coding Across America. This stop begins the leg of my trip that will take me to some remote place in the Southwest United States, including Los Alamos, Moab, and Flagstaff.

It will be difficult to find technology-related ventures in Lubbock outside of Texas Tech University. An Indeed.com search for Django and Ruby on Rails turned up... nothing. Ditto for tech meetups. But in lieu of other software developers to talk to, I'm looking forward to spending some time here in an area of the United States I would otherwise be unlikely to visit. It's also a great excuse to get plenty of time for heads-down coding.

Not much here with regards to startup culture from what I can find. I'll have to do further digging to see if Texas Tech University sponsors any type of incubator or entrepreurship classes.

Los Alamos, New Mexico

Los Alamos, New Mexico is another one of those destinations that leaves people wondering "what does that have to do with tech"? It is definitely not a town that people associate with startups like Palo Alto, Seattle, Boulder, or Austin. Still there is a lot of advanced research going on here although it's not well publicized outside of academic circles. Some of the work is classified as well. Despite my Top Secret security clearance, I'm unfortunately not going to get to see the cool classified work going on in Los Alamos National Laboratory.

It's likely most of my time here will be spent outdoors or in small town getting some solid coding time in.

Sky Crane burns behind Los Alamos, New Mexico's airport.

Moab, Utah

I added Moab to my list of destinations after a couple of enthusiastic recommendations from people I randomly met. Moab looks amazing from photos but apparently none of them do it justice. "You have to see it in person" I'm told. So with that Moab will be destination number nine.

I expect that this will be the third stop in the leg of my trip that takes me out of the tech scene and lets me focus primarily on developing my own software.

San Diego, California

San Diego was a late addition to my slate of destinations. I added San Diego for a couple of reasons. First, I ran into an old friend in DC who was back in town visiting from San Diego. She loves living in San Diego, asked me "why not visit?" and I didn't have a good answer for why I wasn't going. So that got me started thinking about it. Second, my brother hung out in San Diego for a few days when he drove across the country and he said it was amazing.

Plus no trip up the West Coast would seem complete unless I went the almost full length from San Diego to Seattle. San Diego is destination number eleven during Coding Across America.

This is where my Coding Across America trip puts the focus back on technology, meet ups, and start ups. San Diego has a pretty good tech scene. There's quite a bit of venture funding here and more start ups than I have time to talk with. This should be an exciting location to visit.

Los Angeles, California

I have never been to Los Angeles before. The stories I hear about LA's massive traffic jams and major suburban sprawl remind me of Northern Virginia - only worse. A trip up the West Coast just wouldn't seem complete though without a stop in LA. And it'll a comparison point for what I see in San Diego, San Francisco, and Seattle's start up scenes.

Los Angeles is stop number twelve out of the thirty cities I am visiting.

I found the Los Angeles Startups twitter account really useful for learning about companies in the city. There are many small companies here which is expected for a city with almost 13 million people in the metro area.

What I'll find interesting is whether being close to San Francisco helps or hurts entrepreneurship. On one hand, I'm sure some people move back and forth between California cities which helps spread ideas about technology and innovation. On the other hand, if you're serious about starting a company, maybe people just up and move to San Francisco / Palo Alto. Perhaps a third variable, such as the major prescence of the movie industry, impacts the startup landscape in a more dramatic way than proximity to other California cities. This situation needs more research before I take off on the road.

San Francisco, California

Why not San Francisco? Technically this stop is a combination of the areas in and around San Francisco, Palo Alto, and San Jose. There are so many interesting start ups, venture capital firms, and technology meetups it's difficult to know where to start.

I've never been to San Francisco (or CA before this trip). These will be ten very busy days talking to companies, other software developers, and going to tech meetups, as well as exploring the area.

Photo Attributions

Camera

2012-06-24T00:00:00-04:00

I knew I needed a better camera than the one in my Droid 3 for this trip. At first I thought about digital SLRs, but the additional size, weight, and complexity turned me off to them. I am not currently interested enough in learning the intricate details of tuning a camera or changing a lens to take the perfect picture. It is unlikely I would gain any benefit from an SLR over a quality point-and-shoot camera.

After some basic web research, I settled on the Canon PowerShot ELPH 110 HS and a Transcend 64 GB SDXC Flash Memory Card. The camera got great reviews and the memory card should have plenty of space for all the pictures I take. I'm looking forward to using a real camera to post pictures of the people and places in every city I stay in.

Projects

2012-06-18T00:00:00-04:00

Since coding is in the title of this site and my trip across the country, what will I be programming? Part of my excitement with the trip is having focused, dedicated blocks of time to sit in coffee shops or restaurants and work on projects I'm passionate about launching. While my development projects often shift every six months to a year, I'm sure I'll be working on some of all of the projects listed below in some capacity.

1. ProofDriven

In January 2012, I launched a web application where developers can go to create custom financial reports to show that technology upgrades are important investments for companies to make. The first design was... awful. But, I launched! The new design is way better, despite the fact that I designed it all myself instead of using a template. I give credit for the aesthetic improvement to Bootstrapping Design and several design books I read between the launches.

I plan to improve the way the site works and add new financial reports that show how new specific technologies and processes provide a positive return on investment. In addition, I will write blog posts on how developers can encourage technical improvements in their work environments even when their organization is technologically risk-adverse. Sure, it's not the sexiest stuff, but it's important for helping drive improvements in the way thousands of organizations across the country work.

2. My "Idea-Launch-Marketing-Iterate" Personal Project

I've found I unfortunately write a lot of boilerplate code and spend time figuring some of the same things out each time I launch a personal project. I'm trying to automate some of those boilerplate pieces with a centralized web application that allows me to come up with ideas, launch and automatically scale them with Linode/AWS/Heroku, then market the app, collect and show metrics with statsd and Graphite, then iterate on promising ideas. This project is still coming together but so far I like how it's going and its potential.

3. Excella Connect - Contact Management and Data Analysis for Excella

I recently created a web application for Excella Consulting to better understand our connections to different companies and industries. At first I used LinkedIn data, but unfortunately LinkedIn imposes archaic and shortsighted restrictions on the terms of use for their API. LinkedIn just doesn't get how APIs should work to make them useful to third parties. Someone is going to eventually disrupt their business by getting things right.

In the meantime, if the forthcoming pilot initiative within Excella is successful, I'll probably spend time developing functionality for the product that will allow visualizations and data access to other internal applications.

4. Potential Client Web Apps I Can Develop Remotely

If a new or existing client is looking for someone to develop a Python/Django app, I'd consider spending up to 20 hours a week working on it.

As I mentioned above, it's likely these projects will change and new ones will get added, but right now that's what I think of with the "Coding" part of Coding Across America.

The Conversations

2012-06-17T00:00:00-04:00

By far my favorite part of planning and undertaking this trip is talking to people I've just met about where they've lived and where I should go. When you ask people where they are from and where they've visited the responses are often surprising. Asking detailed questions about where they recommend going if you only have a few days in town not only brings out useful responses, it's also a small window on that person's life.

Some people love sports - they'll tell you to check out their baseball stadium or tailgate at a football game. Other people love the outdoors - they'll say go hiking at a nearby national park. I love checking out independent coffee shops to code (surprise!), read a book, or catch up with a friend. Other people have eclectic interests that you would never otherwise be exposed to if you hadn't taken the time to ask them what to do.

So while I'm spending much of my time on coding and technology during this trip, I know there's going to be many random tangents and paths that I'll go down. I can't foresee those paths now, but keeping an open mind about new ideas and activities is a big part of the journey.

Estimating A Budget

2012-06-11T00:00:00-04:00

Until I plan my exact trip route, book places to stay, and figure out what (if any) tech conferences I'm going to, it will be hard to determine an exact budget for my trip. However, I can create a ballpark figure based on averaging an aggressive budget and a conservative budget. "Conservative" in this case means I try to spend as little money as possible while in the aggressive estimation I do not worry about most of what I'm paying throughout my trip.

General expenses to estimate include (in rough order of magnitude):

Accomodations
Gas & Car Maintenance
Food & Beverages
Misc (parking, tolls, cell phone w/ data plan costs)

Conservative

Again, this is the most conservative estimate if I plan to spend as little money as possible.

Accomodations

Let's average about $75 a night for rooms. Some cities will obviously be much more expensive than others. I'll also have to stay outside the main areas of most cities to get a decent rate or watch for particularly good deals on Airbnb. Couch surfing is also an option.

120 nights * 75 = $9000

$9000 actually isn't too bad considering I would pay about $7000 for my rent & utilities from mid-March through the end of July anyway.

Gas & Car Maintenance

Assuming I go about 9000 miles, I get 20 MPG (I get worse gas mileage with the top down), and gas hovers around $5 a gallon (I need premium fuel for the S2000), I'll spend about $2250. Add another $250 for oil changes and other random things adds up to $2500.

Food & Beverages

This one seems the most difficult to estimate because it really depends on how much I eat out while traveling. Obviously I won't have access to a kitchen most of the time. But I usually eat a lot of raw fruit and nuts anyway, so I don't see this as much of an issue.

I will still have to eat out when I want a regular meal, but for the most part I'll shop at grocery stores I find along the way. Let's say I eat out half the time (~60 nights), spend $40 on average throughout breakfast, lunch, and dinner (sometimes way higher, other times way lower), that comes out to 60*40 = $2400. Round up to $2500 just to make it even with gas & car maintenance.

Misc.

Yikes, this is the most difficult one to estimate. My cell phone plan with a data connection (including wifi hotspot) costs $120 a month. parking depends on where I stay and what places I visit. Tolls depend on what roads I take. I'll punt and say $500 a month, so about $2000 additional throughout my trip.

Conservative total: $9000 + 2500 + 2500 + 2000 = $16000.

This seems low to me but perhaps I'm just really used to Washington, DC prices.

Aggressive

This is a reasonably aggressive estimate. I'm not looking to stay at the Ritz every night but in some cities it's worth staying in a nice hotel if it has a great location.

Accomodations.

Bump from $75 average per night to $125 average per night and we're at 120 * 125 = $15000.

Gas & Car Maintenance

I think this estimate has the least variability in it unless something really bad happens to my car. Let's add $3000 in case I have a bad breakdown plus I spend more money on gas than I estimated in the conservative case. $2500 plus $3000 for aggressive estimate is $5500 total.

Food & Beverages

I'll double this to $5000 from $2500.

Misc.

Increase by 150% to $5000.

Aggressive total: $16000 + 5500 + 5000 + 5000 = $31500. This seems high to me but not out of the realm of possibility if I'm not careful about what I spend while on the road.

Summary

So those are some spitball figures I threw out. I'm estimating about $16k to $32k cost total for the trip including accomodations, food & drinks, car-related expenses, and other miscellaneous charges. I'll refine the estimates as my plans become more concrete.

Jump Forward One Year

2012-06-05T00:00:00-04:00

I recently remarked to someone I was talking to about my trip that it is odd knowing I will not be in Washington, DC at this same time next year. I've lived in Virginia for the past eleven years (4 @ JMU, 2 in Arlington, 2 1/2 in Charlottesville, 2 1/2 back in Arlington). It's easy to fall into a trap of taking things for granted when you know you always have them at your disposal. For instance, I don't check out the national monuments at all except when I have family or friends visiting from out of town. It's easy to get caught up in thinking that you can do that sort of thing whenever. Whenever often turns into never.

It's important to know that you will not have forever to experience the particular advantages of your location. Knowing your time is limited forces you to enjoy the things around you that you know you'll miss once you're far off. Jumping forward one year and knowing that I will likely be in Seattle at that time allows me to realize how limited the remainder of my time here will be. Of course I'm planning to come back to DC after my trip, but who knows where life takes me once I'm traveling across the country. Better to use limited time I have here and truly enjoy DC rather than continue to in some ways waste the great parts of this city by not taking advantage of its unique aspects that I won't get anywhere else in the US.

Possessions

2012-05-28T00:00:00-04:00

“Many wealthy people are little more than the janitors of their possessions.” - Frank Lloyd Wright

Several years ago I decided see if I could eventually fit all my possessions in my car. Until recently, this goal seemed like an impossible task. Look at how small that trunk is. The car has no back seat! I also had quite the volume of stuff: couches, a desktop computer, hundreds of books, a bed, a desk, and a closet full of clothes. But I've slowly pared down my possessions after moving nine times in the last seven years.

When I leave in March, I will get rid of the last two pieces of furniture I own: a bed and a desk. Both are on their last legs so I am not concerned with giving them away or trashing them. I read and gave away most of my books (I have about three dozen currently that I'm still going through) and now I only buy books on the Kindle or through O'Reilly. I use a Macbook Pro laptop instead of a desktop computer. Slowly but surely the shift from having lots of "stuff" to a more focused set of useful possessions is happening.

A burden is removed when you stop thinking about buying things and shift into a mindset of only keeping what you need. Combine that mindset with a redoubled focus on the people around you and the experiences you share together. This perspective shift may not be for everyone - materialism is still a big part of the American lifestyle. But reducing possessions and thinking more about those around you is worth a thought while we are in the shadow of the "Great Recession" and most people are already forced to cut back.

Contributions

2012-05-26T00:00:00-04:00

The Coding Across America contributors page is a list of everyone that has in some way given me advice, recommendations, or in some way shaped my trip.

The four month journey I am starting in March is much too large to have planned and figured out just by myself. I want to recognize everyone from behind the scenes that make the trip happen. In addition, just having a list of names isn't interesting nor does it do justice to the people who've taken the time to help me out. Therefore every name has a link to something amazing that person has done.

For example, Ryan Anderson, who I graduated with from JMU in 2005, took a picture that became the cover of Science magazine in December 2010. That's an amazing accomplishment. I hope that going through the list of contributors is a fascinating look into the lives of people who helped make Coding Across America possible.

What To Do In Each City

2012-05-24T00:00:00-04:00

Here are the main places and events I intend to visit while on the road.

1. Meet ups

I have been to a bunch of great meet ups in the Washington, DC area. I am sure many of the destinations on the list also have great meet ups. I'll lean heavily towards areas that I work in, such as Python, web development, mobile development, and DevOps. However, if I see something that fits well in my schedule I would not mind attending a Ruby on Rails, node.js, or similar event.

2. Conferences

Conferences get expensive quickly and they generally last several days, so I will have to be careful with this one. But I'm keeping up with where conferences will be next year through Lanyrd. It's possible something will line up perfectly with a stop in a city that I'm planning to stay more than 3-4 days in.

3. Start Ups

I'm looking to meet with developers and founders of start ups to find out more about what they like and don't like about their location. By bringing attention to common problems start ups face in all cities and understanding the difficulties of particular locations, perhaps we can gave insight into how we can improve our situations.

4. Coffee Shops

I'll be doing a lot of my own coding while on the road. I'm very comfortable doing work in coffee shops. I look forward to checking out the best spots in every city both large and small.

5. Tourist Spots

This is a road trip so I will be taking pictures and checking out interesting landmarks and "touristy" spots along the way.

There are more spots I intend to check out in various cities, but that covers the majority of what I'm generically looking for in each destination.

Goals

2012-05-22T00:00:00-04:00

It is important to focus on specific goals when undertaking any large project. I consider four months away from work to travel a major project, so here are my initial thoughts on what my goals are for Coding Across America.

1. Gain a greater understanding of tech culture across the United States

There is only so much you can learn about other locations by reading about them. Sometimes you have to experience things for yourself. I'm working to combine three methods of learning to gain a better understanding of tech culture in the US. First, through reading and research from articles and blog posts on the Internet. Second, by visiting each city, exploring its locations and talking to people who live there. Third, by synthesizing and writing about my research and experiences.

Much of the reading and writing will take place before I begin the trip in March 2013. That way I can have an understanding of where I am going and attempt to spend my time as efficiently as possible in each destination. I may not get everything right, but it should yield better results than just "going for it" without thinking through what I want to accomplish.

2. Code

"Coding" is the first word in the title of this project for a reason. I'm not traveling the country just to see the sights. I want to take a lot of the free time I have and develop software.

3. Bring my experiences back to Washington, DC

I strongly believe that while there is a pervasive negative attitude towards the work that goes on in Washington, DC that things can get better. I found myself spiraling towards cynicism after a few difficult government consulting stints. However, my experiences at the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau have led me to understand that government can truly serve the American public in an open, honest, and efficient way. No agency is perfect, but from what I've seen if the attitude of employees and consultants at CFPB could be brought to bear on other parts of the government it would profoundly improve how operations are run. More on this in a later post.

What does this have to do with Coding Across America? If I've found positive potential through my experiences in DC, I firmly believe I can find further knowledge in other parts of the US. That's the hypothesis anyway.

In Summary

These are my high-level goals for Coding Across America. Each one may on the surface appear independent, but they are intertwined. The world is now being shaped by software and if we are to have a well run functioning government, we need to be better at developing our ideas of how to put ideas into code. Gaining a greater understanding of tech culture across the US and spending time talking to people in cities both large and small will help to shape my ideas around the subject so I can hopefully spread those positive ideas when I return to our nation's capital.

Why?

2012-05-21T00:00:00-04:00

Why travel across the United States for four months? There's a few ways to approach this question, so I'll answer three variations separately then bring it back together at the end.

1. Why travel at all?

I have lived in Virginia for the past ten years and New Jersey for the previous eighteen since I was born. I do not consider myself well-traveled even within the US. Most of my traveling has been to visit friends on the East Coast. With the exception of a few excursions to Austin, TX and Seattle, WA, I have not seen many places outside of the mid-Atlantic.

Does that matter? Maybe, maybe not, but I want to find out. I've spent the better part of my 20s earning degrees from various universities which has helped me learn a lot and grow as a person, but I do wonder if I'm missing a different perspective on life.

2. Why travel across the US and not the entire world?

I think there's a lot of value in traveling the world and seeing different cultures. I also think that concentrating my time in the US will allow me to focus more on technology culture here. I know many other countries have interesting tech scenes, particularly in Europe and parts of Asia, but I'm not as tied into those parts of the world.

On a more mundane level, I want to drive my car across the country. Staying in the US also cuts down on logistics such as passports, cell phone connections, and exchanging currency. Staying within the 50 states is just easier in a lot of ways. I prefer spending my time focusing on technology, coding, and talking to people within the US for this trip.

3. Why travel for three to four months?

I'm sure I could fly through several cities over a few weeks or spend an even longer amount of time traveling. I think though that three to four months is the sweet spot between feeling pressured to go-go-go and feeling like I have too much time on my hands in every city. Moderate constraints often produce better results than unhinged projects. On the other hand, too many constraints, such as a very short schedule, wouldn't allow me to accomplish what I'm looking to do on this trip.

Wrap up

Why four months? I need to get away from Washington, DC for awhile and gain greater perspective on tech culture across the United States. Staying in the United States cuts down on logistical issues and allows me to focus on our tech culture. Four months provides a solid block of time to travel to many cities and explore each one in unique ways.

Coding Across America

Max Richman, Statistician and Data Scientist at GeoPoll

Learning to Program

GeoPoll

Volunteering for DataKind

Andrew Baker, Python Developer at Excella and CFPB

Latest Technologies

Docker

Learning to Program

CFPB's eRegulations and Regulations Parser

Why Does Building Software for the Government Cost So Much?

Those Holding the Purse Strings Are Not Users

Time (Money) Is Needed to Justify Every Choice

Budget Process

No Third Party Services

"I Want Everything, or Nothing"

No Quick Fixes

Fletcher Heisler, Author of Real Python and Developer at TrackMaven

Latest Technologies

Learning to Program

Real Python

TrackMaven

DjangoCon 2013... Go!

Debate on the "Autoworkers" of Our Generation

My Perspective

Commissary in Washington, D.C.

Busboys and Poets in Washington, D.C.

Vigilante Coffee in Washington, D.C.

An Offer to Developers Visiting D.C.

Thank You!

People of Immense Help Along the Way

Organizations

Talks

Four Types of Software Developer Communities for Startups

Type 1: Severely Limited Tech Community

Type 2: Primarily Enterprise Development

Type 3: Consulting Skewed

Type 4: Extensive Talent, Massive Demand

Django Boston Talk

Hacker Houses Are An Underused Concept

Thoughts After Two Months

Home Run Skepticism

DC Won't Be A Startup Hub, But...

Our Education System is Fucked Up

Adobe MAX 2013

MicroConf 2013

Coding Across America @ EvoNexus

ForwardMetrics

EvoNexus

Antengo

Technology

Team

Add Kansas City, Missouri

What's in Kansas City?

MistoBox

CO+HOOTS

Seed Spot

Seed Spot's Downtown Location

Social Innovation in Phoenix, Arizona

Startup America Artwork

Why the Hell Are You In [small city]?

Why...

What's Normal?

Roadtrip Reflections

A Month of Meeting Startups

Startup Community Generosity

Intercity Connections

Entrepreneurship Normalcy

Highs and Lows on the Road

CopperEgg

Capital Factory

Doers Help Doers

The Gravity Center

Entrepreneurship in Plano

More on The Gravity Center

MemPy

Plug In To New Orleans' Growing Entrepreneurship Scene

News and Who To Know

Sampling of Local Software Companies

What NOLA Needs