www.nickhodge.com

As Microsoft TechEd 2011 is fast approach­ing & Delic8genius has made a call-out to the Aus­tralian com­munity “What is your Geek Ori­gin Story”

So, it’s time for me to doc­u­ment My Geek Ori­gin Story

My first geek obses­sion star­ted with cats. Or, as we now call them, kit­tehs. Quiet com­pan­ions on the Aut­istic scale, kit­tehs added their warm furry friend­li­ness to my pur­suits – and were always more accom­mod­at­ing than humans. There­fore, I clas­sify kit­tehs as a key moment in my geek origins.

Along with kit­tehs in this photo are the col­lec­tion of Air­fix and Rev­ell mod­els. The his­tory of World War 2, and the mak­ing of model aero­planes was a rather unique pur­suit in the middle of rural Eyre Pen­in­sula. But I loved it. Oh, that and LEGO.

After being intro­duced to an Apple ][, on loan to our school from Angle Park Com­put­ing Centre, by a pres­ci­ent Maths & Sci­ence Teacher: Mr Peter Stew­art,  I was hooked. From this early access, I also played with a TI pro­gram­mable cal­cu­lator and CP/M based Osborne 1.

My Dad, sens­ing my inab­il­ity to become the 5^th gen­er­a­tion owner of the farm, pur­chased a TRS-80 Model I. Oh wow, the fun I had with that com­puter was amaz­ing.

I owe Mr Peter Stew­art and my Dad a great debt.

Note on Angle Park Com­puter Centre: many South Aus­tralian Geeks of my gen­er­a­tion began thanks to Angle Park Com­puter Centre. Stilgher­rian, Frank Falco, Simon Hack­ett and David Newell to name four. Being a coun­try kid, we relied on loaners.

More cats: this time Bindi; with our/my first Macin­tosh: a 128K Macin­tosh. One of the first in South Aus­tralia: so first, it only came with a 110V power board!

Thanks to Tim Kleemann from Ran­dom Access (later owner of Next Byte) – this Macin­tosh opened the door on a career & a love of Apple.

Taken some­time in 1984 or 1985, this is me at my Macin­tosh. A har­binger of the next 13 years in the IT industry.

Ran­dom Access, Adelaide. 1987. This is me at my desk, work­ing away at some Macin­tosh things. Thanks to Tim Kleemann, Tre­vor Starke & Adrian van den Bok – and many oth­ers – I worked here hap­pily doing Mac things.

“Discussion: Are Social Net­works the New User Groups?”

An ever pop­u­lar fea­ture of Tech Ed is the Blogger’s Lunch and this year should be no excep­tion. Hos­ted by Roger Lawrence, Evan­gel­ism Man­ager at Microsoft Aus­tralia, this years Blogger’s Lunch will debate the pro­pos­i­tion that Social Net­works are the new User Groups. Make sure you add the Blogger’s lunch in your sched­ule builder and make your opin­ion count.

Topic: “Are Social Net­works the new User Groups” hos­ted by Roger Lawrence

Pan­el­ists For: Deeps de Silva

Pan­el­ists Against: Andrew Coates

Date: Thursday , 4 Septem­ber
Time: 1:00pm– 1:50pm (lunch avail­able in foyer from 12.30pm)
Venue: Sydney Con­ven­tion & Exhib­i­tion Centre, Darling Harbour

Room: Bay­side Ter­race, Level 2

Cost: com­pli­ment­ary for Tech Ed Del­eg­ates (lim­ited seats available)

Thanks to some good friends I met at TechEd last week, I’ve received and installed a build of Win­dows Mobile 6 on my trusty Treo 750.  Long Zheng talked about this last week.

After a few minutes of resetup (yes, I did have a data backup) my phone has leapt into 2007.

The Treo 750 UI feels faster and more respons­ibe. Which is a way cool thing. Thanks Palm!

Bye, bye Mr Developer Guy.

bye bye mr developer guy. Nigel Wat­son, Fin­ula Crowe and David Saf­jar sur­prised and rocked out TechEd with this catchy ditty.

Frank Arrigo, a stal­wart of Microsoft Aus­tralia is leav­ing for Microsoft HQ. He’s been kicked upstairs. He’s going to sub­vert a dif­fer­ent hier­archy. Australia’s loss, Microsoft’s gain.  Don’t panic! We have yet to see the full impact of Frank Arrigo on Microsoft. Red­mond doesn’t know what it’s imported.

Per­son­ally, I am not sad at all. Frank­arr and his fam­ily is ready for this, and he’s going to have a blast. Frank is still “with us”, just in a dif­fer­ent timezone and headzone.

Delic8genius and Andrew Par­sons cre­ated a wiki: http://www.whatdoesfrankarrigomeantome.com/wiki/

A one minute video with vari­ous people using a single word describ­ing what Frank Arrigo means to them was used a the clos­ing key­note. A labour of love, this single minute took at least 12 hours to cre­ate. Includ­ing writ­ing the music. It’s been too long between music for me.

So, good luck to all the Arrigo-nauts. Aus­tralia will quietly wait here in the clear light of the south Pacific, under­neath the South­ern Cross for your return.

Adam Lind­say, the guru who had the genius idea of LOLCODE and its BDFL (see another eso­teric lan­guage, Python for a defin­i­tion of BFDL) has found out about Microsoft’s plan to take over the world with LOLCODE.

I can has video of this event, and will be encod­ing and upload­ing some­where within a week or so.

Joel Pobar is one of those Aus­tralian .Net/C#/CLR gurus, and I am etern­ally grate­ful for his assist­ance and added weight in my presentation.

Next week at Web­Jam in Perth I’ll also be present­ing LOLCODE, and LOLCODE.net. For the LOLz.

The more people that get involved, the greater chance we have a lan­guage across all envir­on­ments: not just Microsoft’s.

It’s time for me to de-lurk from the for­ums and act­ively help the com­munity make a lan­guage. LOL.

BTW @atl, we had fun and lots of LOLZ.

istar­ted­something reports on Joel’s and my present­a­tion of LOLCODE.

LOL.

Long gets it.

Dis­claimer: this is just for LOLZ.

1. For fur­ther ref­er­ence on LOLCATS: I CAN HAS CHEEZBURGER 
2. ps: U CAN HAS TSHIRT AT store.lolcode.com
3. To decon­struct and see the his­tory of LOLCATS: Anil Dash
4. The obvi­ous wiki­pe­dia entry for LOLCATS
5. LOLCATS takes the memes of the inter­net, stand­ard­izes them with funny pic­tures of cats. As LOLCATS is main­stream (ref: http://www.news.com.au/story/0,23599,21988724–2,00.html and ref: http://www.chron.com/disp/story.mpl/business/4862013.html) Oh Noes!
6. LOLCODE: tak­ing the lan­guage: syn­tax, gram­mar, vocab­u­lary — but more import­antly the memes of LOLCATS into an eso­teric pro­gram­ming lan­guage Other eso­teric pro­gram­ming lan­guages include Var’aq, INTERCAL, and Omgrofl
7. Mitch Denny the­ory: we’ll com­mu­nic­ate in shortened phrases and memes as com­mon under­stand­ings. eg: Star Trek:TNG epis­ode: Dar­mok. Note Mitch Denny is Star Wars, not Star Trek — so this ref­er­ence may be lost on Mitch.
8. Examples:
   Stage 1: http://www.nickhodge.com/blog/archives/2025
   Stage 2: LOLCODE HAS LULZ http://forum.lolcode.com/viewtopic.php?id=304
   Stage 3: Seems that the lan­guage dir­ec­tion is dynamic, more like Javas­cript than C# 2.0 (eg: BUKKITS as arrays and slots; like )
9. LOLCODE.net : com­piles down to IL. Really big thanks to Joel Pobar for his expert com­ments and advice for all on LOLCODE.Net
10. LOLCODE Spe­cific­a­tion is presently at 1.2 with lively dis­cus­sion in the for­ums on lol­code. And an example of the com­munity cre­at­ing a language.
11. U CAN HAS LOLCODE?

Pan­el­ists

(attend­ance: 50 100 people, thanks Cathy for doing a cor­rect count from the back of room!)

Philip Sim, CEO, Media Con­nect (blog squash) stop here for web 2.0 real­ity check. hates the word web 2.0. totally polemic to what the web is about, inter­net; fix bugs. Online news/SNS/blogging/SaaS. None of this stuff is new. A rebirth in pas­tel veneer.

Dar­ren Niemke, rea­dify. man­ages pro­fes­sional development. how to cap­ture atten­tion etc from enter­prise. asp.net dood

Des Walsh, busi­ness coach. enjoy­ment of blogging/social media space. star­ted blog­ging as another coach as a method of mar­ket­ing. think­ing home busi­ness. Post blog­ging from a busi­ness person’s pov. linkedin blog­gers. here because of twitter.

Jane O’Connell dir­ector products and strategy at ninemsn. how bal­ance con­tent gen­er­ated by audi­ence vs. professionally?

Michael Platt Dir­ector, MS Cor­por­ate, WebApp Architecture.

Ques­tion 1. do you see the value of blog­ging? is there a real value

Philip Value of blog­ging, depend­ing how much time you put into it. blog­ging is the best form of social net­work­ing. busi­ness com­mu­nic­at­ing your cred/authority on a par­tic­u­lar topic

Dar­ren: access to people within MS; can hear thoughts from people who you not pre­vi­ous have access to. more know­ledge, thoughts, opin­ions. blog­ger­sphere can have con­ver­sa­tions. swarm man­ner, swarms over a prob­lem, solves it, and moves on

Des: con­nect with people over­seas busi­ness (books) and other oppor­tun­it­ies. People know more about me. small busi­ness: lin­coln sign­mak­ing busi­ness; $350k, 10% from blog 2005

Jane: in mass audi­ence; niche, pas­sion, like minded com­munity. MSM, lar­ger issues. Pull out a sen­ti­ment. Break­ing stor­ies, story after story.

Michael: diary resume, jobs. people look at what people. thou­sands of MS blog­gers to make the com­pany more trans­par­ent. we are a bunch of people. a per­sonal view of the com­pany, and feed­back to reduce stu­pid decisions. MS more intouch with cus­tom­ers due to blog­ging and the two way conversation.  Lots more ways to get input from the field and customers/reality.

Ques­tion 2: grumpywookie.com; floods of posts/twitters/feeds/email inform­a­tion mgmt deal with it?

Philip: no time to twit­ter. scep­tical, as its a time sap rather time approval. twit­ter improve busi­ness by 10% will start to twitter

Dar­ren: twitter/facebook/web2 tools as know­ledge worker 2.0 use when need to. choose right tools.

Des: some­times over­whealmed. Bun­nings example, choos­ing the right tools. face­book at the moment. face­book as basic com­mu­nic­a­tions tool.

Michael: remem­ber, haven’t got to the end road. focus­ing in on areas. new tools to find what you want. (nb: go particls). Only begun to scratch the sur­face of search­ing. the thing bey­ond search.

Com­ment: editor/condenses it, good writers (Stephen Withers)

Ques­tion 3: cen­sor­ship? low­est com­mon denominator

Jane: issues in related to world as a pub­lisher, rather than free for all (expos­ure) can’t just put everything up there. web provides a plat­form for lunatics

Michael: prob­lem with people “blog smart”. don’t be stu­pid. no cen­sor­ship. sorta works. internal self-jumping. mop­ping up the little puddles are around. when people leave, then comments/blogging. inter-company issues. find out what hap­pens, lead rather than follow.

Comment4: rod­ney, blog scooped journ­al­ist. Corp blogs as method of gain­ing the upper hand.

Ques­tion 4: journ­al­ism vs. blog­gers. blog­ger expert in field vs journ­al­ist. respons­ib­il­ity of journalist.  where is the line.

Jane: a blog is a stream of con­cious­ness, con­ver­sa­tion. “real­ity tv” con­trived. vs. struc­tured, radio, print. role for both. eg: news cov­er­age. local phone cam­eras, etc. floods, 90 pho­tos sub­mit­ted from “punters” to roof level: cam­era­men couldn’t get through. 200,000 people viewed images.

Philip: dis­tinc­tion is not use­ful: blog­gers, pro­fes­sion­als vs ama­teurs. Doing it as a job, cer­tain level of responsibility.

Des: read some­thing from a journ­al­ist, no com­ment but­ton. same in cor­por­ate field. work­shop with con­ser­vat­ive fin­an­cial com­pany. you are going to get left behind. people have an enti­tle­ment to inter­act with com­pan­ies. as a con­sumer, not my respons­ib­il­ity you need comment.

Jane: can fig­ure out what res­on­ates: how do you know? blog­ging it helps, has feedback

Ques­tion 5: is that app you are buid­ling web 2.0 compatible.

Frank: five people, six definitions

Philip: web 2.0 is about a period in time, not a product. tip­ping point broad­band, pri­vacy changes, advertising.

Dar­ren: “web 2.0 sites” based on name gen­er­a­tion. A web2 site can be picked as its excit­ing. emo­tional con­nec­tion. (Phil hur­rumph) user exper­i­ence ele­ment (delic8genius now owes frank­arr a beer)

Des: busi­ness own­ers can cre­ate, make it easier, without great cost, encour­age with their cus­tom­ers. more transparency

Jane: stuff that helps you use the web better

Michael: jour­ney we are going online. Web x.0 is silly; a new way of using tech­no­logy and build­ing it into their lives; social aspect. IP law struggles with the new way of interacting.

Ques­tion 6: pri­vacy, journos go to jail for pro­tect­ing sources; how do you become a anonym­ous blog­ger. point at which lun­at­ics and reality. 

Des: people have a com­ment anonym­ously. some people will spend lots of money find­ing source, depend­ing on how much money you’ve got. Are legal constraints

Philip: myspace/facebook. free busi­ness : dirt files, black­mail­ing them. massive pri­vacy back­last, black­mail as a mech­an­ism of money mak­ing (badly)

Ques­tion 7: the law and blog­ging. blog­ging union

Michael: may see uni­on­isa­tion of blog­ging. the law, in another coun­try how can you pro­sec­uted for that. lot of changes in the legal sys­tem to follow.

Frank: calls it a day, time over. 

It’s been a long day: coordin­at­ing and upload­ing stuff. Watch­ing the world register and flow into the Gold Coast ver­sion of TechEd 2007. Wall paint­ing. Tears of joy and new friends made.

There are lots of people here. Lots. Some even recog­nise me. From being Nick­Elvis at Web­Jam in Mel­bourne. Ooops.

And at the back of the exhib­i­tion hall, it is the great cala­mari hunt.

Had a quick chat to Long Zheng. Saw Will Hughes. Bron­wen and John. Spruiked for Vir­tual TechEd.

Neville with his 3D “night­time geek shed pro­ject” Breeze Designer that now emits Sil­ver­light 3D objects: