This isn’t a full write-up of the event so I’ll keep this short and simple. The event was at Drei‘s place with just a bunch of Ruby, Python, and PHP guys from both Manila and Baguio hacking up random stuff instead of doing the whole Code Retreat thing.

at the after event, aka “Yo dawg, I heard you like taking pictures so here’s a picture of people taking your picture so you can have a picture of you taking pictures of people taking pictures”

Being the slacker that I am, I didn’t have anything planned out beforehand. I thought I’d just go the same route as with Startup Weekend Manila and just be a rubber duck floating around groups. Fortunately, Buddy brought along his significant other Rizza with the intention of having her learn programming from the participants of the event.

I couldn’t resist this teaching challenge. So for the entire event, I went on to give an impromptu crash course on the fundamentals of software development.

I started off with basic imperative/procedural programming via pseudocode (to drill in the idea that software development is not about computers but about solving problems). As we progressed I moved on to Ruby for the more technical side of things (basic data types) up to Object Oriented basics.

first programs – potato salad and quadratic formula

By mid-day, I had this little flash of insanity and began downloading >250MB of development stuff from a certain site.

That flash of insanity was to go back to the original Code Retreat exercise, Conway’s Game of Life, and build it in Java to teach software development: coding conventions, revision control, test automation, refactoring, etc.

Of course, I had to teach the most crucial concept in software development: how to wing it. And that was where Android came in.

So we had a base GoL class and a freshly installed Android SDK. A couple of Google searches later and a lot of guesswork, we were able to make the whole thing work as a Live Wallpaper in around 1.5 hours.

Lack of sleep and preparation can turn a Ruby guy into a Java developer. LOL

Normally, I would’ve posted something like this a lot earlier. But work interfered so…

Anyway, since I won the event, I really don’t have an excuse not to do a post. Blow the cut are some of the lessons I (re)learned at the event.

I didn’t go to the Rumble to win; my main intention was to go there and get my coding on for 8+ hours straight, something that I haven’t done for quite some time. The idea I had was to make a stupid game (in the vein as Kingdom of Loathing and Mafia Wars) as a follow up to the stupid game I made last year.

But apparently the participants thought my project was the most interesting that day, regardless if it was coded on the most boring Ruby platform and on a boring OS.

Which brings us to the first lesson: It pays to be prepared. Rad mentioned in the after-party that the winners of the Game Jam didn’t look like they were there to just “jam”; they were focused and seemed like they had a clear goal.

At that point, I casually revealed that I practically did the same thing. I had my database designed and my tasks planned out the day before, all written in my notebook. You could even see in the commit history that I finished all of my initial models in the first hour of the event.

The other three lessons are more on the technical side, a few basic pitfalls in writing Rails apps.

No thanks to the recent drama changes in the Ruby landscape, I had to manually define some gem versions in my Gemfile: rake 0.8.7 and mysql2 v0.2.7.

The next lesson was a facepalm moment: I forgot that type is a reserved word in ActiveRecord so I had to rename my type field accordingly.

The final technical lesson was both a stumper and a facepalm moment. I spent over an hour wondering why a ResearchProgress can’t be created even though the new record is perfectly valid when tested with valid?.

Turns out I forgot that a record isn’t saved when a callback returns false. That part finally worked perfectly a single word later.

–

Overall, it was a good event. It was great to see a bunch of passionate developers in the same room hacking away at code just for the sake of coding. I’d like to see more of these events locally, with the other developer/designer groups joining in the fun.

(As a side note, even though it was a “Ruby” Rumble, the nature of practical development made using pure Ruby impractical. For example, Jason’s monitaur‘s client was written in JavaScript.)

In closing, I’d like to thank those that made the event possible:

Ubertor for providing the venue. Micro.ph/one for covering the event so I didn’t have to. (LOL)

The newly formed (informal) Manila Agile Alliance (Proudcloud, Devex, and Aelogica), for sponsoring the after event party at Focaccia.

(Another side note, why the hell do Filipinos sign up for events even though they won’t attend them?!? Beer was practically overflowing in the after event party because the people who signed up didn’t show up.)

And finally, Rad, Topher, and the rest of the PhRUG peeps for organizing and eventually showing up and participating in the event. Hopefully this would be a regular event for the local Ruby community.

–

Oh, and yeah, the prize for the next Rumble should be a belt.

After a day long InfoQ presentation marathon, I decided to try out recording the meetup with a half-decade old camera.

Rad was late so AELogica’s Steven Smith opened the meetup.

I was the first speaker for the night, giving a summary of the things that happened at RDRC.

Steven expanded upon the Pecha Kucha talk he gave in RDRC about estimating Ruby projects.

Rad talking about the upcoming Ruby Rumble Practice.

Rad giving the results of the event signup sheet survey, and the stuff about Ruby Rumble Practice that was interrupted by the overheating projector.

Just some random pictures before and early on into the event (only shows half of the total attendees):

And yeah, some guys from Pivotal Labs also showed up and participated in the talks.

The Pivotal guys went with some people from MOL/Friendster. The former were contracted to do some stuff for the latter, but I didn’t ask if they’re rewriting the social networking site in Ruby. (I was too busy eating pizza to eavesdrop) That’s them in the pic above, with Winston presenting in the front.

Anyway, here’s a list of the talks last night:

• Rad talked about fb_graph
• Nate talked about building RubyGems using Jasmine as the example
• Bry talked about web-app-theme
• Johann talked about RubyMine (which, coincidentally, was used also by Nate in his talk)
• Winston talked about GoogleVisualr
• Topher talked about Hancock SSO for Sinatra

Thanks to Exist for sponsoring the venue, Topher for taking pictures, and Topher again (and Rad?) for the food.

For updates on future Ruby meetups, join our Google group.

Problem is, even if I focused on just anime and manga instead of the entire Japanese hobby culture scene (which would include cosplay, collectibles, etc), I still have literally dozens of possible topics to talk about.

After thinking about it for a day, I went with the topic that I could say that I am really passionate about: the story of how we reversed the fortunes of UP AME; from being a hopeless anime organization into a thriving one. Not only is it a significant part of my life, the topic would also be relevant for most of the audience (I doubt that most of them aren’t inside a club or community of their own).

–

I put a decent amount of effort into this talk, not only because I don’t want to embarrass myself or the org, I also don’t want do look like a hypocrite after bashing the presentations in last year’s Y4IT.

Most of my effort went to the slides. It took me at least 3 days to finish them mainly because of my lack of experience (dammit, I’m a software engineer, not a graphic designer!) and because I had to look for good pictures from various sources. I also had to re-read Presentation Zen since it’s been a long time since I’ve made presentations.

Preparation for the talk itself was difficult, though it’s not as hard as the slides. I’d have to thank Scott Berkun for this part, his Confessions of a Public Speaker as well as his Ignite talk on giving Ignite talks gave me invaluable tips for making my talk.

One thing I learned on my own about Ignite was that Ignite presentations are more like song performances than presentations when you have more than 4 points to make. My talk had 7 different points so the timing is important. It didn’t worry me, though, since I have experience singing in front of a lot of people. I just had to practice enough that my mouth goes auto-pilot when on the stage, ignoring the inevitable effects of stage fright.

My script went through at least a dozen revisions throughout my practice sessions. With at least 3 runs per revision, I’m guessing that it took me 60 partial runs (just a 1-minute section) and about 30 full runs to get the hang of things. As you would see below, even with all this practice, I still had to ad-lib and adapt to the situation.

–

Oh and yeah, Ana Santos of Sex and Sensibilities talked before me. Talking about hardcore geeks after a talk on sex was kinda awkward. D:

–

Script, slides, and side comments below the cut.

Those of you who are into the local Japanese hobby culture scene, possibly the Go guys there, should be familiar with the University of the Philippines Anime Manga Enthusiasts, better known as UP AME. This university org is probably best known

[ "Org peeps holding the legendary tarp" picture from from Szusza's CAL photoshoot album. The source was bad so I had to crop it to look good.

The Go shoutout was added at the last minute to add the impression that at least some people in the audience knows what anime and manga is. Mikong was also a former co-worker, and PGA had a booth AME no Jidai.

The slide transition in mid-sentence was intentional. If I waited for the transition, I would not have enough time in the next slide for pauses. ]

for pulling off events that are on-par (or even better) than anime conventions held by commercial companies.

However, the org’s situation wasn’t always this rosy.

Let’s go back ten years ago,

[ Pictures from UP AME DeviantArt gallery. I chose to crop or use teasers instead of the posters in cases where they would look better in the grid.

Multiple pauses in this slide. The timing is important because the next slide has a lot of spoken text. ]

when a local TV station turned Japanese cartoons, aka anime, into a fad. A small group of anime and manga fans decided it was a good time to start an org in UP. As expected, a lot of people signed up like myself.

[ Instead of having to add another attribution to copyrighted material, I just cropped Deng from the AME no Jidai poster and used a simple scanline effect.

Forgot to add the TV picture's source to slide 20. Source is http://www.flickr.com/photos/pablo_perez/3256295059/.

As I said, this slide has a lot of spoken text. I need to define "anime" as well as introduce the org's founding. In my practice sessions, the "like myself" often goes to the next slide.

The "people" were just simple ellipses and gradients. And yes, the number of people is not far from the actual membership size.]

After a semester of monthly meetings, it was apparent that there was a problem with the org. People were losing interest and just stopped showing up, founding members included.

[ Again, a pretty accurate rendition of the number of active members at that time. ]

At this point, the org’s days were pretty much numbered. It doesn’t take much to see that this geek community would have gone the same way as other similar geek communities that came before it.

And this brings us back to the topic of my talk:

[ Forgot where I got the clipart for the tombstone. Oh well.

The "back" part is ad-libbed because every talk is preceded by a slide containing the title of the talk. Had there not been a "slide 0", I would've not said the word "back".]

How did we save this dying geek community? What did we do to turn things around?

Looking back, what we did wasn’t really that complicated.

To start things off, we went beyond meetings and

[ Drought pic, as mentioned in the final slide, came from http://www.flickr.com/photos/georgiesharp/371472003/.

Mid sentence transition is important again here. The next few slides only allow 1-2 seconds as a margin of error. ]

actually started doing things. We had a week long merchandise booth, a lobby exhibit, and we even joined the Lantern Parade complete with our own float. This had a couple of side effects.

[ Robert gave me a bunch of old AME pics from his old stash. I've uploaded a copy of the pics here.

The merchandise booth pic is obviously not from 2001. I got it from Fra's multiply album. I blurred it a bit to make it fit in with the pictures.

After a lot of experimentation, I found out that a seamless mosaic is the best way to create slides out of multiple pictures. The location of the text in this slide as well as the next two slides are also a result of trial and error. ]

First, the longer mingling time allowed people to bond with each other. And when people start to look forward to meet each other on a regular basis, they’re a lot less likely to leave.

The larger activities also acted as a filter:

[ The top two pics come from Robert's stash. The bottom left comes from Fra while the bottom right comes from Mic. ]

it weeded out the slackers while it brought to light the passionate people, those who are willing to contribute their time, skills and talents for the org.

Now, when passionate people bond with each other

[ A combination of one of the first (lantern parade 2001) and the one of the most recent (AME no Jidai) large-scale activities of the org: working on the float, hosting (from Wigi/Triccie), painting haori (from Wil), and painting the org banner. ]

a community’s culture is formed. Culture is important, as a bad culture would eventually destroy an org. Fortunately for us, what we got was this “fun org” culture. The “fun” part’s easy,

[ Four slides, four important points. I have to elaborate what this slide means in the next two slides, though. ]

We’re an anime org. We do fun stuff like talking about stuff that would get us weird looks from most of you guys here. We also do other fun stuff like, say, wear costumes. But part of our culture is that

[ Upper row: post-2001 lantern parade, pre-Gakuensai (from Krinkle), X-mas party 2007 (from Tiff), 8th Avenue (from Klaine).

Bottom left is from the post-Gakuensai photoshoot (from Krinkle), middle right is a tambayan pic (from Szusza), and bottom right is from 8th Avenue (from me).

The "most of you guys here" is ad-libbed. Had there been more obvious geeks in the audience, that should have been "most people" instead.

It was only after I submitted these slides that I realized that there are more presidents here than in the next slide. Oh the irony. ]

we know when to draw the line and focus on the important org matters like planning for future events, managing finances, marketing, publicity, and so on. Not so obvious from an anime org, huh?

[ Except for the first picture which is from the 2009 applicants orientation (from Krinkle), all of these pics come from the EALM 2 years ago (from Krinkle again, here, here, and here).

The "Not so obvious from an anime org, huh?" was ad-libbed. I sort of panicked when I realized that I was going too fast, around 4 seconds early. ]

And now we have this list. As you can see, there’s still one important thing missing. Those of you in communities should be able to figure this out. Any guesses?

[ The summary + rest slide. The pause at the end allows me 3-4 seconds of rest while the missing entry provides a small amount of unexpectedness to keep the tension/attention up.

Red and probably Frank guessed "Sex!" prompting me to answer "No, not sex!". XD ]

Applicants. Remember, we’re college students, and regardless of what you’ve heard about UP, most of us actually graduate on time. Thus the need for a constant supply of new members.

[ Pic from 8th batch buddy bidding (from Krinkle).

The UP thing was one of the last things I added to the official script. Just a deadpan comedy attempt to loosen up the audience. ]

Recruitment isn’t that simple. though. We have to have a balance here too. We don’t want to scare away potential passionate members, just like these guys who are just fine with our unusual culture…

[ One Piece cosplay pic from buddy dress up (from Fra) ]

but we don’t want the really passionate people, those who could damage the org with their antics. Probably like these guys.

[ Pic from the interwebs.

I really screwed up in this slide. I don't remember how much of the script I followed here. ]

And here we have this list. Follow these and your community will last for a while.

Before I end this talk, I’d like to share one last thing, what you might call the “secret sauce” behind UP AME’s successes.

[ Summary list. The "but wait there's more" turned out to be a good idea as it's hard for the audience to know if you're at the 5 minute mark or the 4 minute mark. This allowed me to keep the attention up for a minute longer. ]

As an org, we know that the best way to grow would be to take risks, to push ourselves beyond our limits.

A good example would be Una kAME!, the first collegiate anime fair in the Philippines. At that time

[ Pic from AME no Jidai (from Wigi/Triccie).

Not-so-obscure anime reference here. ]

we had no money, no experience, and our venue wasn’t that good. But in the end it was still a resounding success, raising the bar for other anime conventions and was a significant stepping stone for our org.

[ Pics from UP AME's photobucket account. Since the pics are all low-res, a mosaic with pictures of different sizes won't work here. I had to make a collage that looks decent.

The "raising the bar for other anime conventions" was partially ad-libbed. During my practice sessions, saying only "success" and "stepping stone" was the reliable approach. Luckily, I was going too fast so I was able to fit that part in. ]

So whether you’re currently in a geek community or just planning to start one of your own, I hope this talk gave you a couple of ideas to think about.

Thank you for listening, and good night.

[ As Scott Berkun explained in his talk, the first and last slides are usually wasted, hence the "thank you" slide. ]

Two months ago, I was invited by Red, a former co-worker, to talk in the first Ignite Manila event. I’m not really busy at the moment so I accepted the offer.

I’m not in the mood to post a long-winded report on the event so here are some highlights:

• The event was great! There was a good mix of topics and the audience was really into it. The only downside I think would be the lack of stereotypical geeks in the crowd (most of the people there were “closet geeks” ).
• The best talks for the night are ironically the least likely to be featured in the global O’Reilly Ignite site: Norman Wilwayco‘s “rebellious” talk (that’s an understatement, pero digs!) and Khavn dela Cruz‘s 5 minute presentation/performance on his potentially controversial Day Old Flicks.
• Probably the most well-balanced talk would be from Carlos Celdran. The topic was socially relevant, the slides were simple and were there to enhance the talk, and he was presenting to the audience and not talking to the wall.
• As for my talk, I’ll leave that to the next post.

Congratulations to the team behind Ignite Manila for this successful event! I’ll be looking forward to the next Ignite Manila!

–

I missed the fist keynote speech again.

–

Kinespell: Kinesthetic Learning Activity and Assessment
Ms. Ada Angeli Cariaga

The talk is about an edutainment software for kinesthetic learners (i.e. those who learn better through experimentation and movement). The main difference between this spelling software and other similar software is that it’s controls rely on physical motion via Sun SPOTs (a Wii port is also on the way) allowing the learner to move more than just their fingers on a keyboard. There’s also an assessment feature for teachers to track the performance of the students, but I think that’s common to most edutainment software anyway.

As students, the audience got the point of the talk. The speaker was also clear in saying that the tool is still not ready for retail or deployment due to lack of resources. Overall, no problem with this talk.

–

To Tumble, to Twitt; to Twitt: Perchance to Plurk: Ay, There’s the Rub
Mr. Juned Sonido

This talk was boring. I’d blame it on the speaker’s tone: using a bedroom voice (not the “sexy” kind: the “sleepy” kind), it was as if he was only talking to himself the whole time. Sure, Luis uses a similar tone, but at least he was able to capture the interest of the audience via sex.

The presentation itself is not really that interesting. It was like your average high school report: introduce the facts, provide bullet points for analysis. It would have been much better if he included a screencast showing how Tumblr, Plurk, and Twitter are used, or at least tried to provide examples which would have engaged the crowd.

I wonder how Feria’s talk went.

Nah, who am I kidding. We all know his teaching style.

–

Making IT Work for NGOs
Dr. Giovanni Tapang

CP Union dude.

His talk about providing free IT services to NGOs through volunteer work was surprisingly interesting for the audience. I guess it had something to do with the fact that most of them came from the provinces and that they need all the support they can get in terms of skills.

I’m actually thinking of volunteering for NGOs for a couple of months (blame Dr. Alan Wiess) so this talk gave me an option on where to start.

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Optimizing Websites for Search Engines: A Walkthrough
Ms. Fe Nuñez

IMO, SEO is overrated. There are many ways to make your site’s presence known without having to fine tune every part of your site to get higher places in search results. Besides, some SEO practices like link dropping are avoided by bloggers (esp. those with connections to the anime community) to avoid being likened to a certain notorious blogger.

That said, I still think the talk was okay in terms of providing an overview on the basics of SEO and why is it important when making websites. It didn’t delve too much in the part I hate about SEO (fine tuning) so that’s a plus. The speaker was also attractive enough to illicit shouts of “Yiheeeeee!” every time a guy asks a question in the open forum so I guess a good percentage of the male audience was paying attention.

As for the problems with the talk, there aren’t any major problems but there were a bunch of minor things that I could nitpick about it. First would be the “hook” of the talk i.e. “Retire Young, Retire Rich” through SEO. I know, no one is supposed to seriously believe that, but with that type of audience, I’m pretty sure a couple of people misunderstood it. (As a side note, buti na lang di nagpa-raise ng hand kung sino sa audience ang nag-retire young, retire rich na. Baka na-tempt ako mag-raise ng hand. )

I could also nitpick about the answers. The question about how to pay for hosting in dollars should have been answered by giving the option to look at local hosting companies which allow peso payments. The question by the guy who wanted Google to refresh its cache of his school’s website with up-to-date information doesn’t need to wait for months for it to happen: just slap on an XML site map and submit the site to Google. The cache should refresh in a few days.

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Aligning Your Social Network Assets with Your e-Portfolios
Mr. Joel C. Yuvienco

This talk explains the lesser known fact that a diploma and a transcript isn’t enough to land you a good job nowadays. At first glance, you might think that the talk is just about uploading the typical portfolio stuff on the net e.g. art in DeviantArt, photos in Flickr, but the real main message of the talk is “don’t do stupid things on the ‘net that could be Googled by prospective employers”.

I definitely agree on this advice given that most of the audience are college students and college students are prone to doing stupid things on the ‘net like uploading scandalous pictures. On the other hand, one part of me just wants to say “FUCK. THAT. SHIT.”

But then again, I already have the skills and the experience so my advice probably won’t work for the other people in the hall.

–

Spring Roo dude was late and this screwed up the schedule. The organizers decided to go with the last speaker in his place.

–

Imagine an Election System Without Precision: What Can the Youth Do?
Mr. Nelson Celis

With the exceptions of the start and the end of the presentation, the whole talk was a lot more suited for big wigs in suits than college students. Run of the mill PowerPoint presentation, legal jargon that kids don’t care about… no wonder 60% of the audience was already gone by the end of the talk.

The content of the talk was well-intended, though, asking the youth to be more vigilant in making sure that the Automated Election System can’t be manipulated. But that can’t save the talk from being boring.

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Spring Roo
Mr. John Paul Alcala

Spring Roo: the answer of SpringSource to Rails and Grails.

While the technology itself is very interesting, almost all of the members of the audience aren’t familiar with Spring. Heck, I believe that I was the only developer in the room with extensive enterprise application experience aside from the speaker himself.

Simply put, the talk’s format was not suited for the audience. Instead of spending 20 minutes explaining the background of the code-generation tool (making a lot of people’s noses bleed in the process), it would have been much better to go the Ruby on Rails demo approach. That is, spend around 5 minutes running through the background of the tool then spend the rest of the time showing the audience what you can do in that span of time with Roo.

Seeing a site with CRUD functionality built from scratch in a matter of minutes should be enough to drop a few jaws.

I am familiar with the tool so I didn’t really have a question for the speaker. Instead I merely pointed out that EJB is the worst thing that happened to J2EE, not AppFuse the presentation didn’t say what a developer needs to study before building apps with Roo. Given that the actual requirements are pretty daunting (e.g. knowledge of Spring MVC/Dependency Injection, Maven, etc), this is a pretty big oversight from the speaker.

–

Final Words

Being a retired software engineer, I didn’t really learn a lot of stuff from Y4iT. Fortunately, I traded off my SE hat for a teacher’s hat early on. Instead of focusing on the lessons taught by the speakers, I focused on how they tried to convey their ideas to the audience i.e. what approaches are effective, and what approaches are not. These past few posts are basically my “notes” on that topic.

Still, the low ROI and diminishing returns means I probably won’t go back for Y4iT 2010. (unless I get invited as a speaker, of course. )

Got to Film Institute earlier today but still missed the beginning of the first keynote. Also, the place was “standing room only” by the time I entered the hall.

I’m no longer going to be complaining about run-of-the-mill Powerpoint presentations. Instead, I’ll just post a link to Tufte’s PowerPoint is Evil.

–

Innovation on the Web
Mr. Jay Trinidad

Google Asia Pacific marketing dude. Masyado ata matagal nang nakihalubilo sa mga puti kaya di na marunong mag- code-switch.

To be honest, I don’t really remember anything from this talk aside from “Google search is actually very complicated behind the scenes” and demos of Google apps that most are familiar with (i.e. no Google Wave).

–

Preparing for IT Security Audit
Mr. John Ruero

Accenture Security Audit dude. There was a break before this so I was able to get a seat near the front.

I’m supposed to be familiar with this, but I actually learned a lot of new stuff about security auditing (bakit kaya? LOL!).

Deming was also namedropped in the talk because of the Deming PDCA cycle. Wala lang.

–

Education 3.0
Mr. Noel Feria

Educ dude.

I was disappointed about this talk. It was too short, the slides were not organized to convey ideas properly, and the speaker didn’t adjust the talk given that the entire audience was not even familiar with “Education 2.0″.

What was really disappointing was the way he answered the questions. For example, the second question from the audience was from a teacher who was concerned that students would be getting wrong/fake assignment answers in this age where Google has trumped textbooks. The speaker simply answered that the students should verify the data by checking the hyperlinks at the bottom of the Wikipedia articles — to put it bluntly, a lame non-passionate answer.

If I was the guy, I’d go on the offensive: I’d state that we are better off now that people are finally critical about the validity of data. Back when we were still relying on textbooks and encyclopedias, it is rare for a student or teacher to question the validity of data from those sources–sources that are sometimes already out of date, and sometimes even worse than the Internet (remember the various textbook scandals our education system has received in the past years?).

The answer to the next query was also disappointing. A teacher who had already started using technology in his course (the usual Yahoo Groups thing: a mailing list, a place where files can be uploaded, and an e-mail address to send assignments) was wondering if Education 3.0 allows more synchronous (his methods are asynchronous; actually his term was “decoupled”) ways of connecting to students like video conferencing.

The speaker’s answer was that Education 3.0 is just being conceived as an idea so he’s not sure if those are included.

My reaction: Uh… isn’t what he’s talking about already under Education 2.0?

–

I transferred to the UP Theater after lunch.

–

Web Threats Security
Mr. Rodel Villarez

Trend Micro dude.

I’d say this was a decent talk even though it was a pitch for their product line. It’s not as hardcore as the Security Audit talk, but it touched the key aspects of web threats that people aren’t really that familiar with e.g. social engineering, anti-virus software needs to be supported by other software and habits, etc.

Even though he doesn’t look or sound it, the speaker was actually pretty good at managing the audience.

–

Global IT Certification Standards
Ms. Maria Corazon Akol

PhilNITS lady.

The talk was all about PhilNITS, a certification I passed three years ago. The talk itself was just about average, answering the five W’s and the How regarding PhilNITS.

What was impressive about the talk was the speaker’s ability in answering questions. I posed the “Certifications are ignored by companies that read Dilbert” problem and she was able to quickly respond by making it clear to the audience that certifications are not an “end” (i.e. pwede na akong mag-drop out pag nakakuha na ako ng PhilNITS certification), and that completing your course to get a holistic learning experience is still the way to go.

It was a valid answer and I applaud her for that. Her other answers also showed that she was familiar with all of the issues regarding PhilNITS. This, IMHO, made it clear how much she is devoted to her cause.

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Cloud Computing and SaaS (Software as a Service)
Mr. Jerome Gotangco

Morph Labs guy. They’re offering a PaaS.

He already gave this talk in DevCon. The main difference with this talk was that today’s audience was a bunch of notches lower in terms of technical knowledge than the DevCon audience. That meant that the former needs to be aware that PaaS ~= Facebook and SaaS ~= Pet Society, and that demonstrating creating 4 App and DB servers in a minute wouldn’t be as awe-inspiring.

The questions were hogged by a single audience member and they weren’t really that hard to respond decently so I couldn’t make a clear assessment on his answering ability (IMO, it was good).

–

Animating “Dayo”
Mr. Patrick Anji Palanca and Mr. Whannie Dellosa

Animator dude and sound processing dude.

The talk was surprisingly engaging. When they showed the various WIP of a scene in the trailer of Dayo, from animated storyboard to finished product, in order to show the technology involved in the process, the audience got to memorize the lines by the 3rd step and was dubbing it until the last.

While the animator dude was somewhat serious about his craft (even as he was wowing the audience with his resume which includes “Smurfs”), the sound dude was more down to earth. I think the proper term for the latter would be “keepin’ it real”, but I try not to use that language on this blog.

Anyway, that combination paid off in the open forum. The animator dude answered indirectly while the sound dude answered directly; this provided both depth and a resolution to the answers. Usually the speaker would just be able to give one of those, either a deep answer that somehow doesn’t answer the question or a direct to the point answer that doesn’t care about the other implications.

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Dinner at Lutong Bahay. Glad to see my old night shift dinner combo, “1 bbq stick + 1.5 rice + vegies”, is still (relatively) cheap at 37 pesos.

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Last day tomorrow. Will spend the entire day at the Film Institute to avoid Dick Gordon and Imee Marcos.

I arrived in UP around 11am and proceeded to the Film Institute for the ASP .NET 3.5 talk. Unfortunately they’re not letting people in anymore because the place was jampacked already.

Went to UP Theater instead. The place was also packed, but at least they allowed me go go in.

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The 7 Habits of an Effective Developer
Mr. Chuk Munn Lee

It’s the Chinese dude again.

The talk’s actually pretty good, mainly because the “habits” are just software engineering fundamentals converted into a talk.

Again, the problem with the talk is that the kids still haven’t gotten used to his strong Chinese accent. Another problem is that the slides have too much text.

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Lunch was fish balls, fish nuggets, and buko juice (now 13 pesos, a 30% price increase after 7 years).

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At this point, I’ve ditched my original plan and decided to just choose an AM and PM venue per day to allow me to get a decent seat.

PM is UP Theater again.

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Careers in IT
Ms. Gina Duminy

The itprosasia.com lady did a great job in convincing the audience that IT careers aren’t just about programming. I really liked how she emphasized the need for passion, as well as how she reaffirmed the 34 year old IT student that IT is all about skills and not about age, gender, race, etc.

I have same problem for this talk as in the previous one i.e. the presentation slides still contain too much information. Also, while Security Auditors were mentioned in the talk, the QA field as a whole was apparently missing in the talk.

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The Next 5 in 5: Predicting Innovations
Mr. Lope Doromal, Jr.

IBM dude with a strong Filipino accent. Talk was mostly tech (not IT) related: there’s advancements in solar power, Gattaca affordable genetic mapping, web access through voice, Orwellian stores where everything is tracked via RFID to allow a bunch of stuff, and memory improvements through IBM’s behavioral sciences division (sadly, he could not confirm if IBM is working on memory implants. boo!)

This talk probably had the worst slides in terms of readability. On the other hand, this talk had the most number of people asking questions.

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Slept through the tacked-on cosplay.

Liezel Garcia was ok.

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Web Usability and User Experience Design
Mr. Regnard Kreisler Raquedan

Ever wonder why I’m complaining about powerpoint slides above? It’s because of this dude.

He’s a professional web designer who’s talking about Web Usability; you could probably guess the quality of his slides.

The only problem I could think of with his talk is that the audience is too green to realize its significance. Maybe if he used a certain website, his ideas might have made a bigger impact.

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Careers in Game Development
Mr. Gabby Dizon

Nothing much to say about this one. It’s basically just a game development version of the itprosasia.com lady’s talk.

I’m kinda annoyed, though, that speakers keep on mentioning Objective-C and iPhone development without considering that most of the audience don’t have 60k to spare for a “Mac Mini + keyboard/mouse/monitor + iPod Touch + Developer License” combo. Parang mas okay pa mag-gamble sa illegal recruiter kesa mag-gamble sa iPhone development.

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Dya 3 tomorrow. Will probably go to Film Institute in the morning for the education 3.0 thing. Will go to UP Theater in the afternoon for the certification shiz.

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“Nobody” is annoying beyond belief.

Mukhang patok naman sa mga bata, kaya pagbigyan na nga.

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Open: The Journey Continues
Mr. Naveen Asrani (Keynote Speaker)

The kids (practically 99% of the audience) had a hard time understanding his Indian accent. Many even found it funny.

Quite ironic since these kids should get used to foreign accents if they’re planning to work abroad. Even more ironic is that most of them aren’t that good in English too.

As for the talk, it’s your run of the mill “What is Sun doing for the world and you can be part of it” talk. Nothing fancy, but too short for my tastes.

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FX with JFX
Mr. Chuk Munn Lee

Chinese accent this time, something I’ve been used to for some years now.

The demo’s a by-the-book run through of the basics of JavaFx. I’m familiar with RIAs so I didn’t see anything new.

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Open Solaris
Mr. Peter Karlsson

English(? which specific?) accent this time.

Was interested in the talk because Open Solaris looks like Linux on drugs… okay, “stimulants”. ZFS and Crossbow (holy crap, virtual networks!) looks fun to use in enterprise environments. Might consider creating a virtual machine running Open Solaris for kicks.

Too bad none of the audience are familiar with enterprise concerns.

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Took my lunch at the fishball stand at DMST just as planned. The fishballs and fish nuggets taste as good as I remember them, but the final bill was twice compared to my original expenses 7 years ago (Fishball/fish nuggets had a 25% price increase, Mountain Dew grew from 10 peso 12 oz bottles to 27 peso 500ml PET bottles).

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Taking Charge of Your IT Career
Mr. Winston Damarillo (Keynote Speaker)

On its own, the talk was ok. He did make the grave presentation sin of putting a ton of text in each slide, but I’ll let that slide because the statements were sound.

What was wrong about the talk was that the audience’s focus was on the iPod Touch (please don’t call it iTouch) contest.

The contestant’s answers were proof that they were not listening: the speaker didn’t talk about studying hard to do well in school (his college degree isn’t even related to IT!), and yet they all answered that that was the best way of taking charge of your IT career. Maybe they misinterpreted “studying open source (outside of school work)” with “studying what’s given to you by your curriculum.”

Sayang yung iPod Touch.

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Developing Web Toys
Mr. Luis Buenaventura II

Heto talaga si Luis, by the book way of catching the audience’s attention and holding on to it long enough to send the (simple) message across.

The only problem I saw with the talk was that Luis’s English was too intimidating i.e. much better than previous speakers from Ateneo and La Salle (as if he wasn’t an Iskolar ng Bayan… lol). Tuloy, nahirapan silang sumagot in English.

Asked the obvious question about monetizing because no one seemed to dare ask a question.

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Web 2.0 Demos with DB2
Mr. Raul Chong

I don’t know why Mr. J. Angelo Racoma was missing and why they proceeded with the DB2 talk.

Talk started off with the usual “IBM DB2 is the bestest DB evar!!!”

Like everyone else (Oracle, MS SQL Server), finally DB2 has a free version.

The Web 2.0 part above? It’s just a way of saying that DB2 now has an XML data type and that you could use XPath selectors in your where clause. That just means you could put unstructured data in the form of XML as a field, then just data mine it on demand.

Talk ended with the revelation of their master plan in invading campuses.

I was really tempted to ask these questions, but somehow I was able to stop myself:

• Are you aware of the P100+ million lawsuit against IBM from our government’s Social Services department regarding a “faulty” critical DB2 installation that crashed multiple times? What is currently the official statement of IBM on this?
• The XPath implementation might have been optimized, but it still doesn’t change the fact that you will still perform a full table search when filtering based on unstructured data.

  Why should we use this approach when document-oriented databases like CouchDB can do the same thing faster (at the expense of cheap hard drive space) through map-reduce?

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Mini-DevCon – emphasis on “Mini”

It was basically just

1. Talk on what is PSIA and DevCon
2. DevCon peeps talking about stuff for about an hour
3. Linux vs Windows vs Mac debate

And that’s it. No developer interactions, no survey and sharing of skills. It was like the purpose of the DevCon wasn’t really realized.

My volunteering to talk in behalf of the non-G2IX peeps in the audience apparently slipped the minds of the organizers.

The free pizza was ok, I guess. Meeting Mikong and Luis in person was also good.

Looking back, it was more of a teaser than a “mini” thing. I hope they push through with making a full 2-day DevCon + BarCamp in the future.

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Tomorrow I’ll keep my expectations really low. Will probably ask a question to the speakers only once or twice.