‘Stop Light Etiquette’
Tuesday, October 23rd, 2007If you live in DC, or any major city, you will fall out of your chair laughing when you read this.
Archive for October, 2007
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DC Startup Scene Is Heating Up
Thursday, October 11th, 2007Over the past few weeks I have been observing trends in the Washington, DC startup community that indicate that things are starting to heat up. A recent RefreshDC event had record attendance (90+) over in Alexandria, VA. Last night an impromptu Facebook Developer’s Garage that I was loosely involved in the organizing of had similar attendance (90+). Here are photos from the event. You can watch the event from Peter Corbet’s blog. Tonight I attended a book club with six others from around the DC tech scene, and from that group two of them will be joining me at the upcoming DC startup weekend and at least one of them will be joining me at the upcoming WidgetDevCamp DC. Did I mention that a new group called NextDC also formed and held an event recently? Then there was BarCampDC, an event that had a waiting list longer than the list of attendees. Want more? Check out Ross’s DC Tech Events list.Oh, and the book we were discussing tonight was The Tipping Point, by Malcom Gladwell. Appropriate. I find it somewhat interesting that people are still trying to find ways to make the DC tech scene a carbon copy (even in name) to Silicon Valley. Several people recently suggested re-naming a recently formed group, The DC Technology Network, to something more Silicon oriented…like ‘Silicon Hill’. I wonder if they would be happier if they were in Silicon Valley. I think we are headed in the right direction and should ride the wave, not try to re-channel it so that it follows the exact same path of some of the other areas.As the DC startup scene picks up more steam then it will become even more tempting to copy what works in other places. I hope that the community resists the temptation.
People who attended last night’s Facebook Developer Garage event should remember that the reason Facebook showed up wasn’t for our developers, Facebook showed up for our non-profits and politicians. There was an event the day before that was all about how to use Facebook to “swing elections”. It was convenient for them to do an extra, last minute, event for developers in the area. They envy our proximity to the non-profit and political community, something that we should not forget. We may envy the valley because that happens to be where Facebook and Google are, but we should not forget that great organizations can begin here too (and that many are already here).
Our biggest challenge is building a community that is going to support itself over time and not just become balkanized because too many people have too many agendas. The good news is that there are good people leading the way on this front and I think they deserve credit.
A couple of of them who I believe deserve credit for their humble efforts include Justin Thorp, who has been building up the The DC Technology Network is helping to bring people together, and Ross Karchner, who has been building up the DC Tech Events list. Without the efforts of these community builders I’m not sure where I would begin to look for information about what is going on in the DC Startup community.
Ruby on Rails, Java, Programming
Saturday, October 6th, 2007As a recruiter I have spent enough time interviewing computer science professionals to get a preview of what is coming. I’ve had a lot of conversations with people about the future of Ruby on Rails and Java and feel like Ruby on Rails is giving Java a run for its money. Whenever people ask me what I think the next 5 years will hold in terms of trends I tell them that private avaiation, electric cars, wearable computing, and Ruby on Rails are all trends to keep an eye on. Granted, all of these are pretty superficial trend statements, but they are all only the tip of the iceberg when it comes to my thoughts. I was browsing technorati’s random links that pop up when you first visit the page and this headline caught my attention:
It brought me back to a conversation with someone here in DC from the early days of Netscape who asked me the 5 year question while we were having beers at Cafe Delux. Ruby on Rails was one of the things that we chatted about that evening. He asked me about how Ruby on Rails would hook into C/C++ (like Java does). I haven’t thought too much on the subject since then, but the writer of the article above has.
A long story short, it sounds as though peopel are working on resovling this siutation. That means that we can count on the movement toward something more evolved than Java continuing.
I also want to re-iterate that I haven’t seen such excitement and community involvement in a programming language in a long time. There are more Ruby on Rails users and user groups now than ever before, and the Java user groups seem to be losing members. I can’t say that people are making a mass migration, but I can say that when it comes to launching new projects, Ruby on Rails is the language of choice…especially here in Washington, DC.
