Today is the day after my attendance at ConvergeSC, and my mind is still trying to process all the valuable information that was presented there. This conference was essentially the meeting of some of the most proactive programming minds in the Columbia area to put together an informative session about various technologies and strategies in the high tech workspace. Presentation topics range from Geno Church’s talk about branding and Joel Stevenson’s presentation on starting a business to Jessica’s Cook’s talk about the importance and role of content in web-based projects and Jason Dew’s overview of Ruby On Rails.
Picture courtesy of Mandi Engram (http://www.mandiengram.com/)
Here’s a quick recap of the day:
- The day kicked off with Geno Church’s talk on branding. Talk about redefining marketing! His talk encouraged others to make movements, not advertisements.
- Jason Beaird, from Cyberwoven spoke about Designing for Developers. In addition to principles of design, he showed some very nice example sites.
- Jason Dew spoke about Ruby on Rails development. In his quick overview he outlined some useful features of the platform that would help web application developers.
- Joel Stevenson, executive director at USC’s Technology Incubator, spoke about starting a business, including the importance of a business plan.
- Mike Mann spoke of the differences between and nuances of copyright, trademark, and other terms of software intellectual property.
- Chris Eargle spoke on the REST architecture.
- Jonathan LeBlanc (affectionately known among my friends now as “Awesome Yahoo! dude”) gave an impressive talk about Yahoo’s developers tools, including YQL.
- Robert Prioleau spoke about turning a website into a web experience (No, I’m not being melodramatic there).
- Jessica Cook gave a refreshing talk on the importance of content in web applications.
- Matthew Smith gave pointers on web designs good enough to make members of the audience “feel like a monkey catholic schoolgirl at a banana boy band concert”. (Commentary courtesy of Bermon Painter via twitter)
- Greg Lunn, “Adobe CS ninja” shared some tips and tricks reguarding Adobe software, including integration between the different peices of software.
- Mark Gunnels spoke of how to work in the Era of big data and using the cloud to your advantage.
- Robyn Tippins, from Yahoo, spoke further about Yahoo technologies and how they could be used to reach Yahoo’s professional network of users.
My two cents:
- For a good example of a REST architecture API check out Last.fm’s API which I worked with quite a bit before. Of course I now know that I could have saved time on writing XML data parsers by using YQL.
- Speaking of YQL, Yahoo’s developers tools are sweet. I recommend anyone working in the web space to check them out.
- Content is king. But don’t forget to augment that content with a little whitespace please
. - It was interesting watching everyone tweet about the conference as it proceeded. I envision future conferences incorporating this type of viral expression into the event itself.
Useful Links:
- Speakers at ConvergeSC
- Thanks to Startlike.com for the after-party!
- CouchDB (This link is a tribute to you) @Bigbluehat
Anything I missed? Please comment below!
