Philly Emerging Technologies Podcast 2011 - #3

How MongoDB Helps Visibiz Tackle Social CRM

Speaker - Mike Brocious - Lead Architect, Visibiz

From the ETE Session Abstract

So you’ve heard about MongoDB and it sounds really sweet (BTW, it is!). Now you’re thinking about using it in your application. We can’t tell you if it’s right for your application, but we can tell you how we’re using it at Visibiz and that might help you with your implementation.

This presentation provides a use case of MongoDB at Visibiz. It first discusses why we chose to use MongoDB as our application’s primary datastore (what were the relevant application requirements and perceived benefits). It then covers how we’re using MongoDB in the application, touching on schema design of the primary collection and listing several secondary uses for it in the architecture. We also touch on lessons learned, as well as pros and cons.

Philly Emerging Technologies Podcast 2011 - #2

Doing the Mundane a Million Times a Minute

Speaker - Mark Chadwick, Invite Media/Google

From the ETE Session Abstract

When dealing with high-volume distributed systems, even the most mundane tasks can be daunting challenges. This talk describes some of the steps, as well as missteps, made while building such a system. It will work through the discovery of such pain points, as well as describe their resolutions with specific technologies or patterns.

Over the course of three years, Invite Media built a high-volume system for serving online advertisements from the ground up. Some of the more interesting challenges revolved around operating routine services at scale, such as distributing requests, logging diagnostics, and keeping track of simple transactions.

This talk will dive into some of these problems, showing the evolution of simple systems at scale, with a strong bias towards cloud-hosted applications. It will include details about the discovery and resolution of bottlenecks we experienced, as well as specific technologies and pattens discovered in the process.

It may serve as a springboard for ideas when building distributed cloud-based systems, as well as hone a sense of when components may be reaching their tipping point.

Philly Emerging Technologies Podcast 2011 - #1

Polyglot Persistence for Java Developers

Speaker - Chris Richardson, VMware

From the ETE Session Abstract

Relational databases have long been considered the one true way to persist enterprise data. But today, NoSQL databases are emerging as a viable alternative for many applications. They can simplify the persistence of complex data models and offer significantly better scalability, and performance. But using NoSQL databases is very different than the ACID/SQL/JDBC/JPA world that we have become accustomed to. They have different and unfamiliar APIs and a very different and usually limited transaction model. In this presentation, we describe some popular NoSQL databases – Redis, SimpleDB, MongoDB, and Cassandra. You will learn about each database’s data model and Java API. We describe the benefits and drawbacks with using NoSQL databases. Finally, you will learn how the Spring Data project simplifies the development of Java applications that use NoSQL databases.

Download the Slides

Today's conference session is a talk from this week's Mobile Application Developer seminar series, held by Chariot Solutions, in Philadelphia. 

The talk, "State of the Art for Mobile Application Development", was given by Chariot's Don Coleman, who develops both enterprise and mobile applications in a variety of platforms and languages.  In this talk, he surveys the current landscape of APIs and platforms, and gives his perspective on where things are today, and where they may be moving to in the future.

Links

• Presentation Slides
• Javascript frameworks
  • jqTouch - http://jqtouch.com
  • Sencha Touch - http://sencha.com
  • SproutCore - http://sproutcore.com
  • IUI - http://code.google.com/p/iui
  • XUI - http://xuijs.com
  • Zepto - http://zeptojs.com
  • Phone Gap - http://phonegap.com
  • Rho Mobile - http://rhomobile.com
  • Titanium Appcelerator - http://appcelerator.com
  • Corona - http://www.anscamobile.com
  • Adobe Air 2.5 - http://adobe.com

We are pleased to release this recording of Linda Rising's talk on Deception and Estimation.  This is a one-hour talk, and is a good talk about how we deceive ourselves in a number of ways in life in general, and of course in the estimation process.

From the abstract:

"Cognitive scientists tell us that we are hardwired for deception. It seems we are overly optimistic, and, in fact, we wouldn’t have survived without this trait. With this built-in bias as a starting point, it’s almost impossible for us to estimate accurately.

That doesn’t mean all is lost. We must simply accept that our estimates are best guesses and continually re-evaluate as we go, which is, of course, the agile approach to managing change. Linda Rising has been part of many plan-driven development projects where sincere, honest people with integrity wanted to make the best estimates possible and used many “scientific” approaches to make it happen – all for naught. Re-estimation was regarded as an admission of failure to do the best up-front estimate and resulted in a lot of overhead and meetings to try to “get it right.” Offering examples from ordinary life – especially from the way people eat and drink – Linda demonstrates how hard it is for us to see our poor estimating skills and helps work with the self-deception that is hardwired in all of us."

Thanks to Linda Rising for speaking at ETE 2010 and letting us publish her talk.  

slides

Bonnie Aumann is an agile project manager and customer advocate for Algorithmics. Her ETE 2010 talk is entitled "Are your developers BS'ing you?" In this talk, she tries to cut through the potential blame game and IT culture issues by practicing rapid feedback and response, and Agile techniques.

Her abstract

"A question I’m often asked is how a non-technical manager like me can tell when their software team is pulling one over on them. This seems to be especially true of enterprise managers and points to structural problems with command and control development methodologies. The principlesof whole team interaction and the practices of rapid feedback and response in Agile seem to create an alternative culture in which things "just work."

Explicit tag warning

You'll hear the word "B.S." in long form several times in this talk, so anyone offended by this term should not tune in. However, it's done in context, and is very tasteful.

Resources

• Bonnie's presentation page: http://ow.ly/24myk
• The Tree Cartoon: http://ow.ly/24mzq
• Slides from the discussion : http://ow.ly/24mAl
• The Cocktail Party Effect: http://ow.ly/24mBp
• Servant Leadership: http://ow.ly/24mCe
• Bonnie Aumann on Twitter: twitter.com/bonniea

Our ETE 2010 Session today is "Influencing your way to Agile" by Audrey Troutt. Audrey Troutt is a Software Engineer at the Drexel Math Forum.  She can be reached on twitter at @auditty.

In this talk, Audrey describes ways to approach your team members, bosses, bosses bosses, and other types in a more productive, influential way.  She discusses common pitfalls and traps, and the talk is very informative as well as entertaining. At the end of the session she takes audience questions.

Her slides are available online.

ETE Session #6 is "Write Once, Run on Any Phone"

A session with Chariot's Aaron Mulder and Kevin Griffin.

They discuss three popular mobile frameworks that allow developers to write the software one time and deploy it to each phone platform supported by the framework.

Rhodes, Titanium and PhoneGap are featured.

Slides for the presentation can be found here.

Today's ETE 2010 Session is another panel discussion:

Social Media - why should I care? (session details).

Panelists:

• Skip Shuda - CEO, Team and a Dream
• Chip Rodgers - VP and COO, SAP
• Adam Coomes - President, Infegy
• Erik Harbison - Senior Director of Interactive Marketing, TrueAction
• Ken Rimple - Director of Education, Chariot Solutions

Disclosure: Chariot Solutions collaborates on social media efforts with Team and a Dream

Today's ETE 2010 session is a panel discussion I chaired on mobile application development.  Panelists were:

• Adum Blum - @AdamBlum - RhoMobile, a re-targetable mobile application development platform
• Joe Conway - Big Nerd Ranch (Apple mobile developer, trainer, mentor, co-author of iPhone Programming)
• Andrew Oswald - Chariot Solutions, developer of the ETE Android application representing Android development
• Kevin Griffin - Chariot Solutions, mobile developer, with interests in open source mobile application development tools, experience with Blackberry, iPhone development

Enjoy.

Ken