Category: programming

6 Awesome South Florida Media, Tech Events Coming Soon

NPR interactive designer Alyson Hurt mentoring at Code With Me DC. Code With Me is bringing the show to Miami in February. Photo by alykat
NPR interactive designer Alyson Hurt mentoring soon-to-be journocoders at Code With Me DC. Code With Me is bringing the show to Miami in February. Photo by alykat

South Florida is totally kickin’ it during the next few months with great multimedia and tech events. There’s Code With Me for those wanting to get started in multimedia. WordCamp Miami is great and inexpensive for developers and content creators. SunshinePHP looks cool for developers, especially if you want to learn the Symfony framework. Microsoft fans can head to NSU for their South Florida .NET Code Camp.

I’d better cut the grass this weekend, because there are way too many great events I’ve got to get to.

Here’s your list of events to check out:

 

Code With MeCode With Me
http://www.codewithmemiami.com/
Twitter: @codewithme
Feb. 2-3, All day, exact times TBA
Cost: $85 general, $65 students
Location: University of Miami School of Communication, 5100 Brunson Drive Coral Gables, FL 33146

Event Description  (from the organizers): At Code With Me, a two-day workshop, we’ll teach you how to code from the ground up so you can tell meaningful, interactive stories. We’re specifically designed for journalists without coding experience. With one mentor for every two students, you’ll always have the attention of a professional programmer so you can learn at your own pace, and never feel lost or behind. With more than a dozen mentors total, you’ll join a supportive learning community that will continue on even after the workshop. Plus, you’ll have fun. You’ll learn HTML, CSS, Javascript and even play games from the dadu online terpercaya series, watching plays, and writing a lot of code. Our goal is to make this your turning point — an experience that not only teaches the basics of code, but gives you the skills and confidence you need to keep programming on your own and in your newsroom.

Danny’s Comments: Yours truly will be one of Code With Me’s mentors, along with several other very cool people. If you’re a journalist who wants to get a solid start on  multimedia storytelling, this seems like a fantastic place to do it.

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SunShinePHP Conference
http://sunshinephp.com/
Twitter: @SunShinePHP
Dates/Times: Feb 8-9, 2013
Cost: $219.95, Students $159.95
Location: Embassy Suites Miami International Airport, 3974 NW South River Drive, Miami, Florida, 33142

Event Description  (from the organizers): The PHP community in South Florida has organized a PHP developer conference in Miami, and you’re invited! We are hosting some of the best speakers, awesome talk topics, latest technology, and up to date news in PHP. And don’t forget about our Hackathon and Uncon’ference. The SunshinePHP Conference has something every level of developer. We will be holding 30+ sessions (10 dedicated to Symfony) that cover trending topics in PHP. Come see what others are doing, and share your experience as well. And there will be plenty of fun and beer on tap for everyone!

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South Florida Code Camp 2013

South Florida .NET Code Camp
http://fladotnet.com/codecamp/
Twitter: #sflcc
Dates/Times: Feb. 9, 7:30 a.m.-5:45 p.m.
Cost: FREE
Location: Nova Southeastern University (NSU) – Main Campus Davie, Carl DeSantis Building, 3301 College Ave., Davie, FL 33314

Event Description  (from the organizers): What is Code Camp? Code Camp is a FREE one day GEEK FEST held on Saturday February 9, 2013 This is the ninth year for South Florida Code Camp. The event will have speakers from the local community and beyond. Speakers will be presenting some of the most requested topics like Windows 8, Windows Phone 8, ASP.NET, Javascript, JQuery, Visual Studio 2012, MVC Framework, Sharepoint 2013 and SQL Server 2012. This event is like Tech-Ed for Free but it’s community driven by a group of dedicated volunteers and speakers. Breakfast and lunch is included!

Danny’s Comments: I’ve never been to the event at NSU, but the agenda here looks like there’d be great takeaways even for those who develop using open-source platforms.

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Miami Social Media Week
http://socialmediaweek.org/miami/
Twitter: @SMWmiami
Feb. 18-22, various events

Event Description (from the organizers): The brpr Group is happy to bring Social Media Week back to Miami for a second year this coming February! In 2012, more than 66,000 people attended Social Media Week in 26 countries across the globe. Social Media Week is about community and its success can be attributed to folks getting involved through volunteering, hosting panels & sponsoring events.

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SuperConf
http://superconf.co
Twitter: @superconfmiami
Dates: Feb. 21-22, 2013
Cost: $257.24 (Use code TNWSUPER for $50 off). Separate workshops are $300 each.
Location: James L Knight Center, 400 SE 2nd Ave. Miami, FL 33131

Event Description  (from the organizers): SuperConf is not just a web technology conference. It’s an experience. Design. Development. Entrepreneurship. These are the things that have been propelling mankind forward since the beginning. SuperConf is a study of that intersection. We celebrate by launching startups, providing workshops & having world class speakers share their insights with hundreds of technologists over two days of perfect weather in Miami.

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WordCamp Miami
 http://2013.miami.wordcamp.org/
Twitter: @wordcampmiami
Dates: April 6-7, 2013
Cost: TBA. Tickets were approximately $30 last year
Location: Ai Miami International University of Art & Design
1501 Biscayne Blvd. #100, Miami, FL 33132

Event Description (from the organizers): WordCamp Miami 2013 is a two-day event that covers topics relating to WordPress, front-end development, and much more. 2012 brought more than 400 students, bloggers, and coders together for two days of education and fun. Expect big things for the 4th Annual WordCamp in Miami for 2013.

Danny’s Comments: I’ve previously attended WordCamp Miami, and it’s a fantastic event where you’re going to meet developers, content creators and all sorts of interesting people. Plus, the price is very reasonable given the quality of the event. Developers and writers both will come away with new tricks up their sleeves. Freelancers and journalists who are looking to possibly do their own thing online should especially go.

Yes, I am attempting to lure you to WordCamp Miami by showing you that they serve nice food. Photo by vanillaforums
Yes, I am attempting to lure you to WordCamp Miami by showing you that they’ve typically served a nice spread. Photo by vanillaforums

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How One Journalist Learned To Code: Tips For The Unafraid

I’m not a guy building the latest killer app, but I sling enough PHP to be dangerous and empowered. Before I learned programming, I had learned some HTML and CSS, but those are really like knowing how to paint a house. I wanted to play with the hammer and nails. So here’s how I learned to code, along with my two cents for journalists who want to learn some programming.

The journohacker knows no limits.

I’m not a guy building the latest killer app, but I sling enough PHP to be empowered. I’ve occasionally built a couple of tools like this that have saved people a lot of time and grief. I had previously learned some HTML and CSS, but those are akin to knowing how to paint a house. All thanks to Sunderland University and Jake Trelease for introducing to learn this.

I wanted to play with the hammer and nails.

So here’s how I learned to code, along with my two cents for journalists who want to learn some programming:

1) Take an intro to programming class at a local school (i.e., in meatspace).

While online instruction is a godsend and there are great programming books out there, things didn’t really click for me until I took a class called Introduction to Programming in C++ at Valencia Community College in Orlando. If you are looking for a gift for a journalist you can check out the best ones on this website.

Prior to that, I had bought great books on PHP, Javascript, Rails and Django. They made for interesting though oversized paperweights.

Paying for a class and having it on a schedule was a way to enforce discipline on myself. The fact is, daily life gets in the way for many of us. But when I plopped down a few hundred bucks and had an appointment each week with homework due, it helped get me over the hump, also I used resources like beautify code to start doing programming even faster.

Also, even the best programming books often take things for granted. They may not show you how to use FTP for sticking your projects onto a server. They will gloss over using your computer’s command line or terminal, which is the text-based way to control a computer. And lastly, even the most helpful community of programmers isn’t going to constantly grade your work and give you feedback on a weekly basis.

2) It doesn’t really matter which language you first pick.

You’re going to read reams and reams online about which language is the best for what. People wage online intifadas over such questions. Here’s the bottom line for beginners: it doesn’t really matter.

If you’re learning the basics of setting variables, data types and loops, it won’t make or break you if you learn it in C++ like I did or in Ruby, PHP, Python, Java or whatever the latest hotness is.

When I finished my C++ class, it was like I could magically read PHP, Javascript and other languages.

And to think I almost didn’t take the class because it wasn’t one of the popular web development languages. That would’ve been a huge mistake.

3) Have a project in mind.

If your focus is on going chapter by chapter in whatever programming book, you might be doing it wrong.

Instead, have a project in mind and pilfer from the book and sites like Stack Overflow to build what you want. You might want to build a site to track your recipes. Maybe you want to build your own blog. Or maybe you want to scrape some public records from a government site. Whatever the case, having a goal of a Thing You Want To Build will focus you. Learning the book is the evil counterpart of teaching the test.

4) Find some mentors.

That’s journohacker Matt Waite. He put up with my newbie crap and taught me what a database is. Photo by Mindy McAdams, who also put up with my newbie crap and taught me CSS.

There may be a great coder in your newsroom who will take you under his or her wing. Maybe you work for a media company that has developers in other cities. Or maybe you can find a local meetup group for the language you are learning. The NICAR listserv is also a great resource. So is Twitter. Just make sure you’ve given your problem some effort before asking for a hand.

In my case, newsroom coders like Matt Waite, Jeff Johns and Derek Willis all either helped me out in person or by email. Matt a long time ago introduced me to the concept of rows and columns in a database. Jeff taught me a bit about using regular expressions. And Derek once inspected a database diagram for me. A lot of coders, especially journalists, will surprise you in their willingness to help a hard-working, well-meaning person learn.

5) Keep sharpening the saw

Maybe you’re a person like me who doesn’t have “build web apps” specifically in his job description. In some cases, your manager may even dissuade you because you need to be filing 1A stories or manning the home page.

My solution to that is to either have side projects or occasionally carve out time to build something useful, even if it only takes a few hours. If you don’t regularly use what you’ve learned, your skills will atrophy. Do yourself the service because this is where our industry is inexorably heading.

Happy hacking!