OSCON

This week I attended my second OSCON event, and as usual it was quite inspiring! Of the presentations there where two in the development/sys admin area that I particularly enjoyed. The first was on developing web apps for mobile devices with JQuery, JQtouch, and Phone Gap.

Over the past few years I have been toying with a project that involves a clipboard sync web service. Now I have some cool tools to roll out web and native apps quickly for the iPhone and Android devices quickly. (I do mean quickly) I just need to land on the best framework for my client apps... I am leaning toward Python still. I already have some code that I have been tinkering with for the client side but I ran into several snags on the OSX platform when dealing with the putScrap method (pout).

Anyhow, the second event I attended was the a session on using puppet to manage our IT infrastructure. The nice thing is, I convinced my boss to go to it also... I guess since I kept on ranting about this mystical "puppet" thingy he thought it might be interesting or something ;) I don't think I'll be the butt of any more Pinocchio or puppeteer jokes p;

In the ideological realm, the presentation by Rolf Skyberg(eBay) "Doctor There's a Problem With My Innovation" on the innovation cycle hit really close to home! It seems at work we now have an innovation portal. Oh no! That was one of the most obvious signs of an innovation crisis, one that will likely end in disaster unless action is taken to correct it. Good thing I'm just an intern for now.

When it comes time to release my clip sync app, I will probably find todays talk about promoting my project on a shoe string budget quite helpful. I thought the tips where quite helpful...

As a funny side note; during the closing keynote today, I was telling a co-worker how helpful I thought the sessions information was and that the presenter did a really good job... and was startled when he(the presenter) suddenly turned around and was like "thanks man I'm glad you liked it." Boy am I'm glad I was praising it! That could have been really embarrassing for both of us.