Sara J Chipps

My Fluentconf Talk and a GMail keyboard shortcut Extension

 

Fluentconf was great for quite a few reasons, the first being that I love SF, the second being that I had such an amazing time with the people there. It's rare that you get to be around so many people like yourself, and to break off with people you admire and get a concentrated amount of great mentorship is such a great recharger. Super happy for the experience.

I was sad about the fact that I learned from Rebecca Murphey the keynotes were for sale. That's a diservice to the community. Developers get sent to these conferences by their employers to learn more. If the things they are learning are expensive advertisements masked as organic learning opportunities we are swindling them. 

However, besides that, the conference organizers are awesome folks, and the conference in general was well done. Peter Cooper and Brady Forrest were lovely, and it was great to meet them in person. I was on the selection committee, and it was great being able to help choose the talks at the conference, super grateful for the experience. 

I did a talk about browser extensions in GMail. I used Thomas Fuchs' library for keyboard shortcuts keymaster, and I mapped them to some GMail shortcuts. I was able to make an extension that allowed me to email a group, sort my inbox, and highlight certain messages just by hitting a key. I hope you find it useful. https://github.com/SaraJo/SpaceXGMail, intructions on how to personalize it are in the README. Otherwise you can just keep my settings and become very close with my family and coworkers. 

After my talk, I spoke with a gentleman named @wshaver who wanted to make an extension to make Github code repos full screen. He did it! It's here: https://github.com/ws-emberex/GitHubWider, check it!

Also, for your pleasure, I made sure to optimize the slide/cat ratio in this deck.

 

Concept Camp 2010

    I have been waiting for this one event all year. Of all the conferences I have been to, this one last year was hands down my favorite. It was a weekend of software and s'mores, what more could a girl ask for? We hosted some amazing talks, we ate some great food, and we talked about the stuff we love. It rained all weekend, but that only made it more fun (you'll just have to take my word for it).

   I'm not going to sell it to you, there are 30 tickets being released, buy them while you can. 

   Without further ado, Concept Camp 2010. Pics from last year below:

  

  

Alright, Internet, give me your best

When I first started out as a freelancer it was very lonely. Steven and I spent many an hour staring at each other, and he never contributed anything of worth to our morning standups. Enter: New Work City, I had heard about coworking through some chatter on Twitter, I googled to find a space in the NYC area and found NWC.

I've been working out of NWC for a little more than a year an a half now. I have never fallen in love with a community like I have the one that works here. There are all types of people in different professions. We have developers (of course), but we also have startup crews, project managers, CEOs, and even a fitness DJ. One thing all these thing have in common is they are all extraordinary. Just walking in the room at NWC fills me with warmth and inspiration. It's such a privilege to be surrounded by people that want to do nothing less than make the world a better place.  

I've been actively involved in NWC's growth for the past year when I became a member of their board. We have been steadily expanding since I started. It became necessary for us to find a new location three months ago. As with everything else we do we turned it into something fun and exciting. We had a member scavenger hunt to find a new location. 

We found 412 Broadway, and we have some seriously ambitious plans for it. We are going to have classrooms (which we have already reserved for Girl Develop IT), we will have an event space for things like launch parties and different types of meetups, and we will have plenty of room for the spillover we are now getting from our packed house down the road. 

So, it's all hands on deck as our Mayor Tony Bacigalupo leads the charge to raise money. I want to do what I can, in getting us this amazing space, so I am laying my dignity on the line and giving it to you: Internet. A guy named Blake has made a web app called My Dunk Tank.  The idea is to allow folks to dare you to do things by donating money. The winning dare has to be done or the money is refunded.

I know you folks like me as much as I like you, so I'm not concerned that I will have to do anything embarrassing. I mean, you wouldn't do that to your favorite Girl Developer, would you? We go back so far!

Check out My Dunk Tank here, and remember, I'm a nice girl!

Girl Develop IT!

In the past few months I've been working with some amazing people about something I'm very passionate about.

Over the past few months I have been working with a rock star team: myself, Tony Bacigalupo and Ana Hevesi of New Work City, and Vanessa Hurst of Developers for Good. We all feel that there is a big need for low cost programming costs for women. We think it is important to create a place where ladies would be comfortable learning concepts, and tools, and mainly "how to code." As I have said before, I think the first step in closing this gender gap is to get women shipping software. So leaving them with something tangible was a priority as well. 

We are all proud to announce, along with our sponsor Girls in Tech: Girl, Develop IT!

What the Frig is up with the WAN party?

So, lately the WAN parties have been few and far between. Originally we were going every Wednesday and then we were at once a week, but random days, however the past two months have been spotty and non-existent. Frankly, I've been pretty busy, and I've found it hard to dedicate one night every week for the WAN Parties. I've been looking for someone who could host them when I'm not around (I still am if your interested), however, none have come forward. 

I'm a little torn, because I enjoy them so much, however my responsibilities are many. I'm involved in some pretty cool stuff right now that I will be sharing soon (Some folks already know about, such as theMVC Melee). I'm going to try to have them as often as possible, and you can find out when via twitter. If you do not follow me, shoot me a line and I will make sure to let you know when one is scheduled. 

Thanks to everyone who has been frequenting them. I really enjoy the opinions I hear and the things I have been learning from the group. I look forward to many WAN parties to come.  

Mix 2010

So, I was lucky enough to go to Mix this week and it was awesome. Vegas was beautiful, the casinos were great, and I got to hear some really cool talks. I was surprised, I expected things to be very designer focused but it wasn't. You have to think, though, how many Windows designers do you know? I don't know any. I think design degrees come with a Mac Book and some granola.  

Douglas Crawford of JSON fame made a special appearance. It was cool to see him speak and even cooler to be sitting in on the same sessions as he was. He had some interesting stuff to say about aging out browsers and Java Script the good/bad. 

There were some cool dynamic language talks, a great "ask the experts" dinner, and many other Java Script sessions I really enjoyed. They have all the videos online and I recommend the following:

Six Things Every JQuery Developer Should Know - Elijah Manor\

How JQuery Makes Hard Things Simple - John Resig

The Tale of Java Script, I mean ECMAScript - Douglas Crawford

The Mono Project - Miguel DeIcaza

Reactive Extentions for Java Script - Eric Meijer

ASP.NET Security - Hanselman and Haack

Check those out and there are dozens more I didn't see that I hope to check out. I leave you with this picture of me and some Microsoft/Mono folk at the awesome attendee party at LAX in the Luxor. 

Happy Developing!

Introducing the MVC Melee!!!

Hi, how are you? Been well? Awesome. I wanted to tell you about something I think is pretty cool, and that's the MVC Melee. The ever so clever/kick ass JP Toto and I thought it would be cool to put together a competition for y'all to do neat stuff with ASP.NET MVC. 

The basics are that contestants get together in teams of 1-4 folk (I suppose one person isn't really a team, is it?) and get 48 hours to build the coolest web app they can think of in ASP.NET MVC. The applications submitted are then voted on by the community and then winners are crowned in a few different categories. 

I'm hella excited about this and a bit jealous I can't participate. JP and I will be starting soon with building the supporting framework that will make the contest possible. 

Check out the site, tell your friends, and be excited. We will be hosting teams at New Work City and other co-working spaces around the country are welcome to join in. We plan on plowing through the weekend, so bring a sleeping back (if you plan on sleeping). 

Review of my MVP trip coming soon. See you at Mix! 

BLOGGING LIVE

That sounds so cool, doesn't it? This week I will be blogging daily from the MVP Summit in Redmond starting tomorrow. Hear it here first as I DONT tell you what I learn (as per NDA) but I DO tell you who I meet. 

I will also be taking lots of pictures, and trying not to feel like a weirdo about it. 

Stay tuned!!

Spoke at Girl Geek Dinner - World Still Intact

Despite my protests I was invited to speak at this past weekend's Girl Geek dinner. I can't tell you guys how great it was to be around a room full of nerd girls. I take back that we shouldn't have support groups, kind of. I still think we could use more time spent focused on accomplishing things. I would love to see more GTD from the ladies. I'm not against us getting together, however. Though it may be a little sexist and counter productive, the positives outweigh the negatives. 

Everyone there was so friendly, a girl even gave me her homeabde ring after I complimented it! It seems the whole thing was videotaped and should be going up on their site. 

Thanks to the ladies of GGD for inviting me, I look forward to attending another!

Here are some pictures from the GGD facebook page:

PDC and Python (in that order)

 I just want to preface this post by telling you that I am writing it from the eliptical machine. I had this brilliant idea earlier this evening and it may be the best one I ever had save http://bundl.it. 

 

Things on this end are buzzing aw usual. I am getting ready for PDC next week. Very excited to meet some very cool people and learn about what's coming up in the world of .NET. There are a lot of sessions I am looking forward to, particularly some of the MEF and Azure stuff. Excited about SQL Server support in the cloud, it's the one thing that's been standing between me and the upper hemispheric web apps.

 

I have been dabbling in Python for a little bit now and the contrast to C# is facinating. The thing that gets me the most is that while C# will throw an exception at the first sign of a sin against typing, Python will try its darndest to make things work. I both love and loathe this. Python as a language is intuitive, I have found often when I'm unsure about syntax I think, "well, it would make sense if it were this" and then when I go check that's exactly what it is. 

 

I plan on writing about setting up your local Python environment on a Windows machine later in the week, as it is not as easy as it would seem. Now, is the .NET world losing me to the dark side? No, I see the need for both languages and I'm just adding some more tools to my developer's tool box. 

 

There are some exciting events coming to the NY/NJ area in the following months, as well as one rocking nationwide one that I can't wait to tell you all about. Stay tuned, and if your curiousity is killing you shoot me an email or an IM, I'll get you in the know. 

 

My desk: