design &#8211; Jupiter Broadcasting

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Thin Design or Branded

Is it best to just follow the OS design principles or go your own way?
Material or not Material?
What are the disadvantages of Material Design?

A photo posted by Chris Fisher (@tophfisher) on Oct 26, 2015 at 12:24pm PDT

Wear Are You Wear?

Struggling with viability of Android Wear in the wider market
vs the dev resources required to make it happen

Tip Of The Week

Pro Tip: Android BuildConfig

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The post Material Matters | CR 176 first appeared on Jupiter Broadcasting.

Keyboardio | WTR 44

chris — Wed, 14 Oct 2015 08:03:39 +0000

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Kaia is the CEO cofounder of keyboardio – premium ergonomic keyboard using open source and open hardware!

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ANGELA: PAIGE: ANGELA: PAIGE: ANGELA: PAIGE: KAIA: PAIGE: KAIA: ANGELA: KAIA: ANGELA: PAIGE: ANGELA: KAIA: ANGELA: KAIA: ANGELA: PAIGE: ANGELA: PAIGE: ANGELA: PAIGE: ANGELA: KAIA: PAIGE: ANGELA: PAIGE: KAIA: PAIGE: KAIA: PAIGE: KAIA: PAIGE: KAIA: PAIGE: KAIA: PAIGE: KAIA: PAIGE: KAIA: PAIGE: KAIA: ANGELA: KAIA: PAIGE: KAIA: PAIGE: KAIA: PAIGE: KAIA: PAIGE: KAIA: PAIGE: KAIA: ANGELA: PAIGE: ANGELA: PAIGE: KAIA: ANGELA: PAIGE: This is Women’s Tech Radio.
A show on the Jupiter Broadcasting Network, interviewing interesting women in technology. Exploring their roles and how they’re successful in technology careers. I’m Paige.
And I’m Angela.
So, Angela, today we’re interviewing Kaia, she is from Keyboardio, which is a badass software company that is trying to reinvent the way that we use keyboards, and we talked to her about the Kickstarter process, the open hardware process, the open software process, and how she got involved in all that, so it’s a really fascinating interview.
And before we get into that, I just want to mention that you can support Women’s Tech Radio and the Jupiter Broadcasting Network by going to Patreon.com/today. That is a general bucket of Jupiter Broadcasting support. We have a bunch of other shows, but specifically if you go there and you donate, it is also contributing to Women’s Tech Radio.
And we get started by asking Kaia what she’s up to in tech today.
I am Kaia Dekker and I’m currently the co-founder and CEO of a company called Keyboardio. We make premium ergonomic keyboards that are also open hardware, so they’re super hackable. We give you the firmware source, we give you schematics for the electronics, and still are selling it fully assembled as a finished product, but at the same time, it’s also open hardware. So if you want to open it up and hack it, you can.
So, an open hardware keyboard. How did you get there?
My co-founder who is also my husband had really bad wrists and cubital tunnel, like a repetitive stress injury from typing too much. He professionally had been a programmer for most of his life, and had tried out something like 20 or 30 different ergonomic keyboards, and none of them were really working for him. So he started out as sort of a hobby project trying to build his own that would be tailored specifically to him and have a working keyboard that wouldn’t make his wrists hurt too much. And he started sort of spending more time on this and I was just getting out of business school and was trying to kind of what I wanted to do next. I knew I didn’t want to go back to the companies that I had worked at before, but hey, we may be able to spin this into a business! And keyboards in particular were really interesting to me, mostly from a blank slate design perspective where it’s this thing that most of us are using for eight hours plus almost every day that we literally have our hands on every day. It’s a very intimate, long lasting relationship with an object, but it’s not something that had seen a lot of design or really thought put into the design. Innovation, the basic keyboard design, it’s based on what a typewriter looked like in the nineteenth century which was based on how you could build something in the nineteenth century. The technology has come a lot farther, the understanding of what makes for good design has come a lot farther, and there is no reason not to make something that would be better. So I was really attracted to the idea of being able to rethink this tool that we use all the time and what would it be like if you were to start over a little bit. We ended up with something, it’s a little weird, a little different. So the materials are different. We have an enclosure made out of wood as opposed to plastic or aluminum. The shape is really different. It’s based around originally research on different hand shapes and what keys people can reach easily, and iterated probably two dozen times before we ended up where we are today. It’s fully programmable, so it’s trying to be a little bit smarter as a piece of hardware as opposed to just sort of a dumb input device.
Right, and specifically one of the first things I pick up when I see your keyboard is that it’s the left and the right hand are separated. They’re broken in the middle if that makes sense. And we’ve seen Microsoft put out a keyboard like that, but what they did was they took a standard keyboard and just broke it in half essentially and moved it at an angle, whereas yours, the actual keys are placed differently with more focus on thumb work than any other keyboard that I’ve seen.
Yeah, so we’ve put the keys in columns because that’s the way, if you look at your hands and sort of bend your fingers, they move in a column. They don’t move in a sort of strange diagonal method, the staggered layout of a traditional keyboard. And we’ve actually somewhat subtly arched them to follow the actual arch that your fingers make. It takes a bit of retraining to follow an ergonomic layout, but once you do, it just feels a lot more natural, which makes sense. It’s building something designed around how your hands work as opposed to just following the sort of cargo culting the same thing that we’ve done for a very long time.
Now, I have a question. It is reprogrammable, but when I was taking typing classes back in seventh and eighth grade, I learned some history about keyboards, and that is that they used to be in alphabetical order, and this may or may not be accurate.
It’s accurate.
Okay. And that it was scrambled onto the keyboard because people were too fast. They learned it, they knew the prediction of where the letters would be based on the alphabet was too fast, so they scrambled them up to slow people down because the technology couldn’t keep up. Well, I think technology can keep up now, and I am wondering have you, well, because it’s reprogrammable, I think anybody can change how the letters are, but have you done any specific keyboards with it in alphabetical order instead of scrambled?
Yeah, so there are a lot of stories. It’s actually really fascinating the history of why people stuck with QWERTY when it isn’t a particularly good design. I still type QWERTY because I’ve been typing it for decades, and for me, learning a new layout wasn’t going to be enough faster, enough more efficient. For me the limiting factor isn’t usually how fast I can type, it’s how fast my brain goes. And so, until I learn how to think faster, I’m not going to worry too much about optimizing for speed. Definitely, some of the people we’ve had beta testing are people who used vorac or other alternative key layouts. There’s actually a very fascinating group of people who have a community online where they will basically track all of their key presses and then feed it into a program to figure out their own personal custom layout that minimizes finger movement. So you can have your own thing that’s completely different from anyone else’s. Otherwise, QWERTY is pretty standard. Vorac is pretty common, and then there is something sort of similar to vorac but based on a more recent and bigger purpose of data to figure out where to put the keys called culmac and that’s actually built into Mac OS and other things as well, so it’s pretty popular. Not as popular as vorac, and of course, not nearly as popular as qwerty, but those three plus one other alternative are built into the firmware by default, and then if you want to change what any particular key does, you are able to do that as well.
Now, if I go to keyboard.ao, there is a lot of information on here, and it shows the keyboard, but I’m wondering, what I don’t see is, and/or, are you planning to put out a ten key?
We’ve thought about it. Right now we are just about to ink a contract for manufacturing our first product, the model one, which is what’s called a 60 percent keyboard. It doesn’t have a separate tenkey pad, and I think once we’ve got that produced, or a little further down the line, we’re going to really kind of look at the product road map and figure out what comes next. Right now we’re a small company and we don’t quite have the resources.
Honestly, if the keyboard were better and more functional, easier to reach the numbers, maybe ten key, maybe it would eliminate that need which I think is what Paige was kind of snobbily implying with her–you didn’t even comment, but you said you and your tenkeys or whatever.
I have a lot of friends that I’ve gotten into this argument, because I have friends who won’t buy laptops that don’t have tenkeys.
Well, you could always get a USB tenkey.
How often do you actually use a ten key?
That’s the thing, if your work is in numbers, it is very handy.
If you’re an accountant or something.
Well, even some things I do, I would really prefer a ten key, so I was just curious.
We do have a numlock mode that turns kind of the right hand side into basically a ten key, which is definitely, I’m the one that gets stuck doing all of the accounting, and I switched to that for doing that. It’s easier.
That actually makes even more sense than a separate tenkey.
Yes, it does, you’re right.
So, you’ve been kind of on this journey. What was it like to go from kind of a business background kind of into this crazy tech world? You dove in deep. This is hardware, software, open source on both side, it’s a pretty complex crazy project.
Yeah, I’ve never been one for just sticking my toe in. I’m kind of a jump all the way in kind of girl. I’d always been interested in tech. I went to a technology magnet focused high school and then I went to MIT which has a very strong engineering culture and a lot of people building things for fun on the weekends and in the evenings, and I’ve always followed that and been interested in that. I ended up sort of in business almost somewhat accidentally. I had been a physics major and undergrad and thought that I’d been sort of pushed that way by teachers and so on, and I thought okay, this is what I’ll do as a career. And then I sort of realized junior year that I didn’t have, one the type of mind that works really well doing physics research, and two, I didn’t really have the temperament to live an academic type of life. You need to be a type of person who can work by themselves and be very driven and work in a very hardworking, but in many ways, a very slow paced environment. That just wasn’t, I realized by that time, that wasn’t the kind of environment where I did my best work or where I was happiest. I preferred working with other people, like things that are much more fast paced, even if you’re working on something that’s not as fundamental as understanding new things about the universe, I’m just happier when I’m working on fast paced things with a lot of different people to bounce ideas off of and to learn from. So I kind of pivoted I guess into doing then technology investment banking which has paid very well, but I sort of left as soon as I got my first bonus check, and I did managing consulting for a while, and then software marketing, then ended up doing this. It’s interesting. There is definitely things that you get used to when you’re working for large companies or on behalf of very large companies that just don’t apply in the startup world where you have to learn to get by with a lot fewer resources when you’re a startup, and there’s no one a lot of times where you can go out and find the person in such and such department who knows about something because you are the such and such department.
You’re every department.
Yeah, but it’s been great. We relocated to the San Francisco Bay Area which has been amazing just in terms of there is a community of hardware startups out here, and anything from you need to borrow a part last minute or getting someone to take a second look at your boards and trying to figure out why they’re not working or getting advice on how to choose a manufacturer, whether or not paying for a sourcing agent is worth it. Anything from the business end to a big architectural type decisions to just day to day prototyping help, like it’s been so amazing to be around so many really talented, really interesting people working on hardware. It’s really been amazing.
That’s really neat that the community would still play such a role. You would think hardware is so much more of a, I don’t know, a set thing, that there’s more like set ways to do it, but I think it’s just as mutable as software.
It’s much more so now than it was 20 years ago or even five or ten years ago and I think it’s still shaking out a little bit. Historically, at least, hardware was something that took huge investment and had very low returns and was something that you could only do if you were a big company or had a lot of money. The prototyping phase of things has gotten so much easier with it being very accessible to have rapid prototyping technologies like 3D printing or laser cutters and CNC mills and so on being much more accessible due to things like tech shop or Hackerspaces where they have these machines available and let people from the community access them, to things like Arduino or teensy or other microcontrollers or environments where the first embedded programming is done for you, so you don’t really have to start from scratch, you can hook together things and do a quick prototype without having to put in quite as much of an investment as you used to. And things like Digikey or Adafruit where being able to access, I need ten of a part is very easy and affordable now, and you don’t have to buy an entire real component to get it, you can find pretty much any component you want and order it in pretty much any quantity that you want. So the prototyping phase is a lot easier.
Yeah, it’s like we’re finally catching up with hardware where we’ve been with software for a long time. Like we’re building these hardware frameworks almost that kind of piece together in a way that makes things fast, easy, and accessible. I’ve seen so many things around Portland or other places where it’s like hey, come over and work on Arduino’s for the day, and just seeing like little kids up to big adults playing with hardware for the first time is really fascinating.
Yeah, it’s amazing. That’s one of the reasons we wanted to make our product open source was that getting people, like the moment, whenever you have a programming language that you’re learning and you get Hello World to work, and when it’s like your first time programming anything, it’s a really magical feeling that like I got the computer to do this thing, and when you do it in hardware, when you get a light pattern to flash up or do things like that, it’s even more magical. It’s a tangible piece of the world that you are controlling through the code that you’re writing and it’s a really, really awesome feeling.
Yeah, I totally agree. This winter I played with my Raspberry Pie and some relays for the first time and made some lights light up and it was like as inspiring as Hello World is. This was even more like woah!
Yeah, and I think the question for hardware is like the prototyping phase, we’re finally catching up, and it’s getting from your first working prototype into production which is obviously not something that every project wants, but if you’re trying to build a company and build products, you do eventually have to make the change away from 3D printing and hooking things together with cables and Arduino and so on. You have to make a fundamental shift in the technologies you’re using to move to even small scale mass production, and that’s something where there is a bunch of different people trying to figure out how to make it easier and make it better. But it’s still just very complicated that there is, not only do you have all of these systems where the changes you make to your electrical layout are going to make your actual physical hardware layout change, and that involves, you might need to get mechanical engineering skill and electrical engineering skill and industrial design type of skill all involved just to make what seems like it should be a really small change, which I mean, that’s a hard problem. And then figuring out what does that do when you take it into production, how does that change things, and very small changes can make very big changes and very big costs down the line.
Your margin for error is very small.
Yeah, and it’s something from software where I think people have gotten so used to Agile or other sort of sprints to make quick changes in small increments and keep building on that, and it’s not something that transfers over to hardware necessarily as well, which is frustrating to someone who likes being able to fool around and try different things and realizing that there is much more kind of top down planning you have to do is not necessarily how people have trained to do it.
Yeah, you have to give a pivot for polish.
Yeah that’s a great way of putting it.
So, in that vein, you guys ran an amazingly successful Kickstarter, originally reaching for $120,000.00 goal, you hit $650. What was that like to go through? What are some of the challenges you’ve had afterwards or during? Can you talk to us a little bit about that?
Sure. It was an amazing experience in Kickstarter. Especially as the person who ends up being in charge of the business stuff, there is always the primary question in my mind, and before we did the Kickstarter was like I think there is a market for this. We’ve got a bunch of people on our mailing list, people seem to think it’s really interesting, but does anyone actually want this? You don’t really trust that people will want a product until they put in their credit card number. So that was great and sort of took this thing that I’ve been worrying about for months and sort of just eliminated it really quickly. It’s like yeah, there are a lot of people who kind of get what we’re trying to do and see why we’re trying to do it that way. And yeah, the whole Kickstarter experience was really cool. We did a cross country road trip from Boston where we used to live to San Francisco and stopped at Makerspaces just about every day and did little meet ups talking about here is how you could build your own keyboard with the materials and tools that are in this Makerspace, and letting people put their hands on our product. It’s a somewhat weird and different product, and so being able to put your hands on it, actually see it, actually try it out is the time when a lot of people sort of get it for the first time, and it was also kind of a great way, like Kickstarter, or any crowdfunding is a lot of work where you have people writing you every day and you have to manage are you doing ads, and there is all this stuff you have to kind of manage and being able to have something that we were doing every day that took the focus away from–its hyper focused on this campaign, and let us look and see what people were doing at different Makerspaces was really cool. We were lucky that it was sort of something that was on grand for us that we are open hardware, we did come out of kind of a hobby maker type of place, but honestly, it’s always so cool to see like what people are making and what people are doing and talk to people who do cool things and put cool things together.
How big is your team? Is it just you and your husband and some 1099?
Yeah, we’ve floated up and down. We don’t have quite enough work in any one discipline to have another full time person coming on, but we have had in the past full time contractors from–currently we have a friend of mine who is working on EE, and she is, I don’t know, it will be a couple of weeks contract probably. We’re pretty close to being done with the electrical, and we’ve had people helping out with industrial design and mechanical as well at different points in the past, so I think peak size would be like five people and sometimes it’s just the two of us.
This is fascinating, a very cool story. I don’t know, I was wondering, so you said there is kind of embedded software for this. Do you guys actually run an embedded processor in the keyboard? Like is there something it’s actually running on like Arduino, Lennox, or whatever?
The chip is an Apple chip. It’s an 18 mega 30T4, which is the same thing that’s in an Arduino Leonardo, so it’s not technically an Arduino because we’re not buying a board from Arduino, but we’re what we call Arduino at heart where essentially what we’ve done is take the Arduino and squish it onto our own board and made a couple of little changes, but it’s compatible with the Arduino developer environment. So right now I can just pull up the Arduino ID, use it to make changes to the firmware and use that to flash the keyboard which is cool. When we were trying to decide which architecture to use, we had actually originally been using something else and ended up switching over to this branch of Arduino because you just, you’re going to have to have some kind of processor anyway, like why not pick one that has this huge ecosystem of other people writing code and making devices that are compatible with it.
That makes total sense. Making that approachable is huge. So just one final question for you before we get out of here. Oh, I have two actually. First, I would love to know what you work in day to day for tools. I love to know other people’s stacks like what kind of tools are you using. You mentioned the Arduino IDE. Is there anything else that kind of keeps you going day to day? Especially I’m always interested in the business stack because I don’t touch that most of the time.
We do sort of a mix of ad hoc tools and otherwise available tools. I would say the most important tool that we use is slack, which I’m sure you hear a lot is great for communication both within our team, with investors and contractors.
I think that might have actually been one of the first–you might be the first person to bring slack up on the show.
Okay. It’s a great tool. I’m happy to evangelize about it. it’s a team communication tool, and it’s an example of really good design where it sort of sets the norms for communication being friendly and kind of fun, but also very easy to–it’s designed by the team that had made flikr back in the day, or a lot of the same team anyway, and it’s really software sort of made with love.
It’s a fantastic tool. I’m in slack every day, and I agree. I think it’s interesting because in my mind, like as a super old nerd, it’s like IRC with user friendliness. But super useful.
We use hackpad for a lot of other things that don’t quite fit into slack in terms of communication, so daily to do lists, we’ve tried out probably most of the tools that are out there like Trello and so on for keeping track of thing and product management type tools, and every time we sort of just end up reverting back to Excel or Google Sheets in terms of they don’t add enough–the complexity that they add doesn’t add enough value to be worth it. And then some of the more mundane things like for payroll and accounting and stuff, I use Zero and Zenpayroll and all these SAS providers which are great and definitely much easier to use than some of the things that I had been using even a couple of years ago.
That’s a neat stack. I like that–slack is very cool. I definitely encourage people to check that out. I actually just signed up for the, there is a, I’m pretty sure it’s just Women in Tech Slack. It’s an invite only, but you can apply for an invitation and then you get invited and the community has been really great so far. They are very friendly and there is a lot of resource sharing and just general helping each other out which has been really cool. And my last question, before we ramble on any more is, looking at the future of kind of what’s happening in technology–be it hardware or software–what gets you the most excited?
I think the thing that excites me the most is the fact that there are companies out there that are taking things that we already have technologies for and really applying a lot of thought and design to them. I mean, slack is an example of that where Hipchat had been around there for a long time, IRC has been around for decades, but they aren’t adding a lot of new functionality, they’re just taking a user experience that hadn’t been very good and transforming it into something that’s awesome.
Sounds like Apple.
A lot of people make that argument for things like Airbnb. Really originally it was Craig’s List, but ten percent better.
And focused.
And focused, yeah, and Uber. Uber is just a cab service.
Yeah, and that’s a trend, as a user I completely appreciate and it’s starting to come into more enterprise tools as well. We just put in a preorder for a Glowforge which is a laser cutter which is something that is a great tool to have, but traditionally it costs $10,000.00 and you’ve ended up spending about a third to a half of your time with it trying to fix problems with different issues with it, and they’re coming out with a laser cutter at a lower price point that is also supported by software that takes away a lot of the pain points of using this tool. This is something that is a prototyping tool, it’s not used by consumers for the most part, but they’re still taking that philosophy and applying it to that. I think people’s expectations in terms of design have come up a lot, and that’s an amazing thing.
Thank you for listening to this episode of Women’s Tech Radio. Remember you can go to JupiterBroadcasting.com for the show notes as well as a full transcription, and you can find us on Twitter @heywtr.
We’d love to hear what you think about the show. If you’d like to tell us, you can use the contact form on the website or email us at wtr@jupiterbroadcasting.com. You can also follow us on Twitter @heywtr. Thanks for listening.

Transcribed by Carrie Cotter | Transcription@cotterville.net

The post Keyboardio | WTR 44 first appeared on Jupiter Broadcasting.

Technology For Connection | WTR 43

chris — Wed, 07 Oct 2015 02:43:04 +0000

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Jaime is the founder of Neologic, digital destinations so far include cornbreadapp and Poetry for Robots. Two completely inspirational concepts created in their lab!

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ANGELA: This is Women’s Tech Radio.
PAIGE: A show on the Jupiter Broadcasting Network, interviewing interesting women in technology. Exploring their roles and how they’re successful in technology careers. I’m Paige.
ANGELA: And I’m Angela.
PAIGE: So, Angela, today we’re going to interview Jaime, and she is–
ANGELA: Amazing.
PAIGE: Super amazing. She runs a digital advertising agency, and they have done lab work and they’re kind of producing these interesting futurist apps and we go down that awesome rabbit hole, and it’s a great interview.
ANGELA: And before we get into that, I just want to mention that you can support Women’s Tech Radio and the Jupiter Broadcasting Network by going to Patreon.com/today. There is no minimum donation, but if you want to donate like $3.00 a month, it’s available. If you want to donate more, that’s great too. But Women’s Tech Radio is funded that way, so go to Patreon.com/today.
PAIGE: We rely on you, the listeners, to make sure these awesome shows keep coming out. So check it out. And we get started today by asking Jaime to tell us a bit about her agency and what she’s up to.
JAIME: So, I run a company, it’s called Neologic, and we do digital marketing for all sorts of companies, but we also have a lab which is pretty common these days, but we’re an extremely small team, so for us, it’s challenging in the right way to keep the lab open. But in the lab, we’ve developed in-house app and also a website theory. I don’t really know how to describe it in two words. But yeah, we’re doing that in the lab and it’s been really exciting. We’re just hitting our year mark of being in business.
PAIGE: Awesome. Congratulations. So what is extremely small?
JAIME: Five employees, and then we stretch into contractors, but that’s the core.
PAIGE: Okay. That is extremely small. Do you participate in the lab with 20 percent time? Or do you have dedicated employees that are just lab employees?
JAIME: We’re not big enough to have fully dedicated people in the lab, but I would say the partners, we spend a lot of time doing labs projects. There is a lot of interesting marketing runoff that comes out of those projects too, so we kind of invest our time there. And then our team, I would say spends probably, yeah, about like ten to 20 percent of their un-billable time on labs work. And I’d like to increase it, obviously, but we need a few more people before we can do that.
PAIGE: So, for people who aren’t necessarily in the lingo, what does lab mean to you?
JAIME: So, a lab to us is where we, if you use like the scientific analogy, it’s where we really mix up our chemicals and try to figure out what’s going to explode without doing that at a client’s expense. We’re in digital, we’re trying to be innovative. There is much to learn, but also for a small company, research and development I feel like is critical to growing and to making sure that you fill the market gap appropriately and that you flex when you need to. So it’s really our research and development time. It’s also our team building time. So if we’re all a bunch of people who are going to go home and drink Mountain Dew and try to build apps in our own time, why not just build time into the work day when we’re not trying to juggle family and kids and schedules, why don’t we just build that time in because we all love spending time together and we love working on creative projects. And so that’s what we’re trying to do. And I’m really proud of the work that we’ve done in a short time in the lab. So the app that we released, it took us about four months to design and develop it, and then we did a soft launch and then we just did a bigger launch. We already have about 400 people using that app, and that’s pretty cool for something that was really a short term project.
PAIGE: You’re talking about Cornbread?
JAIME: We’re talking about Cornbread.
PAIGE: What is Cornbread?
JAIME: So, Cornbread is a geocaching, for lack of a better term, it uses geocaching technology, and we think of it as an art based app. So, it’s location based and social, but you don’t have to be friends with certain people to see what they’ve left behind. So imagine you have a friend who went to Rome, and they have this app with them and they’re walking through Rome and they’re leaving you messages like they would if they were very romantic and they were leaving you a sticky note at the Pantheon and they told you you have to look around the side of this corner and I stuck it on this piece of brick, and go see if it’s still there. So they’re doing that, but digitally. So they’re leaving you messages on a map. You go to Rome, they’ve tagged you so you know that they’re there. You can see them on the map, but the actual art asset won’t pop up on your phone unless you’re in that location exactly on the map.
PAIGE: Wow. So within what kind of distance?
JAIME: Right now it’s about 100. We’re trying to integrate Beacon technology so that we can hone that in a little closer. But right now it’s about 100 feet.
PAIGE: My gosh, that’s so cool. You know what I’m thinking? I’m thinking that the road trip would have been a great place for viewers-
ANGELA: To Cornbread. That’s awesome.
JAIME: That’s exactly right, and so it’s been, name, people are like what? That’s a weird name. But the name is in homage to the original tagger. So there was this guy in the 60s, he was tagging his name all over the city in Philadelphia, which I happen to be from there.
PAIGE: Like spray paint tagging?
JAIME: Spray paint. He was like the original I’m going to tag my name on something, and why don’t I go to Philadelphia Zoo and tag my name on an elephant? So he was that guy. And so it’s kind of for people who followed graffiti at all or graffiti art, they know him and so they get it. Like we did our soft launch in New York and everyone knew the background. On the west coast it’s a little more underground. Not as prevalent. Not that the app is graffiti, but in a way, you’re leaving his piece of art on a wall potentially and anyone can find it. There’s no closure, only my friend or a friend of a friend can see this. It’s like I’m just leaving this here and if someone opens it and I see it on my phone that someone opened my little memento that I left in a part somewhere in Austria, which I just did that this summer. If someone opens that, I am going to be so excited! Like I don’t need to get a million likes, I just need one person to open that little thing that I left behind. And you can leave audio and video.
PAIGE: And multiple people can open it, right?
JAIME: Anyone can open it, yep.
PAIGE: But the person that originally left that digital art, they are notified? And not only notified that it was viewed, but also then could gain likes?
JAIME: Yes.
PAIGE: Wow. That’s really cool and comments, right?
JAIME: And comments, yep.
PAIGE: So it’s like a Facebook for travelers sort of–geo-based Instagram? It’s visual, right?
JAIME: It is visual.
PAIGE: We could argue about that one.
JAIME: You can’t lay in bed and look at people’s pictures. You can’t spy on people. It forces you to connect again-
PAIGE: And get out of the house!
JAIME: You have to get out of the house. If you leave crumbs in your house, trust me, I’ve done it because I’ve tested this app a lot, they’re really boring. And then you realize when you live in an urban area and people walk 100 feet from your house and they can see your crumbs, you’re like ah! Delete, delete, my crumbs need to be cool! So it forces you to really get out there and think about what you’re seeing and document it in a way that means something to you. It’s not caption-y. There’s no caption, hashtag, at symbol, there’s none of that long form text. You can just leave-
PAIGE: Is it not even allowed? Like you cannot use a hashtag?
JAIME: There’s a text box. Let’s just say it’s frowned upon. The whole goal is to leave sort of a whole list of assets. You don’t just have a photo, you click on the photo and you get to see the long poem that someone left with that photo and you get to hear the ambient sound when they took that photo. So it just enriches the moment that you’re standing in that space where that person was. And the best part is going to be in 20, 30 years when you’re like oh my God! Okay, maybe if this existed 100 years ago let’s say, there could be so many people that were like whoa, I just found Einstein’s crumb! This is amazing! He was sitting at this table writing out his algorithm on a napkin!
ANGELA: So let’s think about the future then. There is going to be a point where like, okay, everybody goes to the Eiffel Tower. Like a lot of people go there, and there’s going to be so many crumbs. Like how do you even differ? I’d be curious what the interface looks like. Is it just a list of all the different crumbs in the area? And do you have to like click on them kind of like an email? Is it like an inbox?
JAIME: So, what happens is you get a notification that says there are crumbs here, and then what it is is it’s just a scrolling box. So you just scroll through all the crumbs that are there and then when there is one that looks interesting, you tap on it and it expands to the whole crumb.
ANGELA: And how do you know if it’s interesting? Is that text based or visual?
JAIME: Visual typically. Or if you’re just like oh, this one got a million likes, what’s this one all about? But on the map, it is a problem that we’re going to have to solve, and I’m excited for that problem. But we call it crumb clutter, because on the map–we did a soft launch in New York. We just did another launch in Chicago, and once you’re in an urban area, crumbs start to crop up on the map and then there are so many you have to zoom in a lot to sort of specifically see where they are. If you just look at Chicago on the map, it’s just full of crumbs. You can’t see the word Chicago anymore. So it’s a good problem to have and a problem that’s definitely on the back burner of like new features to dive into, but we’re waiting for the problem to get a little bigger before we try to solve it.
ANGELA: Can you make private crumbs at all?
JAIME: You will be able to, also a version two. Our dreamy version is that you leave a love note for your person, and you go to a bridge and it’s 5:00 and you’re watching this amazing sunset, and you tell them that they have to come to the bridge during a sunset, so certain time of the day, certain kind of weather, only come with an umbrella when there is a light drizzle, and the app will be able to pull in the API from the weather app and pull from all these various things so that it knows that nope, sorry, you didn’t hit the requirement.
ANGELA: Right, but if you do, it unlocks the crumb?
JAIME: Yes.
ANGELA: Yeah, I could see proposals happening this way.
JAIME: Yes, it’s very romantic. I feel like it’s a very romantic app, and I met some people recently and they were talking about wow, it’s like you’re leaving ghosts. Like you walk into a place and you wonder like are there ghosts in this room? Are there crumbs in here that I could see and start to see this kind of alternate universe that’s happening in this space?
ANGELA: This is a whole new level of like– it reminds me of QR codes.
PAIGE: I feel like this is some of the bridge that we’re getting to with the fact that AR is right on the horizon. Imagine when people are walking around with the glasses and there’s a crumb and the crumb is actually an overlay on your world.
ANGELA: Wow, my mind is blown.
JAIME: Isn’t it fun? That’s why we want to have labs, because that’s stuff that we want to work on. That’s the stuff that blows our minds that we like to dream up and fantasize about and then just see if we can do it. and the story behind Cornbread that I just love, and it’s just so fun to me, like right around the time when we launched our business, so the developer and my other partner took a walk and they were standing by the skate park under the Burnside Bridge, and my partner Corey Pressman said, “You know, these guys are taking videos of themselves, but what happens to those videos? Like where are they? And if another skater comes here in an hour, what if he wants to see what that other guy just did and he can’t because it lives somewhere in that guy’s private phone, Cloud, private YouTube site or whatever-“
ANGELA: I have goosebumps. Goosebumps.
JAIME: Wouldn’t it just be cool if he could drop a video of himself here, and then someone else can come back and see it and be inspired by that and then they leave a bunch? And literally they came back, I was like let’s go get lunch, they came back, they’re like Jaime, we’ve got this idea! I’m like what? And I was like this is amazing! This is going to be amazing!
ANGELA: You could even then, there’s a whole other market there where you can pile the videos into short clips so that people could see like here’s our park, all the different people that have–you run into a TNCs is going to have to be pretty expansive to cover publicly releasing those videos. But wow.
JAIME: Yeah, super fun. And you know, at the end of the day, I’m kind of like the penny pincher project manager person in our business, and so I allocated a certain amount of hours and a certain amount of funds. We raised a little bit of seed money which was really exciting, and I was like you know, let’s just take it as far as we want to take it. Let’s just live with it in the state that it’s in. We don’t have to raise like $5 million. Let’s just let people use it. it’s free, people have all these ideas, and we get people coming up to us all the time with use case scenarios, and we’re like that is amazing! Do it. Like there’s nothing to stop you. Use it. Like go use it and see if it’s going to be great. We’re not in this like oh, we’re trying to be the next Mark Zuckerberg. We run an agency and we love running an agency and we love working with our clients and we love working together. We have an amazing team, and so we’re good. I’m like, you know what? This is such an amazing project to work on as a team. Whatever comes of it, it was a positive experience. So great. You know, like it’s so nice to not have the pressure of like this is the only thing we’re working on. Like we have a revenue stream for the business, so we don’t have to put all our time and effort and like blow out our 401Ks and put all or dice on this one project. It’s like that’s just one project. We might come up with another one that’s even better.
ANGELA: And you have, right? Not necessarily better, but you have another project called Poetry for Robots.
JAIME: That’s right.
ANGELA: And now that I read the, just the two questions that you have on the main page, it totally makes sense and it’s genius! So it says, “What if we used poetry and metaphor as metadata? Would a search for eyes return images of stars?”
JAIME: Yeah, so this is why it’s like a website theory.
ANGELA: Yeah, it absolutely it’s Poetry for Robots. It’s beating the inhuman aspect of technology in a sense. Writing poetry for technology to get it closer to-yeah, wow.
JAIME: Yeah, it’s fun. It’s trying to say rather than having all these interns at Getty Images putting these random tags on photos that are not–that have no metaphor, that have no poetry, they’re just like oh, tree, done. Tree.png, treewithsun.png. And so what we’re trying to experiment with is if we added more metaphor to the way we tagged things, can we train the robot, can we train the AI to give us a response that it’s not that we’re training them to be more human, we’re just training them to do what we do instead of trying to accommodate like some data push, okay, great, we have X number of hours to get these number of assets compiled and into this database, so we have to do it really fast. Like wait, just slow down for a minute. Like let’s think about the tags that we’re using because people could have more, and this is an interesting just overall search question, but people could potentially find what they’re looking for better because they’re searching for the terms rather than trying to conform the terms that they would search for if that makes any sense.
ANGELA: And for something that’s not so obvious as eyes, something like freedom. How do you find a picture of freedom? That would definitely work for something like that.
JAIME: Yeah, so we’ve collected over almost 2000 poems, and they are from all over the world. It’s amazing. Like we have used a lot of Google Translate to get through some Portuguese and German and Spanish and French. It’s amazing. I love that part, number one because again, it’s this kind of like romantic, it’s a bridging of romance and technology and I guess I’m just a hopeless romantic. So we have all these poems, and so we built this back end. It’s very simple. The technology behind this is very simple, but we built kind of just a janky search tool to see what would start coming up if we searched the poems. So if you go to the search, I’m not sure if I’m ready to make it public, but I could send it to you guys if you just want to play with it, but if you go into the search engine and you search for sorrow, you see all of the pictures that come up that use that word in the poem. And it’s incredible. And what’s really fun, I’ve searched for things like alone, and the things that come up are surprising. Like there are pictures of crowds or something like that where you start to see the way people interpret that word, and multiple people. It’s not that we have this huge cross cut of people, but I mean, 2000 is a good small little case study.
PAIGE: You have enough to be statistically significant.
JAIME: Yeah, right? And so anyway, so it’s just been really fun to see what comes up. And then the next version is that people are going to be able to submit their own photos, because right now we just have a lot of stock photos in there, things to unsplash. So, yeah, it will be interesting too when people have their own photos, and then other people are writing poems to other people’s photos. That’s going to be really fun.
PAIGE: Seriously, this blows my mind. I love it. It’s teaching search engines, you’re teaching them simile and metaphor.
ANGELA: Yeah.
PAIGE: It’s almost impossible.
JAIME: In a totally community based way. Again, we’re not like oh, we’re going to run some ads and the more traffic we get to our website, which is what we do for our clients, right? We’re like let’s drive more traffic and we’re going to drive the traffic from here and there and then we’re going to follow the analytics it’s like we don’t care about that. This is all about romance. This is all about unbillable time that doesn’t matter because we have an awesome agency, and if we build a tool, this is what’s fun about it too. If we build this cool tool, we can go out and talk to clients that maybe we couldn’t talk to before and say you know what, this tool could be really effective in a fun way as you’re building a campaign, this might be a really interesting way to get people engaged with your content.
PAIGE: Wow, yeah.
JAIME: So, it’s fine. We don’t have to run ads or get people to go there and buy something. I’m so tired of that.
ANGELA: The end goal is not to like be a Getty Images competitor, right?
JAIME: Right.
ANGELA: But it is one venue or one option potentially for the tool.
JAIME: Yeah, for sure.
PAIGE: I think everybody who listens should totally go check this out. It’s Poetry4Robots.com, and it will be the show notes, but I’m definitely going to write a poem or two in my crappy poetry. It’s fascinating. Definitely very cool.
JAIME: And the poems are not crappy. That’s what’s so great.
PAIGE: You haven’t read mine yet.
ANGELA: I’ll reserve judgement, okay?
JAIME: I’ll go there tomorrow and then I’ll pull out the crappy ones. Some of them, you know, I mean, everyone’s got their own take on the way that they see the world, but they’re all really worth reading. I would love to figure out some way to get permission to make them a little more public, because I love the community side of it. I love that somebody from Brazil thought it would be cool to go on this website and write a poem to the same picture that someone in North Portland is writing a poem to. And how do those two different people see, so that’s the other, we’re adding geotagging to the pictures too so we can see where people are when they write the poem if they choose. We’re not doing that in any conspiratorial way. They have to enter their ZIP code if they want that. But that part’s fun too. Wow, two people looked at the same picture and had two totally different takes on it.
PAIGE: Very cool. You should put the public option in the same way you put the ZIP code in. Like can we make this public?
ANGELA: Yeah.
PAIGE: That would be awesome.
JAIME: Yeah.
PAIGE: Very cool. So, Jaime, how did you get into all of this? Like this is crazy all over the map. It sounds like you’re mostly into PM and being I would call you a futurist. How did you wind up here?
JAIME: Yeah, it’s been a long road. I’m not young. I had to make a lot of mistakes and change career paths a couple times to get where I was going. But ultimately, I’m a film maker and I don’t make films anymore, but I still like to call myself a film maker. So I have this brain that thinks about things and I love science fiction. So I think about things as a story, and I think about things as what would this look like if it was a movie, and I think that helps me wrap my head around technology, because I think of technology the same way I would build the pieces of a film. And luckily because I have a production background, I know that it takes the steps from A to B to make something happen. And so I’m not just like a person who’s like you know what would be cool? Let’s do this blah, blah, blah, I’m like well, actually, that’s not going to be possible. So let’s bring it back down to reality and figure out how we can actually build something that we could actually launch and actually get out to the public sphere. But yeah, I have a film degree. I went from film to the big Silicon Valley days. So right when I graduated from college was when the tech industry was going crazy, and so of course, I couldn’t find a job in film, but I very easily found a job in software development just through networking. So I ended up learning how to code right out of college, and I didn’t really care because I was in my 20s and I wasn’t like oh my God, I have to be a filmmaker. I was like whoa, I graduated college and I’m making money. This is amazing! And the people were great. It was my first, I’ve basically exclusively been with startups ever since then and it’s really hard, it’s a grind, but I get it. I think that’s why I’ve been able to run what I hope is a successful business for a year without any major pitfalls. But anyway, so these guys started this company, it was web based software, it was way before there were like log in sites where a client could log in and use their own software. It was really cutting edge for the time. So I built web based software, and I did that for a while, and that was in California. And then I had some friends move up to Portland and they were trying to get me to come and I didn’t know what I was going to do, and then that company let me actually work from home. And so that was huge. So I was working for this amazing startup company with great people. They were seeing a lot of growth, and then I was like whoa, what? I get to sit in my living room at home and do this with my dial up internet connection? No joke. And so I did, and that was kind of like my launching point with Portland, but when I was in Portland, I wanted to work in film because it was also burgeoning at that time and you could actually go on set and meet [indiscernible]. I’m like whoa, what? My brain is exploding. Like these people are here and you can just like go and work with them? That doesn’t happen in California. So anyway, so I started working at the film center and the Northwest Film Center is where I met every single person that’s been critical to my career path, every single person. And one of them works for me right now. And the other one hired me to work in mobile. So that community for whatever reason was where I needed to be and I got, I volunteered there so it got me out of my house. Eventually I started working there. I did marketing for the film center for a number of years. Got me back into the film community, but I was still really interested in technology. And so, on the side, I started teaching technology classes to kids because I just loved that, and then eventually I started teaching at a school, I was like their IT support, which that was really funny because if you’re coding–a lot of people don’t know this–but if you’re a coder, you’re not a systems administrator. But somehow they thought that if I could work on a website I could also work on their network system for the whole school. So I tried to do that which was fine.
PAIGE: Aren’t you one of those magical Devops unicorns?
JAIME: No, I’m not even a developer. I just like learned how to do HTML at a young age and got lucky. But I don’t even consider myself a developer coder. So anyway, yeah, I worked in the school which led me to working in summer camps which was amazing, and I also worked from home and I got to write technology curriculum for kids who wanted to learn coding and 3D game design and website design, and then there was this other opportunity to start a documentary film camp, so I started teaching kids how to do digital editing and after effects. So it’s like film and technology and that was a dream job. And then I met this guy, you know, age old story, met this guy and like started to get into fall in love and then career path didn’t seem as important. So I fell in love with this guy who happened to live in Europe, so I basically like quit my job and just moved to Europe and did that and just like taught and wrote and did that. And then when I came back, I got this amazing opportunity to work with a friend of mine from the film center helping grow her very small mobile agency, and it was called Night and Day Studios. And that was basically my MBA training, on the job training. That experience was so life changing and critical on every level. I just owe them everything. It was amazing. So, we built this amazing team, we grew from three people to 25 people in two years. We’ve opened an office in New York, we started working with very small companies, and at the end, we were working with Warner Brothers, Sesame Street, basically everyone like Thomas the Tank Engine, we were focused on kid’s media, and it was all education and all technology and bridging those two worlds of like what’s safe for kids, what do you want to release to kids and feel good about. And I got to combine everything that I had been doing my whole life like trying to work with kids. There was like this film component because there was animations and we had to do voice overs, and sometimes take like pieces of film and embed them in the apps, and it was exciting, super great. I guess part of that I probably shouldn’t talk about. So like all of the things I said I could talk about, there’s some details of that situation that I probably shouldn’t get into, but it was amazing! And then I went from that and went into advertising which was an interesting jump, but also same thing, I like owe that work so much. So I worked for Swift, and Swift is a digital marketing company. When I started there, they really were web focused, and during the time I was there they really shifted into focus on social only. But they did all the content creation, so they had a studio in house, they do videos, they do photography shoots, so it’s still tying into that, but I got to run the whole production team. So I got to really put my management chops to work, and see if that little tiny night and day studio thing was real. I could like test it in the real world working with more really big brands, really interesting work, and just fantastic people. The people that work at Swift are just amazing. I ran the producer team, and they got acquired and they just started growing really fast. And at that point, I was just thinking like I love that small team vibe. Like I love a startup thing where everyone gets to be a part of every decision. We get to collaborate, we get to dream up possibilities. We’re not in this like cranking out stuff that we may or may not feel good about, but everyone’s working like 13, 14 hours and we’re burning ourselves out and nobody gets to actually like use their creative energy because they’re using it all on stuff that isn’t really that creative. And I saw that grind and just knew that I wasn’t going to be able to do it for very long, so I decided to jump and I just jumped right into Neologic from there. And it was petrifying, very petrifying, but I had a lot of good support, and even people I worked with were so supportive. They’re like this is the right move for you, like this is where you need to be right now. And so yeah, so sorry, that was a long story, but that’s kind of the path.
PAIGE: That’s kind of the point and an awesome story. Your journey is really interesting and deep and it’s very cool to hear about it. I think we’ll have some links the show notes if you guys want to check out some more of that. I did have one last question for you, just because we kind of talked about it earlier. But if you could look down the pipe of what’s coming in technology, what do you think is either like the most exciting thing or the thing that you want to dig into the most?
JAIME: Interesting question. That’s so good. It’s interesting because we’re all trying to keep pace with what’s coming, and so much of it, because I was in advertising, so much of it is based on that. So oh, what’s happening in mobile advertising and what’s happening with new ways to get content in front of people. That stuff doesn’t interest me, and I think at some point people are going to get really burned out on it. And I think people are already really savvy I think as technology grows, the consumer gets more and more savvy. We already know that audiences have become more savvy, but it’s just getting more and more. And the whole like driving traffic to advertising thing, I mean, it works and there’s formulas that work. But anyway, I think that level of technology and what’s happening with the watch, that stuff doesn’t interest me. It’s really, and I don’t want to sound like I’m tooting my own horn, but I mean, it’s really the stuff that brings people back together that interests me most. So new apps that aren’t necessarily social networks, but integrate ways to communicate with each other. So I would even say like things like Uber or apps and websites like Etsy, that’s the technology that interests me. Like the fact that you can be sitting in your living room making a necklace and then put it on a website, and the next thing you know, you get to divert your career into that, I love that level of technology. I love Airbnb, I love Uber, I love that a guy could like get off work, come pick me up, drop me off at home, and then go back home to eat dinner with his family, like so that’s the level of technology that I am interested in, and I don’t know that, I can’t like predict that there is something new on the horizon, but I think the more of those sort of game changing applications come out, I think the more relevant and applicable to people it will be and hopefully the big brands will understand that all they have to do is come up with something that’s going to help people, and they won’t have to worry about advertising so much.
ANGELA: Did you hear about Amazon’s latest move? You can deliver Amazon packages.
PAIGE: Oh, no, I did not.
ANGELA: If I remember correctly, it pays like $15. To $18 an hour and you can just show up to the delivery center and bring the package to a destination. Like if you’re already going that direction, or if that’s just what you want to do, be your own boss and deliver packages, then do it.
PAIGE: It’s like post maids and ship and all these different things. I think yeah, it’s where technology is kind of taking this turn where we’re looking again at technology as a tool instead of as like technology for connection instead of technology for consumption.
ANGELA: Right.
JAIME: Exactly. That is a great way of fitting it. Exactly.
PAIGE: Very cool. Well, I am also excited about these things, and I will look forward to seeing what your studio puts out. Everybody should check out Cornbread, that’s super cool. I will definitely be trying to crumb.
ANGELA: Cornbreadapp.com.
PAIGE: Yeah, and Poetry for Robots.
ANGELA: And Neologic.co.
PAIGE: Yeah, awesome. Jaime, is there any way people can follow you? Are you a Tweeter or anything like that?
JAIME: Yes, I’m @JaimeGennaro.
ANGELA: Thank you for listening to this episode of Women’s Tech Radio. Remember that the show notes are available at JupiterBroadcasting.com. There is also a contact form, or you can email us directly, WTR@Jupiterbroadcasting.com
PAIGE: You can also find us on iTunes, and if you have a minute, we would love to hear a review from you. You can also follow us on Twitter @heyWTR. Thanks for listening.

Transcribed by Carrie Cotter | Transcription@cotterville.net

The post Technology For Connection | WTR 43 first appeared on Jupiter Broadcasting.

Hamburger Non-Helper | CR 166

chris — Mon, 10 Aug 2015 14:13:04 +0000

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The big debate over today’s biggest UI compromise comes to life, Microsoft open sources its iOS-apps-on-Windows compatibility layer, the process of evaluating a new language, plus a book recommendation & more!

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The post Hamburger Non-Helper | CR 166 first appeared on Jupiter Broadcasting.

Pixel Perfect | WTR 36

chris — Wed, 22 Jul 2015 06:31:17 +0000

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Tiffany is a UX front end developer and makes things look pretty! She hates photoshop and the term “Pixel Perfect” though so don’t get her confused with being a designer!

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ANGELA: This is Women’s Tech Radio.
PAIGE: A show on the Jupiter Broadcasting Network, interviewing interesting women in technology. Exploring their roles and how they’re successful in technology careers. I’m Paige.
ANGELA: And I’m Angela.
PAIGE: So, Angela, today we’re joined by Tiffany. She is a UX developer and she goes into the differences between developer and designer, front end and back end, and all this really interesting industry industry kind of separation that has happened over the years and why it’s important. And we also get into a fantastic conversation about board games.
ANGELA: And before we get into the interview, if you’re interesting in supporting this show, if you’re listening to it week after week and you’re finding this content really awesome, which we do — we have a really good time every time we record and we always get something new from every single episode. It’s really awesome. You can go over to patreaon.com/today and that supports the whole network, but also, specifically Womens’ Tech Radio. And you can donate as little as $3,00 a month or whatever you’re comfortable with. And it’s a monthly basis, automatically comes out.
PAIGE: Yep. And we get started with our interview today by asking Tiffany what she’s up to these days.
TIFFANY: Right now, in the tech field, well I primarily identify as a UX developer. So, as i tell people that don’t really know what that mean, I make things look pretty. So, I prefer, and really more of a front end developer but I spend a lot of time on design teams and whatnot. So I actually also have a design eye. Some people mistake me for a designer. I hate PhotoShop, I hate design. But yeah. And right now I’m actually freelance and I’ve been freelance since November. I’m doing a whole bunch of hodgepodge jobs including some YouTube channel stuff, so day-to-day for me is just really random, because it just really depends on what contracts I have going and if I’m filing anything for YouTube or anything like that. My everyday is not a typical day.
ANGELA: Well, that’s awesome. I like that.
TIFFANY: It is. Yeah. It’s also really confusing.
ANGELA: Yeah. Especially when you don’t get Google SMS anymore.
TIFFANY: Yeah. Darn you Google. My life was made by that. Made or break.
ANGELA: Yeah. I guess you’ll have to maybe research another calendar app something; right?
TIFFANY: Yeah. Something like that.
ANGELA: Or write something to-
PAIGE: Yeah, so for our folks, because this going to go in the future. Google just turned of SMS alerts for calendaring, which I think I lame, because i used the crap out of the feature.
TIFFANY: Uh-huh.
PAIGE: But, we’ll figure it out. So, what is, if you don’t identify as a designer, what do you think is the difference between a UX developer and a designer?
TIFFANY: A UX developer is somebody who when they look at a screen and they look at — essentially, like what need to be done, they think about it in terms of code. Like, they think, oh I need to do this. I need to adjust this padding, this margin, etcetera, etcetera. UX developer is more of a, it’s the designer side. And then a designer, specifically a UX designer is usually, um, their partner in crime, if you’re lucky enough to have a UX designer and a UX developer. And they think of things in terms of actual pixels and the modification of actual PhotoSHop files and stuff like that. So, they don’t really code. So they’re dealing mostly in various visual software editing tools to get mock ups or interaction designs, which is a big one. And UX developers work with them to have those designs come to life, and also, UX developers, because they work so closely and always really have an eye for that kind of stuff, UX developers also are really awesome because we usually have an idea of what a goodish sense of design or interaction would be. And we focus primarily on user interaction when we code things, not always necessarily what’s the best way to code something from like an efficiency standpoint of your code, which gets some really good UX developers can write super efficient super awesome code that is also very user interactive and great for the user. But it’s like this, it’s like the unicorn balance effect of that kind of stuff.
PAIGE: So, like any other developer, you’re probably not an efficiency expert unless you’re an efficiency expert?
TIFFANY: Yeah. But I am a front end developer expert. So, I — like, it’s really, there is a phrase that we use, and people have kind of stopped using it in resumes and interviews, but it’s pixel perfect. And I feel that most UX developers, while we hate the term pixel perfect, it’s true. I can look at mocks, I can look at mock ups or specs or I can just look at a webpage and I can be like, oh, that’s four pixels, it needs to be two pixels. Or something like that. Or, oh, that’s five pixels and it needs to be six pixels. So it’s just like, usually we’re very visual and UX developers, all the ones I”ve met, really do actually want to be pixel perfect. Which, I hate that phrase, but it’s true.
ANGELA: That’s too bad, because I think that would make a great title for the episode. I feel like I need to ask you if that’s okay.
TIFFANY: Yeah, no. That’s fine. You can do that.
ANGELA: Okay. Maybe I’ll put it in the description. Like, even though hates the term, find out what pixel perfect is.
TIFFANY: The only reason I hate it is because, for years there when people realized that front end developers existed and needed to be a thing, so there was this transition seven years ago in the industry. I loved and worked out in Silicon Valley and there was this transition where they started realizing that having a software engineer does not necessarily mean that they can do every — they’re not full stack. You have front end software engineers and you have back end software engineers. Especially as more companies started developing products that were web based, like web apps and that kind of stuff, because the technology space between being good at making the front end of a web app is very different from being good at making the back end of a web app, because there’s just so many languages and concepts involved. And efficiency for both ends of those scale. And so, a lot of companies started posted job listings and one of the requirements was attention to detail, pixel perfect. And it just became this buzz word in the industry and if you were talking with somebody and they were like yeah I’m pixel perfect, like 90 percent of the time they weren’t and it was just really frustrating, because it was a buzzword and everybody used.
ANGELA: Right. And it just kind of became vague, it sounds like.
TIFFANY: Yeah. There’s this great — have you seen the nailed it meme?
ANGELA: Yes. With the, was it with the kid, little baby fist?
TIFFANY: Well, no, so the one — there was one that went around with Cookie Monster cupcakes.
PAIGE: Yes, with the bad, the Pinterest fails.
TIFFANY: Yes. So, and it’s a thing-
ANGELA: Oh, right.
TIFFANY: Yeah, yeah, yeah, where there’s like really beautiful something crafty and then somebody tries to make it and it’s like this horrible version..
ANGELA: Yes.
PAIGE: Nailed it.
TIFFANY: We started doing that in the company that I worked at. The large mega corp that I’ve (unintelligible).
ANGELA: Sure.
TIFFANY: We started doing that to developers. Like, we would do the nailed it where we would have the mock up and then we would have like what they made. And we would do, like nailed it.
PAIGE: That’s awesome.
ANGELA: That’s great. I just did a Pinterest fail on Monday with my kids. It was some sort of a flour and salt dough mix and then you put pebbles in it to make a design and my butterfly did not look like a butterfly and none of them look good. The pebbles were too big and it cracked. It was just bad.
PAIGE: Yeah, Pinterest, it’s like a whole other rabbit hole of doom.
ANGELA: I know. Well, I didn’t go to — I don’t go to Pinterest. I make a point not to, because I’ll get sucked in. My friend did. It was a play date.
PAIGE: So youre friend is attempting to make you a Pinterest addict?
ANGELA: We jointly failed. No, I just let her do it. That’s funny though. That is great. Now, did that, was that good for comradery and — I’m sure it kind of framed the culture, but it wasn’t making fun of people that worked there was it?
TIFFANY: No, it wasn’t. It just started making fun of software development. It was-
ANGELA: Okay.
TIFFANY: Specifically we were on — I was on a design team and we fought tooth and nail to get some front end developers hired, because at the time I was on the design team and I was the rapid prototyper. So they would mock up some crazy ideas and then it was my job to just quickly make something that looked and they could click around. So there was a lot of fake Javascript connecting to empty calls. Lots of static text just being loaded in to pretend it was a database. But I was there rapid prototype maker and we really struggled. We’re like, our — my rapid markups of their stuff, proof of concepts would look like the specs and then the actual product when it went over to enginnering always looked really bad. So my boss made those nailed it meme jokes for a presentation with the higher ups who convinced them finally to hire front end engineers.
ANGELA: Nice.
PAIGE: Okay. The fact that you got memes in a corporate presentation in attempt to actually get headcount, that’s impressive.
TIFFANY: Yeah. And after that they started hiring people who specialized in front end development. That really made a big difference in the product. I think that’s — it’s starting to become more common. So when I went to college in 2005, when I started looking for degree programs, there was nothing that I could find that focused on UX front end development. Everything in computer science was computer science hardcore. There was nothing that specialized in front end and web or anything like that. I think there was one program in some random college on the east coast, and I had never even heard of the college. But now if you went and look for those kind of programs they’re popping up everywhere, because there’s such a demand for those positions.
PAIGE: I mean, even Stanford now has a full track for web and iOS. It’s crazy. That’s good. So where do you make the division between front end design, back end. I mean, I know where I do, but.
TIFFANY: Usually I make the division where anything becomes visual on the screen. So, if anybody — if you’re putting something on the screen, you’re dealing with front end design. Especially with the MVC model. So, model, view, and controller. You can really separate frontend and backend, because you work with backend team really closely to make sure that you’re making the correct connections in the middle area, and then you can focus primarily on the view. And if you need to go into the middle area, you can. But there’s definitely a lot of overlap between that area. That’s where the most code conflict happen, on check in. But I really make the divide. It it modifies a data structure that will eventually appear on the screen in some way, shape, or form, there’s an argument that that could be front end. But if it puts anything on the screen, it’s definitely front end development, in my opinion.
PAIGE: I would agree with that. That’s very cool. So you’re freelancing now. How did you get into freelancing? What are you struggles in freelancing? I’ve definitely met a lot of people who are kind of like not quite happy in a job or they feel like they’d like to try doing their own thing. What are some of the ups and downs for you, since you just started?
TIFFANY: Well, my case is — I don’t — it’s probably something that lot of people can relate to. I graduated from college in 2008 and I had a job before I graduated. I actually graduated early so that I could go and work at this job. And I almost burnt out. I was super close to burning out after three and a half years at this giant corporation, that shall not be named. I had a friend that worked at another larger corporation, not giant, but large, that also shall not be named. He was like, you should come work for us. It’s super awesome. I changed companies and I worked there. It was really awesome for a while and then that large company started to grow into a mega corp, like a very large company and it had a lot of growing pains and they had a lot of headcount reduction either through layoffs or people just leaving because they didn’t like the transition from small to large, or from large to extra large. And so in the three and a half — I was also there for three and a half years, that’s basically my boiling point. In the three and a half years that I was there, I was hired when there was 9,000 — or no, there was like 8,500 employees when I was hired.
ANGELA: Wow.
TIFFANY: When I quit three and a half years later, there was over 20,000 employees and we had a piece of software in the company that somebody made that told you how long you had been — it compared how long you had been at the company with everybody else and according to that script that somebody wrote, I had bene at the company more than 98 percent of the rest of the employees.
ANGELA: Wow. So big turnover.
TIFFANY: Massive turnover and massive influx of new people, which meant that there was just constant turmoil. I was, in my last year of evaluation, the last full calendar year that I was there and I had the employee evaluation thing, I had five different managers.
PAIGE: What?
TIFFANY: And so I was like — and I was in charge of a very large code base and I was working with people in Bulgaria (unintelligible) and so I burned out. I crashed out. They were transitioning, when i was there from FLex to HTML5 and so I was in this weird straddle between Flex and HTML5 and I kept telling myself when they first announced they were going to transition that I would stick around long enough to get my resume padded to be able to add the H5 technology officially and then I would quit. And two years later my fiance was like, when I met you you were talking about how you were going to quit soon and that was a year ago.
PAIGE: And you were like, little did you know, it was a year before that as well.
TIFFANY: Yes, exactly. So I decided, I looked at my finances and I discussed it with my partner and we decided that for my mental stability it would be best if I just quit. So I quit my job and I had a friend that was looking for some design work and web work and basically an everything person at his — he’s trying to kickstart a product, a home automation system and so he needed somebody to do that. So I lucked out in that I quit and then immediately had a contract that could pay all my bills for six months. ANd that contract actually came to an end in May and so now I’m looking for work elsewhere, more contracts elsewhere and I kind of — it’s funny because I kind of just keep like — I have a friend that is very involved in a lot of tech networks in Portland, and she’s probably one of the reasons we moved here, but she keeps throwing things over the fence at me and so I just keep accidently getting these jobs. Where she’s like, oh hey this is this thing and you should do it, and I’m like okay. So I feel really lucky in that regard. I haven’t had to actively search for some stuff. But I also am living very-
ANGELA: Frugal?
TIFFANY: Yes. My fiance is doing most of the — we’re basically on like a 1.5 income household right now. So, but we’re both fine with that because we own all the fancy technology gadgets we need and use so we don’t need to buy anything new. And Portland is significantly cheaper than the Bay area.
PAIGE: Oh my goodness, right?
TIFFANY: Yeah, so it’s actually kind of funny. Because if we had continued to live in the Bay area I would have had to get another job that was like an actual tech job because the cost of living is just so high. And that was part of the reason we moved to Portland was so that I didn’t have to get a traditional 9:00 to 5:00 tech job, because I’ve worked for three mega corps at this point. Well, two mega corps and a large company that was becoming a mega corp, and I just can’t do it anymore.
ANGELA: What was one of your favorite contracts that you’ve done since you left your most recent mega corp job?
TIFFANY: It actually wasn’t tech involved really at all. It was in — I do some video editing. I very much am into the board gaming community. And when I say that I don’t mean like just playing board games, I also review board games. I play test board games for designers. I”m friends with a lot of people at publishing companies, that kind of stuff. And also, I’m pretty, I’m not active on Kickstarter but I’m aware of the Kickstarter tabletop world and I usually know somebody that — I have two friends right now that are running Kickstarters on tabletop. So I had a contract from a friend where he wanted me to do his Kickstarter videos. And so part of that involved going to PAX South in Texas in January.
ANGELA: Oh darn.
TIFFANY: Yeah. Gosh darn. That was a fun contract because the game that he was making was about — it’s basically you’re doing a mini role playing as the Goonies. You’re four siblings and you’re going on this crazy adventure. And so it’s a coop and it’s storytelling and there’s actual numbers and stats that you can lose even if you can tell the best story in the world. So it was a lot of fun because I would go and my job was to film people playing it and people would just have such a blast telling these stories about how they were running around in the mysterious forest and throwing dung at trolls, and all this other fun stuff. But it was a blast. And then editing all of that footage was also a lot of fun into a video. So that was my most fun contract, but it’s not tech related.
PAIGE: Totally fine. I think that that’s one of the beauties of doing — you know, it kind of is tech related. Video is still technology. But being a freelancer, being a contractor is you kind of get some of that freedom to pick and choose projects to be involved in a lot of things. To be a jack of all trades.
TIFFANY: Yeah. I have a friend — I decided to paint. I brought my fiance in a copy of Imperial Assault, which is a Star Wars dungeon crawling game. And I decided stupidly while he was out of town one weekend I would surprise him and paint all of the miniatures in this game.
PAIGE: Oh wow.
TIFFANY: And there’s about — yeah, there’s about 40 miniatures. And they’re like super detailed Star Wars, like Storm Troopers and Darth Vader and ATSDs and the heroes like Han Solo, and Chewbacca, and Luke and all that. And it was stupid and insane, but at the end of it I was able to tell the internet, I was able to tweet about it, because I didn’t tweet while I was going it, because it was a surprise. One of my friends online was like, hey actually can I pay you to paint my set?
ANGELA: Oh my gosh.
TIFFANY: Yeah, so it’s the weird funny thing where it was just like, because I’m freelancing I can just basically do whatever.
PAIGE: You can say, yeah that’s a project I’d like to do.
TIFFANY: Yeah. I can get money for painting miniatures. Which is hilarious to me and a lot of fun, but also makes my carpal tunnel way worse.
PAIGE: Yeah. Righit? Miniature painting is the worse thing for that. Okay, so it sounds like you are super into board games. You review board games? Do you have a YouTube channel or something?
TIFFANY: Yeah. I review board games and my YouTube channel is TheOneTAR. I also am on Twitter as TheOneTAR. I’m very active on Twitter. Most recently, if you go to my channel, most recently I was doing an unpacking series where when we moved we packed all our board games up and then somebody on Twitter was like you should make videos when you unpack them. And so I was like, okay. And then I did. And so I have 24 episodes of me just unpacking a box.
PAIGE: It’s like, re-
ANGELA: Wow.
PAIGE: Re-unboxings.
TIFFANY: Yeah. But people are apparently really into them, because they just want to know what’s in the box.
PAIGE: Yeah.
ANGELA: So what is in the box, usually?
TIFFANY: All of my board games.
ANGELA: Oh, okay.
PAIGE: So they want to see your collection, really.
ANGELA: Right. Okay. So do you pack the box or is it-
TIFFANY: I did pack the box.
PAIGE: Because they moved.
TIFFANY: This was when we moved.
ANGELA: Oh. Oh, okay. I got it. I thought you were like — well I wasn’t sure if you were buying new board games and be like oh what could be in here? Or if you were like putting stuff in there for the show.
TIFFANY: Nope.
ANGELA: Okay, so it’s a result of moving. Got it. That’s great.
TIFFANY: Yeah.
PAIGE: Okay. So I”m a bit of a board game player myself. I’m not huge. I don’t have a YouTube channel, but I’m always interested in co op board games because I find that it’s the best way for me to get people who aren’t board game people to play with me. And a lot of my friends for some reason aren’t board game people. So what should I play?
TIFFANY: Well, what have you played?
PAIGE: Um Pandemic, Zombie Panic, Castle Panic, Forbidden Island, and Forbidden Desert.
TIFFANY: Okay. So if you feel like you’re ready for a level up on your co op experience and you want to go — if you like the zombie stuff there’s a game that’s really popular right now, it’s called Dead of Winter. It’s produced by Plaid Hat games and it’s designed by John Gilmore and Isaac Vegas, I think is his last name. But you are survivors. Every player — it’s kind of this weird — the theme is kind of weird but there’s — the zombie apocalypse has happened so there’s zombies everywhere. And it’s the middle of winter, hence the name of the game. Every player controls a group of survivors and you’re trying to work together to make sure there’s enough food stocked in your little base and also to make sure that no zombies break into the base. And you also can send your survivors out into the town at the various locations to look for things like food or fuel or that kind of stuff. So it’s co op in that regard. And in addition to that, everybody has a secret objective that they are working for. So, for example, your secret objective might be at the end of the game you want there to be five med kits in the base, right? And so those are secrets. So you’re all working together but you’re also trying to accomplish your goal and sometimes you trying to accomplish our secret goal might hinder the survival of the whole group. Because you’re like well my goad needs more med kids, but we actually need more food. Which do I play.
PAIGE: So it’s like coop with secret personal goals?
TIFFANY: Yeah, exactly. And if you want to take it a step up, you can include the saboteur when you deal out the secret goals.
PAIGE: Oh yeah.
TIFFANY: And the sabitor’s secret goal is to accomplish his secret goal and also ensure that the rest of the players don’t win. So it’s usually something like you kill so many survivors and also you get this much food and then you run away. Like that’s your secret goal or something like that. So it’s — the game has a lot — there’s so many components in the game and it can be really overwhelming when you open it up, but there’s a really good teaching series online by Rodney Smith called Watch it Played.
PAIGE: I love those.
TIFFANY: Yeah. He does a really good Watch it Played of how to play it and he also does a game with his son Luke, I believe.
ANGELA: That’s awesome.
TIFFANY: So that’s definitely a level up on your coop.
PAIGE: Very cool. Thank you so much for that recommendation. This has been a fantastic chat. We should totally get together and play some board games.
TIFFANY: Oh, yes.
PAIGE: Maybe we’ll have you back on to talk some more about how all of that ties together and you can tell us how your freelancing is going and we’ll definitely follow along. Oh, and if people want to follow you on Twitter, it’s TheOneTAR?
TIFFANY: That’s right. And it’s spelled out, so T-A-R or, sorry, The and then one is spelled out.
ANGELA: Thank you for listening to this episode of Women’s Tech Radio. Remember, you can contact us by emailing wtr@jupiterbroadcasting.com. There’s a contact form at JupiterBroadcasting.com where you can drop down to Women’s Tech Radio to contact us. Or you can on Twitter. Our handle is heywtr.
PAIGE: You can also find us on iTunes. If you have a minute leave a review and you can check out the show notes at JupiterBroadcasting.com on our page and it will also incluide the transcripts if you have some people who might be interested in the show, but don’t have the time to listen to us, but are fast readers. Thanks so much.

Transcribed by Carrie Cotter | Transcription@cotterville.net

The post Pixel Perfect | WTR 36 first appeared on Jupiter Broadcasting.

Don’t Do It Alone | WTR 29

chris — Wed, 03 Jun 2015 07:31:50 +0000

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Moira is the President and CEO of Galvanize Labs, an edutech startup that brings together learning through gaming!

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Transcription:

ANGELA: This is Women’s Tech Radio.
PAIGE: A show on the Jupiter Broadcasting Network interviewing interesting women in technology. Exploring their roles and how they are successful in technology. I’m Paige.
ANGELA: And I”m Angela.
PAIGE: Angela, today we interviewed a good friend of mine, Moira Hardek, and she is the CEO and President, sole founder, of Galvanized Labs, and they’re a edutech startup. She kind of gives us the lowdown on what that means, and what that looks like, and kind of how she’s using her experiencing in gaming to bring technology and education together.
ANGELA: And into gaming, because it’s technology and education in games.
PAIGE: Yeah, its’ crazy. It’s like this awesome hybrid mashup that she goes on to kind of explain what that means. It’s a really neat interview, I think.
ANGELA: And before we get into the interview, I’d like to mention Digital Ocean. If you go to digitalocen.com and use the promo code heywtr, you can save on simple cloud hosting, dedicated to offering the most intuative and easy way to spin up a cloud server. You can create a cloud server in 55 seconds, and pricing plans start at only $5.00 a month. That’s 512 megabytes of RAM, 20 gigabytes SSD, One CPU, and one terabyte transfer. Digital Ocean has date center locations in New York, San Francisco, Singapore, Amsterdam, and London. The interface is incredibly simple, intuitive. The control panel is awesome. It will help you design exactly what you need, which empowers users to replicate on large scales with the company’s straightforward API. Check out digitialocen.com by using promo code heywtr.
PAIGE: And we got started with our interview today by asking Moira to explain her role in technology.
MOIRA: I’m the President and CEO of Galvanize Labs. We are a hybrid tech company at the moment. What we’re working on is ed tech, so educational gaming and technology education. My role is a little bit of everything. In startups, in small companies, it’s kind of everything from the business side to the tech side, the design side. I get to do a little bit of everything, which is probably really good for me. It keeps me excited. It keeps me interested, and it’s certainly never boring,. It’s kind of broad, but also really exciting.
PAIGE: What is a hybrid technology company?
MOIRA: I like to think of it as a hybrid, because we’re focusing on education and we have such a strong emphasis and validating the educational side of what we’re doing. Not just throwing out the term of, hey this is an educational product. We really want to be accredited and validate that educational status. So, we’re kind of half an educational company and the other half of it is a gaming studio. Everything to do within the game is all in house. Nothing is third party. Nothing is purchased. We do everything inside. So, everything from soundtracks to all the digital assets, to the game design, to the voices is all in house. That’s where I kind of feel the hybrid is. It’s great educational emphasis and then this fun game studio.
PAIGE: Has it been a challenge to kind of combine those two worlds? I mean, you don’t typically think of education and gaming at all.
MOIRA: It has been really interesting, because I just don’t think it’s been done in this way before. You really do have these two totally separate industries of gaming, which is so much more classically identified as entertainment. You know, I think of, game releases now are almost like movie release weekends and billion dollar release weekends. It’s entertainment and it’s really what it does so well. Education is obviously kind of almost the flip side of that. Not to say that education isn’t fascinating, but you certainly don’t see, you know, a billion dollar education weekend. And so, as far as how the money flows and how the tech works, it’s entirely different. So, when you try to put educational gaming together, you don’t see gaming classically as an industry really turning its considerable talent towards the education industry, because it just doesn’t have the same type of return. That leaves education a little bit off on an island, that although gaming is a really powerful tool that can be utilized within education, they really don’t get to use the great talant of the gaming industry. And so, that leaves educators to kind of self-educate when it comes to gaming. So, gaming inside of education, or edugaming, which that’s always a great term, has been a little bit lackluster, because it doesn’t bring this entertainment quality. Kids today, I mean, I like to call them the 3DS generation. They’re the first one, if you give them a crappy game, they’re going to tell you this is a crappy game. When they’re used to things like Battlefield and Call of Duty, and World of Warcraft. Visually stunning games with tremendous dynamics that keep them really engaged. Edugaming really can’t compete. What we really wanted to bring to this was a level of entertainment quality gaming with real educational validation. And that was a challenge. We really kind of were able to pull that off for the first time. We live in between these two worlds, and yet we don’t wholey belong to one or the other. There’s pros and cons to that.
PAIGE: Always, whenever you’re bridging a gap it’s always strengths and weaknesses.
MOIRA: Right. Yeah, first to market, again there’s bonuses and there’s drawbacks.
PAIGE: So you do everything in house. What kind of tools do you use to do that for education for gaming?
MOIRA: Oh my god, we do. I feel like there’s a little bit of, just, everything. The game and built and designed entirely from the unity engine. So, obviously, we do a lot of work in unity. All of the web interfaces. All of your guy’s favorite stuff from node to angular to the tremendous list of the custom APIs that we create. The game is hosted within Amazon, right, so AWS, and god bless them for that. And there’s just there’s so many little pieces that we’re able to put together and custom design. Half of the time that we spent building the original platform for launch, before we actually built the game, we built proprietary tools that we were going to use to build the game, and make production even easier going forward. So, the custom scripting system that we were able to create. All of the techs and all the interaction that you see in the game isn’t actually hard coded into the game. It’s actually all dynamically being pulled through our custom scripting system. And so, for our writers and our game designers, we actually have a web portal where now when we write scripts for games going forward, is we’re actually just — when we create those storyboards and write those scripts, we’re dropping the scripts into a web portal that’s then dynamically being pulled into the game when the game is hard coded. So, it’s great tools like that. We have an in-game currency that’s called jewels. It’s like gold coins in Mario Bros or rings in Sonic. To make, again, production much more efficient, instead of hardcoding exactly where those little pieces of currency are going to be in every level, we have a custom coordinate and mapping system. So, again, it’s on the back end. We get to go in this great little web portal that we’ve created and drop the coordinates for where these are going to go, instead of hardcoding in the game where they are. That just gives us a lot of freedom. So we can change levels, and we change maps, and we can build new things, and keep the game and the future games really dynamic and updated for the kids. So, it’s a great experience for our users. So, from the game itself to the tools we’ve created to make production more dynamic, there’s so much stuff that we’re using, and a lot of stuff that we’re creating on our own.
ANGELA: What is your target age?
MOIRA: The age range is remarkably large, because of the type of content that we’re offering. I kind of like to call the beginning platforms — right now, Taken Charge is a serious of four games that are played sequentially, and then we actually have three games that are about to kind of roll off the production line, and then we have 30 more that are currently up on the storyboard that are in production. The first, beginning part of our platform, I like to call as b.c. it’s before coding. So, its’ fundamentals, right. Its’ really getting kids to kind of work up into coding and those advanced topics. Because we’re talking about these fundamentals, that actually gives us a tremendously large age range. The only thing that you need to play Taken Charge is a third grade reading level, and a browser, and an internet connection. So, I have kids playing this that are from third grades to — we just completed a really fun pilot, actually here at a Chicago high school, and it was freshman, sophomores, and juniors in high school that were playing it. So, its’ really all about what level of knowledge the user or the player has, or in this case doesn’t have. And a lot of students in American are lacking these technology fundamentals. And then gaming, being this great universal language, can speak to a large range of audiences. So, the exact same game is just as fun and interactive for elementary school kids as it is for high schoolers. It kind of has that Minecraft effect, right?
ANGELA: Yes.
MOIRA: You know, ten years old playing Minecraft, and then very popular in the 55 plus market too, it’s tremendous.
ANGELA: Right. Where do you see the kids going after they use your product? Are you planning to develop something after that for more advanced? What is your vision on where they go after?
MOIRA: There’s kind of multiple ways to look at it. Obviously, the company being as young as it is, we are building extended platforms. So there are, again, three games coming and there’s 30 more games to come. So, this will be quite a large marketplace of options and of topics. It all begins to get more advanced. So, we’re all kind of about this progressive learning model and being able to progress kids through technology as a subject. Because, I feel like, technology is always kind of treated as this one off when it’s addressed educationally, and we certainly don’t do that math, right? And you always see, like, let’s throw kids into coding. Because coding and robotics, those are really sexy technology topics. And those are great, great, great topics. But when we teach kids math in school, when they have no background in math, we don’t start them in long division. We go back and start with addition and subtraction and multiplication. And then we move them forward. We make sure that they grasp these topics so that they don’t get frustrated, they walk way. When we teach kids technology, we’re throwing them to coding and there’s this huge assumption that they have this underlying knowledge, when I’ve got the benefit of working with kids hands on for the last decade. Ninety percent of the kids that we work with don’t know where a file goes when you download it through a browser. But we’re like, (unintelligible) go to coding. So, what we really want to do is build this progressive model, have them move forward. So, yeah, our platform will move into things like coding. It doesn’t move into things like 3D modeling and different stuff like that, so yeah, there are those options. We partner with a lot of youth development organizations that offer, again, more advanced programs. And we’re also kind of working with, now, other types of technical sites that are a little bit more adult driven. That, if you can get this really solid, kind of, base line in your younger years, then why couldn’t you go into — think of what’s out there in tech ed for adults. And things like Linda and portal site, and all those great educational sites that you can continue your own education online. So, there’s so many places to go after this, once you establish this great baseline. So, we’re working in a lot of different arenas to see where you can go.
PAIGE: Have you always been involved in gaming? Did you start out as a game developer or anything like that?
MOIRA: No, certainly not. I mean, I’ve always had an interest in games dynamics. I’ve always applied them in a lot of the work I’ve done. And game design as pure game design, was something that kind of came later. It really kind of came in the second half of my career and the decade that I spent at Best Buy. It really came for me when I really was able to recognize what a powerful tool gaming was going to be, and it could be in that educational realm. I had just had a particular passion point around teaching, and particularly in the youth market. Gaming just seemed to be at the center of that for me. Immediately, I think, kind of any other entrepreneur, I just looked at gaming and what it could be and was urked that — my point was view was, we’re not doing it right. I wanted to do something different with it. I had to get involved. So, gaming came much later for me.
PAIGE: So, you’re been a lifelong gamer yourself. What are some of your favorites?
MOIRA: I go all the way back to my Apple IIe when I was younger. I totally just dated myself and gave away how old I am. That’s fine. I still play like mod of number munchers from when I was a kid, because that’s all we had when we were in school. So games like that. And then Day of Tentacle I felt was really great. I still have the original box too, it’s one of my prized possessions. For me though, really, really advanced gaming. I have told this story a million times. It was the very first Civilization by Sid Meier when i was Civ, and that really pushed me over the top into my love of gaming. I really kind of like this closeted gamer in college, because I didn’t know any other girl that gamed. So, yeah, I always hung out with the geeky guys, because I worked at the student union, and they introduced me to Counter Strike and things like that. It’s been this really slow progression. I was really kind of an isolated individual gamer until after I got out of college. Then, when you go to work for a company like Best Buy, that sells games and consoles. the addiction got out of control from there.
PAIGE: I had a very similar experience. I got into games a little bit in high school and then (unintelligible) Civilization, definitely one of those. And the Sims.
ANGELA: Yeah, I never did do Sims.
PAIGE: I had to actually — I had a burned copy back in the day of the Sims and my freshman year I had to take it out of my drive during finals week and literally break it in half so that I would pass my finals and stop playing the Sims.
ANGELA: Oh my gosh.
MOIRA: Yeah, see. I think it still is. I believe it is still like the number one game for women. I believe it is still sitting out there as the number one game for women.
PAIGE: Yeah, I’m pretty sure.
ANGELA: I got into Minecraft in 2011, I think. And I really like it. Now, I’m playing it with my son and that’s really fun, but I did Battlefield 1942 and some of the other first-person shooters. And it was my husband and me and his friends. No other women, but it was great.
PAIGE: It’s one of my geek cards of shame that I’m epically bad at first-person shooters.
ANGELA: Oh, I am epically good.
PAIGE: Really?
ANGELA: They call me hidden angerz.
PAIGE: Oh man, that’s awesome.
ANGELA: Yes. Yes, I’m a sniper.
MOIRA: Very nice. I am epically mediocre.
PAIGE: Well, we run the gamut now.
ANGELA: Yeah, all three of us.
MOIRA: I can at least hold my own and not be at the bottom of it, but if I go to talk trash, then I totally get rocked. And so I’m just kind of somewhere in the middle. It Sim games that just dominated me. So like SImcity, that was the one that I had to get rid of, because I was going to never have a social live again with Simcity. And then, I was one of those that was so depressed when Simcity came out, you know, with EA last year, and it was so bad. But now, thank you Skylines, is amazing. And if you haven’t played that yet, do it. I’m afraid it’s going to very, very negatively impact Galvanize right now.
ANGELA: You know, in the same way that I’ve avoided Pinterest, I avoided Sims. Because I would get consumed. I have chosen not to do that, intentionally.
MOIRA: Don’t avoid Pinterest, it’s so good.
ANGELA: No, you know what, I use Instructables. It’s way better, because they actually show how to do it, right there. You don’t have to click on somebody’s blog so they can get ad revenue, or wonder, just because they didn’t put any link on how to do things. Instructables is way better. I tried to get into console games, like Donkey Kong I really liked on Super Nintendo. But Poker Smash on XBox is amazing.
MOIRA: I’ll have to look at it.
PAIGE: Like Poker, the card game?
ANGELA: Yes. And it’s like Tetris, but with poker. You match poker hands to clear lines.
PAIGE: Whoa.
ANGELA: It’s really cool. You go up levels. There’s different music, I just love it. Anyway.
MOIRA: This is it. Gaming is just universal. And this is why it’s just so, so powerful as a tool. This is why.
ANGELA: Yep.
PAIGE: I’m a competitive Tetris junkie. I like it. A lot of people are like, I”m really good at Tetris. I’m like, you don’t understand, competitive Tetris is different. Where you send lines to each other and stuff.
ANGELA: Do you have the Tetris lamp from ThinkGeek?
PAIGE: No, but I should.
ANGELA: Yeah.
MOIRA: Clearly.
ANGELA: I can’t find the power brick. The straight — it’s the straight brick. I can’t find it, but I have all the other ones.
MOIRA: I bet you anything it doesn’t exist, because like in the game, it’s never there when you need it.
ANGELA: Yeah, I have real life Tetris in my house with that lamp.
MOIRA: So, ThinkGeek didn’t actually ever create one, just to give you the same level of frustration that the game does.
ANGELA: No, I did — it did — I did have it. I have three kids and one of them took off with it somewhere and it is somewhere else in the house.
MOIRA: Your kids also are functioning completely the way the game Tetris does. That’s fantastic.
ANGELA: Yes.
PAIGE: Somebody has made off with my ilen piece. Where is it?
ANGELA: Yep.
MOIRA: So awesome.
PAIGE: So, you’re the CEO of your own company now?
MOIRA: Yep.
PAIGE: And having done that, and having been in the gaming space as a woman, have you been able to find other women to work with in your company? Other women gamers? How is that working?
MOIRA: I mean, I will definitely say, obviously there is women at Galvanize. I won’t overplay that, that I went out and went on some big search for women and everything, because quite honestly, my team and I have been together for a long time. We’ve worked together at previous companies. So, sadly that wasn’t this big recruiting coo. And I haven’t expanded the company incredibly. We’ve stayed in a very, very lean model as we’ve gone on to do this. You know, kind of going to Reddit way and staying real lean, so I haven’t done a lot of that. But, from a networking standpoint, it’s hard. I don’t see — I don’t come across a ton of other female startups in this genre. Certainly not, kind of, in gaming, and not locally. I think I mentioned I was on a Skype call last week, and that happened to be a female game designer and she was up in Canada. But the two worlds were completely different. Being on the business side here, right, and we’re monetizing the game. There’s is more kind of social game and kind of grant based. That kind of stuff. So, those were two a little bit different worlds that we lived in. Gaming is still, obviously very, very male dominated. I still get bathrooms to myself at PAX and GDC. And you guys know how that goes. I don’t come across a lot of that. What has been, I think, a little bit different for me is because of how we started the company, the fact that it was kind of bootstrap and angel funded, I didn’t do things like Y-combinator or Sim Connector, or kind of any of those incubators to kind of get this started. I went a different path. And then we moved right into a revenue model. I was networked a little bit differently. I didn’t have access to a ton of that stuff. It has been a little bit isolating. And that’s been not the greatest feeling in the world.
PAIGE: So, if other women are kind of out there with a big idea, and kind of some cohones to make it happen, it’s always sad to me that there aren’t more women out taking risks. What would you say to someone who’s got an idea and wants to try to be an entrepreneur?
MOIRA: Take a risk. I don’t see why not. I really — I don’t see any difference in a woman taking the risk than a man taking the risks, and the startups that they have. Quite honestly, my favorite kind of part of it is always strength in numbers. I don’t think it should be one or two female entrepreneurs at a time. I think we should be doing this in big groups and big numbers. Are there special challenges for us? I think, yeah. That certainly can be the case. But I also think women have a really, very particular point of view. I think it’s very powerful. The way that women look differently at how to solve problems. I think in the world and the way the marketplace today, I think the woman’s point of view is very, very powerful. And I’d love to see that out there way more than it is. The very simple answer to that is, yeah get out there and do it. I don’t see any reason why not. The same risk is involved. It is, it’s scary. I think my dad says it best. It kind of feels like you’re trying to thread a needle while jumping out of an airplane. It feels like that for everybody, no matter what gender you ar.
PAIGE: The diverse thinking is so important. We had an interview with Tarah Wheeler Van Vlack, and she’s a CEO of Fresh Mint and has done a lot of work in the tech space as a woman entrepreneur. And she’s like, it’s not even just women. It’s just getting a group together that doesn’t all think the same way. You can have a diverse group of all different colors of the rainbow; all different genders, all different sexualities, and put them in a room. If they’re all Harvard grads, they still all think the same.
MOIRA: That’s true.
PAIGE: Diverse thinking is more than just gender, but gender is a huge piece of that.
MOIRA: Agreed. Agreed. I’m a very, very big advocate of that. I think you see it all the time. I am members of different women’s groups and I can’t help but see it in a lot of different scenarios that I’ve put in, and these very stark differences. And I think that point of view is just so powerful, and I really want to see that voice and that point of view come to the forefront a lot more.
PAIGE: If there was one piece of advice you could give someone who is about to get started, what would you say?
MOIRA: I think is one I give every time I hear this one, and it’s so true. It’s just, don’t do it alone. I think there are a lot of people out there that think that when you do this and the startup culture is — it’s kind of either one of two things. Either you already have to be incredibly well-networked, and if I’m not then I can’t do this. And that’s not true. And the other side of it is, I have to have all the answers. I can’t do this if I don’t have all the answers. There’s this kind of misconception of I’m doing this alone. You’re not. You’re never actually really doing it alone and don’t try to do it alone. You don’t have to have all the answers. Don’t try to be the lone ranger on this. It’s okay to ask for help. It’s okay to bring other people in. It’s better to do it that way. It is scary, but it’s not scary for the reasons that you think it’s scary. Scary comes later, but don’t do it alone.
ANGELA: Thank you for listening to this episode of Women’s Tech Radio. Don’t forget, you can contact us by going to jupiterbroadcasting.com. There is a contact form. You can also do the show drop down to find all the Women’s Tech Radio shows, and find the show notes for each of the shows with tons of links and resources.
PAIGE: You can also check us out on iTunes, where you can subscribe to the podcast. Or, if you’d rather use the RSS feed, that’s available on the Jupiter Broadcasting site. You can also follow us on Twitter @heywtr. Or, you can check out our tumblr that has all of the transcripts of the past shows at heywtr.tumblr.com. And if you have a minute, shoot us an email. Leave us some feedback wtr@jupiterbroadcasting.com

Transcribed by Carrie Cotter | transcription@cotterville.net

The post Don’t Do It Alone | WTR 29 first appeared on Jupiter Broadcasting.

Krita Developer Interview | LAS 364

chris — Sun, 10 May 2015 16:50:48 +0000

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We get the opportunity to talk to the Krita project. Can professional graphic design be done on Linux? What it will take to get the project to the next level? We find out!

Plus a crazy member of our audience takes CentOS desktop challenge & we check in. CryEngine to support Linux, Firefox OS in Africa, Snappy packages, Python 3 in Ubuntu by Default & more!

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Krita Lead Developer Interview

Brought to you by: System76

Krita | Digital Painting. Creative Freedom.

Krita is a FREE digital painting and illustration application.

Krita offers CMYK support, HDR painting, perspective grids, dockers, filters, painting assistants, and many other features you would expect. Check out the gallery to see what other artists have done with Krita

Krita: free paint app – let’s make it faster than Photoshop! — Kickstarter

Krita is the free and open source digital painting program used by artists all over the world. Help make Krita even faster and better!

— PICKS —

Runs Linux

Ubuntu Powered Drone

It seems world is slowly and steadily moving towards Linux powered devices. After Linux was used to power destroyers for US Navy, now Erle Robotics has used Ubuntu to power a drone.
Erle Robotics, a Spanish company, has been at the forefront of using Linux in devices and had introduced the Erle-Copter drone powered by Ubuntu Snappy Core back in February 2015, has launched the world’s first Ubuntu powered Drone on 3rd May.

Desktop App Pick

Fort Password Manager

Fort allows you to store passwords and other sensitive information. Today it’s important not to use the same password on multiple places. Passwords should also be more than 8 characters long and contain mixed case letters, numbers and special characters. Of course it’s impossible to remember such passwords. That’s where Fort comes in. All you have to do is to remember one password, the Fort master key. Fort will remember rest of your passwords.

QtPass by IJHack

Weekly Spotlight

Centos 7 on the Desktop

https://slexy.org/view/s21VYbhCQh

Last night I started a challenge. A good friend of mine said to me “I doubt you could use CentOS 7 on your desktop for a month.” After thinking about it, I realised I probably could. So I accepted his challenge. Mind you this was at 10:30 at night. Maybe tiredness played a role in my decision, but I am going to document my experience with CentOS 7 on my desktop for the next month.

Jupiter Broadcasting Meetup

Our Past Picks

These are the weekly picks provided by the Jupiter Broadcasting podcast, the Linux Action Show.

This site includes a separate picks lists for the “Runs Linux”, Desktop Apps, Spotlight Picks, Android Picks, and Distro Picks.

— NEWS —

CryEngine to Support Linux

Let’s talk about the pengui… elephant in the room If you read the above paragraph, it might not come as a major surprise to you, but we are proud to announce that we will add an Open GL implementation and support for running your EaaS games on Linux with one of our next updates. For now, Linux support will be limited to the game launcher, and the Sandbox editor will still require Microsoft Windows. And of course, Linux support will be subject to the same developer-friendly terms as on Windows: Your monthly subscription fee will allow you to sell your games for Linux in addition to Windows, with no additional fees or royalties required.

A massive change for Ubuntu package management is on the horizon

Snappy Personal is slotted to take the place of Desktop Next. If you’ve been following Ubuntu, you know that Next is the iteration of Ubuntu that will feature Unity 8 and Mir, which will power desktops, phones, and tablets. Snappy Personal will be the desktop image that will install Ubuntu 15.10 (if it arrives in time for that release) that’s built with said Unity 8 and Mir.

An important notice for Desktop Next users Edit: This is referring to the…

Ubuntu Plans for Python 3 by Default

Within the Ubuntu world, by Ubuntu 16.04 LTS next April they want Python 3 by default and potentially to only have Python 3.5. In upstream Debian for their 9.0 Stretch release they are also hoping for no Python2 by default, albeit the Stretch release is much further out.

Orange Launches First Firefox OS Smartphones in Africa

We are happy to share that the first Firefox OS smartphones went on sale in Senegal and Madagascar this week. This follows an announcement from Mozilla and Orange at Mobile World Congress 2015 that Firefox OS smartphones would be available in markets across Africa and the Middle East later this year.

CHIP – The World’s First Nine Dollar Computer by Next Thing Co. — Kickstarter

C.H.I.P. is a computer. It’s tiny and easy to use.

C.H.I.P. does computer things. Work in LibreOffice and save your documents to C.H.I.P.’s onboard storage. Surf the web and check your email over wifi. Play games with a bluetooth controller. With dozens of applications and tools preinstalled, C.H.I.P. is ready to do computer things the moment you power it on.

C.H.I.P. is a computer for students, teachers, grandparents, children, artists, makers, hackers, and inventors. Everyone really. C.H.I.P. is a great way to add a computer to your life and the perfect way to power your computer based projects.

The CHIP Is A $9 Computer That Can Almost Do It All | TechCrunch

Star Trek Comes To Linux, Star Trek 25th Anniversary & Star Trek Judgement Rites On GOG

GOG have now added two classic Star Trek games to their collection with Star Trek 25th Anniversary and Star Trek Judgement Rites.

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The post Krita Developer Interview | LAS 364 first appeared on Jupiter Broadcasting.

Astrophysicist to Designer | WTR 19

chris — Wed, 25 Mar 2015 07:47:15 +0000

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Caryn is a UI/UX Designer for Stateless Networks. Her background wasn’t in design or technology.

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Show Notes:

Stateless Networks – Principal User Experience Designer
Envision App
Caryn Vainio’s Website

Full transcription of previous episodes can be found at heywtr.tumblr.com

The post Astrophysicist to Designer | WTR 19 first appeared on Jupiter Broadcasting.

Best Of Coder Radio 2014 | CR 133

chris — Mon, 22 Dec 2014 12:37:25 +0000

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We peer into the past of the show to pull out the amazing clips you guys suggested to us and fondly remember how funny it is to listen to Chris get trolled. Sit back, relax & enjoy the fun in this look back at best of Coder Radio!

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— Show Notes: —

A look back on 2014:

Clips are listed in the order they’re show. Repeat links are because multiple clips were used from the same episde.

The post Best Of Coder Radio 2014 | CR 133 first appeared on Jupiter Broadcasting.

The Xamarin Solution | CR 112

chris — Mon, 04 Aug 2014 14:19:14 +0000

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Mike discusses what his business has noted after using Xamarin and Xamarin.Forms. Plus we bust some myths, discuss use cases and advantages, the disadvantages.

Plus you great feedback, some follow up and more!

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