Talentopoly Podcast

Episode 45 - How and Why to Start a Meetup                                      Subscribe on iTunes Subscribe to RSS Download MP3 Miles Sterrett joined us to discuss how he got roped into hosting a Ruby meetup and why he does it. If you’ve been considering starting a meetup or wonder what’s involved give this a listen. Show notes Why?:  You’re selfish. You want to lean on others to get better at your craft. You’re unselfish. You want to help others, maybe the whole community, get better at your craft. Both! Ideally, you want to get better, and you want others to get better. How? Get the Word Out (Meetup.com, IndyHackers, Twitter) Make it fun Find a Business Looking to Hire Meeting Attendees (if you need sponsorship) Talentopoly links - Noteworthy links posted on Talentopoly in the last two weeks The Golden Ratio: a designer’s guide Responsive Carousel Project: Now Open Source draper - Decorators/View-Models for Rails Applications Raspberry Pi Gets Own App Store: … Make It Even Easier For Kids To Get Coding And Earn From Apps

Episode 44 - How to Roll Your Own Cloud Services For Maximum Privacy                                      Subscribe on iTunes Subscribe to RSS Download MP3 Edward Rudd calls in and Jacob West stops by our studios to discuss alternatives to popular cloud-based services like Dropbox. Listen to us discuss the pros and cons to doing it yourself. We list some of the software that’s out there that will allow you to setup your very own service for personal use. Show notes Why roll your own? Privacy Storage Total control http://zenhabits.net/google-free/ Pros/cons of “Rolling your own {INSERT SERVICE HERE}”? Good option for young kids Cons 1. A dedicated server just for Zimbra with Domain Keys installed 2. A block of 24-32 ip numbers. (49 ip numbers would be ideal, but it’s harder to buy odd blocks like that.) Put your mail server as close to the middle of that range as possible. It sounds like a lot, but most collocation facilities can hook you up with this for 300-500 usd a month. 3. Proactive attention to getting your ip block removed from all spam lists (especially Barracuda, their list is the most annoying for the high number of false positives) before the fact. Just let them know you exist. 4. Pray that all of the hundreds of moving pieces you’ve just put in place don’t break, that bad hackers don’t brute force their way into your server. Strong passwords don’t really help as much as people tell you they do either. That’s now something you have to worry about too. Where to host? Linode Slicehost “Your house” (Business grade internet options) Dropbox Alternatives Owncloud (http://owncloud.org) - Dropbox Alternative + Calendar + Contacts + plugins AeroFS - http://aerofs.com - Dropbox Alternative without a central server Rsync SparkleShare - http://sparkleshare.org/ - just clients and uses git on the server GMail Alternatives qmail, Postfix, Sendmail Horde, IMP, Squirrel Mail, Roundcube http://www.turnkeylinux.org/zimbra Spam filter? Amavisd (runs spamassassin + virus scanning as a pluggable mail filter) hosted service http://ask.slashdot.org/story/11/08/07/1533224/ask-slashdot-self-hosted-gmail-alternatives Google Docs Alternatives http://www.fengoffice.com/web/pricing.php http://etherpad.org/ http://onedrum.com/ Bought by Yammer and integrated with it now ANY Self-hosted WIKI !!! Flickr Alternatives http://www.zenphoto.org/ http://gallery.menalto.com/ YouTube Alternatives Google Voice Alternatives http://www.twilio.com/api/openvbx http://pbxinaflash.net/ Full Backup Solutions? Backblaze Carbonite rsync.net LOCAL BACKUP DEVICE! and the Shoe leather express to a remote location!! Security? selinux, disable password login on SSH Talentopoly links - Noteworthy links posted on Talentopoly in the last two weeks Changing times for web developers – 6 Tips You Should Read to survive Workless gem, dynamically scale your Heroku worker dynos Your team should work like an open source project

Episode 43 - Creating a Repeatable Sales Process                                      Subscribe on iTunes Subscribe to RSS Download MP3 Alex Lopes swung by our virtual recording studio to tell us about why marketing and sales gets him out of the bed in the morning. We focus on the science of creating a repeatable sales process in our discussion. Listen to how Alex suggests you approach adapting to the dynamics of your industry and customers. Show notes If it’s not predictable, it’s not repeatable. Lacking traction: You’re not solving the right problem You’re do not have the right solution You’re not being found and evaluated correctly Customer’s buy pain killers, not vitamins “The pressure point of the opportunity changes over time” ~ Brad Feld Focus on metrics that matter Books to read: Nail It Then Scale It ~ Nathan Furr and Paul Ahlstrom Mastering the Complex Sale ~ Jeff Thull Talentopoly links - Noteworthy links posted on Talentopoly in the last two weeks SpriteMe - a service to make image sprites Responsive Navigation: Optimizing for Touch Across Devices TryMyUI - Website Usability Testing A simple guide to responsive typography

Episode 42 - Hosting Your Own Developer Conference                                      Subscribe on iTunes Subscribe to RSS Download MP3 Tony Dewan stopped by the studio to talk to us about what it’s like to organize a conference. His re:build conference has had some of the top designers and developers in the industry come speak. He shares his tips, opinions and experience so that anyone interested in organizing their own conference can understand what is involved. re:build - A conference for developers & designers rebuildconf.com 2011.rebuildconf.com tagboard.com/rebuild2012 Show notes You live and die by your speakers! Choosing/finding/signing speakers Have an opinion and stick to it Picking/working with venues Clever ideas to limit costs sweat the details - badges, speakers needs, etc sponsorships are hard don’t do it alone understand your target audience - speakers, ticket price, sponsors it’s a labor of love - you won’t make much money Other awesome, inspirational events: Brooklyn Beta Talentopoly links - Noteworthy links posted on Talentopoly in the last two weeks FuelUX - A lightweight library that extends Twitter Bootstrap Manymo - A Better Android Emulator The Top 10 Alternatives to Google Adwords CSS3 Microsoft Modern Buttons Better TDD Workflow via Exclusive Tests in Jasmine and Mocha

Episode 41 - Creating Your First Typeface                                      Subscribe on iTunes Subscribe to RSS Download MP3 Abelardo Gonzalez joins us to discuss how he created his first typeface, open-dyslexic. His font is already getting strong traction among apps like Instapaper and large institutions. He talks about which apps he used along the way, how much he spent and what issues he ran into. Apps used started with app demos and fontforge fontforge requires more time than I had.  fontcreator was cool, cheap, but a little buggy. Messed up font smoothing. FontLab is expensive, buggy, slow iteration, didn’t look like they offered any help. switched to Glyphsapp better workflow. Nicer. Learning materials great source of info was Google’s submission requirements for web fonts exploring FontLab and reading the help file showed me things I should have been doing to maintain compatibility.  Playing with other fonts as examples Just doing it and figuring it out later. Glyphsapp probably has the best tutorials out there Adobe’s website http://www.adobe.com/devnet/opentype.html I’m still not perfect. Fixing spacing issues and kerning. https://talentopoly.com/posts/5383-kerning_in_practice_beware_odd_letter_spacing https://talentopoly.com/posts/2843-kern_type_the_kerning_game Talentopoly links - Noteworthy links posted on Talentopoly in the last two weeks Understanding Postgres Performance Base 2 - A SQLite 3 GUI Announcing the First Beta Release of Persona Ego Driven Development GitHub Collaborative Coding Training