HowTo: Meetups in Berlin # I get that question once in a while - and need the list below myself every now and then: How to actually setup a meetup in Germany. Essentially it all boils down to three questions: Which channels to use for PR? Where to do the meeting? What other benefits to offer to attendees? When it comes to PR there are several options: Announce the meetup on relevant mailing lists ...
Happy Valentine # Free Software developers can be very critical: Every single line of code gets scrutinized, every design is reviewed by several often opinionated people. Even the way communities are supposed to work sometimes gets restricted. Sometimes a simple Thank You can make all the difference for any contributor or committer. FSFE proposed a really nice campaign: Celebrate the “I love Free Software” - Day on February 14th. In the hope that some of the readers of this blog actively develop or contribute to free software projects - this is a thank you for you! ...
February 14th: “I love free software day” # This year FSFE is once again running their I love free software campaign on February 14th: The goal they put up is to have more love reports, hugs and Thank You messages sent out than bug reports filed against projects. They have put online a few ideas on what to do that day. I’d like to add one additional option: If you are using any free software and you feel the urgent need to file a bug report on that day, use the opportunity to submit a patch as well: Make sure to not only describe what is going wrong but add a patch that contains a test to show the issue and a code modification that fixes the issue, is compatible with the project’s coding guidelines, doesn’t break anything else in the project. ...
Note to self - Java heap analysis # As I keep searching for those URLs over and over again linking them here. When running into JVM heap issues (an out of memory exception is a pretty sure sign, so can be the program getting slower and slower over time) there’s a few things you can do for analysis: Start with telling the effected JVM process to output some statistics on heap layout as well as thread state by sending it a SIGQUIT (if you want to use the number instead - it’s 3 - avoid typing 9 instead ;) ). ...
Apache Mahout 0.6 released # As of Monday, February 6th a new Apache Mahout version was released. The new package features Lots of performance improvments: A new LDA implementation using Collapsed Variational Bayes 0th Derivative Approximation - try that out if you have been bothered by the way less than optimal performance of the old version. Improved Decision Tree performance and added support for regression problems Reduced runtime of dot product between vectors - many algorithms in Mahout rely on that, so these performance improvements will affect anyone using them. ...
Clojure in Berlin # Though I had the chance to tinker with some Clojure code only briefly it’s programming model and the resulting compact programs do fascinate me. As the resulting code runs on a JVM and does integrate well with existing Java libraries migration is comparably cheap and easy. Today I finally managed to attend the local Berlin Clojure meetup, co-organised by Stefan Hübner and Fronx. Timing couldn’t have been much better: In this evenings event Philip Potter from Thoughtworks introduced Overtone - a library for making music with Clojure. ...
February 2012 Apache Hadoop Get Together Berlin # The upcoming Apache Hadoop Get-Together is scheduled for 22. February, 6 p.m. - taking place at Axel Springer, Axel-Springer-Str. 65, 10888 Berlin. Thanks to Springer for sponsoring the location! Note: It is important to indicate attendance. Due to security restrictions at the venue only registered visitors will be permitted. Get your ticket here: https://www.xing.com/events/hadoop-22-02-859807 Talks scheduled thus far: Markus Andrezak : “Queue Management in Product Development with Kanban - enabling flow and fast feedback along the value chain” - It’s a truism today that fast feedback from your market is a key advantage. ...
Dorkbot Berlin # c-base - 8p.m. on a Monday evening - the room is packed (and pretty cloudy as well): Time for Dorkbot, a short series of talks on “People doing strange things with electricity” hosted by Frank Rieger. First talk up on stage was Gismo on Raumfahrtagentur - a Berlin maker-space located in Wedding. Originating from the presenter’s interest in electrical bikes a group of ten people interested in hardware hacking got together. ...
Scrumtisch Berlin # After quite some time off I went to the Scrumtisch Berlin. The event was incredibly well visited - roughly 50 people filled the upper floor at Cafe Hundertwasser. Today’s event was organised such that participants first collected discussion topics, prioritised them together and then discussed the top three items in a timebox of 15 minutes each. Topics collected were: Best tricks to make teams self organised (20 votes) ...
Teddy in Chicago # Last week I spent several days in Chicago mainly to attend a few meetings at the local Nokia/Navteq office. Though the schedule was pretty packed, a few hours remained to explore the then frosty and windy city: Top three images: Some impressions of the city. Bottom left: Teddy’s new friend. Bottom right: Situation at ORD when flying out - fortunately both, the airport as well as the airline (Swiss) have quite some experience with challenging weather conditions so that we could leave without too much delay. ...