Austin Software Mentorship — Meeting this Thursday

Last semester I received an energetic email about offering UT students one-on-one interaction with local software professionals. At first, I did not understand the vision (sorry Sukant!), but I felt it was worth pursuing so I replied. After a couple emails I was on-board and ready to help out with the noble vision. Basically, students graduate with a lot of skills, but they still have a lot left to learn before they’re truly effective in industry. Why don’t we augment the curriculum and arm students with the skills they need while they’re still in school? From this simple idea, Austin Software Mentorship was born. It’s a really cool group and I’m proud of where it’s going! I’ve met a lot of incredible local people and been humbled and impressed by their range of skills. I have a lot to learn

So why am I am posting? To announce the first major event!

What: Professional-grade classwork: How software professionals might code your homework and projects

Where: TAY 3.128

When: 7pm Thursday, February 11th

More Information
PROFESSIONAL-GRADE CLASSWORK
How software professionals might code your homework and projects

Local software professionals will introduce concepts, techniques, and tools
essential to software development in industry.  Students in a software
discipline are encouraged to work these practices into their software
classwork.

Pizza and beverages will be provided.

I encourage any student or software professional to join the mailing list and get involved; I promise you won’t be disappointed.

Public Transport + Technology = Good

Why don’t public transportation providers outfit their vehicles with GPS trackers and update the position in real time? This would effectively eliminate the need for time tables: just check the website/phone application to see when a bus will be near you. Traffic? No problem! The map still shows exactly where the bus is. Even the bus-drivers could use the map to coordinate with other bus-drivers on their route.

Extending this system, the bus could text individuals whenever it is X minutes from a bus-stop (where the user sets the X and the bus-stop). I have a bus stop two minutes from my front door, so the morning bus would text me when it was five minutes away; similarly, at school I’m about 10 minutes from the bus stop so I would want a text about 15 minutes in advance. That’s better living through software! And the technology exists already.

From an economics standpoint, this innovation would be justified if ridership would increase enough to offset the cost of the project (hardware, software, installation. and maintenance). My hunch is that this system would pay itself off quickly because more people would ride the bus if it were easier to catch. Who wants to wait in the rain or the sweltering heat indefinitely? A system like this would also differentiate the transportation operator and raise the bar on service. I rode a bullet train, in part, because I wanted to experience the future. I can just imagine Austinintes on vacation bragging, “CapMetro back in Austin texts you whenever the bus is close! Why doesn’t this city do the same?”

So, how about it? Why doesn’t your city make public transportation easier? What other innovations and upgrades should we expect from public transportation?

I survived ICSE 2009

Better late than never, right?

Last Sunday I returned from Vancouver where I was attending the International Conference on Software Engineering (ICSE). I met a lot of great and interesting people. A few that stand out are

• Sherlock Licorish – the soft-spoken researcher from Guyana who told me I was an academic
• Justin Erenkrantz – the President of the Apache Software Foundation who was really down to Earth and cool
• Andy Ko – a professor finishing up his first year at University of Washington. Andy was an all-around great person: articulate, helpful, funny

I also had the honor of hanging out with a couple esteemed colleagues, Drew Stovall and Hyrum Wright, and my wonderful wife.

And a big thanks to the person that made this all possible, Dr. Christine Julien.

Vancouver was an amazing city! I feel extremely glad to be able to see the Pacific Northwest in the late Spring/early Summer. We experienced temperatures  in the 40s to 70 with ample sunshine and a light breeze. By most definitions, near perfect weather. In the eight days we were there it only rained once! Of course, that was the day we were on an open-top zodiac chasing whales, but the experience was too cool to let a little rain get in the way (my retrospective opinion, not the opinion I held while freezing on the chilly waters of the Pacific Ocean). We had awesome Japanese food, terrific Chinese food, a tasty bubble tea, and other ethnic fare that was totally worthwhile.

Before ICSE, we were in Madison, WI to see my sister graduate with her PhD. Her research was about DBMSs on flash disks. Congratulations to her on this momentous ocassion. We’re all very proud!