Wiredgeek's Professional side

Shanghai_software_park.mp4

Jacob Redding — Thu, 05 Jun 2008 08:33:57 +0000

Most tourists like to travel to resorts, amusement parks, or fancy restaurants. I like software parks!

yup, I'm that geeky

huangzhou_developer_conference.mp4

Jacob Redding — Thu, 05 Jun 2008 08:26:10 +0000

May 24, 2008 I attended the 2nd annual developers conference in Huangzhou. I have to say that I was quite impressed with the line up of speakers and with the quality of the presentations. I was always extremely interested to compare how I, a big white westerner, and the local Chinese students interacted within the sessions. Or maybe I should say that lack of interaction within the sessions. I was extremely excited to ask questions, to probe deeper and to really get at the "meat" of the matter(s). The Chinese students seemed bored and also as if they knew all the answers or maybe they just didn't care.

I was cool to attend and to see how the local developers interact and to watch this ecosystem grow. In 10 years (or less, according to the Chinese government) the world is going to see a lot more highly skilled, very talented developers hit the industry.

Working in China

Jacob Redding — Wed, 28 May 2008 00:31:36 +0000

Working in China, for someone coming from the "West", comes with its own unique set of difficulties. The first difficulty, of course, is the language barrier which may be present even if you speak perfect 普通话（Mandarin, Chinese) as many Chinese people still speak in local dialects. The second is another obvious one, the cultural differences. Cultural differences may not be apparent at first but they creep up on you and can present interesting challenges from time to time.

The biggest challenge/difficult when working in China may not be these obvious ones but rather these things that we take for granted in the "West".

1) 24 hour power. Power at all isn't always guaranteed even in the big cities. I know of several technology shops that have regular power outages. How does a tech-company operate without power? answer, it doesn't.

2) Internet access. Yes you have the challenges of the great firewall and the impositions it places but you also massive inconsistencies with the web itself. You may be paying for a 2MB line but there is no guarantee that you are going to get that or anywhere near that. Now when you combine spotty Internet with the fact that most of the Internet is hosted outside of China you get a really bad combination for doing any sort of web related work unless, that is, your web is 100% focused on China, your hosted in China and all of your resources are within China; a highly unlikely scenario even for China-based sites/companies.

As an example of one of the challenges, I uploaded 100MBs of file to a server in the U.S, the upload was done on a 2MB up/down business class ADSL line. The picture shows my upload times. As you can see one 34 MB file took 2 1/2 hours to upload, at a whopping 3.8KB/s but roughly 2 hours later a 13MB file took only 4 minutes at a, moderately faster, 54.7KB/s. This sort of inconsistency reigns supreme here and its just something that, for the moment, you just have to live with.

Doing any sort of web-based work in China is, in a word, challenging.

Barcamp Shanghai

Jacob Redding — Tue, 20 May 2008 17:19:13 +0000

This past weekend was Barcamp Shanghai. Not great the same as the US camps but great nonetheless. I had a good time and I can't wait for the next one.

Can you tell that I'm not much of a blogger? no... time..

Listen to my Horrible Chinese

Jacob Redding — Sat, 03 May 2008 17:52:36 +0000

Yes its true I do speak a little Chinese and a lot of horrible Chinese. At our last Drupal meetup in Beijing I was stuck as the only presenter and I didn't have an interpreter handy so it was just me and a room full of Chinese Drupal folks just waiting for me to speak. Very intimidating but I think I managed to get my point across.

These videos only prove one thing. I need practice!

Odd URLs

Jacob Redding — Wed, 16 Apr 2008 11:30:26 +0000

Ok so here's an odd one. Today I was writing a module that checks link module URLs for valid links (i.e. not 404s). In order to test that my module was working correctly I entered this as a URL

http://pinkypinkypinkybraincrainornot.com

It was random gibberish that my hand simply typed out.

My link checker went through the paces and it kept telling me that the above URL was valid so I went through my code over and over again to see what was wrong. Apparently nothing was wrong the above URL really is valid. At least it is in China.....

I'm filing that URL under odd....

Jacob + Raincity Studios = Drupal China love

Jacob Redding — Mon, 14 Apr 2008 06:29:01 +0000

I'm happy to announce that I have joined the great intercontinental team of Raincity Studios. Raincity has a great team in Vancouver and Shanghai as well as awesome folks scattered throughout the world. Since moving to China last year I have been looking for a way to get more involved in the local Chinese Drupal scene and to do my little part to help it grow. Additionally when I became a board member of the Drupal Association I made a pledge to do whatever I could to help encourage the growth of Drupal-related events around the world.

I'm excited that my work with Raincity Studios will allow me to do exactly this!

My job at RaincityStudios will not only focus on China but also on the rest of the world. In China I've been fortunate to meet some great folks at the Beijing user group as well as the Shanghai user groups and I'm excited to meet new Drupal folks down in Guangzhou, Nanjing, Hangzhou, Hong Kong and ???. In North America I've met great folks in Boston, NYC, San Francisco, LA, Colorado and many other places. The great folks in Europe, whom are currently putting on Drupalcon Hungary are awesome as well are the folks in Australia.

In addition to working with the community I will also be providing internal and external Drupal training. I'm very excited to get back to my training roots as it was as a Microsoft, yes that's right Microsoft, trainer that I really became the geek that I am today. I love training and watching others learn it is a wonderfully gratifying experience.

My new position will have me based out of Beijing, China with frequent trips to Shanghai. I'm looking forward to meeting all of my new coworkers as well as the new folks in the Chinese Drupal community!

Shanghai Drupal user meetup

Jacob Redding — Sat, 12 Apr 2008 09:30:04 +0000

I was fortunate enough to be in Shanghai for their Drupal user meetup. It was great to meet all of them and see the projects that they are working on. Shanghai has a good number of Drupal developers and some of them have worked on some really cool projects. For me the highlight of the entire meetup was when one of the guys introduced himself as "ian" and just in case you didn't know how to pronounce it, it is "Ian" of Deb-ian.

Yes! There are super Chinese geeks! I love this place!

Track the group at groups.drupal.org/Shanghai, they are growing quickly.

Drupalcon Europe 2008

Jacob Redding — Tue, 08 Apr 2008 04:33:52 +0000

Due to the hard work of many people Drupalcon Boston was a great success but just like how the Drupal community doesn't stop once a new version is released neither does Drupalcon. Drupalcon Europe is announced and will be held in Szeged, Hungary. Gábor Hojtsy and Kristof Van Tomme provided a solid proposal and put together an awesome team of professionals whom combined will create yet another amazing Drupalcon!

This announcement marks the end of months of hard work by the Drupalcon Boston team, Drupalcon Europe team as well as several members of the Drupal community that stepped forward to provide proposals for Drupalcon's throughout Europe. Dates were checked and double checked, venues scrutinized, budgets drawn up and revised over and over again, and the tiniest of details thought out.

This announcement also marks the start of a lot of hard work on the part of the Drupalcon Europe team as well as many volunteers throughout the community. The team is always looking for volunteers so please if you have the time step forward to help make Drupalcon Europe another great success.

Even though we are announcing Drupalcon Europe 2008 we are now planning Drupalcon North America 2009, Drupalcon Europe 2009 as well as Drupalcon ??? Please submit your proposals and ideas now.

DrupalCon Group photo

Jacob Redding — Tue, 11 Mar 2008 06:38:25 +0000

The entire Drupalcon gang hanging out for a big group photo.

Cool shirt

Jacob Redding — Tue, 11 Mar 2008 06:31:23 +0000

I liked this shirt.. super geeky ;)

Come to Drupalcon

Jacob Redding — Tue, 11 Mar 2008 06:29:36 +0000

Closing ceremony at the Boston Drupalcon 2008.

DrupalCon Code sprint

Jacob Redding — Mon, 10 Mar 2008 23:43:44 +0000

The day after Boston DrupalCon 2008 a nice, and big, code sprint was held. People from all over the world came together to collaborate for a full day of working on modules, themes, and Drupal core. Its amazing to watch the community get together!

Emfield gets tudou.com support

Jacob Redding — Tue, 04 Mar 2008 16:56:44 +0000

While sitting and listening to the Drupal in China session at the Boston DrupalCon Aaron Winborn, creator of the emfield module, added support for the Chinese video sharing site tudou.com. Support was added in about 30 minutes demonstrating how easy it is to extend the functionality of the emfield and of Drupal.

DrupalCon

Jacob Redding — Mon, 03 Mar 2008 08:27:31 +0000

Today is the first day of DrupalCon Boston 2008 and the start of an incredibly busy week for me. Working with the great folks at Rain City Studios as well as a great guy at World Zhulu I left my comfortable home in Beijing, China to be here for this whirlwind event. The many volunteers of the Boston DrupalCon team, Kieran, and many others have poured thousands of hours into making this a major milestone in the history of Drupal. Robert, of Raincity Studios, John, of World Zhulu, and myself will be leading one of the many sessions at this years North American DrupalCon!

Our session is entitled "Drupal in China the how, who, and why". We'll be discussion why Drupal in China is important, who is using Drupal is China as well as who are the dev shops in China, and finally we'll cover how China is adopting Drupal as well as OSS and, more specifically, how it is different that North America or Europe. I think this is an important session not simply because China is the next big juggernaut that is constantly in the news but because the adoption rate of OSS across Asia is incredibly low compared to the Western world.

We have a few goals with running this session. The first is to encourage more collaboration with Chinese developers by discussing the various challenges and barriers to collaboration. These include language barriers, cultural differences as well as differences in technology. The second goal is to discuss the challenges and rewards of working in China directly with Chinese developers. The third goal is to discuss/encourage various forms of investment in OSS within China. Although outsourcing is the obvious first thing that springs to mind when someone mentions investment in a developing country this will not be the center of our discussion. There are many other forms of investment that can do great things in this world.

If you are interested in how China, or Asia, is using Drupal and/or want to get involved in helping to grow Drupal in Asia stop by our session and join the discussion.
Monday March 3rd, 2008 @ 3:30pm,
DrupalCon Boston 2008