Code Camp Comes To St. Louis
Kyle Cordes was on hand at the St. Louis JUG meeting this evening to get the word out about a novel concept of a conference—Saint Louis Code Camp.
What is a Code Camp? If you haven't had the pleasure of experiencing a Code Camp first hand, check out the Code Camp Wiki. In particular, you should read the Code Camp Manifesto.
Back? Great. Now, perhaps you are wondering, what does this have to do with me? You could also be wondering why you haven't been to a Code Camp and how you too can have a Code Camp. I have great news. Code Camp has come to St. Louis! Now, you have a Code Camp. Even better, you can help make the St. Louis Code Camp great by attending, by volunteering, or - even better - by signing up to be a presenter.
The St. Louis Code Camp is first and foremost about the community. It is the perfect opportunity to start your career as a presenter, or just hang out with a bunch of people like yourself. And best of all, just like the Manifesto says, it is free. We look forward to seeing you there.
The St. Louis Code Camp is organized by Brian Button. It will happen on May 6th and 7th. It's free, but registration is required.
VOIP, Asterisk, Java, ...
Can you use an open source PBX?
Tonight's St. Louis JUG meeting featured Mike Plezbert from Agilis Systems talking about VOIP and the open source Asterisk PBX system.
Mike opened the presentation with a demo. He asked the audience for a cell phone number and ran a little script that drives an Asterisk Gateway Interface Manager program to call the number. The phone rang. The callee answered with the speaker on. An audio file played on the phone. The callee was then instructed to press 1, 2, or 3. He pressed 2. The script printed "pressed 2" on the screen and hung up the call.
Mike then proceeded to talk about VOIP and Asterisk technologies in terms that a non-specialist like me can understand. (The slides will be posted to the St. Louis JUG Knowledgebase in a few days.)
The presentation was lively with many audience member questions and answers. Some centered around the VOIP technology details and some centered around the business of Agilis Systems, which is by itself pretty interesting. The St. Louis Post-Dispatch did a write-up about them last year. You can find the article here.
BTW, they are hiring. They also invited JUG members to a Half-Life 2 Frag Fest. Sorry I did not copy down the details.
Google Calendar Is Out
I love it. :)
Google Calendar is now live
The subject says it all... Go ahead: log in, play around and post your suggestions and impressions as long as it's not "It doesn't work on Safari" (usually the first thing that Mac users say when they see it).
I took a look, and liked what I see. Such clean and simple UI:
[Update] OK, that was a joke. I logged in on the second try. It looks just like the other calendar programs that I have used in the past (Outlook, Evolution, etc.) with some of that "I know what you want to do" intention guessing UI power.
Now comes the real question: I used calendaring software only for work. And for the kinds of meetings that we schedule (planning the next release of a product, vendor demos, etc.) I'm not sure if I want that kind of information to be stored outside the company.