Tag Archives: Austin

Google I/O Extended Austin (2012)

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While the major Google I/O fun is happening in San Francisco on June 27-29, some of us will stay behind and run/participate at the Extended version of Google I/O — in my case, Google I/O Extended Austin.

You can sign up for Google I/O Extended Austin — for registration and information visit https://sites.google.com/site/austinioextended/.

We expect close to 50 people and we will have 3-5 speakers on June 27; yours truly included. I will cover “Security on (Android) Mobile Applications”.

Related to this see Countdown to Google I/O: Diverse perspectives.

ceo

VC: Silicon Valley vs. Austin (May 2012)

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Christopher Calnan of the Austin Business Journal wrote a piece titled VC: Silicon Valley vs. Austin, on the opinions that came out from this month’s CEO Summit in Austin.

The following snippet from the article summarizes very well why Silicon Valley is (and will remain) ahead of Austin:

“Bay Area is more conducive to startups because the area’s large number of venture capital firms has resulted in a more aggressive, fast-moving environment fueled by an army of investors who are more tolerant of risk.”

There is money in Austin, but the “risk taking attitude” of the Austin VC community, while it has improved over the years (thanks to folks like Joshua Baer and other Angels and Incubators), is not there yet as compared to SV.

Over the years I have seen that the Austin VC community likes to invest more on “sure things” vs. cutting-edge unproven ideas and people. This is especially true in general with respect to my space, Mobility; Austin is still more B2B-focused (and chips) in general. An example of this you can see by looking at the portfolio page of Austin Ventures, the big VC in town.

So Silicon Valley wins, and New York City is doing very well.

Austin life-style and people and tech community is great though, which is why I am here.

I hope to continue seeing more local innovators, entrepreneurs, facilitators, investors, and risk takers in general, all here in town, fueling the local ecosystem.

As a side note, Kickstarter is a great alternative. Recently, Austin-based Replay Inc. raised over $600K via Kickstarter; congrats to Paul and team.

Update: After I finished writing this piece, I read the following at the Austin American Statesman: Austin chamber, tech guru team up to create startup center. Awesome. Led by Joshua Baer, the startup center, called Capital Factory, opens in 22,000 square feet of space on the 16th floor of the Austin Centre complex at 701 Brazos St. This is the kind of thing I was talking about. Congrats to Joshua are rest of the team.

Update-2: See The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly of Building a Company in Austin (pandodaily).

ceo

Android Dev Austin (May 2012) | Topic: “Android app performance and analysis”

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Update: we had a great event! — see some photos of the event. Thanks to our speakers, and to our sponsor Evernote.

Topic – “Android app performance, optimization and analysis”:

For headcount purposes, please register at http://www.eventbrite.com/event/3493177187

Food and drinks will be served.

We have some goodies to give away, courtesy of Google’s Developer Advocate group.

Event Info:
Date: 5/24/2012
Time: 6:45-9pm
Where: Evernote Corp. 6504 Bridge Point Pkwy, Suite 400 Austin, TX. 78730

Agenda – “Android app performance, optimization and analysis”:

0 ~ Intro, and a word from our sponsor, Evernote
1 ~ The Evernote Android SDK
2 ~ Using the Memory Analyzer tool to find memory leaks/inspect memory usage, including soft vs weak references (useful for memory analysis), and using the built in Android profiler to find performance hotspots
3 ~ Introducing CoreDroid (An OSS app framework to ease up some of the pain of app development)
4 ~ Android Performance monitoring and configuration SDK with InstaOps (mobile application performance monitoring and configuration management system)
5 ~ Open discussion

Also, if interested, you may want to bring your computer — the folks from InstaOps will also explain how developers or dev-ops can use InstaOps’ SDK and tools to improve mobile performance. So if you are interested into diving into the code (including code walk through), please bring your laptop.

Thanks to our sponsor, Evernote.

And thanks to Google’s Developer Advocate group for the goodies/give aways.

For more information visit the Android Dev Austin website.
ceo

Mobile Monday Austin | Nokia USA Tour visits Austin – Apr 30, 2012

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Mobile Monday Austin

Please join us April 30 for our next event when Nokia visits Austin for its “Nokia Lumia USA Tour”

WHEN: April 30, 6-9pm
WHERE: Buffalo Billiards, 201 E. 6th St.
WHO: Mobile Monday Austin & Nokia

Please RSVP at Eventbrite: http://momoaustinapr2012.eventbrite.com/

If you have a Windows Phone application, Nokia Developer wants to see your app – visit http://www.mobilemondayaustin.com for more information.

Drinks and appetizers will be served. Nokia is giving away 2 Nokia Lumia 800′s, plus other! For more information, visit the Mobile Monday Austin website.

Also see our new Facebook Page!

See you there…

ceo

Proclamation: February 6 is Awesome Day in Austin

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Awesome Foundation

February 6 is now officially Awesome Day in Austin, Texas.

The Mayor of the City of Austin, Mayor Lee Leffingwell, just proclaimed February 6 as “Awesome Day” in honor of the launch of the Austin chapter (@atxawesome) of the Awesome Foundation.

As one of its founding members, I am super excited about joining my co-founders and helping start the new Austin chapter with its mission of Forwarding the interest of Awesome in the universe, $1,000 at a time.

What is the Awesome Foundation?

The Awesome Foundation for the Arts and Sciences is an ever-growing, worldwide network of people devoted to forwarding the interest of awesomeness in the universe.

Created in the long hot summer days of 2009 in Boston, the Foundation distributes a series of monthly $1,000 grants to projects and their creators. The money is pooled together from the coffers of ten or so self-organizing “micro-trustees” and given upfront in cash, check, or gold doubloons. The chapters are autonomous and organized by the trustees around geographic areas or topics of interest.

The Foundation provides these grants with no strings attached and claims no ownership over the projects it supports. It is, in the words of one of our trustees, a micro-genius grant for flashes of micro-brilliance.

So if you have an idea that is related to the Arts and/or Sciences and need some help to kick start it, feel free to apply for a grant!

The official Proclamation by the Major of Austin

Austin Austin Proclamatin

ceo

Mobile Monday Austin, Mobile Gaming – Sept 19, sponsored by Nokia

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A reminder that our next Mobile Monday Austin event is on September 19, 2011. The topic is Mobile Gaming and the event is sponsored by Nokia.

Date: Monday, September 19, 2011
Time: 6-9pm
Location: Buffalo Billiards, 201 E. 6th St.
Cost: FREE, food and drinks will be served

Please join us on Monday, September 19 for the next Mobile Monday Austin session. We’ll be discussing mobile gaming, and the latest trends and technologies in this exciting and active area of the mobile industry.

We’ll start gathering at 6pm for free drinks and some appetizers, and the session will begin at 7pm. Come out to meet other members of the Austin mobile community, and to hear about:

  • the latest research in mobile gaming from Nielsen, with David Gill
  • what’s hot in the Austin game developer community, from American-Statesman reporter Brian Gaar
  • an update from Nokia and Microsoft on Windows Phone 7, and what it holds for game developers
  • presentations from local game developers on their latest and coolest work

Please RSVP below to reserve your spot! Visit Mobile Monday Austin website.

If you are an Austin-area game developer and would like to present, please contact Carlo Longino, carlo at mobilemondayaustin dot com, or C. Enrique Ortiz, eortiz at mobilemondayaustin dot com.

Thanks to our sponsor, Nokia!

ceo