I spent a long weeked at Py­Cam­p. It was awe­some. How could spend­ing 4 days with 50 geeks hack­ing things and pro­gram­ming python not be awe­some. But I was alone, be­cause re­al­ly, my wife (a lawyer) and son (too young to code yet) would have been bored to tears.

And I know some­thing sim­i­lar hap­pened to a bunch of oth­ers there. Let's face it, we geeks are get­ting old­er. While there is still an in­flux of young peo­ple, we old ones are re­fus­ing to go away, and we are now mar­ried, and have kid­s, and leav­ing for days is un­fair to our fam­i­lies.

So, I wish there was an event where I could go and do this, while my wife could go as well, and my son too, and there would be some­thing for ev­ery­one. Maybe we would not hack all day long, but just half a day. Maybe we wuold hack more games and then be­ta test them on the kid­s.

One good thing about kids is that once you cross a cer­tain thresh­old, in a con­trolled en­vi­ron­men­t, the need for adult mon­i­tor­ing de­creas­es. In m ex­pe­ri­ence, 1 kid needs 1 adult, 2 kids need 1.5, and 5 kids need .5 adult­s.

The board games at night would be in­clu­sive (my wife likes role games, for ex­am­ple), the jug­gling class­es could in­clude kid­s, peo­ple could work on art­work... I don't know, do things that are not ex­clu­sive­ly hack­ing. I love hack­ing but it's a small­er part of my life than it was in the past.

So, any­one has any good ideas? Know of such a place or even­t?

Sor­ry again, span­ish on­ly, be­cause it's an­oth­er video of me speak­ing in span­ish (this time with a spaniard)

Si querés ten­er mu­chos usuar­ios de tu pro­gra­ma, es fun­da­men­tal que el uni­ver­so de "gente que puede us­ar el pro­gra­ma" sea lo más grande posi­ble. El mejor camino para el­lo es hac­er que el sis­tema op­er­a­ti­vo que us­a/­sufre tu po­ten­cial usuario es­té so­por­ta­do. Hac­er eso no es in­creíble­mente difí­cil, pero siem­pre hay al­gu­na cosa rara. La con­fer­en­cia tu­vo lu­gar en la ciu­dad de Junín ( Buenos Aires, Ar­genti­na ) en Sep­tiem­bre de 2011, y fué or­ga­ni­za­da por PyAr ( Python Ar­genti­na ).

Video:

Slides:

Sor­ry, span­ish on­ly, since it's a video of me speak­ing in span­ish ;-)

Fi­nal­mente, gra­cias a Juan Ro­driguez Mon­ti, video de mi char­la "Ha­cien­do tram­pa: Tru­cos para pro­gra­mar menos" de Py­Con Ar­genti­na 2011.

Y los slides:

So you could­n't make it to Py­Cam­p? This is the place. Sor­ry, I can't post the awe­some, so it's just a pic­ture :-)

One of the things I hacked at dur­ing this Py­Camp is try­ing to fig­ure out a nice work­flow for Niko­la, some­thing that will en­able users that are not so tech­ni­cal, to use it.

One first step is Niko­la-as-a-ser­vice, which is meant for tech­ni­cal users any­way but lays down the in­fra­struc­ture for this to work semi-nice­ly.

In the video be­low, you will see me do this:

• Go to GitHub

• Take a starter's blog I pro­vid­ed, and do a clone

• Go to the niko­la-as-a-ser­vice site, and lo­­gin (via twit­ter)

• Cre­ate a site us­ing my fork's re­po URL

• Get a "we­b­hook" URL, and add it to my fork's ad­min as a post-­­com­mit hook

• Ed­it a file in github's web UI and com­mit it (y­ou can of course just push from any github clien­t)

• Au­­to­­mat­i­­cal­­ly, the site niko­la-as-a-ser­vice pub­­lish­es gets up­­­dat­ed.

Please don't try to use this ser­vice yet be­cause:

1. It's run­n­ing in a $4.50/­­month serv­er

2. It's the same serv­er my own blog us­es

3. I will turn it of­f, delete ev­ery­thing, etc. ev­ery once in a while

4. I am ed­it­ing the code on the server, so no guar­an­­tees it will not just stop work­ing.

So, here's the video: