“Here is a short footage on our recent work on quantum levitation. We were inspired by the game Wipe’out to do our work. With this new technology, we hope to revolutionize the world of motor transport; Maybe in a near future we could assist to a real Wipe’out race.”

Amazing stuff – this is the sort of inspired stuff that hackerspaces were invented for.

I’m in a bit of limbo at the moment as I’m not sure where things are going to end up. As I mentioned earlier, I signed on as a STEMnet ambassador and I’ve got a few wee projects keeping me busy. In the interim, I’m kinda interested in this stuff:

http://codingforkids.org/
http://ruby4kids.com/ruby4kids
http://www.kidsruby.com

It’s a lot closer to what I originally envisioned code4pizza to be about. An after school/work club for people of all ages, from 16 up, coming to write code for the public good, in return for pizza.

I intend to intro these links to Izaak and Meggan this weekend.

From the BBC:

Fewer bus services and reducing the number of full-time drivers are among cost cutting measures being introduced by Translink, it has emerged.

Although frequency is being reduced, Translink said no routes will be cancelled.

So, in essence, rather than three buses coming all at once, there will just be two…

 
 
I have absolutely had it with Translink. For the last two+ years, I have attempted to talk to them, to reason with them regarding opening up their data. I firmly believed that if they opened their data and made it easier to get access to their timetables and routes then more people would take buses and trains.

We have worked through DETI, DRD and other organisations. We have attempted to deal with their arcane IT infrastructure and their obfuscatory marketing department. We have spoken to their management, to their mid-level managers. We have even been vaguely complimentary about their awful web site.

But at every turn, Translink have blocked our access to the data. They gave an instance of the data to OpenDataNI, a project within the DFP (which has since fallen by the wayside with the cuts) and have flatly refused to give the local community access to use the (now outdated) timetable and route data for anything other than developer demos. The local developer and designer community invested hundreds of man hours of work into decoding the archaic file formats, into developing an API and a database, in writing code to make the data accessible and developing designs for user interfaces for the web and mobile. All of that effort has been wasted, all of that effort has been blocked.

Translink, an active go-co (government-owned corporation) have systematically blocked local industry from using the innovation they were giving freely to create opportunity and enterprise.

So, in light of todays news, I am sickened. I give up.

@mdhughes sent this to me:

In the future, we envision that computer programming will be taught in elementary school, just like reading, writing and arithmetic. We really mean computer programming–not just computer use (which is already being taught).

In this “expedition into the future,” we want to explore the notion that virtually everybody can obtain some level of computer programming skills in school, just as they can learn how to read and write.

They recognise that if everyone is programming then the number of poor programmers will increase. By the same token however, programming talents will be more able to be discovered (and will have increased resistance to cultural gender bias) and there will be a greater awareness of how hard it is to make really great software.

I’m still looking for the names of folk who would sacrifice a few hours to help some complete noobs, including some young kids, and get them on the road to programming. How about you?

[UPDATE: This has been retweeted a few times. I've created a Twitter list here. Mail me or DM me if you want to get added to it. ]

I launched a new blog today: City of Tomorrow designed to help capture ideas for the development of cities in the near future.

What is City of Tomorrow?

City of Tomorrow is a Civil Imagineering (as opposed to Civil Engineering) project to have individuals imagine the city of tomorrow and then explain this from the point of view of an observer in the future. We want to think of, and describe, features of our future cities and hopefully imagineer dates by which these things will be achieved.

What do we hope to achieve?

We’re at the Imagineering stage so we’re just looking for ideas. As we get closer to the dates mentioned, then we’re going to look for ways to implement these things.

When?

For the purposes of this web site, the date is now 2025 AD or later. We all live in magnificent cities which have witnessed more than a decade of revolution in architecture and design, in transportation planning, in social re-engineering and a complete re-write of the planning laws.

The writers here will provide a retrospective look at what happened in the past to get to where we are (in the metaphorical) today. We’ll provide important dates of when things happened, attempt to give links and credit to people who made the greatest changes and at some point in the future (in real time) review how much we got right, how much we got wrong.

Part of this comes from attending a CityCampLDN (CityCamp London) in February and meeting some of the “civil entrepreneurs” who attended.

CityCamp LDN brings together city leaders at all levels from government, business and community organisations to reimagine the way in which technology can help to reshape the future of London.

I know we have more folk who are interested in this – and this is definitely not a Belfast-centric piece of work – but we have to think about our cities first just due to the population. I hope that progressive town and borough councils will steal these ideas – I hope even more to get them engaged.

Later in 2011, I’d like to hold a City of Tomorrow event in Belfast and/or Derry-Londonderry to see if there are others interested but for now I’d appreciate any comments or tweets you have.

Stephen Houston (@egeek) contributed this to todays meeting – some things that need to be considered or taught and things that have been lacking in his experience of recent graduates.

#ImprovingCodersFromColleges Fundamentals
- How does a computer execute your code?
- What does the OS do?
- Where does your code execute? JS, server side, etc
- Network/Internet, TCP/IP, etc
- How your further your own knowledge, blogs, etc
- Writing your own projects, advantage of doing so for interviews
- Self-starting, own initative
- How are the large sites architected?
- Scale, how much data do the big guys handle?
- DBs, relational, schema-less, etc
- Agile methods
- Handling requirements
- Professional behaviour and attitude
- Different languages, what are they used for? Advantages/Limitations of each
- Why you need to be a polyglot

Software skills
- Version control
- Team working
- Emphasise the need to understand projects during placement, how they fit, team dynamics
- Language fundamentals
- Coding standards
- Unit and integration testing
- Code patterns - don't just know, understand
- Multi-threading/concurrency
- Deadlock
- Documenting your code
- Thinking maintenance

Local Industry
- Who is out there?
- What do they use and what do they need?
- What can they do for you? How will they further your career?
- Your own ideas?
- Your internet profile
- A good interview

I reckon this is a good start. I have toyed with the idea of getting hiring managers (not HR) to contribute to the process by essentially sponsoring spaces which will turn into jobs. So if CompanyX needs 10 enterprise Java guys, then maybe we find training for 20. And if CompanyY needs 5 PHP or Ruby guys, we train 10. We have to remember to not only fill the job pipeline but also to provide training to supply our growing startups.

All in attendance were agreed that software engineering is vocational and not academic and that more could be achieved with training courses and input from industry than with a 3 year degree. And for the most part an honours project is a complete waste of time.

I’ve spoken to Momentum and BMC and I believe we can do this if we have enough support from local industry leaders. It can’t be just the usual suspects – we have to engage with the little companies as well as the big ones. I left with a few actions to go speak to people. In all a very positive meeting.

Very happy to also meet today with @bndouglas, @andyboal and @hamstarr to chat about this subject.

This is supplementary to the Code4Pizza FreeSchool. We need everything working in unison.

This is, to my mind, the best way out of the Age of Austerity.

After the debate the other night on twitter, I proposed the idea of a FreeSchool for extra-curricular programming guidance.

I’ve spoken to both Momentum and Belfast Metropolitan College about how they can support this and both seem keen to help industry find the software developers they need. Momentum and the colleges have some experience in this with their Software Professionals Course that ran in previous years, funded by DEL. It was designed to take graduates from non-IT backgrounds and give them the vocational skills (over 6 months) to have a sustainable career in software. This is, in theory, similar to other courses – such as the Rapid Advancement Programme (RAP, originally by BIC Systems) and the Advanced Vocational Training in Information Technology course (AVTIT, originally by the University of Ulster). These courses were popular pre Bubble 1.0 but seem to have fallen by the wayside even though we seem to be heading for a larger (and slightly more sustainable) Bubble 2.0.

We’re meeting at 1 pm today, in Starbucks at Cornmarket, to generally see what level of interest there is in industry lobbying for a renewed commitment to turning non-IT graduates and non-graduates into professional software developers using an industry-focused vocational course.

If you can’t be there, comment!

My friends Rory and Anita at The Creativity Hub are pretty much the nicest people I know. That’s not entirely surprising considering the work they do in creativity and conflict resolution. I know Rory from a few years ago when he was working in the rehabilitation of prisoners (from our unique political ‘situation’) and I was very glad to re-acquaint myself with him not long after the start of this job – both for work and socially.

Rory introduced me to the concept of “Advanced Civilisation” (which he said is also available on the Internet as Beachhead). It’s something I had used for my creative writing but I had not really considered using it for work-related purposes. I do find now that I use it a lot – that imagination figures heavily in how I want to enact change in the world around me. The secret to achieving things lies in the discovery of great people, not in the funding programmes that are available.

This weekend we will complete the proposal document for StartVI year two and we will be looking for 6 great start-up ideas. We have a much more cohesive programme planned for the 2011 intake, more mentors and a better idea of what can be achieved now that we’ve shown it can work.

I’m also proposing the founding of a new co-working, research based technology centre in Belfast. And a solution to improving the quality of software engineering in Northern Ireland – comprising of a industry-tailored education programme and a community focused technology freeschool. Of course I alone am not qualified to do all of this. That’s why I’ve been looking for great people to help change the world; to steal the future; to get there earlier.

All of this to create a hub of 21st Century Enlightenment.

John Girvin sent this link: Why aren’t we teaching our kids how to code?

So the future is in technology. But what are our children actually learning? Depressingly, the answer is almost nothing useful. Maths and programming will be core to the majority of future innovation, businesses and jobs. Yet maths education in the UK is a joke: the curriculum is outdated, children hate it, and it has little practical value.

The conversation started because of a general malaise about the quality of software engineering and computer science graduates in the UK. I am slightly encouraged by reports that graduates worldwide are pretty rubbish and it’s not just in the UK. But I’m more interested in how to fix the problem and more specifically; how to fix it here.

The original idea for Code4Pizza was to provide pizza in the evening and invite anyone, schoolkids, teachers, professionals, students in to work together, learn together. The problem, as with everything, is opportunity.

But I’m reckoning that time might be approaching.

So, apart from getting some local disgruntled software developers together to try and put together a syllabus for “coders” and then presenting that to local FE colleges and the Department of Employment and Learning, I reckon there’s also room for an industry focused “FreeSchool”. FreeSchools are an actual thing, that any charity, community or industry body can set up. But I’m not really aiming this at replacing schools or even being a full time education alternative – this is about additional education, for free.

Yes, this links into my ideas for creating a hub of 21st Century Enlightenment. Yes, this is another “Change the World” idea. But at some point we need to deliver on this. I’d love to meet some volunteers who would put something in the comments below on what they feel they could teach? Whether they’d want to help out with learning coders? Whether they’d help people make stuff.

I’ve been ruminating on #BigSociety for a while now as I try to recollect every aspect that would affect me.

Wikipedia:

The Big Society is the flagship policy idea of the UK 2010 Conservative Party general election manifesto and forms part of the legislative programme of the Conservative – Liberal Democrat Coalition Agreement. The aim is “to create a climate that empowers local people and communities, building a big society that will ‘take power away from politicians and give it to people’.”

The plans include setting up a Big Society Bank and introducing a national citizen service.

The stated priorities are:

– Give communities more powers (localism and devolution)

– Encourage people to take an active role in their communities (volunteerism)

– Transfer power from central to local government

– Support co-ops, mutuals, charities and social enterprises

– Publish government data (open/transparent government)

That sounds amazing. I’ve been a fan of the idea of National Service ever since I spent fours years in the Territorial Army during college. There’s room for our standing army to become involved in the fixing of society by providing leadership and guidance. Getting people fit, teaching everyone basic first aid, explaining to people how things work and providing assistance to charities and volunteer organisations.

So, Big Society sounds amazing. What’s the problem?

The problem has generally been from the opposition (not surprisingly) and also reports from a lot of public sector-funded companies and quangos who are afraid of the coming cuts:

“There are strong, sensible ideas at the heart of the ‘Big Society’ vision… [but] for all its potential, the ‘Big Society’ raises a lot of questions, which become more urgent and worrying in the light of public spending cuts”

“The Government is simply washing its hands of providing decent public services and using volunteers as a cut-price alternative [...] Public services must be based on the certainty that they are there when you need them, not when a volunteer can be found to help you”

We have to be pragmatic here – there will be cuts, they will be painful and they will be sweeping. But there are also areas where we can turn vulnerability into opportunity. Where we need to put the needs of the community above our own wants. While the political opposition can afford to count coup on the government by sniping about this, only the most deluded individual will deny there are cuts to be made. And only the most selfish would exclude themselves from involvement in the solution.

But what we’re talking about it not really #BigSociety but #BetterSociety.

Builds Bridges on Strong Foundations
We live in a divided society. There are marginalised young, abandoned elderly citizens and disaffected folk in the middle. It is not necessarily the job of the public sector to make up the lack of cohesiveness in our communities. Our own communities can be strong and they can be better than public service delivery: it stands to reason that locally run programmes should deliver what communities want as opposed to centrally run programmes.

Stand up and Own up
I am reminded of Pastor Martin Niemöllers “First they came…“. At what point, as public services degrade will you care enough to do more than change the channel/tweet/write a blog post?

Practical and Honestly Pragmatic
We have to be realistic about what levels of support we are going to receive and at what point do we step in and fix things. I hear too many public-sector quangos complaining about where the money is going to come from. Assuming there is no money: what happens? Look at those stated priorities above.

Collects Positive Actions
You can do something, everyone can do something. It can be taking on those extra student placements (and giving them something interesting to do that you’ve been putting off). It can be making sure you always tip at the coffee shop. It can even be as simple as always letting at least one person out at a junction when in the rush hour traffic.

My challenge to everyone is not what you can start, but why haven’t you joined up with efforts which are already going on? I’d like to invite anyone who has a #BigSociety-style idea to come along to some of the #Code4Pizza events we run – events which were aligned with the Big Society before the term became fashionable.

Companies which do stuff?

AirPOS and Rumble Labs – major contributors to StartVI, always willing to help local startups and individuals with ideas and dreams. They’ve been the folk who I’ve leaned most heavily upon over the last year.

LearningPool – launched MyLearningPool a couple of weeks ago which vastly decreases the spend for community and voluntary groups, charities and social enterprises for training.

The University of Ulster provides space and rooms to local social enterprise and has extensive engagement with the local voluntary sector.

Any more you can suggest?