This post I’ve finally tidied up and published – I started writing it during the release of the Widgetbox Blog Network. I’ve been wanting to have a blurb out there about what I do.

I’ve had one slight gripe when I try to explain where I work and what do I do here out in the Bay Area: widgets. Most people, both technical and non-technical grasp the point of what a widget is – an embeddable piece of content that could be placed anywhere on the web. Where I work, we provide a gallery and syndication platform for our users. For the developer, one can create or “widgetize” their content and watch it spread through social networks or the open web. For the consumer, we have high SEO (PageRank 8 anyone?) which puts us in the first few search results if you look for ” widget”.

Simple, and seemingly unexciting to any technical power user. Why would I want to add little “things” to my blog, people ask me. Many see them as clutter or complain that it adds little to no value. There is also the issue of the majority of widgets seem to have a rapid popularity growth and depreciation as the content is outdated or as users constantly re-tool their sites.

I have the solution! Its called OpenSocial!

What about OpenSocial? Isn’t that supposed to be the Holy Grail of pushing little web widgets around the web? Not exactly. If you’re a social network, you not only want value for your users but you want interactivity between them. There is a ton out there and a even more being formed to center around some sort of core product that another network does not have. Most wannabe networks are “growing” with the hope that they are just as open with an API and follow-the-herd idea of promoting user-generated content. If OpenSocial is able to embed itself in every major network, they will become nothing more than federated identity providers.

It’s with this I’ll try to narrow down Widgetbox’s place on the web – we add value to publishers. The idea of widgets being helpful for a consumer makes sense when you are rapidly sharing content via tweeting, IMing, and e-mailing, but that is only secondary to who the original target is. It is the content owner who starts it the wave. The Blog Network, evolving as I write, represents a way for a widget to provide value by consuming and spreading content.

Oh, for those that are interested, here’s a cat widget.

I’ve been fairly lax about writing since arriving out in San Francisco at the end of June. Some of it is reasonable – setting up new apartment, beginning a job at a startup, and attempted to explore the vast number of restaurants and bars that exist around me.

Recently, my perspective has been shook up a bit. The economy has taken a downturn and will most likely be limping along, if not getting worse, for the next six months. I felt like being at a small tech company with funding, was akin to having immunity. Not the case at all. Being part of a Sequoia-backed company, the message was crystal clear – monetize! The accusations that scaremongering is taking place is summed up well by Fred Wilson: “If they shouted fire, it was in a private room not a theater.” The deck that was leaked with slide after slide of downward slopes was not filled with projections, but with current data. The lack of commentary with the deck has been causing many to flip out thinking the end is near for small companies. It will be for those that still believe they need to grow a user base for a something dubbed the “next cool web thing” when no viable business plan is on the table. For the rest of us, it’s time to get real.

I know I’ll look back at what took place over the last few days and do my damndest to remember what was going through my head at this time.

In SF – piecing a life together. It may be busy but its still the calm before the storm of crazyness.

Officially graduated. Leaving shortly for the long drive back to Boston.

This past weekend was the third BarCamp held at RIT, BarCampRochester3 and I had hanging over my head being one of the hosts pulling it together mostly in the last two weeks leading up to it. I’ll put up pictures on Flickr (tag: barcamprochester3), but as for now my snaps are on Facebook. As for slides, I was going to tweak them for my Public Speaking class as I have an “informative presentation” to give this week and I’ll put them up via SlideShare and post it here along with a presentation made for my Grid Computing “class”.

I think the best part of the event is the type of people we attracted to it – smart, interesting and dedicated individuals that wanted to learn from others and it is those people who take the reigns. I felt like there were so many great people there and I was able to talk to many but not all of them. Aside from the event being a fun place to learn about cool subjects, its the perfect networking event. Chatting it up with those who I will see again out in SF was great and talking about the current and future state of web applications (coincidentally my talk) kept me energized for the entire day. Well, that and the wonderful Coke products we bought (RIT is a Pepsi campus) like Hi-C! I mean come on, it was a huge hit and completely brought us back to the carefree days of running around outside after elementary school was out.

I’d also like to give a big shout-out to those who were able to come, specifically those not in the area like Jordan Sissel (SF), Jason Morrison (Boston), David Recordon (SF), Justin Thorp (DC) and John Resig (Boston). Many people were psyched at how well it went and although I may be leaving, others are ready and willing to pull together an even bigger one come this fall. So glad that I was able to be a part of it before I go – definitely can’t wait to particpate in more meetups!

Lets see how short of a post I can make, as many many many things have been going on. First off, lets dig a little deeper into what I was able to do over my spring break just over two weeks ago. School wound down and allowed me to plan out an incredibly packed trip to SF, where almost every meal I had was with friends and former co-workers along with interviews at a few small companies in the area. After losing sleep for two nights thinking about my future, I ended up signing an offer letter to Widgetbox.com to be a software developer upon graduation. I’m still a bit stunned that I was able to find such a great place, located right within the city with incredibly smart and dedicated people building out their widget platform. I really am chomping at the bit to get my hands dirty and working with them, so as soon as I was back at school I picked up a few books on Hibernate and JSP and spec’ed out a few small applications I could build to give me both a refresher in Java and teach me Java-based web development. It’s actually going to be quite trippy migrating from a C# / ASP.NET web development background to Java, which has about 7 years more time to mature.

As much as I do want to start hacking around, school started up and beat me down before I could say, “Last quarter partying!” I’m in the process of pulling out of a class I was re-taking (Assembly / CPU-design) to concentrate on Entrepreneurship and Grid Computing (check out me on the wiki!) which has become something between a part-time and full-time job. We need to build out a business plan over the course of the quarter in Entrepreneurship, which will involve some solid groupwork, but the part that makes me bite my knuckles is the analysis of case studies we have to follow that we only get a few days to do. Not a fan. GC on the other hand, is a straight up graduate course that is pure research. Already we’ve had to cook up presentations, dig through research papers, and right now I’m in the process of trying to solidify a project proposal for the entire quarter thats due this Thursday. I’m incredibly excited on what I’ll be working on and the fact that I’ll be writing an excellent paper on it will make IEEE/ACM editors glow with delight is simply awesome. Once I fall into a somewhat organized cycle in getting everything done, I’ll drop interesting notes about it here.

My mind has been non-stop churning along since last Sunday, and will probably continue to do so until after BarCamp is completed. I think I’m also having some sort of cold right now, combined with wild headaches with the mind in overdrive and the lungs complaining from a run I pushed myself too hard too fast on (somewhat out of shape plus cold weather) is just adding to the blend that is me currently.

It looks like I’ll be running full steam ahead until graduation.

To continue with random bursts my thoughts, here is a bit more of what is new and exciting with me -

In a few weeks, I’m off to spend almost a week in San Francisco, clocking in more JetBlue miles (to no avail – I won’t be able to get the free round-trip ticket) to spend my spring break mingling with folks. A rough itinerary is thrown together, but it will get packed with fun lunches, dinners and drinks with people. I’m psyched to be staying at the Hotel Boheme, right in the middle of North Beach. The prices were excellent and right around the corner was where I used to live, so a smidge of comfort of being around my old stomping grounds of last spring and summer will come back to me.

I do have a dopplr.com account and I did tag that I’m going out west but I simply don’t travel enough nor do I know many people around the country that would use such a service to maintain contacts who are a bit more “mobile”. It’s neat, but I’m stuck with the problem of hooking in others to actively use it. Maybe when I’m some wild business traveler it will come in handy.

I’ve also somehow managed to find myself being more open to mingling with anyone interesting I’ve come across. I don’t know what it is, but its probably a combination of me seeing the light at the end of the tunnel and wanting to use up what time I have left here with those also looking towards the future and possibly finally being able to meet like-minded people. I guess it makes sense that it was bound to happen towards the end of my college career instead of at the beginning, because by now most (well, some) have at least a general idea of what is happening after graduation. RIT is definitely a career-minded school, and those that enroll here generally are on a track for entering the workforce. Still, meeting new people and spending time with old ones is excellent.

I can’t wait to join the Kickball league in SF.

I’m one of the hosts for the upcoming un-conference here in Rochester known as a BarCamp. In a nutshell, it brings tech-oriented people together to present topics that they are interested in. By having those who go present on projects / ideas / lead discussions that they are invested in personally, it will attract like-minded people that would be open to collaborating on the topic. This is the third that will be hosted at RIT’s Golisano College of Computing and Information Sciences (GCCIS represent!) and the numbers of attendees should be over a hundred (can we break two hundred? we haven’t even advertised yet!). I highly recommend going over to the wiki at http://barcamp.org/BarCampRochester3 and learn a bit more about what it is. Put down your name, contact info, a presentation topic and a teeshirt size (it’ll be free!) and we’ll make sure you’re accounted for!

I’ve tabled my incredibly long stream of consciousness for now. Perhaps when I’m feeling “frisky” I’ll look it over and try to clean it up for public consumption. Now just isn’t the time. That, and I’m not sure it makes any coherent sense.

Jimmy Eat World is coming to RIT at the end of April. Suh-weet deal.

My next and final quarter at RIT has been planned out classes-wise and it’s pretty ridiculous. Ridiculously awesome! I have two classes every day, 2-6pm from Monday – Thursday. My lineup includes re-taking Computer Organization (time to tidy up that GPA) which is half MIPS assembly programming (yay) and CPU design (nay). I still have my book and all the notes/homework from round one, so it should make round two much easier. Next up is Public Speaking, top top off an “Upper Level Liberal Arts” requirement. I could simply take another philosophy class, but the drive to take something a teency bit more practical with a roommate versus getting up at 8am.

I’m also in Entrepreneurship, as part of my “Non-Computer Science Related Electives” requirement, as I’ve taken a few other business classes and wanted to see what academia could give me versus reading a slew of books on my own. It’s a shame I can’t minor in Entrepreneurship – I would have been able to, but two years ago I was more interested in taking Wines classes. Nothing wrong with knowing that Pinot Noir from the Willamette Valley in Oregon will trump anything you can come up with any day of the week. I think being able to pick out wines on dates, family gatherings or on business ventures trumps anything I would have achieved with a second minor from RIT.

Possibly the most influential course that I’ll be taking next quarter is a graduate level CS course on Grid Computing. It is the first time it is “taught” – its a research class, where I will be digging through papers and presenting on a topic on a whim. It’ll be a lot of information to absorb, but the most interesting part is the project that will be worked on throughout the quarter. It will be some sort of group effort where our results won’t be something that is graded and canned by the teacher, but will be used by others in research and/or academia to help complete the work they need to complete. The idea of utility computing benefits every sector of research if its easy for them to tap into a large amount of computing resources. Regardless of what I end up working on, being part of the Center for Advancing the Study of Cyberinfrastructure (CASCI) here at RIT will definitely be a miniature capstone for me.

Rock out.

I’d just like to point out that when making a nice big promise to put a nice big post up I felt like I was setting myself up for failure. Something is getting kicked around, but I guess it has less of an “impact” now that I’ve dawdled. Don’t throw me to the fishes just yet.