Congratulations to the lucky winner

The contest is now closed. AAAAAnd the winner is… @jkundan!!!! He gets a free #HOHOTO ticket. Congratulations @jkundan!

That’s all folks, see you at #HOHOTO today!

Contest: Win a ticket to HOHOTO!

Technology related? R&D driven? Innovative? Like to Network?

We want to hear about it!

Tweet us (use hashtag: #sredunlimited) in 140 characters or less on what makes your company innovative. The best answer will be awarded a free ticket to #hohoto! Deadline is Monday, December 14th at 5pm!

Official HOHOTO website: http://hohoto.ca/

A.S.Byatt, “Children’s Book”

I’m going to Netherlands in February, for A.S.Byatt “Children’s book” translators’ conference, yay!
ASB almost got the Booker’s prize for this book, but it did not happen (Hilary Mantel got it for “Wolf Hall”). But Leiden University is giving ASB a Honorary Doctor degree anyway, and we are all invited to the ceremony. We’ll probably make a trip to England (I will for sure) from Holland, to visit the V&A Museum in London, as most of the book’s plot is wrapped around the Museum. ASB promised to join us there as well!

On volunteering

I had a most shocking experience today. It started quite innocently. I applied for volunteering at a two-day event, got an e-mail with my schedule (7 hours’ shifts both days, I thought it was a little bit too much but I wanted to attend the event anyway so I thought OK, no problem), shifted my other scheduled stuff around to free up these two days. I turned up on time, sat at a reception table and everything went well until, about three hours later, the person in charge told me that they don’t need me anymore and would manage on their own.
Here’s our further dialogue:

- So, shall I come tomorrow morning?
- No, we don’t need you.
- But I can still attend the conference tomorrow, right?
- No, sorry.
- But you gave me the schedule, I freed up these two days…
- It’s enough that we allow you to stay today and mingle with the attendees; we normally do not allow the volunteers to do that.

I was completely astonished. I have had volunteered at around 20 events in Toronto so far, and it is common understanding that, when a volunteer is not on duty, he or she gets to walk around at the event, attend any sessions if there is room enough, talk to whoever he or she pleases, etc. This is actually why people volunteer: to exchange some of their time for the right of attending an event and everything that comes with it (a networking opportunity, etc.). The concept of a volunteer being low caste and not allowed to touch the regular attendees lest he soil them with his impurity is entirely new to me. Now, I totally understand that sometimes the resources are limited and the volunteers do not get invited to a final reception or something. But this really takes the cake. I am probably lucky they allowed me to use the washroom at the venue and did not send me to a McDonalds up the street for that purpose.

OSEB suspended

The Ontario Self Employment Benefit (OSEB) Program has been suspended as of October 9th 2009. The people who have entered the program still go on with it, but the new applications are not accepted until April or so. Rumour has it that the funds have been redirected to the Second Career program.

Eats, shoots and leaves

I wonder why Facebook developers suppose I have only one friend.

my friend's wall

Hackers and translators

I read this essay by Paul Graham, and suddenly it occurred to me that most of what he says about hackers is applicable to translators as well. What we do is hack words, or with words, to achieve meaning.

Because hackers are makers rather than scientists, the right place to look for metaphors is not in the sciences, but among other kinds of makers. What else can painting teach us about hacking?

One thing we can learn, or at least confirm, from the example of painting is how to learn to hack. You learn to paint mostly by doing it. Ditto for hacking. Most hackers don’t learn to hack by taking college courses in programming. They learn to hack by writing programs of their own at age thirteen. Even in college classes, you learn to hack mostly by hacking.

Because painters leave a trail of work behind them, you can watch them learn by doing. If you look at the work of a painter in chronological order, you’ll find that each painting builds on things that have been learned in previous ones. When there’s something in a painting that works very well, you can usually find version 1 of it in a smaller form in some earlier painting.

I think most makers work this way. Writers and architects seem to as well. Maybe it would be good for hackers to act more like painters, and regularly start over from scratch, instead of continuing to work for years on one project, and trying to incorporate all their later ideas as revisions.

The fact that hackers learn to hack by doing it is another sign of how different hacking is from the sciences. Scientists don’t learn science by doing it, but by doing labs and problem sets. Scientists start out doing work that’s perfect, in the sense that they’re just trying to reproduce work someone else has already done for them. Eventually, they get to the point where they can do original work. Whereas hackers, from the start, are doing original work; it’s just very bad. So hackers start original, and get good, and scientists start good, and get original.

The other way makers learn is from examples. For a painter, a museum is a reference library of techniques. For hundreds of years it has been part of the traditional education of painters to copy the works of the great masters, because copying forces you to look closely at the way a painting is made.

Writers do this too. Benjamin Franklin learned to write by summarizing the points in the essays of Addison and Steele and then trying to reproduce them. Raymond Chandler did the same thing with detective stories.

Hackers, likewise, can learn to program by looking at good programs– not just at what they do, but the source code too.

The complete text of Paul Graham’s essay is here.

$10 million Open Screen Project Fund announced by Nokia and Adobe

The $10 million Open Screen Project Fund, announced by Nokia and Adobe, awards grants to help developers create exciting new applications and content over the next two years up to December 2010. The fund also provides marketing and educational support for the Open Screen Project, which aims to establish cross-platform runtimes, remove development and distribution barriers, and innovate through industry collaboration.

More information here

Product camp reminder

ProductCamp Toronto is fast approaching, on Sunday, October 4th at the Ted Rogers School of Management, Ryerson University, downtown Toronto (55 Dundas Street West, above BestBuy and Canadian Tire).

Registration and breakfast is at 9am.

It’s free to attend!

Here are a few links to give you more detail about what to expect:

- ProductCamp Toronto home page: http://www.productcamp.org/toronto/

- Schedule:  http://www.productcamp.org/toronto/event/

- Suggested Sessions: http://www.productcamp.org/toronto/sessions/

- Pre-registration site: http://pct2009prereg.eventbrite.com/

Follow the latest news on Twitter via the #pct2 hash tag.

ENTERPRISE TORONTO SMALL BUSINESS FORUM 2009

ENTERPRISE TORONTO
SMALL BUSINESS FORUM 2009
METRO TORONTO CONVENTION CENTRE
255 Front Street West, North Building, 100 Level
October 19, 2009 — 9am to 4:30pm

Small Business Forum 2009 brings together entrepreneurs and business development experts, all levels of government, and business product and service providers.

ADMISSION IS FREE BUT YOU MUST REGISTER TO PARTICIPATE