Nodebots Take Over

          Having little to no experience with Node.js, anxiety struck as I walked through the massive revolving doors at 1500 Broadway into this months Nodebots event at the about.com headquarters in Times Square. My nerves immediately subsided (with the help of some beer and pizza) as I found out that most of the people who had attended this event were in the same boat as I was, but there were still hardcore Nodebot veterans in the building.

         Nodebots was great because anyone (with javascript experience) can get a good handle on understanding the in's and out's of how their code can be used to control these little "bots". What I loved most about this event was the amount of help that I received from the developers who were hosting the event. A couple of the pioneers of the API 'Johnny-Five' were present, including Rick Waldron. They handed out Arduino hardware to anyone that didn't bring their own to work with.

        The 'Johnny-Five' API is actually what made Node accessible with the Arduino hardware. I began to realize how easy it was to use and understand 'Johnny-Five' as I read through their app on GitHub. With some help, I was able to get a potentiometer to control how fast an LED light was able to blink as well as control the rotation of a servo solely with javascript. As amazing as my accomplishments seem to be, they came nowhere close to what was going on at the table behind me. Some guy was working on wirelessly controlling some sort of robot on wheels from his laptop with Node, and thats not even the full potential of what the 'Johnny-Five' API can do with this sort of hardware.
        As the night came to an end Rick Waldron sat next to me and began to explain what sort of things his team is working on. My jaw dropped when he showed me a youtube video of one of his partners presenting a spider-like-robot that can be controlled by just waving your hand over some sort of sensor. The sensor picks up all sorts of hand gestures that manipulate its movement in some sort of way.
        This months Nodebots was most definitely a success. Everybody who attended learned something new and more importantly had a lot of fun. I'm looking forward to seeing when the next Nodebot is going to go down.

Project Medici at The Bitcoin Center

Overstock.com + Counterparty = Project Medici

Overstock's CEO Patrick Byrn announced last year that his company had begun working with two members of the Counterparty team to build the world's first legal (read regulated) securities exchange built on top of the blockchain. The technical details have not yet been made publicly available, but the team working on the project, code named "Project Medici", is exceptionally technically capable, perhaps one of the most capable teams on the planet, and Byrn seems confident that the only hurdle that could be an issue at this point is regulatory. I've been to a few meetups at the Bitcoin Center before, but this is the first time I've had a chance to write about one of them. The purpose of the center is, almost exclusively, to provide a hub for the NYC Bitcoin community. This means weekly meetups, open working space, high profile project presentations and speakers, as well as pretty much anything else you could think of that could possibly include some aspect of digital currency. Judd Bagley, Overstock's director of communications, presented at the Bitcoin Center yesterday on project Medici. For the most part it wasn't anything that hasn't been said elsewhere, and the crowd would have appreciated it if a developer were present to answer the more technical questions, but there were a few things to note: Medici is primarily targeting naked short selling enabled by the DTCC Though marketed as a distributed open system, this will be a semi-closed system operatedbtransparentlybat a profit by Overstock. Overstock will maintain strict control of who is allowed to issue tokens on this network (unlike the pure Counterparty system which allows for almost complete token autonomy.) Drinks were had, chairs were in short supply, and the crowd was intensely nerdy. Some audience members were very critical of the Medici system, but for the most part there was a sense of cautious optimism in the room. Everyone has been hoping for something like this for a while, and, while it seems like a long shot, this just might work.

Chicago Geekfest: Rust & Mozilla @ Groupon

Rust

Mozilla's Systems Language hits 1.0 alpha and takes a trip to Groupon in Chicago

For the past few years Mozilla has been working on a systems language to take the place of C. That should raise some eyebrows. C has been the foundation of low-level level programming since well before I was born, and to those of us newbies not in the loop on the academic side of the programming world, replacing C may sound like a longshot.

Lars Bergstrom of Mozilla

The goal, says Lars Bergstrom, is to eliminate data-races and crashes caused by ownership (for any value there can only be one variable with access to it at any given time). I'm not a low-level guy, so I'm pretty fuzzy on the details, but his project at Mozilla, servo, is a web browser written in the language. It looks like it has gotten a lot of attention lately (224 watchers and over 3800 stars at time of writing), so if you're interested in getting involved with the language through an open source project, this would probably be a good community through which to enter the Rust world.

Lars' presentation was really solid, I think. While I can't speak to his knowledge of the technical side of things, I hope that his Ph.D. in Computer Science is enough validation of his proficiency that I don't have to. He presented the language's primary attributes in a clear way with a few live coding examples, and announced that the language has largely moved past its (extreme) early volatility, and was now in a 1.0 alpha stage, with a final 1.0 to be released within 12-16 weeks.

For more info on rust, check out the language page at rust-lang.org

Groupon Meetups

First of all, yes this is in Chicago, so unfortunately Groupon's Geekfest meetups aren't going to be accessible to most readers. But, if you happen to be on a trip through the city, check their schedule here and see if they're talking about something that interests you.

As always, there was good food provided. The room we were in was long, with multiple screens for viewing the presentation, and an excellent audio system. There were 91 people on the rsvp list for this one, though I think there may have been a few more than that in attendance. I get the feeling that these events were the idea of a Groupon employee, are hosted primarily for the benefit of employees, and are opened to the public as a way of engaging and enriching Chicago's tech community (so props to you Groupon, keep doing what you're doing).

24 Pull Requests

This week was round two for GCM at Huge Inc., the incredibly communally active web design firm in Dumbo, Brooklyn.

This event, named 24 Pull Requests, was a part of a larger event taking place (I think) the world over. The purpose of the 24PR is to promote giving back to the open source community by submitting a pull request as a gift during December every day leading up to Christmas.

As always, Huge came through tremendously in the food department. There was a little bit of stir when the floor above us started leaking water everywhere (The third floor has been under construction since before the last time GCM visited.), but it was quickly taken care of.

There were perhaps 15 developers there to work, about 5 of whom were actually bringing their project in hopes of finding some new people to help build their open source education platform. (Unfortunately I wasn't able to get a name). People worked from about 6pm - 10pm with tacos and beer. All in all, a good night of hacking.

This event has inspired me to make an effort to focus a bit more on the open source community for this blog, so expect to see another group of meetups added to the "Regulars" page above sometime soon.

EDIT - We were able to work for a while with a really cool guy named Michael Kolodny who is working on building a website to help ease the apartment hunting process. I think it has some potential to be a really great service. If you know someone who's going to be moving soon, let them know about Janther. 

My First Event

Earlier today Lauren Schuhmacher posted a review of "The Digital Currency Round Table". There she provided, hopefully, an unbiased analysis of the event and what went right/wrong. Now I'm here to tell you what it was like planning it. It should be mentioned, however, that this wasn't your standard monthly meetup. I had been working on this event with CoinApex and we're hoping to do something of the sort again next semester.

Advertising:

We got really lucky here. The incredibly capable Andy Johnson of CoinApex designed some kickass advertising for us. Not only did we have a great poster and post cards around campus, but he also put up a great site at digitalcurrencyroundtable.com!

Speakers:

Connections are key here. The only reason this event happened is because I was able to get an introduction to the board of CoinApex. If I had not been given that introduction, then I seriously doubt I would have been able to pull this event together.

I met with Alex Waters and Sarah Tyre, they loved the idea I pitched, and the rest was just those two calling their friends and getting them involved! Getting quality speakers is really a connections game.

You can find bios on the speakers at the website posted above.

Food:

I made a mistake here. We did fine with the amount, but unfortunately I forgot to announce that people should go get some before the event started! We got going with the discussion before a box had even been opened!

Overshoot on amount, and be SURE people know the food is available!

Setup:

Most likely your venue will be able to set things up for you before the event, but make sure you've contacted them about this. I've had friends who forgot to do this and just assumed that the venue would take care of it, and when they showed up before the event nothing was ready. Be sure you know what you need, and make this list clear to the venue.

Attendees:

There are a lot of opinions on how you should how about getting attendees. In this instance I chose to offer free pizza for the students, and CoinApex sent out a media alert to their network, as well as a few email blasts to their mailing lists.

We also chose to stream the event in an effort to provide accessibility to those who couldn't attend (we got a lot of views on this).

Followup:

We are currently working on followup now. All the speakers we invited are receiving packets of our marketing material with a hand written note thanking them for their participation. In addition to this we are sending a packet to individuals we are hoping to have speak in the future.

The Digital Currency Round Table

On Wednesday, November 19, The King's College Programming Club hosted a digital currency round table debate in conjunction with NYC-based CoinApex. The debate, moderated by PaymentsSource reporter Bailey Reutzel, illuminated some of the major concerns, roadblocks, and advantages of Bitcoin for an audience of students, faculty, and New Yorkers with an interest in digital currency.

Participants were Alex Waters, CEO of CoinApex; Ryan Strauss, chair of the Payments Practice Group at Riddell Williams P.S. in Seattle and commercial lawyer; and Robert Adler, who is building one of the first Bitcoin hedge funds.

The discussion started with a question submitted in advance: "Is Bitcoin going to the moon?" The prompt, as quaint as it was poignant, allowed the panel to begin their discussion by considering the possibilities for Bitcoin as it continues to develop. It's only reasonable for us to wonder how great digital currency is going to be—and if it is going to the moon, we might want to get in on it.

The idea of wanting a piece of Bitcoin and its success transitioned the conversation into one of regulation. The debate stayed on regulation for a while, and there was some resistance from Adler regarding the utility of a regulation discussion: he argued that the panel would better serve the audience by discussing the possibilities that Bitcoin allows, so that the students specifically could see digital currency as a means to experience and create cool things. While there is certainly something to be said for the possibilities of Bitcoin, Waters and Strauss countered Adler's comments by arguing that a conversation about the possibilities of Bitcoin is useless without also discussing the regulation in place. What someone has to do with Bitcoin inevitably informs what someone can do with Bitcoin.

The discussion, I think, was most well-suited for audience members that had at least a small working knowledge of Bitcoin technology. Occasionally, the speakers would ask the audience if they needed an explanation of certain point—like the Blockchain, for example—and audience members would shout, "yes!" and the speakers would explain. Those moments were informative for listeners who entered the debate as novices to Bitcoin, but the majority of the content was interesting to people who came because they already knew about digital currency.

Because the debate ended only because it had to—we ran out of time, but not out of conversation—I think there's good reason to assume another event like this would be well-received. I'm sure that everyone who left the debate took an opinion about Bitcoin's future. Maybe it is going to the moon. 

—Lauren Schuhmacher

HackBit @NYU - November 14th, 2014

This Friday I will be blogging about NYU's first Cryptocurrency Hackathon! Currently almost 200 students have registered to participate, and I'll be providing a firsthand look into the world of University Hackathons as it happens.

Overview
This will be an overnight hackathon ending Saturday evening.

The judges:
Fred Wilson - Managing Partner, Union Square Ventures

Jalak Jobanputra -  Founding Partner FuturePerfect Ventures

Ryan Selkis - Director, Investments, Digital Currency Group

Peter Smith - Co-Founder, Blockchain

Adam Ludwin - Founder, Chain Alice Lloyd George Associate, RRE Ventures

The sponsors:

Bloomber LP

Chain Inc

Blockchain

Check back Friday afternoon for updates on NYU's first Crypto hack!

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UPDATE: 12:30am Saturday morning

We're well into the hackathon and the TKC Programming club is building a space invaders game that awards players bitcoin for high scores.

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UPDATE: 1:20am

Lego competition went well and we walked away with Pebble smart watches!

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Conclusion:

NYU sure knows how to throw a great hackathon. The university provided plenty of great food throughout the event (even a massive midnight Chinese meal!), and really brought in a huge amount of talent to compete.

Many schools were represented, and the judging panel was made up of representatives from many of the East Coast's top VC firms like Fred Wilson and well known Bitcoin community members like Yifu Guo. The sponsors and mentors were phenomenal as well. Both the Blockchain team members and the Chain founders stuck around the whole time and were a great help to us in our project.

I highly recommend attending one of NYU's hackathons if you ever get the chance. Everything about it was perfectly organized and we had a ton of fun meeting new people and working on our project (which, by the way, ended up taking first place!).