Entering the world of Bitcoin Cash!

A very old friend of mine is active in the Bitcoin Cash space as, well Brendan but also as Coinstorage Guru, the maker of Safewords: A low tech solution to the high tech problem of Bitcoin Wallet backup. Brenden also runs the Brisbane Bitcoin Cash Meetup, and I have wanted to attend just to see what the cryptocurrency space was like in Brisbane.

It was fun and informative. I mean, I knew a little about the difference between Bitcoin and Bitcoin Cash, but the meet-up helped me understand the difference better. I also got to install and play with a Bitcoin Wallet a bit. Along with that information, I got to meet some of the participants, who proved to be a colourful bunch.

I mean, I was not expecting George Soros's name to come up. But it was during the portion of the night when the discussion centred around Bitcoin Cash as an investment vehicle. But honestly, Bitcoin, Bitcoin Cash or any other cryptocurrency as an investment vehicle is the least interesting aspect of cryptocurrencies for me. What I am more interested in, is Bitcoin as a potentially viable fiat currency.

On the currency end, I found out about Satoshiware NQ who are trying to push Bitcoin Cash in Townville and beyond. Also, Bitcoin Rewards that allows you to earn Bitcoin while still shopping at places where you are already shopping. So that's cool. But I guess the big question is, will I be joining the cryptocurrency craze? All I'll say for now is, not with Australian dollars but I do have a use case for the Bitcoin Cash.

ThingSpeak

Woohoo! I managed to attend my second consecutive IoT Brisbane Meetup! It helped that the meetup has moved to University of Queensland's iLabs. So I was able to easily drive there and park for free! I am glad I could make it because this month's talk was an intro to ThingSpeak by Daryl Ning from MathWorks. From there website:

“ThingSpeak™ is an IoT analytics platform service that allows you to aggregate, visualize and analyze live data streams in the cloud. ThingSpeak provides instant visualizations of data posted by your devices to ThingSpeak. With the ability to execute MATLAB® code in ThingSpeak you can perform online analysis and processing of the data as it comes in. ThingSpeak is often used for prototyping and proof of concept IoT systems that require analytics.”

— ThingSpeak

I am excited about this as I think I might finally be able to do something with my CPRO boards from Mbient Labs. I mean, I can't connect the CPRO board directly because the board doesn't have wifi onboard. But I was going to combine with a Raspberry Pi (or Banana or Orange) anyway. But given my recent foray into home automation, I am looking forward to putting ThingSpeak to use!

Tanda Hackathon 2018

Last Friday I attended the opening night of the Tanda Hackathon 2018 with the theme of employee experience. I did want to take part when I signed up for the event. But, unfortunately, since then I had other commitments come up that meant that I didn't want to devote my entire Saturday to this event. Also, the friend I wanted to do the event with is now busy with an application for the RCL accelerator, that too played a part in deciding not to participate in the full hackathon. So I decided just to go along, listen to the pitches, see what ideas people had for products to improve employee experience and enjoy the evening. I also ended up pitching two ideas because why not!

The ideas on the pitch night were interesting. There were two ideas that caught my attention. 1) an app for tracking and rewarding good behaviour when not at work. I don't think this was going to be practical because of privacy concerns. But when one bad tweet can get you fired, there is merit in considering rewarding employees for being good netizens. Also, there is merit in the idea of rewarding employees for taking care of their body and mind.

2) An offboarding app and process that follows up with employees who were fired. Again, not sure about the practicality of this because I imagine a lot of fired employees would be angry and not keen to hear from the employer. But then again, I think a lot of employees would appreciate the attention. Especially if its meaningful in that the offboarding involves pointing the former employee towards programs and services that could help them land their next job. 

The two ideas I put forward were 1) Core Skills - which was about benchmarking your skills today and tracking how they develop over time. Crucially, the app would also keep track of market trends, giving employees active feedback about how the most valuable product they will ever work on, themselves, is coming along.

My other idea, which I came up with then and there, was 2) Emotion Tracker. The emotion tracker idea came about because at least three of the pitches was about rating other employees, managers etc. Unfortunately, studies show that our current form of active reviews, rating and feedback don't work. But given that emotion tracking wearables are already a thing, why not use them to track how employees feel during a shift. Properly analysed, the trackers could expose bad managers who demoralise employees, or co-workers who sap the energy out of the room. Conversely, it could also help identify good managers and co-workers.

Obviously, since I wasn't planning on sticking around, I didn't try to form a group around my ideas. I probably should have informally polled the audience to see what they thought. But I didn't think of that on the night. So the night ended with pizza and a pleasant walk back to King George Square bus station. Not a bad way to spend a Friday night, I think!

Collisions: From Startup to ScaleUp with Ian Mason

Yesterday I attended the first session of "Collisions" speaker series. It's to celebrate the launch of Collider Accelerator for Creative Startups. The first speaker of the block was Ian Mason of Virgin Startup. I didn't even know there was a Virgin Startup, so that was something new I learnt immediately. But the larger take away from the talk was how important a proper support system is for a startup ecosystem.

Ian's talk painted an informative picture of the situation in the UK and how Virgin Startup is making a difference. His personal entrepreneurial story was also very interesting. Because not only was it a story of seeing a need and filling it, but also of how inspiration can come from areas outside of your specialisation.

The Virgin Startup is apparently coming to Australia, with Ian spending time locally during the latter half of this year to set everything in motion. I am looking forward to seeing how the startup impacts the Australian ecosystem.

Kanban Pizza Game & Pizza!

Last Wednesday of the month meant it was time for the monthly meetup of Women Who Code, Brisbane! This month there was pizza, I had the pumpkin and goat cheese pizza, and a pizza based game to explain the principles of Kanban.

My team for the night: Mama's Pizza

The Kanban Pizza game was developed by Agile 42 and seems like a pretty effective way to learn Kanban principles. I joined three other coders to form Mama's Pizza while Cathie Hagen, a Lead Consultant at ThoughtWorks, hosted the games and taught us the basics of Kanban. I am happy to say that Mama's Pizza was able to produce many slices of delicious paper pizza but only after enacting Kanban principles.

During the first round, while we instinctively assigned each other set roles and had a rough flow, but we fell into the assembly line mentality of trying to make as many slides as possible. But the slides were too small, and our product owner rejected all three slides we managed to get out of the oven. But from round 2, as we learnt and applied Kanban principles, we were able to produce more slices and passed muster. It was fun and good time, but I also felt I learnt something. I don't always make the meetups for the Women Who Code group, but I am glad I made it to this month's meetup.

Lastly, before the game started, we got a few announcements for upcoming events. The one that caught my attention was the Internet Freedom Hackathon. Certainly a topical hackathon for the times we are living in and I'll certainly keep my eyes on this event.