tech

It seems fitting that as I start piecing together the fragments of interviews and notes gathered over the past months that it has been just over a year since Estonia’s innovative e-Residency program began, which is where my fascination with Estonia began and this story starts. [Read the full article here](https://thenextweb.com/insider/2016/01/08/estonia-between-east-west-and-the-world/).

I apologise for the delay in this installment of the Weekly Squeak, I let various things get the better of me in the past weeks and am annoyed that I did. First the madness of a series of events, conferences and travel and then I got hit by a crippling cold-flu thing that has made me struggle to get even the work I needed to get done complete, let alone the things I wanted to do. I had a topic I wanted to cover in this post, but I think I will save it for the future and instead talk about some...

I make no pretense that I am a generalist and get bored quickly. I have written before about how this sometimes makes you feel left out, or worse, an idiot who has wasted their life. I want to explore this topic in more detail, and that of 'tech tribes', that I feel it relates to.

I go to a lot of events. Firstly because I get bored easily, but mainly because I like hearing what people are working on and their ideas. I have noticed an increasing amount of companies and events that label themselves as 'tech', and I challenge if they actually are. To me it feels like some older phrases that are slowly dying and losing their meaning.

This is my second visit to Tirana for the OSCAL conference, an annual celebration of open source technology in Albania's capital. Aside from excellent content, the conference stands out for a couple of reasons. Most attendees and organizers are under 30, and the gender divide is pretty much an even split. Anyone who attends tech-related events in other countries know that this is (sadly) unusual, and I was interested in digging beneath the surface to find out more.

In this Weekly Squeak I cover another week in Berlin meetups and after Apples September product announcements, do they no longer like the prosumer? ## A Week in Meetups ### Reactive Programming (with Swift) First up was [a Swift meetup](https://www.meetup.com/Dubsmash-Tech-Talks/events/233449942/) covering [reactive programming](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reactive_programming) with a variety of frameworks. Having heard a lot about the subject I was keen to get a more 'beginner' perspective of what Reactive programming actually is and how / when it's useful. The talks were more advanced than I was expecti...

This has been a week of me appearing at meetups rather than attending, and I must admit, when I present, I tend to forget what else happened. More of an adrenaline rush than egotism. I hope. I delivered an Ignite talk about technology in board games, which went well, but I think the Ignite format lends itself more to 'inspirational' style talks. I also appeared on a panel recapping new products from IFA, and added sufficient journalistic realism. I think. Aside from that I had a more relaxed...

I haven't been to many meetups the past weeks as the beginning of October is traditionally conference season in tech, and as I look back through my [Timehop](https://timehop.com/) for the past years, pretty much every year around this time I am at a conference. This year has been the turn of Voxxed Belgrade (2nd time) and LinuxCon (also 2nd time). Both very different conferences and great in different ways. I'll tackle chronologically. ## Voxxed Belgrade 2016 Voxxed in Belgrade last year was by far on of my favouri...

I am a thirty-something white, English speaking male working in tech. I feel like this simultaneously gives me every right and no right to discuss privilege.

Last year at IFA I came across a small stall lurking within a gathering of startups. The booth was full of blinking small blocks, motors and switches that aimed to help children learn to code. Fresh from my experiences and reflections teaching Syrian refugees to code, [I have been pondering the best ways to do so ever since](https://www.sitepoint.com/teaching-programming-whats-the-best-language-for-beginners/). In a series of posts that will cover a variety of projects, and a broader summary post, I intend to look at a variety of different techniques for teaching coding, especiall...

After using macOS for over 20 years I was interested to get new perspectives and try other operating systems in my daily work. In this first part, I spend a month with Windows.

Android finds itself in interesting times. Google has begun creating it’s own ‘premium’ versions of the operating system (OS), Cyanogen have ceased development, and many feel that Android will change name or shape in the near future.

After using macOS for over 20 years I was interested to get new perspectives and try other operating systems in my daily work. In this second part, I spend a month with Linux.

Stack Overflow's 2017 developer survey crossed my desk at the same time as a report on tech wage trends from Dice.com, who I’d never heard of before, but the report echoed many of my own observations, so I read further. It’s only from US data, but again, I have seen similar trends in other countries, so thought I’d share insights with you, in case, you know, you’re looking for a change, or are inquisitive about your worth.