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.

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 of the questions and issues that have arisen as a consequence of these past weeks.

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?

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 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 for the past years, pretty much every year around this time I am at a conference.

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.

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.