Eric Ries and Lean Startup Methodology

It has been a while since last post and last event. I have been super busy with my startup and simply did not have time to do anything cool. Few weeks ago I decided to get active again. I noticed on Twitter that Eric Ries, the man behind Lean Startup Methodology, is coming to Finland. After couple of tweets, DMs and facebook groups we had group of people working on to get Eric stop in Helsinki. Here is a post from Arcitstartup The Ultimate Methodology To Build A Startup – Now In Helsinki. Hope to see you there!

I am a big fan of software development processes and process management. In my startup we are thinking about trying out Kanban. I am thinking about setting up next SDG event about SW processes in startups. What do you think? Some people have been also asking about the next Mobile Dev Camp. We have started to talk about the next one and will have information about it soon

Startup programs rock!

Time to announce new SDG event which will be hosted by Teknologiatollisuus (eteläranta 10). This time we will talk about startup programs.  We will join forces with Techstart which is event organized by Aalto Entreprneur Society. Techstart starts 4pm and we will continue with SDG program at 6pm.  We have Kim Nielsen from Microsoft talking about Microsoft Bizspark and two startups from Bizspark program to share their experiences. Markus Porvari from Gweb2 and Antti Makkonen from Sopima Oy will tell us what they got out of Microsoft Bizspark.

Please sign up for the event here : http://www.stubmatic.com/aes/event/937. We have limited amount of space so be quick and please only sign-up if you know that you will attend

Microsoft BizSpark

JavaFX!

The next SDG will be about JavaFX! It is held in the usual place Korjaamo on 21st April starting at 7pm. The concept in short is beer, technology and networking. It is an honor to have Terrence Bar from Sun Microsystems to introduce us to this long waited technology. Terrence is a Senior Technologist at Sun Microsystems and Ambassador of the Java Mobile & Embedded Community. He has 15+ years of industry experience with more than 10 of those years at Sun. Check out his blog here. This is his intro for the event:

JavaFX is Sun’s new platform for expressive content and Rich Internet Applications that scale across the web browser, the desktop, and mobile (and soon, to entertainment as well). What makes JavaFX unique is the combination of the ubiquity and power of the Java platform with the domain-specific JavaFX Script language, optimized cross-platform media and graphics engines, and designer-oriented tools and workflows.

The talk will give an overview of the goals and technological aspects of the JavaFX platform, a brief run-through of some of the interesting features of JavaFX Script, as well as portability and deployment aspects of JavaFX, and a road map of upcoming JavaFX releases and features. A number of live demos across multiple platforms will be included.

This is very current topic since the JavaFX Coding Challenge is on right now. If you are experimenting or already using JavaFX and want to make $25k you should definitely check out the competition here.

Join Facebook group here

RSVP Facebook event here

Finaly I would like to thank our sponsor Sun Microsystem for supporting the event.

SDG co-organizing Mobile Dev Camp

Hi, In February we do not have SDG as usual because I am co-organizing Mobile Dev Camp in Vanha. In December I started planning mobile SDG about Android and I ran into some other people planning big mobile event. We decided to combine our forces and do something big together. Trust me when I say that it will be great. Join us this saturday for food, drink and tech! SDG will be back in March. If you have some special subject in mind please leave a comment on the blog and we will organize SDG about it.

Here is the preliminary program for the Mobile Dev Camp

09.30 – 10.00 Doors open,Networking
10.00 – 10.15 Peter Vesterbacka, Somebazaar, Welcome and greetings from Mobile World Congress
10.15 – 11.00 Teemu Kurppa, Huikea, platform = stage – how to choose a mobile development platform
11.00 – 11.15 Break
11.15 – 12.00 Tomi Mickelsson, Idean, Android platform
12.00 – 12.45 Samuli Grohn, Valve Intro to Web Runtime for Nokia
12.45 – 13.45 Lunch
13.45 – 14.15 Niklas Wahrman, Developing Android/iPhone game
14.15 – 14.45 Harri Myllynen, Offscreen Technologies, Developing for Symbian using Offscreen Studio IDE
14.45 – 15.00 Break
15.00 – 18.00 Hackathon & BarCamp (more about this here and here

Beer, networking and security!

Join us for beers and networking in Korjaamo on 15th January 6pm. We have very interesting SDG coming up about web app security. Security is rarely the first thing in mind when building a new cool app in startup. Usually it pops up when some VC or a bigger partner asks about it. Security is very important specially when you grow user base and start implementing your revenue models. The subject of the next SDG is Web App security. We have Antti Laulajainen from Open Web Application Security Project (OWASP) to talk about how startups could plan these things little bit earlier. Antti is the Chapter leader of OWASP project and he introduces us to the subject as follows.

Application security has become a business factor. Organisations and corporations buying software will be demanding proof of how security is integrated in products or services. Companies developing software may have difficulties responding to these demands. In general it is much cheaper to tackle problems early in the application’s lifecycle rather than later e.g. in the support phase. Where to start then? One good source of information is Open Web Application Security Project OWASP. OWASP provides free documentation to introduce application security in the development process and tools to measure it. Come and listen how OWASP can help you to develop more secure software.

Agenda

Introduction to OWASP

* What OWASP is

* Examples of useful Tools and Documents

* OWASP in Finland

SDG in Slush Helsinki

Just wanted to give you quick update about Slush Helsinki. We have SDG – track in Slush Helsinki (www.slushhelsinki.com). We have very interesting topics and companies presented. This will be the last SDG related event this year. We are planning to start the year 2009 by talking about security in January. I would also like discuss more about iPhone development and other mobile related stuff. What would you like to discuss about? Please leave comments to the blog.

I hope you can all join us for tech talks and beers in Korjaamo and Helmi on Monday 24th November.

Here is Slush Helsinki tech track program:

09.00-09.15      Welcome
09.15-09.45      Developing mobile services – Teemu Kurppa
09.45-10.15      iPhone development -  Kai Kankaala
10.15-10.45      Break
10.45-11.15      Symbian development – Lasse Mäki
11.15-11.45      Mobile developer panel moderated by Vesa-Matti Paananen. Panel members: Teemu Kurppa, Kai Kankaala and Lasse Mäki
11.45-13.15      Lunch
13.15-13.45      Nokia Touch UI development -  TBA
13.45-14.15      Implementing OpenSocial API – Slava Kurkov
14.15-14.45      Scala: Improving modularization for Scala-bility – Pietu Pohjalainen
14.45-15.15      Break
15.15-15.45      Video encoding with VLC – Rémi Denis-Courmont
15.45-16.15      Ruby development – Jarkko Laine
16.15-16.30      Summary

Slush party @ Helmi starting 7pm.

Full program and registration at www.slushhelsinki.com.

Next SDG on Thursday!

Remember that next SDG will be next Thursday at Korjaamo. First plan was to have it on Wednesday but we had to reschedule it to Thursday because there is some gig at Korjaamo on Wednesday. Hope to see as many of you there as possible! In the future please RSVP on facebook to get the latest updates.

SDG about Google App Engine

Thanks for everyone who made it to SDG last week! I got very good feedback about the event and I think everyone had a blast. The topic of the next SDG will be Google App Enginge. In May Jani Luostarinen talked about Amazon Web Services and specially about S3 and EC2. Now it is time to have a look what google has to offer in this space. Stefano J. Attardi is a CPO of Zipipop. He has been using Python for web-development since 2001 and has lot of experience about different frameworks. He started using Google App Engine shortly after it was published. Here is how he introduces us to the topic.

Google App Engine

App Engine looks like the dream platform for Python web developers. It makes deployment completely transparent. You press one button and the site goes live, and it scales indefinitely. No syncing and restarting servers, no load balancing, database replication, etc… And it’s free! Too good to be true?

I will cover:

• The Good Things: deployment, versioning, logs, data viewer, scalability, reliability, costs.
• The Bad Things (and how to live with them): quotas, profiling, limits on files, subdomains, custom error pages, data viewer, ssl, lock-in.
• Tips: data modeling, scheduled tasks, using versions, timezones, unit testing.
• Conclusions: when to use it, when not to use it?

SDG Meetup August 27th @ Korjaamo

Next SDG meetup will be held in Korjaamon. Join us to talk about databases with beer. Miku (Mikael Kopteff) will be giving introduction to the topic. I hope that won`t be a monologue! Let`s make this as conversational as possible (includes cutting Miku out after 15min). Here is how Miku introduces us to his presentation:

Alternate object persistence systems

Relational databases are the de-facto standard persistence systems for modern applications written in object-oriented languages. The use of these tools is usually justified by the use of SQL, standardized toolsets and abstraction from the programming language. The usage of a relational database still creates a impedance mismatch problem between the relational data model and an object-oriented language, that is traditionally solved with ORM-tools or manual object-to-relational mapping. As an introduction to the SDG I’ll go through some of the alternatives for relational databases, mainly object databases. The idea of this session is to have a discussion about these alternative systems and the benefits they might offer.

The introduction will include the following topics:

-What is object persistence?
-What are object databases?
-What does an application benefit from an object database?
-Differences between object databases and ORM tools
-What other persistence solutions are available?
-Different use cases for persistence systems?

Hello World

This is official Startup Developers Gathering blog. I will announce new meetups here and write about random stuff. I hope that i can find some other people to write here too…