Strategic goals should not be confused with tactical goals. Tactical goals are things like “climb a mountain” whereas a strategic goal might be “experience nature to the fullest.” The tactic and act of climbing a mountain helps you achieve your broader strategic goal of experiencing nature to the fullest.

Everyones life goals will be different because we all have different world views, but here are some examples of broad strategic goals to get you thinking.

• Feed the world’s hungry
• Become exceedingly wealthy
• Affect peoples lives with art
• Entertain people
• Help people
• Rule the world
• Be happy

You can probably think of much better examples than me, but you get the point.

Take the time to write down your life’s strategic goals, and reflect often on how you are achieving them. It’s easy to get caught up in the day-to-day grind and to-do lists and forget what you’re really trying to achieve.

In my attempt to measure my progress towards my strategic life goals, I’ve created a dashboard that attempts to mimic the behavior of unlocking achievements and leveling up in a video game. It’s certainly a work in progress, but you’re welcome to check it out on my Strategic Life Goals page.

What are your goals? How do you measure your success in achieving them?

Here is a list of seven famous women programmers and their pictures to illustrate their style of fashion.

Ada Lovelace

Ada Lovelace

The only child of Lord Byron, Ada Lovelace was born in London in 1815. She wrote an algorithm to compute Bernoulli numbers using Charles Babbage‘s mechanical computer, the analytical engine. This makes her the world’s first computer programmer. The programming language Ada is named after her.

Adele Goldberg

Adele Goldberg wrote several books on Smalltalk-80. In the 70′s Adele worked on the Xerox Alto, the first computers to have a GUI and use a desktop metaphor.

Steve Jobs requested to see a demo of the Xerox Alto and Adele refused to show him. Her superiors at Xerox ordered her to show Jobs a demo, and naturally Apple copied all of their best ideas.

Erna Hoover

Erna invented the computerized telephone traffic switching system at Bell Labs in the 70s. It was one of the first software patents ever.

Mary Lou Jepsen

Mary was the founding CTO of the One Laptop Per Child (OLPC) project. She invented the laptop’s sunlight-readable display technology and co-invented its ultra-low power management system.

She left OLPC in 2008 to found her for profit company Pixel Qi which focuses on display technologies.

Mary is in the 2008 “TIME 100.”

Shafi Goldwasser

Shafi is a professor at MIT and the Weizmann Institute of Science where she researches computational complexity theory, cryptography and computational number theory. She’s won two prestigeous Gödel Prize awards on her work in theoretical computer science. I can’t even begin to understand what this means in English, but it sounds impressive doesn’t it? :p

Jeri Ellsworth

Jeri is a self taught chip designer and hacker extraordinaire. Remember Christmas 2004 when all the shopping malls had those joysticks that plugged directly into your TV loaded with tons of Commodore 64 games? You can thank Jeri for that. The C64 Direct-to-TV is her creation.

Grace Hopper

I saved my favorite for last.

Rear Admiral Grace Hopper (nicknamed “Amazing Grace”) served in the United States Navy for over 40 years and was awarded the highest non-combat award possible when she retired. With a masters in mathematics and physics from Yale university, Grace developed the first compiler, and conceptualized machine-independent programming languages, ala COBOL. Grace is sometimes called “the mother of COBOL.”

You’ve probably heard the old story of how a moth got caught in one of those old massive computers, causing it to crash. Grace remembers that story, she was there! She’s the one that popularized the phrase “debugging.”

Grace Hopper

Grace Hooper is also responsible for one of my most frequently used quotes, “It’s easier to ask forgiveness than it is to get permission.”

And if you’re still not impressed, the US Navy named the destroyer ship USS Hopper (DDG-70) after her.

The majority of Grace’s retirement was spent speaking and lecturing about technology at computer events, where she always wore her full military dress.

Grace is kind of my hero.

$dusty = new Person($attributes, $experiences, $startLocation);

$dusty = transport($dusty, $newLocation)

function transport($person, $newLocation)
{
   return new Person($person->attributes, $person->experiences, $newLocation);
}

On November 1st I shaved my face clean for a friendly bet amongst my friends on who could grow their mustache the longest before their significant other gave them ultimatum to shave it. As it turns out, our little bet coincided exactly the same day Movember started. What is Movember? Movember is an annual, month-long celebration of the moustache, highlighting men’s health issues – specifically prostate and testicular cancer. This of course is brilliant, and I couldn’t help but join the cause.

You can help fight against prostate and testicular cancer by becoming a sponsor of my mustache. “Ridiculous” you say? Ok, sponsoring a mustache is a little silly, but this Movember, the money raised in the U.S. will be split between the Prostate Cancer Foundation and the Lance Armstrong Foundation to fund research to find better treatments and a cure for prostate cancer, and there’s nothing silly about that.

DONATE HERE
The link so nice, some times you have to click it twice [to make it work].

While doing research for the book I compiled a brief timeline of Twitter’s company history. I was about to remove it from my notes when I realized it was kind of interesting, and I might like to refer to it later. So, I’m throwing it up on the blog for you to enjoy.

• March 21, 2006 – 1st Tweet – http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Twitter#History
• July 2006 – Twitter.com goes public – http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Twitter#History
• Oct 2006 – Ev, Biz, others aquire Odeo & Twitter as Obvious Corp – http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Twitter#History
• February 19, 2007 – Odeo sold – http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Odeo
• March 2007 – SXSW hype fest - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Twitter#History
• April 2007 – Twitter spun off into its own company – http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Twitter#History
• July 2007 – $5M Funding – http://www.crunchbase.com/company/twitter
• Aug 2008 – $15M Funding – http://www.crunchbase.com/company/twitter
• March 2009 – $35M Funding – http://www.crunchbase.com/company/twitter

The current definition of coworking needs revision. Coworking is not a space, a community, a set of values, a business model, or any combination of those things. Those topics are about coworking, but they do not define coworking.

If we look at the definition of coworking on the Coworking Wiki, we read that “coworking is a cafe-like community/collaboration space for developers, writers and independents.” This defines coworking as a noun and as a type of community space. Wikipedia does a bit better at defining coworking, but still place a lot of emphases on “the space.”

From my experience with Jelly, coworking is not a space or a noun. It is a verb. Coworking is something you are doing. For example, I’d use it in a sentence like this: “Today I am coworking at Jelly.” Or, “I might go to Citizen Space to cowork.” From this usage I’d like to propose the following definition.

Coworking is two or more individuals working independently or collaboratively who are socially interacting while they work.

As a verb you can cowork with people, you can be coworking, or you may have coworked. You may even go to a designated coworking space.

Also note, that this definition does not mention anything about a space or even proximity. This leaves the possibility to cowork remotely. Second Life and Yahoo! Live come to mind.

When we talk about creating a “coworking space,” “coworking community,” or having a specific set of values, we’re really talking about how to create an environment or community that will encourage the activity of coworking. Arguments over values, profits, business models, and furniture can neither undermine nor enhance the definition of coworking. Build a pool and I may go swimming. Is it a free pool? Do I have to pay to swim? Is the water clean? Are kids allowed in the pool? Is there a swim team that meets at this pool? Is the pool’s owner honest? All of these thing may affect my decision to swim in the pool, but are ultimately a matter of taste.

In summary, coworking is NOT a cafe-like community/collaboration space. That’s like saying swimming is a pool. And arguments such as for-profit versus non-profit need not become heated. Coworking is coworking regardless of where it’s at, what values people share, or how big the community is. If you’re working and socializing, you’re coworking.

We’ve been out of Brian’s original sticker print-run for awhile now, but today I got a new batch in the mail! Big thanks go out to Stephen Gutknecht for fronting the money to purchase the stickers.

If you’d like a sticker let me know at Jelly. They cost $2 a piece to print. Not so coincidently, we’ll be accepting donations of $2 per sticker.

Alternatively you can hop on Mikons.com and create all kinds of schwag using the Jelly icon and have it shipped straight to your door.

I had a little trouble with the checkout process at Mikons, but Mark was fantastic about helping me, and it turned out to be an over the top customer experience.

Step 1. Download the latest version of the Austin Tech Events widget and upload it to a subdirectory on your site.

Step 2. Go get yourself a Google GDATA API key here.

Step 3. Add the following code to the head section of your site. Note the sections in red. You need to add your Google API Key and be sure to change the paths below to reflect where you uploaded the Austin Tech Events widget folder.

<script type="text/javascript" src="http://www.google.com/jsapi?key=YOU GOOGLE API KEY GOES HERE"></script>
<script type="text/javascript">
	var calendarURL = 'http://www.google.com/calendar/feeds/i8m14fqigtkhpj744qml1vht920bq5j0%40import.calendar.google.com/public/full';
	var pageMaxResults = 15;
	var parseWiki = true;
	var showNav = true;
	var weeks = null;
	var widgetListSize = null;
</script>
<link type="text/css" rel="stylesheet" href="http://example.com/wp-content/plugins/austin-tech-events-calendar/css/thickbox.css" />
<link type="text/css" rel="stylesheet" href="http://example.com/wp-content/plugins/austin-tech-events-calendar/css/style.css" />
<script type="text/javascript">
	function addLoadEvent(func) {
		var oldonload = window.onload;
		if (typeof window.onload != 'function') {
			window.onload = func;
		} else {
			window.onload = function() {
			if (oldonload) {
				oldonload();
			}
				func();
			}
		}
	}
</script>
<script type="text/javascript" src="http://example.com/wp-content/plugins/austin-tech-events-calendar/js/date.js?ver=alpha-1"></script>
<script type="text/javascript" src="http://example.com/wp-content/plugins/austin-tech-events-calendar/js/jquery.js?ver=6124"></script>
<script type="text/javascript" src="http://example.com/wp-content/plugins/austin-tech-events-calendar/js/thickbox.js?ver=3.1"></script>
<script type="text/javascript" src="http://example.com/wp-content/plugins/austin-tech-events-calendar/js/wiky.js?ver=1.0"></script>
<script type="text/javascript" src="http://example.com/wp-content/plugins/austin-tech-events-calendar/js/functions.js?ver=0.85"></script>

Step 4. Add the following code to body of you page. Place it wherever you want the widget to show up.

<ul>
	<li id="austin-tech-events" class="widget widgetWPNGCalendar">
		<h2 class="widgettitle"><a href="http://door64.com/event">Austin Tech Events</a></h2>
			<div id="wpng-cal-widget-events" style="display:none;"></div>
			<div id="wpng-cal-load-widget" class="wpng-cal-loading">
				<img class="wpng-cal-image" alt="loading..." src="/wp-content/plugins/austin-tech-events-calendar/images/loading_large.gif"/>
			</div>
		<div>
			<script type="text/javascript" defer="defer">
				widgetListSize = 5;
				addLoadEvent(loadCalendarWidget);
			</script>
		</div>
	</li>
</ul>

That’s all there is to it. Check out the example I created of the Austin Tech Events Plugin installed on WordPress 1.5.2. Proof it can be done! The biggest disadvantage to this approach is that you won’t be notified of code updates like you would on a proper WordPress 2.5 widget install.

Let me know if you have any questions!

The Austin Tech Events Calendar plugin is a “branch” of the wpng-calendar, a WordPress plugin for integrating a Google calendar into your WordPress blog. I’ve customized it to best display events from the door64.com events calendar.

To install this plugin:

1. Download it from here
2. Upload the plugin to the “wp-content/plugins” directory in your WordPress installation
3. Activate the plugin in your WordPress admin panel
4. Go get yourself a Google GDATA API key here
5. In your WordPress admin panel, goto “Options -> Austin Tech Events” then enter your Google GDATA API key. If you’re running WordPress 2.5, look under “Settings -> Austin Tech Events.”
6. Under “Presentation -> Widgets” add the widget to your side bar, alter the options if you like

That’s it!

For more information about this plugin checkout the documentation from the the wpng-calendar site.

Drop me some comments if you have questions or feedback!

PS. This plugin uses Javascript to interface the Google API. I’d love to rebuild this plugin using PHP so that the links inside of the event descriptions would help each organization’s page rank in Google search. If anyone wants to take a stab at converting this from Javascript to PHP, I’d love you forever!

Have an old version of WordPress that doesn’t support widgets? Not using WordPress at all? Check out this post: Austin Tech Events Widget for those without widgets or WordPress.

One large barrier I’ve found organizing Austin Jelly is the proliferation of calendars online for me to post my events to. And each of those calendars has their own small audience, so of course I need to post to all of them to reach the largest audience. What we need is ONE shared calendar feed with an API so we can display and post events from our organizations website. But the key thing is that the backend is shared, so we’re promoting each others events across the web.

Matt has done a great job developing the community and the calendar at door64.com. One great thing about the door64 calendar (aside from the amount of events posted there and the audience size) is that it’s already integrated into Google Calendars, which is a huge step towards making it easy to spread.

I’d like to help make the door64 calendar THE tech event calendar for Austin. I believe the way to this is by developing the following:

1. Create WordPress Widget for Austin Tech Events
   (Are you an Austin Tech blogger? Why not promote Austin Tech events by using this widget? PS. It’s almost done, check it out on the bottom of my blog’s sidebar.)
2. Create automated batch push of Austin events to 3rd party calendars via API
   (AKA: Post an event to door64.com and it gets pushed to these other event calendars.)
   1. Upcoming
   2. Craigslist
   3. What else?
3. Create an event posting API
   (AKA: Post events to door64′s calendar from your organization’s website. Keep your brand, but cross promote your event.)

What do you think? I’d love to hear everyone’s thoughts.