Events and Meetups of 2010

As a software developer, I am active in my membership in some developer groups and in attending their events and meetups. I have been mosty active in Google Technology User Group Philippines (GTUGPH) and in the Association of Filipino Java Developers(PinoyJUG).

I attended all the meetups of GTUGPH. The first was the February 19 Android meetup in Room 3302 of Smart Tower, Ayala Avenue, Makati City with Miguel Paraz and Marc Lester Tan. The group had another meetup last March 10 with Dan Delima, Software Engineer from Google Japan and Christine Songco, Technical Program Manager, Developer Relations, Google Inc. about Google Visualizations API, Google App Engine (GAE) and Google Web Toolkit (GWT) at the G2iX Techbar (5F Orient Square Bldg. F. Ortigas Jr. Rd., Ortigas Center, Pasig City).

I was also present at the August 14 chill-out meetup at Cafe 5845 (Mall of Asia) and the September 14 meetup with Dan Delima at Gerry's Grill Glorietta 5. Last October 14, another meetup was held at the office of Proximity Philippines / BBDO Guerrero (11/F Insular Life Bldg, Ayala Ave., Makati City with JP Loh (HTML5 Websockets), Miguel Paraz (Web Runtime Development on Android) and Allan Ortile (Google Apps). After the talks, there was a demo of the Android-powered smartphones and tablet from Cherry Mobile, courtesy of Reggie Ramos.

Finally, I attended the Geo 3D meetup with Google Geo product manager, Bruce Polderman, and Geo community advocate, Nicole Drobeck last December 1. It was held at the office of Orange and Bronze Software Labs, Inc.

PinoyJUG had four meetups this year and I attended only three. Its first meetup was the Selenium and Spring Technology meetup last January 29 at the G2iX Techbar with Aaron Tinio (a senior QA engineer at G2iX and specializes on test automation using Selenium and Ruby) and Jasper Blues (a software engineer at ValueCommerce Phils, and the founder and lead developer of Spring Ldap-ODM). The second was the February 26 JMeter meetup at the Orange and Bronze office with the topics "Introduction to JMeter" by Brian Tan Seng and "RMI Plugin for JMeter" by JM Ibanez.

The only meetup I was not able to attend, the April 27 meetup at the G2ix TechBar ("Profiling and Heap Analysis" by Franz See and "Client-Side Performance" by Alvin De Leon), was the third. On November 3, the last meetup for the year was held at the G2iX TechBar with the topics "Common Pitfalls Experienced in Java" by Julz Cutaran and "Dive Into Agile: What Your Scrum Master Didn't Tell You" by Michael Mallete.

Aside from these events and meetups, I also attended two developer events this year. The first one is DevCon Luzon at Function Room 1, SMX Convention Center last February 9. DevCon (Developers Connect) events are gatherings designed to facilitate interaction among the software and web development professionals. I was also a part of DevFest 2010 Manila. DevFest is a free Google-sponsored event where you can learn about Google technologies and other developer-related stuff.

There are some events I had missed due to various reasons. I do hope to attend more events next year, especially those that I haven't attended yet.

Tweet
Post to Google Buzz   Share

Civil Service Eligible

Yesterday, I just got my CSC Certificate of Eligibility. I am now a civil service eligible under a special eligibility pursuant to Presidential Decree 907. It was filed last year but I only got time to update my application yesterday. I eventually received it on the same day.

Until now, however, I still don't know if I'll be able to use it since I do not have plans to work in the government. I just applied for it before because I no longer need to review and take the Career Service Examination. I only need to submit some requirements, pay a smaller amount and wait for the application to be processed.

Projects and projects

Tweet
Post to Google Buzz   Share

I have been wanting to start a great project but I have no idea yet. So, the projects I have been doing now are those that I do while studying and learning. As of now, I have two personal projects.

The first project I did was Post This, a Facebook that allows users to post status updates. For now, it can post updates in Facebook and tweets in Twitter. I am planning to do integrations in Google Buzz, Plurk and on others as well. I have been unable to continue coding on it but just recently, after fixing a bug and refactoring the code, I decided to continue development on it.

I also started CvSEA (CvSU Student Election App). It is an open source app for student elections in CvSU (Cavite State University). It is based from Halalan, the open source voting system being developed and maintained by the UP Linux Users' Group (UnPLUG). I have started the development on the project while the talk with CvSU Naic Campus is still being done. The project is also hosted in Google Code.

I am still thinking of an idea for an app or a project that will allow me to learn while developing it. Participating and contributing to an open source project sounds nice too.