63% of security breaches involve weak or stolen credentials, which highlights why authentication is often the weak link in the security defences of organizations. For hackers, stealing or guessing an employee’s credentials means they can “legitimately” enter company networks and, …
Smart City Innovation SAN DIEGO, Jan. 31, 2017 /PRNewswire/ — AT&T teamed with Current, powered by GE and Georgia Power, a subsidiary of Southern Company, to test intelligent lighting solutions in Atlanta. The companies are using the AT&T Smart Cities framework as the…
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You’ve decided to attend a technical conference this year. You’ve reviewed the options and have selected the perfect conference for yourself. Congrats!
But it’s difficult to take time out of your schedule and money out of your budget to attend a technical conference. Even if your employer provides you with a learning budget, you’ll likely need to convince them of the value of sending you to the conference that you’re interested in attending.
So, is attending a technical conference time and money well spent?
Technical conferences can be enriching and rewarding experiences for developers of all types. But just attending a conference doesn’t necessarily guarantee that you’ll get enough value for your time and money. It takes effort. And it helps to have a plan before you get to the conference.
Here are some suggestions on how to get the most out of the experience of attending a technical conference.
If the conference is a single track conference (everyone is in the same room all the time), this is less important from a planning perspective. You mostly just need to know when and where to be for registration and the start of the conference.
If the conference has multiple tracks, you’ll need to decide what talks you’ll attend for each time slot in the schedule. This can be more difficult than it sounds, as each slot will likely have more than one talk that’ll sound interesting to you.
Taking time to familiarize yourself with the speakers and the topics that they’re presenting will help you with deciding which talks you’ll attend. Also, it’ll help ensure that you don’t overlook an opportunity to see a well-known presenter (that might not be well known to you) or an interesting topic that you might be less familiar with.
Don’t be afraid to take chances. Most conferences record all of the talks and make them available online to attendees after the conference has concluded.
This is all about getting out of your comfort zone. Attend a talk about something you know nothing about or a language or technology that doesn’t immediately seem applicable to your current work or project. Getting a fresh perspective can help you to see your preferred technologies and processes in a new light—even those that you know well.
Conferences are inherently social events. Wikipedia (http://ift.tt/2jQBDGg) defines a conference as “a meeting of people who ‘confer’ about a topic”. Over the years, I’ve found that meeting new people (often from all over the world) is one of the main benefits of attending a conference.
Developers are—sometimes—not the most social people. I generally fall into that category, though I’ve managed to improve over the years (pro tip: just like anything, it takes practice). Luckily, there are simple things you can do that’ll help. Sit next to someone at breakfast, lunch, or dinner that you don’t know. Introduce yourself to the people you sit next to during sessions.
When you meet someone new, ask them questions. Here are some suggestions:
Avoid the urge to check your email or messages during talks. Sometimes it helps to take notes, either handwritten or in a text editor. Having something to refer back to later will help you with recalling key information after the conference is over.
When you see or hear something interesting or learn something new, let the presenter know! It takes a lot of work to write, create, and produce a talk; not to mention a fair amount of nerve to get up in front of a roomful of other developers and present a talk. You can help repay that effort by giving the presenter feedback.
Let them know your thoughts, either in person or online afterward via social media. Only offer criticism through private channels, preferably in person. If in doubt, think about how you’d feel if you were on the receiving end of the feedback.
After the conference is over and you’ve returned to your normal routine, take the time to share your experience or something that you learned. This could take the form of a presentation that you give to your teammates or a blog post. Best of all, going through the process of sharing information with others will help your own understanding and retention.
Developing websites or applications day in and day out is hard work. It’s easy to get burned out. Attending a conference will give you a break from your normal routine. Use that time to reconnect with your “why”.
Have you attended a technical conference? What was your experience like? What did you find helpful to do while you were at the conference? And after?
The post 8 Ways to Get the Most Out of a Technical Conference This Year appeared first on Treehouse Blog.
Telepresence, Robotics and Holograms When you talk about the future of work, what often comes to mind is automation and machine learning. However, there is a new firm, claiming to provide the future of work through robot “doubles”. Rather than…
This post Telepresence: From Robotics To Holograms appeared first on CloudTweaks Connected CloudTweaks.
They have also selflessly shared their expertise with others in a wide variety …
IoT Evolution Just as the Industrial Revolution changed the relationship between humans and work, the rise of the Internet of Things promises to create a fundamental shift in the way companies and their employees operate. This leap forward won’t happen…
This post IoT and the Evolution of the Workplace appeared first on CloudTweaks Connected CloudTweaks.
Big Data Analytics Fraud Detection Fraud and corruption create havoc in businesses and governments across the globe, with Americans losing an estimated $50 billion each year to such practices according to approximations from the Financial Fraud Research Center at Stanford…
This post Prevention of Fraud and Corruption While Utilizing Big Data Analytics appeared first on CloudTweaks Connected CloudTweaks.
Facebook has created a new authentication feature that’s designed to securely help GitHub users recover their accounts should they lose access. Beginning on 30 January, members of the online project hosting service will be able to recover access to their accounts via their social media profile. All they need to do is set up a […]… Read More
The post Facebook Creates Authentication Feature for GitHub Account Recovery appeared first on The State of Security.
BI Intelligence, one of our favorite analyst groups, has a fascinating presentation on online social video being "the next big thing".
Because they are a paid subscription site, we can't link to the presentation.
But we can provide the highlights. These are:
Traditional TV is Declining While the New Online Networks are Booming
We won't bother with the charts showing the decline of traditional TV, but it's happening. Meanwhile, the chart below (click to enlarge) shows the stunning growth in the number of people subscribing to the new online networks.
For a variety of reasons the folks at BI Intelligence aren't suggesting traditional TV is dying, at least not anytime soon. Instead they think much like print and radio, traditional TV will "suffer in style".
By this they mean the traditional TV industry will "go through decades of consolidation and pain" as the industry slowly shrinks.
The Rise of Social Video
We've written quite a bit in the past about the growth of online video, so the trend itself is not new. Nor is the fact that it is rapidly growing.
But the growth continues to amaze. The chart below shows BI Intelligence's estimate of the overall growth of online video streams. The numbers are pretty staggering.
But even more impressive is how fast the online video is growing on Facebook, Snap Chat and YouTube. Their daily video views have basically doubled over the past year to over 30 billion views per day.
This leads us to think that social video is not the next big thing. Instead, we think it already is a big thing.
For those interested in the topics BI Intelligence covers - Apps & Platforms, Digital Media, E-Commerce, IoT, Payments and Fin Tech - we highly recommend their service. It's well worth subscribing to.
You spin the top and wait to see if it continues in kinetic motion or if it falls to the pull of gravitational force. You trust that the road chosen to walk the path of serendipity toward an anticipated culmination of the correct state of scientific innovation – which, in this case, has been forged to […]… Read More
The post Inception and the Road from Security Serendipity appeared first on The State of Security.
Choosing to upload your data to the cloud is, for the most part, a moot point; the advantages of mobility, scalability and convenience have proven that cloud platforms are a necessary and vital tool for the advancement of modern-day industry. However, some issues are still a challenge for the online world, including that of regulatory […]… Read More
The post Regulatory Compliance in the Cloud appeared first on The State of Security.
