Stories

I hear a lot of talk about folks looking to bridge the left with the right in this country. Trying to find common ground. Listen. Don’t be so angry, and hostile to folks on the right. While I agree with these concepts, on the ground I just don’t think they are always practical in the current environment. While this might work with the first layer of conservatives who walk the party line, are generally in denial because of white privilege, but might find themselves troubled by what is going...

Several times over the course of doing API Evangelist I’ve found myself financially broke. I have done pretty good at making a living over the last eight years, but along the way shit has just happened. The number reason I fall short in the bank account is that people don’t pay their bills. The second reason, is that I do way too much for free, and people extract value from me and my work, and do not give back. I’ve learned just how much the technology sector is designed to support people ...

I’m winding down the mission focus of API Evangelist in 2017. Since 2010, I’ve had this mission to help the “normals” understand the importance and value of APIs. In 2017, I realized how this mission was more about me, than it was ever about anyone else. I don’t doubt that along the way I’ve helped inspire, and educate folks about APIs and what they can do, but looking back over seven years of my work I’m seeing much more damage done, than any positive impact.

I’ve been taking a look at some of the promises made by technology companies over the last couple months when it came to helping make sure Puerto Rico has access to power and Internet. After Hurrican Maria hit the island, the tech and telco giants quickly moved into help make sure the island recovered.

Last year was very difficult for me. Not career-wise. I’m doing what I want to be doing. What I need to be doing. Mentally it was brutally exhausting, and painfully eye-opening. I’m open to having my mind expanded, and shown new things, but to be show so much fear, racism, misogyny, and mental illness at the national level, all the way down to the cracks and crevices of my childhood, rocked me to my core. I feel like I have entered into a new stage of growing up, not just in age, but as a ...

I’m doing a significant amount of research into the big picture of public data through my new partnership with Streamdata.io. I am going through all my research around open and public data, as well as my research our city, county, state, and federal government data efforts. I’m assessing my hangover from the Web 2.0 open data wave I believed in so heavily, as well as my own participation in the tech invasion of Washington D.C. as a Read more →

As I enter the first business day of 2018 I realize I have written anything wrapping up 2017, or made any resolutions or predictions for 2018. I think this reflects where I stand in 2018. Last year I was a mess. I was pissed. I was sad. I was frustrated with where our country is headed. This year I’m on much solid ground, but I don’t feel like doing any grand standing regarding 2017, or getting all hopeful and optimistic about 2018. I’m just ready.

As I was preparing to head to Nebraska last week to conduct a three day API workshop for Mutual of Omaha, I began having some of the usual doubts in my head about whether or not I had what it took to deliver at an organization of this size. Thinking about flying to Omaha for a week to consult within a company who was baked into my childhood triggered all kinds of voices in my head. Their architecture team and I had hammered out a robust outline for the three day workshop in a Google Doc ov...

I’ve learned a lot about being a white dude from my girlfriend, and I’ve learned a lot by watching her Twitter timeline, and people’s interaction with her. I learned the other day that I cannot hate on other white dudes, because I am whiter, and “dudier” than most. Ok. Thanks for that lesson. I have a dedicated column in my Tweetdeck for keeping an eye on the waves of white dudes who love to talk shit to my girlfriend. I don’t engage them by default, because a) many of them are bots, and b...

I have had my eyes opened enough times to realize that everything in the physical world around me isn’t always what it seems. Something that is a cornerstone of the digital world that is being constructed around us right now. Humans have worked hard to construct the ...

I have spent most of my adult life trying to be what I considered a diplomat. When people were too outspoken, or appeared to be overly critical of me and the world around us, I always felt the need to step in and speak up. Why can’t we all just get along? You are being too critical, and never offering solutions. You just don’t...

I was captivated by several aspects of this story on the coming software apocalypse. After reading the story, I...

I find myself regularly surprised at the meanness of folks right now. I’d put the lion share of the blame on the tone set by the right wing, but I see it in the middle, and on the left, and find myself struggling to follow some basic rules of kindness and respect. I’m getting to a point as of September 2017 where I’ve re...

I have been playing with machine learning since the election. I started a side project I have called algorotoscope, which I started applying texture transfer machine learning algorithms to videos. I don’t have the budget I did around the holidays, so i...

We’ve seen an escalation in the deplatforming of nazi and white supremacists hate groups lately, with companies like GoDaddy, Read more →

I hear a lot of noise about voice as an interface. I don’t doubt that voice enablement will have it’s place, and be used in a variety of situations, I’m just not convinced that it will end be everything everybody is thinking it will be. My feelings on the subject are mostly because of how I see the world, but come to thinking about, all my feelings are this way. Hmmmm? While the API aspects of voice enablement like Alexa are interesting, I seriously doubt that it will become the primary in...

in the area of fake news](http://boingboing.net/2017/08/04/fbi-tracked-fake-news.html), but I wanted to explore some of the other fake I’m coming across in my regular monitoring of the news.

A topic that keeps coming up in discussions with my partner in crime Audrey Watters (@audreywatters) about our podcast is around the future of labor in an API world. I have not written anything about this, which means I’m still in early stages of any research into this area, but it has come up in conversation, and reflected r...

I am totally hooked on POLITICO’s Morning Cybersecurity email. I’m not an email newsletter guy, but this is government cybersecurity wonky enough to keep me engaged each day. One of the bits that recently grabbed my attention was regarding what should be considered Internet of Thi...

When I worked at the Department of Veterans affairs I was approached by a number of folks, external to the federal government, who wanted to help clean up, work with, and improve public data sets when it came to open data efforts in the federal government. As I was working on specific datasets about veteran facilities, organizati...

I have a number of friends who worship markets, and love to tell me that we should be allowing them to just work things out. They truly believe in the magical powers of markets, that they are great equalizers, and work out all the worlds problems each day. ALL the folks who tell me this are dudes, with 90% being white dudes. F...

I was logging into the Twitter web application for my @apievangelist account, and got a popup about their terms of service changes regarding sharing data with partners. While far from the world of privacy and data ownership I see in my head, it is a step in the right direction.

Continuing the grooming of my digital self, I’ve deleted all my Tweets prior to 2017. These tweets offer almost no beneft to my traffic to my site, or the sales of my content, products, and services. They do contain many things that could be taken out of context, and potentially be used as leverage against me when it comes to potential legal cases, ins...

I’ve been playing with different ways of visualizing the impact that algorithms are making on our lives. How they are being used to distort the immigration debate, and how the current administration is being influenced and p0wned by Russian propaganda. I find shedding light o...

I flushed the the last 9 years of my Facebook profile over the last couple of days. Instead of deleting my account, I just cleaned up everything except what I have posted in 2017. In the future I will make it a ...