So, in true Bryn Mawr College fashion, I’m going to make this TODO list a “Done is Good” list. There are a couple of differences between the TODO list and the Done is Good list that are important to note. The first and foremost one is that everything on the Done is completely non-optional, and this is how I want to view my list. The second is that I want to do everything on my list — they are not mere chores! Same goes for the Done is Good list. Here goes.

1. Migrate my WordPress blog to Blogger
   WordPress and I have gotten into many a fight, and it may be time to call it quits. I hate what pain it has caused me recently, and it never brought me flowers to apologize. Therefore, I’m going to move this blog over to Blogger, hopefully in the very near future so there will be less to migrate.
   
   
2. Create a tool that takes a Picasa Web Album and outputs a portable HTML5 slideshow
   I was going to originally do a Picasa desktop plugin, but it seems that the desktop API is deprecated. I really want an easy way to just take a whole album and create a clean HTML5 slideshow that I can drop onto my site. I had one that did this using flash, but didn’t easily find one for HTML5. If you know of one already out there (and open!), feel free to send it my way, but I’ll probably still write my own.
3. Read four books
   My life lately has not left a ton of time for reading, so I’d like to catch up on that. My goal is modest, and I’ve already achieved 25% of it, but I need to make sure it is on my Done is Good list. 

   
   

4. Clean up / revise my own site
   I’m no designer, and I make no secret of that! However, I’d like to redo my own site to incorporate some principles that I’ve learned recently. This shouldn’t take too long, and is a nice break from any serious work.
5. Take pictures of my travels
   This goal is something that tends to fall by the wayside when I travel to familiar places. Even though I’m used to the scenery, I want to seek out new places to visit, or rediscover beauty in the old ones. 

   
   

6. Try 6 new recipes
   Just like reading, my cooking adventures have steeply declined. I need to branch out into new cuisines, try new flavor combinations and record the results! Hopefully my readers will appreciate the rate at which I take pictures of food.
7. Go to the gym or exercise 3 times per week
   Oh, fitness. How important you are, and how much I ignore you! I want to make fitness my friend, so I can head off those minor ailments that always seem to strike when I least expect it. I’m to a good start with the gym and a fantastic new trainer, but I want to make sure to stick with it. Therefore, it is on my Done is Good list, despite the fact that I will hopefully never finish it.

   
   

8. Shed my obsession with even-numbered lists
   Ooops…

There you go! Definitely achievable while still leaving time for other fun (except number 8, maybe). I’ll try to post any cool updates here!

Turns out, quite a lot.

Come the middle of September, I will be moving to San Francisco to start a new job (details to come!). The decision to leave my previous job was incredibly difficult, especially after working with such talented, passionate people on a fantastic product. I spoke with family and friends before deciding, and even had long conversations with Jager about it (he growled a few times, but had no other advice to give). Ultimately, I made the decision to follow this new opportunity.

So my line is changing directions, yet again.

Before I completely change course, I have about a month and a half to reset. I’ll be traveling around the country to visit family and friends, starting in Philadelphia! Keep an eye out for my next entry, which will detail all the projects that I plan to tackle during my time off.

We set up the plaques and oversized cheques. They look great!

People listen to the videos that the contestants put together, demoing the projects.

Nicholas Reed wins best consumer app for a parental consent form signing application. No more sending kids home with slips of paper!

Neil Mansilla wins for the best enterprise app, sponsored by Box.net, for PodioSign — an integration between DocuSign and Podio.

Peter Ma and Kash Vaidya win for best Mobile App with EZSlip, which allows you to sign off on deliveries.

And the grand prize winner is…Philippe Furlan, who developed a mobile app that allows you to sign petitions! Not only can you sign a petition with DocuSign, but it also leverages your mobile device’s camera to snap a photo of you, and adds it to the record. Pretty cool, if you ask me.

Kudos go out to all the hackers — the judges had their work cut out for them to decide between such amazing apps! I enjoyed working with everyone and getting a first look at applications that I know will be a hit. I, for one, cannot wait to get a kindle, so I can start getting my books electronically signed with kindlegraph!

I run into Dave Grigsby in the entryway, showing off his VIP coffee card.

Artem from Factual, a sponsor of the hackathon, gives a talk on the basics of the Factual service and API. After this, the hackers get back to coding and the photo documenting goes on hiatus.

Once all entries are submitted, hackers gather to drink beer and socialize at the close of the event.

The idea board is full of great concepts, and our hipster hacker has had his Mac graffitied with the Windows logo.

This DocuSign employee demonstrates what we all feel by collapsing on the floor in exhaustion.

A few of us stay till nearly midnight, cleaning up the aftermath of a great time hacking. Awards are due to go out on Monday, so stay tuned for that report!

Setting up breakfast for the hungry hackers. Starches and coffee is a must.

Mike B’s excellent drawing for our idea board, awaiting the brainstorming of our attendees. The glasses are hipster chic.

The DocuSign engineers are getting caffeinated and hydrated in preparation for hacking up their own projects. These guys know the API in and out, so it’s good that they are out of the running for the competition!

The hackers listen attentively to Mike B, Grant P and Jeremy G give the opening talks.

Jeremy Glassenberg from Box.net talks about the extensibility of Box.net as an enterprise platform and easy consumer app (sorry for the blur).

Had to snap a picture of Steffen’s t-shirt. Geek-tastic!

The hacking got serious, and I wandered around lending a hand. Stay tuned for day two!

This hackathon was centered around building innovative mobile applications, and it was backed by some big names in the business with AT&T, Apigee, PhoneGap, Sencha, F5 and ReadWriteWeb sponsoring. The hackathon’s landing page encouraged developers and designers of all backgrounds and experience to come together to build something awesome. Turns out, tons of people were interested, and tickets sold out a week in advance!

An Bui (@anwith1n) and I got to F5’s HQ a little after 7am to pitch in a hand with setup. Shanley (@shanley) with Apigee supplied the coffee, which definitely compensated for the early hour! My t-shirt rolling skills came in handy, although I must make sure to bring a pocketknife to future events — my keys are starting to complain about being used to open boxes. We all set up the SWAG table and verified the functionality of the displays.

At around 9am, Alex Donn (@Alex_Donn) with AT&T set us up to check people in, as well as gather ideas of people hoping to team up with others for projects. Not wanting to miss the talks, I raced back to the seat I had staked out before anyone had gotten there. This foresight saved me from having to situate myself on the floor, though Shanley seemed quite comfortable on the beanbags that popchips provided.

So tough to get out of bed but worth it for #mobileappSEA

04/16/2011 2:12 pm via MOTOBLUR

@anwith1n

An Bui

#mobileappSEA This is a great turn out. Not seen a pure dev mobile event this big. 200 hard core devs + 30 or so mobile pplz. WOW!

04/16/2011 5:55 pm via TweetDeck

@adronbh

Adron Hall

Apigee, MongoLab, SenchaTouch, PhoneGap, AppMobi, AWS and RedFoundry gave stellar presentations that typically featured live coding demos! Note to all: those canned demos are totally out. If it’s not live, it’s not worth showing. Interested in watching these great talks? Luckily, they streamed the hackathon’s talks on ustream. Be sure to note Brian Mulloy’s (@landlessness) use of my favorite quote by Heraclitus!

Step 3: Make up some rules for the game. #livehacking #mobileappSEA

04/16/2011 5:20 pm via web

@synack

Jeremy Grosser

After the talks we sat down to lunch, where I found a fellow RubyMine user in Adron Hall (@adronbh). Sure, he was running it on Ubuntu, and I on OSX, but we united briefly over our common use of the IDE. An, Adron and I chatted with Tyler Phillipi (@Phillipi), Jeremy Grosser (@synack) and Scott Koon (@lazycoder) about our past and present projects.

Now, I’ll confess. At this point, I had been up since 5am, and caught myself falling asleep. I realized that my ability to hack anything halfway decent had gone the way of my alertness and I headed home to get some sleep. Before I knew it, I read that awards are being given out and awesome apps are being showcased. Hackathon success!

Cool - add icons to your mobile desktop that are click-to-call your favs. that is so cool. #mobileappSEA

04/17/2011 1:44 am via TweetDeck

@shanley

Shanley Kane

The app that Shanley was talking about was created by none other than JD Brennan (@jazzdev), a DocuSign developer! Apps created at this hackathon do not just vanish into the ether; JD is still working on fit and finishing his app.

Watching demos at #mobileappSEA. Awesome mobile apps built with @Apigee @appmobi @awscloud @sencha and more.

04/17/2011 1:41 am via web

@Apigee

Apigee

My next hackathon is the DocuSign Hackathon! This epic two-day event has some serious prize money on the line. Unfortunately (or fortunately, depending on your perspective) I am eliminated from competitive consideration due to the fact that I am a DocuSign employee. Join me in hacking up some paperless solutions and register for the DocuSign Hackathon now!

Two weeks ago, I went down to San Francisco to attend a meetup at Apigee HQ. The theme of the meetup was API Outlook for 2011, and had four great speakers to address the topic. I was lucky enough to secure an early RSVP – apparently there was a waiting list, as the event was capped at 50 attendees.

First up was Andrew Mager, a developer advocate for SimpleGeo. According to Andrew, an awesome API is accessible, open and fast. Make authentication simple for your users, as it is one less barrier that they would need to overcome. As for cultivating a developer community, Andrew emphasized keeping an eye on the pulse of your community through tools such as CoTweet, holding “office hours” and communicating downtime or changes.

Dan Hobbs presented lessons learned from engineering the CNET API. CNET allows consumers of their API to specify how they want their response – XML by default, and JSON by request. Also, CNET always delivers the smallest response possible, unless the user asks for more. This allows the API to operate quickly and efficiently, while still letting consumers to get all the information they need.

David Barrett, Founder & CEO of Expensify, spoke about when APIs go bad (cue ominous music). He emphasized that before planning an API story for your business, analyze whether it will add value to your product, or simply add another item for upkeep. It is definitely not something you tag onto your product for the heck of it — it deserves careful thought and consideration, even if the vote goes against its existence.

Lastly, hacker advocate at Answerly, Abraham Williams gave a talk intriguingly entitled “Please Feed the Unicorns.” This presentation addressed how to attract, feed and retain a herd of unicorns. The subject of the talk might make more sense when you realize that:

And there’s more – unicorns are not just developers with free time, but they are also early adopters, fanboys and technical evangelists! Reward your unicorns for being a part of your community by giving out SWAG, tickets to conferences and recognition. See what works and what doesn’t with your community. As Abraham stated: “You’re iterating your product. Iterate your community too.”

Overall, the event delivered invaluable information and was a great opportunity to meet technology influencers! Check out these resources to find out more:

• Site for developers, providers and consumers of open APIs
• Abraham Williams’ “Please Feed the Unicorns” slides

Abraham’s “Please Feed the Unicorns” talk:

I’ll keep updating this post once videos of the talks go up. In the meanwhile, I encourage you to leave your thoughts about what makes a good API and/or awesome developer community in the comments.

Interested in reading more of my writing? Feel free to check out more of my blogging over at the DocuSign DevCenter Blog!

Reposted from the DocuSign Blog:

We’re excited to announce an addition to the Developer Programs Team! Julia Ferraioli is DocuSign’s newest Technical Evangelist, coming to DocuSign from the University of Rochester, where she worked on low-cost, technical solutions for blind users.

She also played a key role in launching Rochester’s human-computer interaction group and co-held their first iPhone development workshop.

Prior to her work at Rochester, she was at Microsoft, where she worked on both the front and back ends of an online document sharing and collaboration service. Other past projects have involved everything from cryptography to robotics, and she is also a twice published author in the field of semi-supervised clustering.

So… what excites Julia most about being DocuSign’s Technical Evangelist?

I’ve had the opportunity to use DocuSign “in the wild” a few times now, and the user experience astonishes me – I didn’t have to worry about access to a printer or fax machine, or wonder if my signature was received successfully. The DocuSign experience made all of these concerns irrelevant! Needless to say, I’m a fan, and I’m really excited to enable the developer community to take full advantage of DocuSign.

From looking at the forums and seeing how developers are using the DocuSign API, I clearly see that the community is smart, motivated and passionate. I love working with developers and helping them achieve their goals, and that’s part of my job here at DocuSign! I’m very much looking forward to interacting with the community and getting to know them.

Julia will work closely with DocuSign’s developer community – what does she want to learn from our technical community?

Turns out, Julia wants to learn several things:

I want to learn how the developer community is currently utilizing the API, and how you would like to utilize the API. My goal is to make you as successful as I can, and if there is anything I can do to make your experience better, I’d love to hear about it!

• Do we need to improve our documentation?
• Are there scenarios that you would like to create with DocuSign, but are not quite sure how to go about it?

These are issues that I want to address so that I can improve the developer experience. Also, if there are things we have done in the past that have really helped you (such as webinars, blog entries, etc…), let us know so we can further direct our efforts!

For more information about DocuSign’s Developer Center, take a look the at resources we offer. From our SDK and API to electronic signature developer forums and eSign Here, DocuSign’s electronic signature blog, we’re always looking for ways to connect with our customers, developers and community members.