| |
Find out what David Keener has been doing lately:
| Voxant Merges With Anystream: The official announcement went out over the wires today. My company, Voxant Media, just merged with Anystream. Voxant Media specializes in building an advertiser-supported distribution network for monetizing content such as video, images and text. Anystream produces products that process video, transcribe video as needed and generally make it available for distribution. Their most notable recent activity is streaming all of the content from the Beijing Olympics. Check out the official press release. | | September 22, 2008 | | | Reactions on the Voxant-Anystream Merger: Some more reactions to the merger:
| | September 22, 2008 | | | | WorldCon 66: Dave Keener attended the 66th World Science Fiction Convention in Denver, Colorado, from August 7 to 11. As per usual, there were lots of great events, good food and many, many SF books. The convention center was also nice, with an interesting statue, as shown below: | | August 14, 2008 | | | | RubyNation 2008!!!: The RubyNation 2008 Conference was a stunning success on August 1 - 2, easily at the upper end of what the organizers were hoping for. The CIT venue was excellent, with plenty of parking, a really nice auditorium and good electronics capabilities. The catering was first-rate. Finally, the array of speakers and the mix of topics went over very well with the audience. Rest assured, there will be a RubyNation 2009. | | August 4, 2008 | | | Merging Branches in Subversion: In Voxant's codebase today, I had to merge a branch back into the trunk. As a recent converter to Subversion, this was new to me, so I went looking in the Blogosphere to find out how to do the merge effectively. I came across this nice blog entry from Eleutian Technology:
How to Branch Properly.
| | July 22, 2008 | | | | RubyNation Conference Sold Out!: As one of the organizers, I'm proud to say that the RubyNation 2008 Conference has sold out. All 125 tickets (at $175 each) were sold in 52 days, which is excellent for any technical conference, let alone the first year of a conference. We were also able to attract a number of great sponsors, as well as companies to provide some truly excellent giveaways. Between the tickets selling out and the sponsors, the conference is solidly in the black, which is also gratifying (since there are some pretty hefty hard costs associated with running a conference). | | July 16, 2008 | | | Portland Trip: I just got back from a business trip to Portland, Oregon, where I got to spend four virtually uninterrupted days designing RESTful web services with some excellent developers. Staying in downtown Portland was a treat; the city was gorgeous, the weather was delightfully mild and walking through the city was a lot of fun. I also got to try out a bunch of really nice restaurants at company expense. I even managed to catch a glimpse of the majestic Mount Hood from my hotel room.
| | July 11, 2008 | | | | RubyNation Tickets Selling Nicely: Tickets for RubyNation 2008, a new regional Ruby conference that I'm helping to organize, are selling briskly. We're at about the 75% mark, with ticket prices due to increase by $25 on July 16th. By my calculations, we're already in the black based on ticket sales and sponsorships, which is always a vital milestone. My guess is that RubyNation will be sold out at least a week before the conference. | | July 1, 2008 | | | | RubyNation 2008 Registration Now Open: Registration for the 2008 RubyNation Conference just opened today. Join the nation! Get your ticket for the DC area's very own regional Ruby conference. | | May 26, 2008 | | | | RubyNation Progress Report: Plans for RubyNation, a new regional conference serving metropolitan DC and surrounding areas, is progressing nicely. The venue and budget have been finalized. The Call for Papers just closed earlier this week, and final selection of speakers will be done in a couple of days. Finally, registration will be opening shortly for this two-day conference, which will start on August 1, 2008. | | May 23, 2008 | | | Scotland Trip 2008: David and Sally Keener toured Scotland, Sally's homeland, from May 14th to May 27th. Highlights included a highland journey to scenic Loch Lomond, a guided tour of the Cruacha Power Station (a water-based electrical generating plant tunneled into a granite mountain), shopping in Glasgow and many pubs. The top restaurant for this trip was the River House, situated next to a small loch and literally within view of Stirling Castle.
| | May 27, 2008 | | | On the Steering Committee for RubyNation.org: I was honored to be asked to join the Steering Committee for RubyNation.org, which is a new, regional Ruby Conference that will be held in the DC metropolitan area this year. The organization is headed up by a sterling group of people, who I have already worked with in various capacities. Naturally, I accepted, even though I realize it's going to be a lot of work. We're expecting not only to run a successful conference this year, but we're also hoping to make it an annual event.
| | April 23, 2008 | | | Voxant Has Open Positions: My new company, Voxant, currently has open positions they are trying to fill. Voxant is a dynamic, venture-backed start-up located in Herndon that distributes licensed media assets and advertisements to a vast network of web sites. They are currently looking for a junior Ruby/Rails developer and a (very) senior Flash developer. If interested, check out my Contact page to get my email address and send me your resume. Direct parties only, no head-hunters please.
| | April 12, 2008 | | | | JFreeChart Presentation for NovaJUG: I will be presenting for the Northern Virginia Java Users Group (NovaJUG) on April 9, 2008. The topic will be "Creating Dynamic Charts With JFreeChart." I've given this talk several times for AOL during my recent tenure there, so the presentation is already available in PDF form on my Presentations page. See the NovaJUG web site for directions to the meeting location at the FGM headquarters in Reston. The talk begins at 7:00 PM, although the (optional) networking activities begin around 6:30 PM. | | April 8, 2008 | | | | Regional Ruby Conference (2008): The as-yet-unnamed regional Ruby conference being planned by the NovaRUG has been tentatively scheduled for June 28th. Right now, it's planned as a one-day event, although I'm hopeful that it will expand to a two-day event. Expansion to two days would, of course, increase my chances of being one of the speakers. | | April 2, 2008 | | | | Shenandoah Speaking Engagement: I have been asked by the Shenandoah Ruby Users Group to give my OpenID/Rails presentation to their membership. I'm scheduled for June 24, 2008 at their regular meeting locale, which is the headquarters of Rosetta Stone in Harrisonburg, VA. | | March 28, 2008 | | | Temporarily Unemployed: As of today, I am temporarily unemployed. Yes, this means that I am yet another ex-AOL employee, although my separation was voluntary rather than being the result of one of AOL's notorious rolling layoffs. Fortunately, my unemployment will only last three days, after which I'll start my new job as a Technical Architect for Voxant.
| | March 26, 2008 | | | | Dead Man Walking: This blistering article in the April issue of Fast Company exposes the management problems, lack of vision and business ineptitude that have transformed AOL from a high-flying Internet company and world-class brand-name into a slow-motion train wreck. The article is also strikingly negative about Randy Falco's reign of error as the CEO of the organization. | | March 22, 2008 | | | Arthur C. Clarke: Pioneering science fiction writer Sir Arthur C. Clarke has died at 90. He's best known as the author of classic science fiction novels such as "2001: A Space Odyssey," "Rendezvous with Rama" and others.
| | March 18, 2008 | | | Regional Ruby Conference: I'm a member of a NovaRUG committee that's organizing a regional Ruby conference for the Northern Virginia area, to be held sometime in June 2008. I'll post more news about this event as it becomes available. I'm also tentatively planning to speak at the event, probably on a topic related to JRuby.
| | March 14, 2008 | | | Joining Voxant: Well, after five productive years at AOL, I'm finally leaving for greener pastures. I officially submitted my resignation notice to AOL today. I'll be joining Voxant as a technical architect, effective March 31, 2008.
| | March 12, 2008 | | | | AOL Ruby Users Group: I got a last-minute request to speak at the AOL Ruby Users Group, which is held the second Thursday of each month (March 13th for this month). So they're getting a preview of my March 19th NovaRUG presentation. The topic will be "Implementing OpenID for Your Social Networking Web Site." | | March 12, 2008 | | | | NovaJUG and JFreeChart: I will be presenting for the Northern Virginia Java Users Group (NovaJUG) on April 9, 2008. The topic will be "Creating Dynamic Charts With JFreeChart." | | February 15, 2008 | | | | NovaRUG: March 19th: I will be speaking at the Northern Virginia Ruby Users Group on March 19, 2008. The topic will be "Implementing OpenID for Your Social Networking Web Site." Meetings start at 6:00 PM for networking, with presentations beginning at 7:00 PM. Meetings are held at the FGM building in Reston; see the NovaRug web site for directions. | | February 13, 2008 | | | | Metro Web Services Stack: I've started working with Metro 1.1, the new, high-performance web services stack from Sun. Metro packages up Sun's reference implementation of JAX-WS (Java API for XML Web Services), JAXB for bindings and WSIT (Web Services Interoperability Technologies) into one comprehensive package. I'm sure I'll be posting more about my experiences later. | | January 16, 2008 | | | | Movies: OK, it's no secret that I'm a huge movie buff. It's also no secret that, while I enjoy the typical, over-hyped, over-the-top Hollywood action thriller as much as the next person, I'm much more excited about movies that reach out and make an emotional connection. A number of people have recently asked me for a list of the movies and television shows in my DVD collection, so I decided to put it online. | | January 12, 2008 | | | Rails 2.0 Released: Check out the link below to find out more about this eagerly awaited release.
| | December 7, 2007 | | | | QuickStart Rails: I decided to create some brief "Quick Start" presentations with the expectation that there might be opportunities to present them as "fillers" at other events. No sooner did I finish the first one, "Quick Start: What Is Rails?", than I found myself presenting it internally within AOL twice in two weeks. The PDF of the presentation is now available online. Check out the Presentations web page for other available presentations. | | December 2, 2007 | | | | Winning an iPod Touch: I just won the new 8GB iPod Touch at an AOL offsite event (for best team scores in bowling if you can believe it). Within 8 hours, I had it filled with music, i.e. - more than 700 songs. Truly an impressive device ... expect some posts about it later. | | November 15, 2007 | | | | AOL Brown Bag Presentation: I will be conducting my presentation, "Using Rails to Create an Enterprise App: A Real-Life Case Study," as a Brown Bag presentation at AOL on November 27th, 2007. | | November 13, 2007 | | | | Yes, It's Confirmed: I will be be doing the December presentation for the Washington DC Ruby on Rails User Group. The meeting will be held December 13th at George Washington University, from 7:00 PM to 8:30 PM. | | November 11, 2007 | | | | December DCRUG Meeting: Still waiting for final confirmation, but right now it looks like I'll be presenting at the December meeting of the Washington DC Ruby on Rails Users Group. The meeting will be held at George Washington University. The topic is going to be "Leveraging OpenID in Rails." | | November 6, 2007 | | | | Surviving the AOL 2007 Layoff: I was fortunate enough to survive today's layoff at AOL, which was particularly brutal for the Dulles, VA campus. Half of the development team that I worked for got cut today. Many of my friends and co-workers also got the axe. While I am, of course, happy to continue having a job that's a mere 5 minute commute for me, I can't help but think that, in some very fundamental ways, AOL has lost its way. | | October 16, 2007 | | | | AOL Unconference: David Keener did a presentation on JFreeChart at AOL's Unconference. This unique event exposed AOL's IT staff to a wide array of technical topics presented by some of AOL's top technologists. | | September 26, 2007 | | | | First Internal Rails App at AOL: David Keener led the team that launched the Exception Request Tool (ERT), the first internal corporate application to be fielded (and actively used) at AOL using Ruby on Rails. This follows on the heels of Ficlets and circaVie, the first two customer-facing applications fielded with Rails. | | September 24, 2007 | | | | Traffic Diary: My brand-new Traffic Diary blog provides a detailed look at the types of low-cost tactics that can be used to promote web sites. Using KeenerTech.com as an example, this blog provides statistics and analysis regarding the effectiveness of various guerilla promotional techniques. | | September 3, 2007 | | | | Giving October Presentation for DCRUG: It's official. I've signed up to do the October presentation for the Washington DC Ruby Users Group. The topic of the presentation will be "Using Rails to Create an Enterprise App: A Case Study." The talk will focus on real-life issues, and solutions, associated with using Rails to create a business application for use by AOL employees. I'm currently seeking permission from AOL to release real-life screen shots and related information. It should be an eye-opening presentation. | | August 3, 2007 | | | | Scotland Trip: The Keeners went to Scotland for vacation from May 10 to May 21. Highlights included visits with Sally's relatives, various pubs, shopping, Dave pulling a muscle, various pubs and limping around places like Glasgow. | | May 10, 2007 | | | | Elected as Director for the Belle Terra Community: On April 26th, Dave Keener was elected to the Board of Directors for the Belle Terra community. | | April 26, 2007 | | | | Chad Fowler's Rails Class: Compliments to AOL, for procuring several session of Chad Fowler's Ruby on Rails class, one of which I'm enrolled in beginning Monday, March 26th. Chad Fowler is the author of the book "Rails Recipes." | | March 26, 2007 | | | | Northern Virginia Ruby Users Group: Douglas Sellers gave a nice presentation on the practical uses of Selenium for testing web sites. He then demonstrated some of the advantages of using Selenium on Rails to improve the testing experience. Afterwards, Sean Mountcastle spoke on REST development in Rails. | | March 21, 2007 | | | | Presentation on JFreeChart: I conducted a presentation at America Online on JFreeChart, a very nice open source charting package. See my Presentations web page to view a PDF of the presentation. | | February 28, 2007 | | | | NOVA Ruby Users Group: Chad Fowler, author of the book "Rails Recipes," covered a grab bag of Rails tips and tricks during his presentation at the users group meeting in Reston. It was a well-attended meeting. | | February 21, 2007 | | | | Skiing in Utah: Due to the extreme lack of snow on the East Coast, the regularly scheduled Killington ski trip to Vermont morphed into a last minute excursion to Salt Lake City, Utah, from December 30 to January 1, 2007. See Dave at the Alta ski resort, accompanied by friends Ian Watson and Lucia Capuano from Scotland. | | December 29, 2006 | | | | Vacation in Scotland: David and Sally Keener visited Scotland for vacation from November 18 - 28, where they got to enjoy seven days of rain (out of ten days). Hey, this is what happens when you visit Scotland during the rainy season. | | November 18, 2006 | | | | Belle Terra Phase 2: Phase 2 of the Belle Terra web site launched today. This release seamlessly augments the site by integrating a full-featured content management system into it. New features include user authentication, permission-based access to features, banner advertising and rotating reminders. | | October 29, 2006 | | | | Parade of Homes: Dave and Sally Keener attended the Northern Virginia Parade of Homes, which was sponsored by B.F. Saul Mortgage. The promotional event allows custom home builders to showcase some of the best homes in the area. | | October 8, 2006 | | | | DC Ruby on Rails User Group: Dave volunteers to design the web site, including the look-and-feel, for the newly formed Washington DC Ruby on Rails User Group. Ruby on Rails is one of the hot, new technologies for producing highly functional web sites in minimal timeframes. | | October 1, 2006 | | | | Architectural Guidelines, Final: The ARC Recommendations Committee of the Belle Terra community delivered the final version of the new Belle Terra Architectural Guidelines to the Board of Directors for consideration. Dave worked as the technical writer who helped the committee draft the new guidelines. | | September 28, 2006 | | | | New KeenerTech Look: David Keener unveils a sleek, new look for the KeenerTech web site, replacing the original look-and-feel that the site launched with in 2004. | | September 14, 2006 | | | | Architectural Guidelines: On behalf of the ARC Recommendations Committee, Dave delivers revision 0.8 of the Belle Terra Architectural Guidelines, the first version to be submitted for external review. Dave volunteered in April as a technical writer to help the Belle Terra community draft new guidelines. | | September 7, 2006 | | | | WorldCon 64: David Keener attended the 64th World Science Fiction Convention in Anaheim, CA, from August 23 to August 27. One of the highlights of the trip was a visit to the bridge of the Starship Enterprise. Dave also supported the convention by working as a volunteer. | | August 23, 2006 | | | | MilitaryByOwner.com: David Keener becomes a monthly columnist for MilitaryByOwner.com, a web site that publicizes homes for sale or rental by military personnel. Leveraging his extensive property management experience, Dave will be regularly covering topics related to managing rental properties. | | August 15, 2006 | | | | Bentley Homes Property Management: David and Sally Keener offically organize their property management and real estate investment activities as an ongoing business concern. | | June 14, 2006 | | | | Scotland Vacation: The Keeners go to Scotland for vacation from April 16 to April 25. Highlights included visits with Sally's relatives, shopping, various pubs and indoor skiing at the new XScape center adjacent to the Braehead Mall. | | April 16, 2006 | | | | Lake Anna Holiday: The Keeners are invited to visit overnight at the Lake Anna cabin of Andrea and Roger Monaghan. The cabin is advertised on the web as Lake Cabin Retreat, and is a splendid rental. | | January 28, 2006 | | | | Lakes Community Meeting: The second meeting of the Lakes of Belle Terra neighborhood was held at the house of David and Sally Keener. More than 30 people attended. Discussions included prioritization of neighborhood problems, selection of a neighborhood ARC organization and other issues. The goal of the meeting was to ensure that the homeowners association addresses the issues currently impacting the neighborhood. | | November 11, 2005 | | | | Belle Terra Web Site Launches: The initial version of the Belle Terra web site launches. The site includes key HOA documents, as well as extensive information about the Belle Terra community. | | October 17, 2005 | | | | Belle Terra Web Site Demonstrated to Board: An early version of the Belle Terra community web site was demonstrated to the Board of Directors. Attendees included Michael Lowman, Tim Holmes, John Johnson, Al Wilhelm and Caryn Moran, plus hosts David and Sally Keener. The demonstration was well received; only minor text changes were requested by the board. | | September 15, 2005 | | | | Muddawg.com Web Site Launches: The web site for the MudDawg professional motorcycle racing team went live today. The web site embodies a stark, minimalistic design that conveys speed to viewers. | | September 5, 2005 | | | | WorldCon 63: David Keener attended Interaction, the 63rd World Science Fiction Convention in Glasgow, Scotland, from August 4 to August 8. The convention coincidentally took place during David and Sally Keener's regular vacation to Scotland. | | August 4, 2005 |
|
|
