Tag Archives: SRCCON

Biking from Tualatin to Portland for SRCCON

Growing up, I always rode the cheap bike from Costco. I didn’t know what it was like to actually enjoy biking until I ended up with a Trek 7.3 for my birthday last summer.

SRCCON is pretty much my favorite conference of all time. The first year was in Philly, and the second year was in Minneapolis. This year, SRCCON ended up in Portland, on my birthday to boot, which meant I could do the unthinkable: attend SRCCON by bike.

As it turns out, there’s a great bike path for all but a quarter mile or so of the ride.

Tualatin to Portland

From Tualatin Community Park, ride through Cook Park and then along Hall Blvd. You’ll go past the Tigard Public Library, over 217, and then eventually end up on Oleson Rd. There’s a short jaunt on Garden Home, then you end up on Multnomah Blvd for quite a while. The one sketchy part of the route there is where Multnomah turns into Terwilliger, and you have to bike on the odd combo off/on-ramp. From Terwilliger, you turn right onto Barbur for a short while, then drop down to the waterfront near Willamette Sailing Club. It took me about an hour to get to this point. The waterfront then connects you to whatever part of downtown you want to go to.

2016-07-29 at 4.43 PM

Portland to Tualatin

Surprisingly, Google Maps doesn’t just reverse the route for the ride home. Coming from the Pearl, I ended up taking Broadway to Terwilliger, where I rode in the shade for quite a while. After Terwilliger, you take Capitol Hwy to Multnomah Blvd again, then reverse tracks home.

2016-07-29 at 4.43 PM -2

Awesome way to spend the day!

 

Two proposed sessions for SRCCON 2015

SRCCON was my favorite conference last year, and in the running for favorite conference of all time. I liked it so much I’ve submitted two proposals for this year. You should too! Submissions are open until April 10th.

Continous Integration for Content

There’s lots of little attributes which define the “quality” of a piece of content — just like there are attributes which define code quality. Developers have continuous integration to run automated checks on their code, but journalists have editors — who are prone to human error. It’s easy and quite common to forget to add a photo credit, or spell the SEO title incorrectly. What are some ways we can automate these errors out of existence? Let’s get together, present some real world “quality” problems to work on, prototype, wireframe, and define algorithms, and then share our results.

Code review takes two

Code review is single-handedly the best way to level up your development skills. It’s also really hard! Let’s discuss code review methodologies as a group, and then pair up to practice.

Status

Off to Philly today for SRCCON, a gathering of some of the nerds who make the technology behind the news. I am so excited! For years, CMSes, publishing workflows, and the unsexy but very mission critical technologies have been my passion. Yet most of the conferences, online discussion, etc. have skirted around the topic, in part because legacy organizational structure hasn’t let the hackers get to work.

Funny how things go if you stick at it long enough. Washington Post and Vox have made great leaps forward, and convinced executives everywhere that change is possible. Hell, even The New Yorker relaunched on WordPress two days ago. NBD.

Back to Portland Saturday night, off to Sunriver Sunday through Wednesday, and then to New York for WCNYC Thursday through the following Wednesday. REST API retooling here we come!