Author: Petr Zaparka

I'm a developer, but I think that communication is the most important aspect of product development. That's the reason why I'm focused on understanding how to talk to my peers and customer by improving my soft skills.

Rails: The Next Five Years by Yehuda Katz

Rails: The Next Five Years by Yehuda Katz

When Ruby on Rails burst onto the scene in 2004, it excited web developers by showing that you could build next generation apps quickly and efficiently. Rails was one of the first frameworks to embrace Ajax, giving everyone the power to do partial page updates and whiz-bang effects in a conventional, effortless way.

TextMate folder pattern

I reinstalled my Mac recently. Because it was a new installation a had to install everything from scratch which includes a TextMate. After a while of using it I get annoyed by dialog window for opening a file. It list lots of similar files from vendor folder in my Rails env. So I investigate little bit and find that you can modified settings for that (Preferences -> Advanced -> Folder references -> Folder pattern). When I’m trying to open a file, TextMate is ignoring vendor folder, now. You can see regexp for that bellow.

Looking for Ruby on Rails contract

To follow my passion which is writing my own applications and running, I decide to leave  Unboxed, where I had really great time. I was there almost 2 years and during that time I learn a lot, met lot of interesting people and work on lot of different types of projects. This is list of my projects that I was working on and my role.

education.skype.com

simple platform, designed to enable teachers to connect, share their resources and start collaborative projects. Winner of Core 77 design award 2011. Responsibilities included:

  • Lead Back-end developer and Technical Architect
  • Performance optimisation for current 14000 active users
  • Skype API integration (Authentication)
  • integration with Amazon S3, SES (Emailing service), EC2 (Cloud hosting)

Skype New Year Eve

To bring in 2011 Skype launched an HTML5 site that tracked NYE as it happened around the world. Users uploaded videos to YouTube via the site which, in turn, were displayed on an interactive timezone map of the world. The site was designed to work across multiple platforms in including mobile and tablet optimisations. Responsibilities included:

  • Lead Back-end developer and Technical Architect
  • YouTube API integration with download performance optimisation

Skype Theme

Skype Theme is site where Skype Apple users can upload themes for Skype UI. Responsibilities included:

  • improvement of unsecured parts of application. Based on Security report from independent agency.

Extra special trust

The ExtraSpecial Trust is charity that offers small personal grants towards some of life’s important extras to help make a wish come true. Responsibilities included:

  • finishing of html templates
  • deployment set up for Heroku
  • Amazon S3 integration

Edna (Channel 5)

The Edna is programme database. It has been design to streamline the working processes of the Digital Media team. It provides sources programme, series, episode, cast and VOD availability data from a variety of sources for different sites. Responsibilities included:

  • integration with Movida (programme database)
  • export dat in XML and JSON – contained information are based on type if requested player or platfiorm

If you are interested to work with me you can sand me an email to petr(at)zaparka(dot)cz or if you are just interested what am I up to just follow me on twitter @zaparka

Art of presentation

I’m big fan of good and interesting presentations, especially if they make you think or change your life. Today I was browsing Mixergy talks (btw Andrew Warner is doing great job, although I’m missing that giant book shelf that he had behind in earlier episodes) and I saw talk The Presentation Secrets Of Steve Jobs – with Carmine Gallo. As the title says in this talk Andrew and Carmine are talking lot about Steve’s presentation skills and why he is the best presenter. I made couple of notes, so if  you don’t want to spent 1 hour watching interview on mixergy, here are couple of bullet points.

  • Tell a story – most of presenters are presenting just facts like dry numbers, graphs, long list of bullet points, … etc. You should start your presentation by telling a story. You should say, why the subject that you are talking about matter.
  • Educate your listeners –  when Marrisa Mayer had a presentation at SF Museum of Modern Art, she did’t start talking about what news she have. She start talking about search evolution. She said that in 1935 it would have taken you day and a half to find information on certain painting. Because you would have to travel to get to the library. Than she went through every decade, describing how search evolve. Her point was that what took you day and a half takes now 3 seconds.
  • 10 minutes rule – you will notice that every great presenter will take a ‘brake’ around 10 th minute of his/her talk. Reason is that human mind loose focus after 10 minutes and it doesn’t matter how good presenter you are.
  •  Intermezzo – is kind of brake that your brain need to re-focus on presentation. You should change interaction with your listeners by playing video or showing demo of your ‘thing’.
  • Twitter friendly headlines – did you notice that great presenters are not using slides with lot of texts on them ? The reason is, if you can’t formulate your idea in short twitter friendly headlines, your audience could misunderstood you or get quickly bored.
  • Numbers as equivalent of … – when Steve Jobs has been presenting iPod he says that device has 5GB big storage capacity which is equivalent of 1000 songs in your pocket. There was also ad called iPod 1000 songs in your pocket. If you saw that presentation did you remember that iPod had 5GB or that you can download 1000 songs to it? :)
  • Presentation are not just powerpoint/keynote – when you start working on presentation, to sit infront of your laptop and opening keynote should be the last thing that you should do. Start with sketches, draw a timeline, be creative and don’t be afraid to do something new and original.

During the interview Carmine mentioned couple of times Steve Jobs iPhone presentation  in 1997. Carmine also write a book called “The Presentation Secrets of Steve Jobs: How to Be Insanely Great in Front of Any Audience”.

To be honest, I like Steve Jobs presentation but my number one presentation is Identity 2.0 by Dick Hardt, you can watch it on youtube too.

Good luck with making your own great presentations.