HackMiami Offers Both Training and Opportunity (Video)

Today's video conversation guest is Alex Heid, whose HackMiami title is Senior Security Researcher. The group started as a non-profit but is now technically a for-profit company that gets work from local businesses and shares it (and the fees it generates) among HackMiami members. You're welcome to join them at one of the regular meetings they hold at Planet Linux Caffe in Coral Gables (which, for those who care, is one of few businesses in the Miami area that accepts Bitcoins) and at other local venues, or at their annual conference, although you have a pretty long wait ahead of you for that; the next one is scheduled for May, 2014. Meanwhile, if you want to start something similar to HackMiami in your area, Alex has some good tips for you, including the idea of checking out -- and listing your group on -- the Hackerspaces Web site.

Comments

Re:Homophobic conference tracks

[citizenr]

You might have a broken keyboard there buddy, its new fags and old fags.

How do they do it?

[ugen]

I moved to Miami a few years ago from an area with significant technological presence. A contrast is quite striking. I see SoFla as a technological (and, really, intellectual) wasteland. There are no high tech companies to speak of (well, there is Citrix, I think). General level of education, technological and otherwise, is relatively low compared to more "hi-tech" parts of the country. Add to that a peculiar local demographics where vanity is the primary motivation, and you get an environment in which it's difficult to create or maintain a techie movement. I applaud these guys for trying, of course.

Me, I am here for the diving :)

Re:How do they do it?

[MrDoh!]

Hmm, I was shocked at how much there IS here (though I'm coming from a wasteland in the UK). There's a cool vc/cafe/workspace area downtown (Windwood area? I'm unsure of the names, but the place with the cool graffiti all over the place near downtown). Opposite, there's a monstrous VC/development hothouse. There's the weekend get together of geeks where people bring in Glass, HTC send devs to show new toys/get feedback. And this planetlinux cafe (that I must admit is the one place I've not been to yet). I've no idea what it's like in places like San Francisco, but I'v been shocked at how many techies and support groups there actually are in the area.

Re:How do they do it?

[bad-badtz-maru]

As someone who has been down here for 40 years - get the hell off my lawn!

Miami

[rseech01]

All things being relative, the South Florida region has seen a lot of activity, while we are not in the same league as the Valley, Austin or New York there is a lot of work being done here with startups. Co-working and knowledge sharing spaces are active (The Lab Miami, Project Lift, MEC, Pipeline, RightSpace all come to mind). Organizations like SFTA, Refresh Miami, and the Ruby group are rife with attendees. Ignite Miami, and Social Media Miami have held community focused events. This year Ray Kurzweil, and Dawkins both spoke in Miami, a few weeks ago, Isaacson held court talking about his Einstein bio. Apple just bought a biometric (last six months) company, and I know of two companies that Microsoft acquired. Granted we just lost Ed Iacobucci, but every once in a while, you can have a chat with John Sculley. One of the local universities has Donald Knuths successor on its staff, and their CS department is world class. I'd say we are working on it, and while we have a lot of people who don't have all the skills, here, we are making steps in the right direction. Slowly we are building a world class community. Yes it would be nice to have an education system here that understands the importance of a forward thinking high school curriculum, and what I wouldn't give to hear someone say sustainable knowledge economy. It would be brilliant to have more humility and less hubris, more older folks to advise the younger entrepreneurs, and less egos overall, but this is Miami, we are making progress.
Just my two cents.