Software development is a world that is always changing, especially the world of open source software development. It takes a bit of effort just to keep up, so with that in mind I decided to go to Flourish! Open Source Conference at the University of Illinois at Chicago today.
I almost didn’t go because nothing on the schedule appeared to be directly related to my current projects. But after having been reminded of the conference by a coworker, I decided what the heck, it’ll probably be fun! And I was not disappointed.
I went to talks on Kubuntu, the Open Source Lab at Oregon State, the Processing development language and environment, and a couple on Android app and game development. I was particularly interested in the Kubuntu presentation because KDE apps have started showing up everywhere, including Windows. But the presentation that totally blew me away was Processing!
Processing allows artists to create incredible graphics and animation often with only a few lines of code. I’m really not doing it justice with this description, so please visit Processing.org. All I know is that I just discovered something that I may be able to use to better visualize the data in a big project I’m working on!
So my day at Flourish has paid off far more than I would have imagined. It really is a blessing to be able to do what you love for a living! I won’t be able to make the whole day tomorrow, but hopefully I can at least get there for the Processing workshop and afternoon panel.