Toni Gemayel.com

Lets build a Co-Working space in St Pete

Edit: A few people have pointed out on Twitter that there are already co-working spaces in Tampa with WaVe here, and ideafield. I have edited my title and shifted my thinking to Downtown St. Pete specifically.

Lets Co-Work Tampa bay

I have always been a huge fan of co-working. I love the environment, the fast internet, and most importantly working with like minded creatives. In case you havent heard of co-working before, its a physical space with desk space, bandwidth, coffee and snacks. Its much more than a physical space though; its about sharing ideas, giving referrals, networking and making friendships. Its also a great place to hang out and throw events, or have the occasional beer night.

Tampa bay Tech needs this

When I moved to Tampa for college, right around the time my career as a developer started to take off. Universities are generally regarded as institutions were like minded individuals can get together and discuss the things that interest them academically. Unfortunately for me, it was tough to find people who wanted to discuss javascript minification, or debate ruby vs. python with me. Tampa’s tech community is on the way up. The fine folks over at Tampa Bay WaVE put on some great tech events on a consistant basis. We have Front-end Conference put on by the awesome Dan Denney. Tampa bay also has a great deal of tech talent spread out over St. Pete, Tampa Bay, and Clearwater. But unix neckbeards and design nerds need a place to come together, to talk about whats trending on dribbble or why Ubuntu is better than centOS. Tampa is a growing tech hub, but in order to take the next step, a common space for collaboration is necessary. These are the exact type of facilities that tech hubs such as San Fransisco, Boston, and New York all benefit from.

Coffee shops just dont cut it

Co-working space isnt just for designers and developers, its for all types of creatives. Writers, artists, photographers, and other creatives to come together and work in a positive, beneficial environment. Coffee shops are great for an occasional change of pace, but they dont really provide a professional workspace. Their wifi is often unsecured, slow or unreliable. You dont have a full desk, access to a permanent mailing address, printing/faxing services, snacks and coffee, and a free flowing space for ideas to grow in.

Money where my mouth is

The purpose of this blog post was two fold; to raise awareness on the importance of co-working, and to get the word out that I am looking for a location to start a co-working space. I truly believe if you want to create change it needs to be done without any shortcuts or miracles. That is why I want to put my money where my mouth is. I am currently searching for co-working space in downtown St. Pete and/or downtown Tampa. If you have any recommendations or have some spaces in mind, tweet me or leave a comment below!

15Nov 6

Why Java isnt for Startups

I had a conversation with the insanely talented Chris Brauckmuller the other day about why I thought startups shouldnt build in Java, which led to some interesting discussion that I wanted to build upon in a blog post

Its not you, its me

Over the last few months I have been working as an Angel Investor & Startup scout at Coloma Ventures. In that time, I am yet to interview a startup that is working on a Java based product. We see about 75% python and ruby projects, with some php thrown in there. That, coupled with my conversation Chris got me thinking about where all of the Java developers have gone. Java is often labeled as a “corporate language” but I think the main reason you don’t see Java in startups is because its neither rapid nor enjoyable to code in. If I am going to spend my nights, weekends, and free time coding, I want to have fun doing it, and Java is just too verbose to enjoy.

Agility, prototyping and energy

One of the biggest advantages of choosing another language over Java is agility and rapid prototyping. Most startup wars are fought on agility and ability to prototype, instead of speed, and while Java is faster then python/ruby/php, they are fast enough to get the job done. The community energy behind ruby and python (especially ruby) help accelerate development. The sheer amount of development resources, open source components, and general mentorship trump anything Java can offer in this arena.

The Cool Kids

According to Heroku, “Java boasts an estimated population of six million developers” and while Java does have a vast ecosystem of tools, libraries, frameworks and literature, it does not benefit from being considered a “uncool” language. Startups, for better or worse, are largely interested in all of the cool things happening around them. Most startups are built by young, passionate, and enthusiastic early adopters who want nothing more to use new and interesting tools.

Final Thoughts

Java is by no means irrelevant, and there are strides to make it relevant amongst startups. Heroku now supports 2 minute Java deployment, which is a huge win for Java developer. Still, Java is mostly considered a sturdy, reliable language that is very well suited to fairly boring corporate work. If you’re a Java developer interested in joining a startup and are worried the language may be stagnating, you should find comfort knowing the JVM ecosystem is stronger than ever. There is a big need for smart folks who know Clojure and Scala.

java, startups, web development

29Sep 5

Road Trip Recap

Note: This is a personal post, and not related to my work as a developer, startups, or normal content on this blog. Last month, I took a road trip of a lifetime with some great friends of mine. The trip spanned a grand total of 2,293 miles, which we did over the course of 4 days. If you want to check out the exact route, here it is. We took a road trip to watch my USF Bulls take on the Notre Dame Fighting Irish, in South Bend. By all accounts, things went pretty well. Despite the historic win, the trip itself was an adventure itself.

The Setup

We rented a Toyota Prius for our cross country adventure, which was extremely comfortable, and insanely fuel efficient. We setup wifi tethering, my cousin installed a 400 watt power converter, and we added a power strip to support all devices. I also wrote a little web application to transmit my GPS signal so that my friends & family could follow along. We ran 3 laptops, charged 4 phones, and a tablet during the trip. During the course of the trip I pushed closed to 3000 lines of code, watched a few movies, and streamed my internet playlists round the clock.

The Unknown

We hopped in the car from Tampa on Thursday evening. We had two plans, make it to Notre Dame by 3:30 kick off on Saturday, and stop in Lynchburg, Tennessee, home of the Jack Daniels distillery. We had no hotels, no plans for food, a sense of adventure and a slight disregard for personal hygiene. After briefly stopping by in Downtown to Atlanta, we made it to Chattanooga near 3am and quickly hit passed out. The next morning we were out the door at 9am on our way to the Jack Daniels distillery. Tennessee is a beautiful state, and driving through the blue ridge mountains was really enjoyable. My roommate Nick loved it so much, he got us lost and we drove around until I got us back on track. The distillery itself was amazing, and really made me appreciate the depth of work that goes into producing Jack. Having brewed my own beer before, I loved the smell of barley and corn that wafted through the air. After trying to steal a 500lb barrell of whiskey, we bought a commemorative bottle and hit the road to Nashville. In Nashville, we pulled over for lunch at a place called Burger Up, thanks to a tip from a twitter friend. Burger Up turned out to be the best burger I have ever had in my life. If you’re ever in Nashville, make the stop. Their burgers are good enough to convert vegetarians.

The Win

Notre Dame really is one of the premier places to watch a game in the country. Having been to games at FSU, UF, and the Big House (all of which I consider top ten stadiums in the US) Notre Dame trumps them all. The football culture coupled with the beautiful campus make it a must see for any football fan. Their fans are probably the classiest in the country as well (you could call them the anti-UCF fans). Despite almost having the game canceled twice due to huge storms, it was a great win, and a wonderful time, and as always, go Bulls.

29Jul

Team Orca

What is Team ORCA

Team Orca is a collaborative between Myself, my brother Vince, and my great friend Thomas, who have all worked with me on a huge project I did through Two Giraffes that lasted close to 6 months. During that time, we developed technologies for managing large infrastructure, big data, and agile development. We decided to team up and push forward with Team ORCA. While we arent releasing any work yet, expect some open source contributions from us and in depth blog posts in the future.

Shout out to Sean Farrell, who did a killer job on the logo.

team orca

20Jul 8

Working On Some New Things

As of this weekend, I became a managing partner at Coloma Ventures, a Las Vegas based venture capital group with a focus on Internet based start-ups. Its a dream position that is going to allow me to combine my business savvy with my programming skills. I am brimming with excitement to work with the Coloma team who are some of the brightest guys I have met.

What I will be doing

For Coloma I will be searching for talented entrepreneurs and developers that are in need of capital. I will be focusing on finding viable Internet start-ups in web, software, mobile, digital media, social, and the gaming sector. In addition to raising capital, I will help start ups in every aspect of their business, including finding talented developers/designers, infrastructure, user acquisition, and more. The other partners will provide strategic input all other areas necessary to build a successful business. If you have a startup you think I may be interested in, you should get in touch

What about Two Giraffes

Two Giraffes will stay open for business. I will continue to work on select projects, with a focus on front-end design for startups. The truth is, Two Giraffes has been consuming every minute of my life for the last 24 months. Freelancing is hard. I spent every free moment, day and night working on building my business, and after all my hard work, freelancing is still feast or famine. The problem with web design is that even if you are “successful” that just means you earn more work.

The next 24 months

Im going to be devoting the next 24 months to developing passive income streams and building my own products, like Fonadu. Im plan to spend more time working with new languages, helping new startups, contributing to open source projects I like, and speaking at conferences (shameless plug: hire me to speak). I am also going to spend some more time with my family and friends, who have often worked around my insanely hectic schedule in the last two years.

19Jul 1

So You Want To Learn To Program?

I try my best to get out to conferences and events, and often the first question people ask me, is how did I get into programming? Truth is, I have always been interested in computers. Like many of my peers, I started writing html at 13, and spent my free time tinkering and taking apart electronics. My first actual language was php 4, which was a horrible train wreck of an intro language. I kind of just found my way from there. If I had the luxury of having a teacher, my course list would have looked like this:

Start with python

Start with this book its the best Intro to programming book I have ever read. Its well written, witty, and easy to get started with. To top it off, the book is free, but I would really urge you to donate if you finish it. Its the

Setup your dev environment

When you’re just starting out, you want to get rid of all other distractions and just code. A simple OS is the way to go. I personally believe Ubuntu is the easiest OS to learn on. Its painlessly easy to install, test, or even run in a virtual environment (there is plenty of support as well!).

Dont use an IDE

Built in FTP? Git integration? Power user commands? What? You dont need full features. Grow into an IDE later. For now, start out with something stupidly simple so you can just focus on what you’re coding, instead of the IDE you are using to do it. For Ubuntu, I recommend gedit. (protip: edit the color scheme from a white background, to a black one. Your eyes will thank me)

Find a friend

Much like a gym buddy, a programming buddy can help you stay focused and interested in what you’re learning. Further down the road, you will have somebody to build things with, learn things from, and most importantly of all, bounce ideas off of.

Awesome, what now?

Once you finish learning python the hard way, I would proceed onto the Django Book. From there, the web is your oyster. You can contribute to some open source projects on github, or maybe learn how to setup a low end server. Learn some html and css as well, grab a template off themeforest, and build an app.

24May 1

An Essential Guide To Getting The Most At Conferences

Two weeks ago I launched my first startup after close to 6 months of development. I spent mostly weekends and late nights hacking away on it, as most of my time is taken up by my day job. When I launched Fonadu, I really only had a few blogs on board and almost no one interested in advertising. Having spent most of my time coding, I now had time to go out and contact both publishers and advertisers.

Last minute notice

I shifted my focus to client acquisition, putting together a list of top, influential blogs I wanted to contact. I did some reading on them, and sent out a few dozen emails the first night. Within 45 minutes, Irvin, one of the bloggers I wanted the most for Fonadu contacted me back and told me he was definitely interested, but was really busy preparing for BlogHerFood. “are you going?” he asked. Within the first 60 seconds of reading blogherfood website, I knew I had to be there. With over 300 of the industries top food bloggers slated to be there, it was a dream conference for client acquisition. The problem? The conference was in 5 days, and the tickets were sold out. Flights were close to 400 dollars to Atlanta, and driving wasn’t a plausible option for me. I immediately got on twitter and searched for someone selling their ticket. After 30 mins of searching, I found someone willing to sell it. I tweeted and emailed her. 15 minutes after, I had a ticket. With the flights being close to 400 dollars, I purchased a 99 dollar non revenue buddypass. Two hours later, I emailed Irvin back and informed him that I would be attending.

Cute Story, Now What?

I was excited and fortunate to have found out about BlogHerFood, but I still had a lot of work to do. The conference was now five days away, I didn’t have business cards, any idea who was attending, or even what the conference was about. Worse, no one in the food blogging world really knew me. I needed some sure fire ways to maximize my time spent at the conference. Here are the conference tips I devised:

You Don’t Need To Be A Sponsor

My most effective time spent at the conference was giving things away for free. I got personal, one on one time with some of the top food bloggers by tweeting things like, “anyone have wordpress questions? Im in room 200 #freehelp” As a software developer and someone who is extremely familair with WordPress, I was able to make improvements, both small and large, for some very thankful bloggers. I helped non-technical food bloggers with everything from JavaScript debugging to installing Google analytics, in return I was able to pitch them on Fonadu.

Do Your Research

At a conference, you will be meeting a ton of people. You can’t meet everyone, so be sure to do research prior to getting there. Target the people you want to speak to, follow them on twitter, make notes of their interests. Actually read their blog. Look them up on LinkedIn, Facebook, and any other site you can find them on. If you have similarities, find them. People do business with people they are comfortable with, by doing your work early, you can map who you will have connections with in advanced, making your time spent more efficient.

Take Notes Like You’re In School

At a conference, you’re going to be receiving hundreds of business cards. Some from people you talk to over lunch for an hour, and some you meet for 30 seconds in an elevator. Every few hours, try and run up to your room (if you’re staying in the conference hotel) or give yourself some quick quiet time to take some notes. For every business card you have, try and write a sentence about it with something to jog your memory later. For example: “Toni Gemayel – Met in the elevator. Talked about ad network. Tall, dark, and handsome.” This way, at the end of the conference, you will actually remember what you and that person spoke about, transforming that stack of a hundred business cards into more efficient business leads.

Be Social

Im not just talking about Twitter, get out and socialize like the internet doesn’t exist. I’m talking about witty jokes and good ole fashion business charm. Know your audience and cater toward them. If you don’t know where to start, just simply say, “tell me more about blank”. People love to talk about themselves, this should produce endless conversation. Its during these social events that you can really get to network and know people. Be careful to pick out who is there to relax, and who is there for work. Some people use conferences for vacations. That’s okay, but that isn’t why you there.

blogherfood, conference guide, lifehack