Let’s Innovate for Vegas

Show Notes Host: Dan Hugo Summary: DEI is making headlines, some are sticking with it, some are tossing it out, it is simple and complicated. Our Foundation has always taken a scaled-down approach, making Inclusivity, Diversity, and Accessibility our goals, and we will continue to do that, but what does that mean? Let´s talk about it. Links Innovate for Vegas Foundation https://innovateforvegas.or...

Show Notes Host: Dan Hugo Summary: Our episode number this week looks like the binary representation of the decimal number 5, and this nybble reminds me of a visit to Bits and Atoms at MIT a few years ago, where I met with Neil Gernshenfeld and took a look at their facilities and their program, and it is something that should be emulated everywhere, especially here in the Greater Vegas area, the F...

Show Notes Host: Dan Hugo Summary: The Greater Vegas area is a strange mix of cultures and possibilities, some of which may be wagered on. Our Foundation began reaching out beyond our locality to engage those in other places interested in community elevation and civic volunteerism over one year ago, and it was at CES 2025 where there was some leaning-in. Links Innovate for Vegas Foundation https:/...

Show Notes Host: Dan Hugo Summary: Any organization doing anything needs to have some way of informing those joining in how things work, how people work together, and so on. No more true than with an volunteer organization, especially one such as ours intending to deliver ideation and innovation in the form of implementation to elevate our communities. So we write things down… Links Innovate for V...

Show Notes Host: Dan Hugo Summary: It is rarely a bad idea to have things written down, and this is most definitely true when it comes to setting some ground rules for contributions to open source initiatives, and well, our contributing document is almost ready. Almost. Links Innovate for Vegas Foundation https://innovateforvegas.org Project-ACT.info https://project-act.info AgileForVolunteers.org...

Show Notes Host: Dan Hugo Summary: There are always details to sort out, especially if you are more than one person and you are planning to do something or make something that may be used by many, or have far-reaching impact, or which might be around for a while. Flip is fun and easy, dotting and crossing everything is quite the other thing. Links Innovate for Vegas Foundation https://innovateforv...

Show Notes Host: Dan Hugo Summary: There are pros and cons being a nonprofit upstart in the innovation space. One thing that is a bit of both, is a general lack of market forces driving releases of early initiative efforts. That is, we have no ship dates for our initiatives, so no rush, but also, no rush. Links Innovate for Vegas Foundation https://innovateforvegas.org Project-ACT.info https://pro...

Show Notes Host: Dan Hugo Summary: This is the latest version of this audio program, but how do you know? Links Innovate for Vegas Foundation https://innovateforvegas.org Project-ACT.info https://project-act.info AgileForVolunteers.org https://agileforvolunteers.org Mastodon for Vegas https://mastodon.vegas Semantic Versioning https://semver.org/ Calendar Versioning https://calver.org/ Zero Versio...

Show Notes Host: Dan Hugo Summary: The business of volunteering can be tricky, both for the cohort or group of volunteers as one whole team and for the individuals that make up the cohort. So why do we do all of this, and can we do it better? Links Innovate for Vegas Foundation https://innovateforvegas.org Project-ACT.info https://project-act.info AgileForVolunteers.org https://agileforvolunteers....

Show Notes Host: Dan Hugo Summary: This episode is recorded during the usual short week of Thanksgiving 2024, which for some is a time to take a break, spend time with family and friends, travel, or maybe just lay low for a while. But what if you have things to do? Links Innovate for Vegas Foundation https://innovateforvegas.org Project-ACT.info https://project-act.info AgileForVolunteers.org http...

Show Notes Host: Dan Hugo Summary: We haven´t talked about hackathons in a while, from whether we should bring back our monthly hackathon meetup, to participating in a hackathon, to hackathon outcomes, to why you should participate in hackathons regardless of your level of experience. Links Innovate for Vegas Foundation https://innovateforvegas.org Project-ACT.info https://project-act.info AgileFo...

Show Notes Host: Dan Hugo Summary: Our very first project and hackathon, the one that got the most interest for some time and the one that many people need to see happen even though they have no idea we were ever working on it, is finally getting some real attention. Links Innovate for Vegas Foundation https://innovateforvegas.org Project-ACT.info https://project-act.info AgileForVolunteers.org ht...

Show Notes Host: Dan Hugo Summary: The user story seems like a basic idea, often dismissed as a part of the much-maligned Agile method but often a real and legitimate representation of why any initiative is undertaken and for whom. If one is looking for motivation or reason of any kind to participate in community elevation initiatives, look around, your users and customers are all around you. Link...

Show Notes Host: Dan Hugo Summary: You may or may not be aware of The Fediverse. Unlike The Metaverse, this is actually a real thing, and in fact we could argue that it has been around in one way or another the whole time. Surely a component of our Virtual Vegas vision, making our Smart City Smarter, should include something intersecting The Fediverse, how about this week? Links Innovate for Vegas...

Show Notes Host: Dan Hugo Summary: The exciting worlds of nonprofit public charity endeavoring, civic volunteerism, story-telling, and the always-essential, difficult-to-describe umbrella category, miscellaneous, can make for some interesting times, but also some interesting times… Links Innovate for Vegas Foundation https://innovateforvegas.org Project-ACT.info https://project-act.info AgileForVo...

Show Notes Host: Dan Hugo Summary: Obviously we test and debug and test again and debug yet more our various software applications and whatnot, and then you the customer, the user, does more testing for us. The same goes for everything else, not merely Software, and we can always do better across the board. Links Innovate for Vegas Foundation https://innovateforvegas.org Project-ACT.info https://p...

Show Notes Host: Dan Hugo Summary: At long last our website is near the top of our to-do list, and what we want to do with this audio program and more… Links Innovate for Vegas Foundation https://innovateforvegas.org Our GitHub Org https://github.com/InnovateForVegas Project-ACT on GitHub https://github.com/Project-ACT Project-ACT.info https://project-act.info AgileForVolunteers.org https://agilef...

Show Notes Host: Dan Hugo Summary: That time of year is upon us once again, a truly scary time indeed. When the curious and inexperienced are invited to sprinkle some contribution to open source projects or initiatives out on the Internets, wherever the lights are on and a Hacktoberfest tag has been left like a creature of darkness between the curious and the candy. It is good, but is it great? Li...

Show Notes Host: Dan Hugo Summary: Somewhere around 25 years ago, one of the various open source luminaries, Eric S Raymond, was working on and eventually published a book entitled The Cathedral and The Bazaar, a collection of essays about adventures developing software and business. We are pursuing The Bazaar here so why not describe that a bit in context. Links Innovate for Vegas Foundation http...

Show Notes Host: Dan Hugo Summary: What would happen if our Innovation Culture could be kickstarted by answering the age-old question, “When am I ever going to use this?” How about right now? Links Innovate for Vegas Foundation https://innovateforvegas.org Our GitHub Org https://github.com/InnovateForVegas Project Hail Mary by Andy Weir https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Project_Hail_Mary

Show Notes Host: Dan Hugo Summary: Story Points are one of the two least popular aspects of Agile to tackle for our own Agile for Volunteers implementation. The other is the daily stand-up, which is also optional, but Story Points are completely misplaced in a volunteer organization without a commercial style need to hit release dates. Sort of. Links Innovate for Vegas Foundation https://innovatef...

Show Notes Host: Dan Hugo Summary: One of the more essential elements of the original Agile brought over to Agile for Volunteers, and to our endeavors in general, is the notion that all participants should be able to, and should be enabled and encouraged to, contribute to the planning, implementation, and ongoing development of initiatives and projects. This may be a new idea for newcomers and may...

Show Notes Host: Dan Hugo Summary: You may know the differences between complication and complexity, but do you know the difference between a puzzle and a mystery? Do you know how these apply to civic volunteer projects? Let´s find out! Links Innovate for Vegas Foundation https://innovateforvegas.org Our GitHub Org https://github.com/InnovateForVegas Project-ACT on GitHub https://github.com/Projec...

Show Notes Host: Dan Hugo Summary: Volunteer time is gold as we say here at the Foundation, and so we endeavor to shine light upon it, and to best do that we need to write things down. Knowing who did what for which projects is important, not only for giving due credit, but for managing the resources volunteered not only by one, but by all concerned, especially when there is collaboration involved...

Show Notes Host: Dan Hugo Summary: Programming languages, there are many. So many. Sometimes a company or project will pick what people like to call a Tech Stack with specific programming languages, tools, libraries, modules, and so on, to focus the efforts of their developers, but we are not going that route. Links Innovate for Vegas Foundation https://innovateforvegas.org Our GitHub Org https://...