The CloudSpokes Blog

Camaraderie in Community Software Development

2013-05-22T06:30:00.000-07:00

Passion. We discussed it a little in our last post regarding self-selected experts. We're incredibly lucky to bear witness to the many acts of talented contribution from the CloudSpokes developer community. However, once in a while, we see something truly special. Like the discussion thread on one of Smartsheet's first developer challenges. We've taken the liberty of adding a screenshot here

#RingDNA Quick Connect #ChromeExtension Winners

2013-05-20T13:32:00.001-07:00

Just last monday, we announced RingDNA as our newest sponsor and already they had their first challenge up and running. Only a few days later that challenge was scored and has officially kicked off what will be a long series of many more RingDNA challenges to come. This community development challenge called to build a Chrome Extension that allowed Salesforce users to click on phone numbers

Emerging Maturity: How Crowdsourced Competition Brings Self-Selected Experts

2013-05-16T06:30:00.000-07:00

In our last two posts regarding the 3 different types of crowdsourcing, we touched upon two main benefits: (1) Task complexity, and (2) Variable Skills & Scale. Now it's time to explore the people that are core to competition, and get an idea of how competition-based crowdsourcing, specifically in a community development model, creates those aforementioned benefits. In the three models

Welcoming our latest challenge sponsor, RingDNA!

2013-05-13T07:02:00.000-07:00

We’ve just kicked off a series of crowdsourced development challenges with our newest sponsor, RingDNA. This is the just the beginning of an ongoing relationship with a very cool company, with multiple challenges in the pipeline. We caught up with RingDNA Founder & CEO, Howard Brown, to chat about tapping into a community development model. Q: Hey Howard - how’s it going? A: Tremendously

Recording - uTest & CloudSpokes Webinar: Unlock the Power of Community Development and Testing

2013-05-06T07:04:00.000-07:00

We finally have a recording of our webinar with uTest! Featuring our very own Dave Messinger, this webinar showcases how to unlock the power of crowdsourced development and testing:

$4,300 Weekend Special #GoogleAppEngine Challenge - gAudit Application Hardening

2013-05-02T08:49:00.000-07:00

Looking for something fun to do this weekend? We've got a unique, high price-tag, challenge running through Monday. This challenge is all about security. We surfaced vulnerabilities in a recent related Google challenge, and this challenge is all about addressing them. Therefore this one will be judged strictly on meeting the security requirements. Go to the challenge >> Be notified first

Emerging Maturity: How Crowdsourced Competition Enables Variable Skills & Scale

2013-05-01T08:42:00.000-07:00

We've discussed the 3 types of crowdsourcing. We've seen how if done correctly, competition can allow complex assets to be created (as in websites with 99Designs, or complicated videos with Tongal). But the next logical question beyond complexity, is how elastic (what range of problem sets) and scalable (how many at a time) are the problems that crowdsourced competition can tackle? Now we

Future of the Cloud Day Recap

2013-04-29T15:29:00.001-07:00

With the the 2013 Future of the Cloud Day now behind us, it is time to recap the amazing day and the great work done by the CloudSpokes community, in their local communities. We had aimed to get 10 members in 10 different countries involved with FOTC Day this year and knew that would be an great feat. While we did not reach our goals we still had a great level of participation and even more

In The News: Specialization Provides Online And Offline Growth Opportunities

2013-04-26T09:14:00.000-07:00

Forbes - Sean Rosensteel "...These were all born out of the availability of new technology and a specific market opportunity. For example, before social media networking, sourcing particular skills or talents was an overwhelming task. Now, crowdsourcing firms create and connect unique communities that focus on a specialization. From graphic design and logos at CrowdSpring to enterprise coding

The API: Field of Dreams, or Empty Playing Field?

2013-04-25T08:57:00.000-07:00

Field of Dreams Iowa farmer Ray Kinsella hears a voice in his corn field tell him, "If you build it, they will come."Ray interprets this as a message to build a baseball field in his cornfield. Ray builds it... Ray's message is apropos to the recent news of API management companies getting acquired. Recently Vordel, Mashery and Layer7 have all been purchased by larger companies hoping to

#DifferentSpokes - with @mesirii from Neo Technology

2013-04-24T12:37:00.000-07:00

Earlier today we hosted our 6th episode of #DifferentSpokes and had on special guest Michael Hunger from Neo Technology. It was a great episode with a nice and geeky discussion about Neo4j and Graph Databases, as well as some very interesting tidbits of information about our guest. Including his awesome coffee shop complete with a bar made out of books, and wall paint made from coffee. He even

In The News: Marketing an API to a non-technical audience

2013-04-24T07:04:00.000-07:00

NetworkWorld - Lorinda Brandon "...The joy of an API is that it is infinitely pliable, like Silly Putty. And, like Silly Putty, people like to play with it. Marketing becomes more about planning competitions and driving innovation than about spinning features. And the more API calls you add, the more fun you can have. But don’t take my word for it – spend just 15 minutes on Twitter

#DifferentSpokes - Neo Technology

2013-04-24T07:03:00.003-07:00

That's right, we are back today with another episode of #DifferentSpokes, and we are talking neo technology! More specifically, neo4j.org and the book Graph Databases for Bowerman's Book Club segment. Special guest Michael Hunger from neo will be joining us to answer all your questions, so send them in via Twitter using hashtag #DifferentSpokes. A special prize will be given away to the most

Emerging Maturity: How Crowdsourced Competition Enables Task Complexity

2013-04-23T13:46:00.000-07:00

We made a pretty bold statement towards the end of our last blog post on Crowdsourcing: "One way to look at the transition is to look at the change from an organization using “the internet” to engage the world, versus using “the cloud” to transform a business." What does this mean, and how does competition foster it? As stated previously, a crowdsourced-competition model exemplified by

console.log("Smartsheet Hello World!");

2013-04-18T17:03:00.000-07:00

Don't say we didn't warn you. We mentioned in our last post that Smartsheet was just getting warmed up with their API challenges. We want to give you an update on the latest live challenges, a sneak peek of what's coming, and a way to better manage staying on top of it all. Smartsheet live challenges right now: API Bug Bash Live, ends Apr 22, 2013 Do you enjoy finding bugs, errors,

Automated CloudSpokes Code Testing & Analysis with Thurgood

2013-04-16T07:04:00.002-07:00

For the past couple of months we've been running "Thurgood" in stealth mode. What is Thurgood you ask? Thurgood is our new tool to provide automated build, quality and security analysis of submitted challenge code. Thurgood taps into numerous services including Cloudbees, Checkmarx, JSLint, PhantomJS, Checkstyle, and more based upon the platform and/or type of code. The results of nearly all of

Asking the Community to Give Back - Future of the Cloud Day 2013

2013-04-16T06:03:00.000-07:00

Next Friday, April 26th we're going to try something a little different. We want to see if we can pool our talented group of CloudSpokes members, family, and friends to come together as a community and give back to our local communities in need. Our goals are simple. If we can rally 10 members from 10 different countries across the world to participate that would be amazing, and would be the

Help smarten up the Smartsheet API with a new Bug Bash challenge

2013-04-13T12:57:00.000-07:00

Our marquee Spokes partner, Smartsheet, is throwing down the gauntlet. It’s the beginning of a series of Smartsheet challenges focused on the new Smartsheet API, and CloudSpokes members (like you) are getting the first peek. Note that this is only the first of many of Smartsheet API challenges. Getting in early will provide a leg-up on some bigger and badder challenges to come. Do you enjoy

Emerging Maturity: The 3 Different Types of Crowdsourcing

2013-04-12T10:02:00.000-07:00

Crowdsourcing, according to Gartner's hype cycle, is really in its infancy as it begins to approach the peak of the curve. The "crowdsourcing" term itself is less than ten years old, and the most of the key players in the industry are younger than that. There are countless blog posts that help define the handful of categories that most companies fit into, but there are really three key model

CloudSpokes April 2013 Roadmap

2013-04-11T06:33:00.003-07:00

April is well underway and not only is it income tax time here in the US but our April sprint is in full swing. We've got a number of new features planned for this month and we've launched challenges to build out this functionality for both members and sponsors. Before we talk about what's coming up in April, let's take a step back and see what we actually accomplished in March. Besides

In The News: Committing to your developers will help you keep them

2013-04-08T13:37:00.000-07:00

VentureBeat - Dave Messinger "...In Silicon Valley and elsewhere, developer talent is scarce, particularly for companies that are not “the” social network or named after a fruit. But when companies do find, recruit, and hire the talent, most aren’t taking the right steps to empower their developer talent to learn, grow and thrive. Few companies truly harness and empower developer talent, but

uTest & CloudSpokes Webinar: Unlock the Power of Community Development and Testing

2013-04-08T06:23:00.000-07:00

We're teaming up with one of our favorite crowdsourcing companies this coming Thursday for a special webinar. The plan is to cover what it takes to fully build, and fully test, an app or asset from start to finish. uTest provides in-the-wild testing services that span the entire software development lifecycle – including functional, security, load, localization and usability testing. The

$1400 Weekend Special #Salesforce Challenge - Online Auto Listing Account Planner

2013-04-05T15:21:00.000-07:00

Looking for something fun to do this weekend? We've got a special challenge running over the next few days that is the precursor to about 4 or 5 subsequent challenges that are coming soon. The goal of this challenge is to provide a clean Account Planner in Salesforce.com that will be responsive and work well in both browser and tablet. In this challenge we are looking for a quick prototype -

Guest Blog: Being a Community Judge by @talesforce

2013-04-05T07:44:00.000-07:00

If you know CloudSpokes, then you know the name talesforce. He is not only our overall leader in wins, but has been a rockstar CloudSpokes member since the day he joined! Talesforce recently jumped over from full time competitor to also judging challenges and has hit the ground running. In the past 2 months alone, he has reviewed over 60 submissions and continues to sign up for as many challenges

#DifferentSpokes Recap - Talking Node.js with @kevino80

2013-04-03T10:24:00.000-07:00

We just wrapped up our fifth episode of #DifferentSpokes and it sure was a doozy! We had a slight technical difficulty around 12 minutes in when the Google servers booted us, but it didn't last long and we were back up and running less than a minute later! As always we had a really great show today and owe a big thanks to Kevin for joining us and talking node.js as well as sharing his story