The Freehackers Union NYC show went insanely well. I managed to pull off a full live internet feed of the audio to people in FU and the show at the same time. We had about 10 newbies show up to give their first five minutes and 11 listeners on IRC/icecast. Some people showed up just to hang out, so we relaxed the rules and let them stay to build an audience. Overall, there were some cool projects presented and everyone had a good time.

But, I’ll let the audio from the show tell you rather than write about it.

I’ve uploaded a “full” feed that’s high quality, a “low” that’s mono and 22khz, and a “flyby” that’s the low version but sped up so you can listen to it fast.

I’ll be uploading video of the event to the same place and then I’ll look at automating this process more.

How The Live Audio Worked

I’m kind of still wondering how it all worked, but it worked great and didn’t have many problems other than the audio levels.

What I did was setup an icecast server running on zedshaw.com that people could connect to with their browsers and various streaming media players. Then at the FU NYC show I used the icecast client ices to relay the audio out over the internet, to the icecast server, then out to everyone listening. The people who were listening then were hanging in IRC and could ask questions realtime and get responses.

In order to make it just a bit more complicated I took my Yamaha mixer board with me and used that to do the audio recording. This let me plug in the mic, an iPod, and any sound demos people had without much hassle. When people were setting up and there was down time, I played some classical music for the people on IRC to listen to and not get bored.

It worked out great, so I’m gonna look at this for some of the UnLocal technology we’re building. (UnLocal is the virtual local we’re building).

Interviewing My Peeps Is Not Interviewing Me

I’ve had a few friends and former employees tell me that knowing me sucks when they try to get a Rails gig. Apparently, there’s some assholes out there who are bringing in former employees for interviews only to ask them what it’s like to work for me. These companies don’t even have jobs, they just want to pump my friends for information on me.

Here’s a little advice to all the shithead startups in NYC that are doing this:

This is incredibly unprofessional, and can backfire on you quick. While you may say, “It’s not illegal,” you’d be wrong. All someone has to do is call the EEO and claim that your hiring practices are racist or sexist and the investigation alone can get you fired. For a smaller company the negative publicity from my blog alone could crush you, not to mention all the many friends I have in various activist networks. Calls to local unions, government agencies, publications I’ve written for, and blogs that I’m connected with can destroy what little image you have left.

More importantly, when I get pissed at someone and start writing about them, they die. Just ask anyone who was creating a Rails startup when I called Rails a ghetto and exposed that shitfest. After I wrote that essay, Thoughtworks called in the big guy Roy to call all my managers and try to get me fired. He of course didn’t call me (because I’m impervious to his Neuro-Linguistic Programming mind tricks) but think about that for a minute. I wrote a single essay that scared a large company enough that they started using their biggest hitters to come after me.

In short, don’t fuck with my friends.

You can fuck with me all you want, but some people I barely even know who are looking for work should be treated fairly and professionally.

( and people wonder why I started Freehackers Union )

(( and to the redditors who will say “he deserves it”, you are proving my point you morons ))