I just had an all-too common conversation with the founder of a startup who had spent more than a year working with a software development company who had produced a mess. If I’m being asked to do startup software development, I’m going to push fairly hard on key questions that the startup needs to have answered before they develop anything. What's the User Interface Beyond the Web Site ? The mess really comes from a developer who was willing to get started on a product that was not fully thought out. I always take a very different approach in early conversations.

In his post, he mentions the following events / event organizers, and you should visit his post for a bit more on each of them. LA CTO Forum Dealmaker Media Digital Family Reunion Startups Uncensored Social Media Club, LA Twiistup Mindshare LA LA Hadoop Meetup Dorkbot Geek Dinners LA Cloud Computing LA Web Application Developers LA PHP Developers In addition to these, I'd recommend looking at: Technology Council of Southern California – Surprised John didn't mention this one.

We did eeommerce, we did web applications, anything and everything people wanted. Roy Rubin was a student trying to make extra money on the side when he founded Varien, the company that went on to launch Magento, an ecommerce platform that enables billions of dollars in online sales. He came to Mixergy to talk about why Varien grew (it had a lot to do with focus) and how the company launched Magento (his developers pushed him to do it).

Just the kind of person I like to meet. :) But I was a bit surprised when he emphasized how hard it had been for them to find a web developer in Los Angeles. My flippant comment was, “If you do a Google search for Los Angeles web developer, you’ll find a LOT of people and firms.” His response was that he had done exactly that, but that the long list is not all that useful. Web design typically refers to Yesterday, I met with someone at the early stage of a startup. He has a great concept with some complexity to it.

If you have solid web skills and a few years experience, either with a commercial company or running your own legit projects, there are dozens of companies in L.A. who would love to talk with you. There’s quite a bit of truth to what Mark is saying about startup software developers, but my guess is that there’s another reason that it seems harder to find developers in this context. First, early in the post, Mark mentions: The idea behind the meetup is to connect technology startups with prospective hires who may be interested to work for “alternative compensation”–e.g.,

But it was not until the last couple years that I updated my skills and capabilities in web development. They have a custom implementation of CPanel, so it is really easy to add a domain, install and upgrade dozens of popular free and open source web apps like Wordpress or Drupal with just a couple of clicks with Fantastico. It includes the LAMP stack ( Linux OS , Apache web server , MySQL database , and PHP ) which any worthwhile web hosting is going to provide, I first started messing around with HTML in DreamWeaver and Claris Home Page around 1999 to put up my own music website.

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This is a private group of CTOs who are responsible for software development within their companies. They are generally the senior most person responsible for custom software development, database design, database administration, web development, etc. In a recent conversation with a fellow CTO, we lamented about the fact that while there's very active software development and web development going on in Southern California and West Los Angeles, yet there didn't seem to be as much of a community around it. I've helped organize the Los Angeles CTO Forum for almost 10 years.

Dorkbot – This is where the hardware and software DIY nerds go to play. LA Web Application Developers – I have not been to this event yet, but all the top techs that I know speak very highly of it. Tags: Technology Web Startup Advice CTO internet startup los angeles marketing networking startup army tech networking technology networkin My friend Mark Long recently asked me about networking in Los Angeles. Mark is a CTO, see, and his company, PortBlue , was recently acquired (congrats, Mark!).

El Segundo-based iRise, a maker of software for prototyping web applications and software, is targeting ecommerce retailers with a new set of templates, the firm said Wednesday. According to iRise, it has made pre-configured, business software visualization templates for the firm's products available to ecommerce retailers. The templates help online retailers work through According to iRise, the new templates are available at no charge. iRise provides software which are used by product managers and others to define and create web applications; those definitions are