For my second day and second project of the 4-in-4, I flew to San Francisco to present my TwiTerra project at the monthly meeting of the Bay Area Scala Enthusiasts. The group was set up by Dick Wall and Carl Quinn of the Java Posse podcast, and my friend Jorge Ortiz is a member and helps organize the speakers each month. He asked if he could present TwiTerra or if I wanted to come present it myself; I initially thought it infeasible because of my commitment to the 4-in-4, but decided I could do it in a day as my second project and be here in NYC for the other three.

The presentation was to a group of two-dozen-plus programmers at the Twitter offices in SOMA. I gave a demo of the application and then walked through much of the code, focusing on Java-Scala integration, Actors, Lift’s Object Relational Mapping, and the World Wind SDK. It was nice to give a much longer (80 minute?) presentation of the project, in contrast to the <5 minute presentations I gave at the show and at the NY Tech meetup. The presentation went well, and the Twitter employees seemed to particularly enjoy the visualization – Steve Jenson asked if I could put the .app file on the Mac Mini connected to the TV so that he could show the rest of the office in the morning.

My flight left from JFK yesterday at 9:00am, arrived in SFO at 12:45pm, and I had time for lunch with a friend before meeting with Jorge to prepare for the 7:00pm presentation at the Twitter offices. I was in a cab back to SFO by 9:15pm and at my gate with plenty of time before my 10:55pm flight, which landed back at JFK at 7:15am. I used Twitter to document the day as it went:

• Good morning everyone! I’m going to document my trip to SF on Twitter, but I’ll @ reply to @twiterra so that seeing them is opt-in. #4in4 at 5:49 AM
• @twiterra Somehow managed to wake up after only 15 mins of snoozing, oatmeal and espresso now. #4in4 at 5:56 AM
• @twiterra Almost to the airport, thinking about what to say about learning Scala, looking forward to napping for 3k miles. #4in4 at 7:31 AM
• @twiterra Advertisement for gogoinflight wifi with cool *–)– logo (a plane)… hm I wonder how much $$? I’m sleeping regardless though #4in4 at 8:21 AM
• @twiterra Window seat with no one next to me!!! #4in4 at 8:39 AM
• @twiterra my flight landed 35 minutes early, cutting short my otherwise great nap. On the BART to SF for lunch with a friend. #4in4 at time
• @twiterra done with lunch, Jorge caught his train, finding coffee+wifi, the weather is flawless. #4in4 at time
• @twiterra At a cafe called Epicenter near the Twitter office prepping for tonight with @jorgeortiz85, their [sic] playing chiptunes music. #4in4 at time
• @twiterra Ahhh presentation in 35 mins, somehow there is code I want to improve. And by ‘somehow’, I clearly mean ‘of course’. #4in4 at time
• @twiterra In a cab on my way to the airport, presentation went well :) #4in4 at time
• @twiterra At my gate, plenty of time to spare, glad I could get a window seat for flight back, looking forward to another nap. #4in4 at time
• @twiterra I meant to tweet this earlier — “Such was life in the Golden Gate / Gold dusted all we drank and ate /” (½) #4in4 at time
• @twiterra “And I was one of the children told / We all must eat our speck of gold” — Robert Frost (2/2) #4in4 at time
• @twiterra And I’m back in my apt, subway back wasn’t tooo painful (but why does the J go sooo slooowly), time to write some blog posts #4in4 at time