A Call For Developers – And The Chance To Be Part of a New and Open Type of Developer Program

I operate largely from a sphere of belief sets.

I don’t pretend to know, nor profess I know a whole lot even though I have been doing what I do for what is approaching 34 years.

In the world of startups, I don’t really think most of us know what we are doing.

We are only “experts” when we have had a win or two or three or four (I’ve had my share) and we hardly promote the losses – of which I have had many.

https://developer.rackspace.com/

Right before I headed off to Israel for my 89 day engagement for the Rackspace Startup and developer+ program, I had a chance to visit with Jesse Noller, who, as a Principle Engineer & Developer Advocate, has this thing about everything that is open sourced, focused on community and making the most of the developer experience.

In simple, non-tech speak, it means that Jesse – and the core of Rackspace’s brand – is all about being open and helping developers with an absolutely, positively, Texas-sized experience in building cool stuff.

While I have many friends who are developers, I really don’t know or understand exactly how they do what they do. I do believe that they, like other creative artists are driven to architect, construct and create compelling things that deliver great value.

And while I am hardly an anthropologist (remember – I am totally unqualified) I do have a fundamental belief set.

I believe that the wine, the produce, the cheese from blessed cows, the fresh vegetables, the weather, and the sometimes craziness that exists here in Israel produces developers that are, well… they are just wired different.

I have no scientific proof. It’s just what I believe through my observations.

So I am reaching out the universe and asking you to prove me wrong.

Head on over to the Rackspace developer+ site.

Let me know what you think and if you’d consider giving it a test run.

You can sign up on the site, or you can email me – alan@weinkrantz.com and I will try to help you. It’s free and you can apply for credits to build something. Think of it as sandbox without getting your shoes dirty or sandy.

They have a whole team of techno-nerd developers in the U.S. and the U.K. who will treat you right and provide what they call Fanatical Support – for your code. They’ve got a wonderful blog, which I will tell you I have read forwards and backwards, but I will confess that I am really not qualified to go much deeper than this.

Rackspace aside, there’s this thing called OpenStack, which was developed by Rackspace and those friendly folks who put several people on the moon, NASA.

The idea is that if you build something, you don’t have to married to any one brand. You can build on Rackspace, move it over elsewhere, or spread it around to other places like IBM, HP, EMC, Cisco, Google, Microsoft and lots of other companies who have a huge footprint here.

If you are in startup mode or if you are a VC / Investor thinking about a technology roadmap, you’d be well served to have one of your due-diligence peeps look into this as well.

If you are going to start on something, you might as well do it where you can change gears, pivot, and all that other startup gibberish, so you don’t have to rebuild and start the whole thing over.

So there you have it.

And back to my non-scientific thesis about what makes developers a unique breed here.

Prove me wrong.

I’m here to listen, and help you.