If you’ve ever seen pictures of the crazy work environments at Pixar or Google you’ll notice that most offices/cubes are cluttered, but people obviously get a lot done there. Well, IZEA decided it was time to bring a little of that creative clutter into the office and is having it’s own cube design content — Cubico Loco!. The contest brought in many more themes than I would’ve guessed including a video games cube, a stripper pole and a champagne room (complete with condom dispenser). There’s no shortage of pictures thanks to the camera-fiends at IZEA. When it comes to creating a workspace though, would you want something fun (themed, cube toys, colorful) or would you favor a workspace that’s purely functional?

I decided to go with a fun but functional setup for my workspace, putting up something that could stay up year round. The theme? Flying Spaghetti Monster! Marilyn and I were able to create a little FSM plushie, along with a blowup of the famous noodly creation drawing. There are a few bits of pirate memorabilia, some random pasta, FSM stickers and such, and of course the gospel sitting high.

Of course this goes against my home office setup. It’s the very definition of a functional office. It makes a more sense to have that kind of setup at home to me, while keeping the office space more fun.

If your work is lacking some decorations, I’d definitely suggest holding a similar contest. I also like the idea of a public vote for the winner, which will be factored in with interoffice votes for the winner. Please vote! It doesn’t have to be mine of course, but more votes can’t hurt. There’s plenty of great cubes better and more deserving than one worshiping and parody deity of a religion.

Even though BarCampOrlando is a few months behind us, there’s still plenty to do this summer for us developers. It seems like in the past 2 years or so more and more events are springing up in town — exciting stuff. Finding new events can sometimes be a little tricky though. There’s a few ways to make this a little easier.

Gregg Pollack from Rails Envy maintains a Google Calendar titled Central Florida Tech Events which is probably the easiest way to stay up to date. You can search for it within Google, or just add it there (or to iCal) and always know what’s coming up. For a one single stop for what’s on the agenda is does most the work for you. As the Orlando community is getting more organized though, there are a few other places that also have listings. Doterati, taglined Central Florida’s Click (I still stand by statement that you need more kerning in the word click), is was recently started as an open network for usergroups and various other IT and computer related groups in the Orlando to gather together. Florida Creatives has a wiki for some events and local resources that aren’t listed elsewhere, but overall it needs more adoption to make it work.

So what events am I looking forward to?

• Probably Orlando Ruby Users Group tomorrow with talks on Rails security and Git.
• Adobe Developers of Greater Orlando meeting on July 1st where we’ll be continuing the code session from last time which turned out to be a great success
• IZEA Devasaurus on July 2nd should be a lot of fun and hopefully bring a lot of passionate people together.
• IZEAFest 2008 should be another one just around the corner. It’s still a little ways off — Thursday, September 11, 2008 at 07:00 PM – Saturday, September 13, 2008 at 09:00 PM. 3 day conference for bloggers and advertisers with quite a few speakers I’d heard about.
• Ruby Conf has also been announced to be in November, and once again in Orlando. Not sure if I’ll be able to make it, but definitely going to try for that one. It’ll be

Know of any other big events in Orlando that are worth checking out? Or other places to find out what’s going on?

One thing on my mind more and more recently was the idea of getting a job in what I do during my part time. While working at Westgate much of my spare time at home I’d been slowly learning Ruby on Rails, and liking the core concepts as well as the Ruby language in general. After running into Peter Wright at BarCampOrlando, the idea seemed even more exciting. So I applied, interviewed and was happy to be added to the IZEA team starting last week! That’s the short story of how I ended up here.

Prior to starting at IZEA, most of my exposure had been through PayPerPost, Techcrunch and Rockstartup which don’t show much in the way of life for a developer, or the group as a whole. It’s a dedicated, passionate bunch across the organization though, and with SocialSpark just launching into beta in April there’s a lot to do. Between their company blog, forums, twitter, videos, social networks like ning, flickr and other sites they’re really taking advantage of the Social Web to get the word out. It’s exciting being a place that’s embracing that on so many fronts, and open to trying things out.

The idea of developing professionally in something new (but that you enjoy doing) might seem a little daunting if it’s you’re not at a high level at it. When it comes to programming though, what matters is problem solving, core programming concepts and most of all passion. While staying up to date with what interests you may not be hard, most would agree it’s incredibly time consuming. If you’re staying up to date in ColdFusion, Ruby, Rails, Java, Air and Flex — chances are you’re not spending much time getting things done! I think that was a gap that I feel into a few months back. Clear out your RSS reader of those feeds you’re not interested in (or that just post too often)! Read the headlines of areas you’re interested in, while reading in depth articles for the things you’re passionate about will probably leave you happier. If you honestly don’t see yourself going forward in an area don’t feel like you have to follow it as aggressively. Trim it down to the cream of the crop and you’ll get all the information you need. I felt a little guilty doing this at first, but it was just too much reading. What matters more is finding your own sweet spot in terms of how much information you want from every interest, and constant re-evaluating it. If your interests change, your news intake should change. Don’t rule out changing jobs — it’s all about finding what you enjoy after all!