Stories From a Music-Fueled Distributed Streaming Bender

So we built an employee-driven, geographically-distributed, multi-client, HTML5-based, API-centric, bathroom-enabled, buzzword-embracing music server for the GitHub offices. It's been a fun project to explore company culture, CSS frameworks, JavaScript methodologies, native clients, outside contributions, and to discover who gets really angry when Garth Brooks starts singing on the speakers. It's one of those projects that ended up far more nutty than the original idea. Come steal some ideas for your own projects.

Transcript

1. stories from a music-fueled distributed streaming bender PLAY
2. MUSIC
3. music keeps your RIGHT BRAIN happy LEFT BRAIN works while your
4. my company is a pretty musical company
6. WE BUILT an employee-driven, geographically-distributed, multi-client, HTML5-based, API-centric, bathroom- enabled, buzzword- embracing music server
7. THIS ISN’T AN AD i hate talks like that
8. THIS IS ABOUT building open source
9. THIS IS ABOUT improving your company
10. TODAY: what is play company side project culture doing open source real good structured experimentation stealing shit
11. @HOLMAN
13. we talkin’ about WHAT
14. PLAY a shared music server at github’s office GITHUB.COM/PLAY/PLAY
15. MAC MINI all of our music QUEUE songs, artists, albums, stars >
16. STEP ONE get a potentially empty office MARCH 2010
17. STEP TWO get some big speakers MAY 2010
18. STEP THREE get work done MAY 2010
19. MUSIC LEADS TO STORIES! LIKE...
20. WHEN OUR OFFICE GOT MISTAKEN FOR A NIGHTCLUB BECAUSE YOU CAN HEAR THE SPEAKERS THREE BLOCKS AWAY our neighbors hate us
21. WHEN NINE OF US GOT TO CALL MC HAMMER... how did we get fired up? by blasting hammertime in the office all morning. true story.
22. WHEN THE FIRE DEPARTMENT RUSHED TO THE OFFICE BECAUSE OUR SMOKE MACHINE WENT CRAZY... what were we playing? i don’t know but it must have been one hell of a song ARTIST’S RENDITION
23. WHEN THE FIRE DEPARTMENT RUSHED TO THE OFFICE BECAUSE OUR SMOKE MACHINE WENT CRAZY... we don’t try to use the smoke machine anymore ARTIST’S RENDITION
24. WHEN THE FIRE DEPARTMENT RUSHED TO THE OFFICE BECAUSE OUR SMOKE MACHINE WENT CRAZY... also, are these kids dead? ARTIST’S RENDITION
25. WHEN THE FIRE DEPARTMENT RUSHED TO THE OFFICE BECAUSE OUR SMOKE MACHINE WENT CRAZY... also this kid definitely set the place on fire ARTIST’S RENDITION
26. WHEN THE FIRE DEPARTMENT RUSHED TO THE OFFICE BECAUSE OUR SMOKE MACHINE WENT CRAZY... no seriously he was like, laughing last frame ARTIST’S RENDITION kid creeps me out
27. i was going somewhere with this, i forget
28. ANYWAY, MUSIC HAS BEEN A FUN PART OF GITHUB
29. WE’VE SINCE EXPANDED IT.
30. ⽄ ⽄ ̇ ̇ ⽄ ̇ APRIL 2012
31. WEB queuing and searching
33. WEB BACKEND itunes, applescript, sinatra, redis, pusher
34. WEB FRONTEND coffeescript, mustache, scss, pusher, html5
35. API the web is just another client
36. SPEAKERS airport express, music everywhere >
37. 60’S ROOM >
38. ⽄ ̇ ̇
39. ⽄ ̇ POOL TABLE >
40. ⽄ ̇ SITUATION ROOM >
41. ⽄ ̇ MEN’S ROOM >
43. DON’T WANT MUSIC? - we have private, quiet offices, too - you have headphones - or just don’t go to work today
44. STREAMING music really everywhere
45. consume everywhere CLIENTS f
46. DISPLAYS f
47. hubot play daft punk hubot play next hubot volume 75 hubot play something i’d like f HUBOT CLIENT hubot i like this song
48. f OS X CLIENT
49. f IPHONE CLIENT
50. f IPAD CLIENT
51. f WINDOWS CLIENT
52. f ANDROID CLIENT
53. LIVE DJ BOOTH dj! spin that shit ~
54. ~ LIVE DJ BOOTH
55. PAUSE PLAY DJ SWITCH STREAM TO CONTROLLER AUTO-RECORD DJ SET TIMESTAMP & LABEL SET IMPORT BACK INTO PLAY
56. MOST OF US HAVEN’T DJED BEFORE IT’S LIKE PROGRAMMING BUT FRESH AND NEW EVERYONE FEELS LIKE A GENIUS FOR MIXING “ALL MY FRIENDS” AND “WE ARE YOUR FRIENDS” FOR THE 462TH TIME guise it’s like two songs about friends whoaaa
57. ECOSYSTEM lots got built, lots to build
58. together, right now COME
59. PLAY builds culture
60. KEEP YOUR EMPLOYEES HAPPY
61. A SOURCE OF UNHAPPINESS? BEING EXCLUSIONARY
62. THIS IS ESPECIALLY DIFFICULT FOR REMOTE WORKERS
63. PLAY IS ONE WAY WE GET GITHUBBERS SHARING EXPERIENCES
64. PLAY HAS BEEN STREAMED: ON SAN FRANCISCO MUNI IN SOUTH AFRICA OVER MOBILE TETHERING IN VIRGINIA IN A CAR OVER BLUETOOTH IN JAPAN ON A HIGH-SPEED TRAIN
65. THIS IS HOW WE KNOW WHO LOVES GARTH BROOKS (scott)
66. THIS IS HOW WE KNOW WHO HATES GARTH BROOKS (everyone else)
67. THIS IS HOW WE SHARE COMMON EXPERIENCES
68. SHARED SIDE PROJECT build clients, learn new techniques, work with coworkers you wouldn’t normally work with
69. GITHUB SIDE PROJECTS we build things like play and hubot to keep everyone excited sometimes even “fun” work blows encourage a culture of building
70. FIND SOMETHING YOU CAN ALL HACK ON TOGETHER
71. collaborate and listen STOP
72. BUILD SOCIALLY that means be a good teammate
73. ZOMG TELL EVERYONE EVERYTHING README INLINE DOCUMENTATION CLEAN TESTS LONG-FORM DOCUMENTATION OPEN ISSUES
74. PLAY WAS DISCOVERED months before it shipped
75. USE GITHUB to find free slave labor open new issues add todos detail your plans
76. PEOPLE WILL SURPRISE YOU and build things you didn’t expect. it’s awesome.
77. CONTRIBUTORS helped shape play without being asked
78. detail your setup BUILD A KILLER README readme-driven development explain your plans
79. setup development fixtures BUILD A KILLER BOOTSTRAP install with a one-liner dependency management
80. say thanks, help them redirect BUILD A NON-KILLER ATTITUDE sometimes weird features happen don’t fret, don’t shoot down
81. EXPERIMENT
82. MAKE A PROJECT specifically to fuck around with new things
83. HERE’S WHAT ISN’T IN PLAY foundation backbone.js ember.js WE GAINED A LOT FROM TRYING A LOT macruby
84. GO OUT OF YOUR WAY TO TRY NEW TECHNIQUES
85. HERE’S WHAT’S NEW IN PLAY: WEB AS API CLIENT “twitter-style” all clients use the endpoints same as web more stable, more dogfooding
86. HERE’S WHAT’S NEW IN PLAY: COCOA/RUBY BRIDGES subscribe to itunes in cocoa push over pusher realtime clients (including web)
87. HERE’S WHAT’S NEW IN PLAY: LIVE DJ SETS applescript agains gets us around GUIs
88. HERE’S WHAT’S NEW IN PLAY: NATIVE OS TECHNIQUES data-first UI design on windows, mac ios/mac library sharing
89. WHEN THE WHOLE PURPOSE IS EXPERIMENTATION, YOU CAN TAKE RISKS
90. WHAT WERE RISKS THEN BECOME NORMAL PRACTICES AND YOU’RE BETTER OFF
91. STEAL shit
92. PLAY HAS LOTS OF MOVING PARTS
93. PLAY ( MAC MINI ) AIRFOIL NICECAST PUSHER > RESTROOMS > POOL TABLE f OS X CLIENT WINDOWS CLIENT IPHONE CLIENT c CONTROLLED BY CAMPFIRE ( CHAT ROOM ) IPAD CLIENT TV SCREENS ANDROID CLIENT > 60’S ROOM > DESKS ~ LIVE DJ BOOTH
94. GO LEVERAGE EXISTING THINGS
95. INTERNET STREAMING AIRPORT STREAMING MUSIC STATE nicecast airfoil itunes DJ SOFTWARE traktor
96. BUILDING ALL THAT OURSELVES WOULD HAVE SUCKED
97. PLAY 1.0 MANAGED PLAY STATE TURNS OUT, DIFFICULT PROBLEM reliability, simplicity PLAY-NEXT LETS ITUNES DJ HANDLE IT free itunes client browsing, remote.app, queueing redis, separate player process
98. GUIs ARE HORRIBLE TO MANAGE completely breaks the bootstrap goal they’re great until we can replace them BUT:
99. EMBRACE HACKY SOLUTIONS THEY’RE THE PINNACLE OF PROGRAMMING
100. PLAY
101. PLAY NOT WITH MY PROJECT, PLAY WITH YOUR PROJECT
102. PLAY EXPERIMENT COLLABORATE
103. PLAY GITHUB.COM/PLAY
104. THANKS
106. ZACH HOLMAN @HOLMAN