Dev8D: Five minutes with Amy Guy

Feb 15, 2012 by michelle-pauli

Amy Guy, an MSc student at the University of Edinburgh, gives the first-timer perspective on Dev8D

What do you do?

I’m working towards and MSc interdisciplinary creative practices at University of Edinburgh. I’m doing stuff to do with fiction and narrative and web technologies, combining two of my interests. I’m building an engine such that the narrative responds depending on where you are – it’s a Location Aware Interactive Fiction Engine, mapping virtual worlds on to a real world.

Why are you are Dev8D?

Went to DevXS in Lincoln and there I heard about this and it sounded fun. By the end I’m hoping to have written some Python to parse the YouTube datafeeds and turn it into RDF.

What are you looking forward to?

I’m looking forward to all the people talking about linked data and all the experts in that area who would be able to help me and have been doing so.

What have you found interesting?

Everything. There’s a really good mix of people. The linked data guys from Southampton have been great and I’ve talked to them a lot.

What will you take back to Edinburgh?

More RDF and Python knowledge and some useful new contacts, which is always a goal of attending these things

It’s your first time here, did anything surprise you?

Not really, it’s like a conference / hack – equal measure of talks and sitting around talking to people and networking

Dev8D has more female developers attending than ever before, but is there more it could do to encourage women to attend?

It’s not a case of encouraging more female developers but encouraging more people who are good at what they do. That’s my view on anything relating to positive discrimination. But perhaps it could advertise more to students? There are lots of people here who could help students a lot, getting them aware of scripts and things.