Tech Around Town

CTRL Collective, Friday Coffee Women in Blockchain, SCaLE 16x, and Girls Coding Camp all in one weekend.

Gene Chuang
Innovation Insider

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Southern California Linux Expo is the biggest tech conference in Southern California and this is the 16th year and running. This is the 3rd year that SCaLE has moved from LAX to Pasadena Convention Center, and everyone is happier for it, including me. Since I just moved into CTRL Collective a block away from the convention center, I was able to attend SCaLE on Friday and Saturday as well as checking out Friday Morning Coffee: Women in Blockchain. Here are some of the sights and sounds of my 3 day romp around Old and Innovative Pasadena.

Recently I moved into CTRL Collective to share office with my friend Hung Tran of The Change Group. This is the latest creative and tech co-working space to open up in Pasadena, along with Cross Campus, WeWork and BLANKSPACES. CTRL occupies the old Bally’s Fitness brick building that I use to work out in 15 years ago, so it’s amazing to see the transformation they made to this old smelly gym.

It’s like working in a Restoration Hardware showroom and a fully equipped photo studio, accented with design cues from The Big Bang Theory. This is This is another great coworking space here in Pasadena and I’m glad to call it my second home.

On Friday morning I attended oldest IP program: Friday Coffee Meetup. I gave an FCM talk 3 weeks ago on Pasadena Tech Past, Present and Future. In fact, all 4 years of weekly talks, over 100 of them, are available on FCM YouTube Channel. This Friday Talk was “Women in Blockchain”. Sho Guo of Oben and Stacy Jain of Kaiser Permanente spoke about Blockchain development in their respective companies. So far, all the Crypto/Blockchain meetups and panels I’ve attended are dominated by males, so it was good to inject estrogen into this hot space.

Friday afternoon I went to SCaLE. The event was held the same time America’s Got Talent was taping, so it was a eclectic mix of tech nerds and dubious talent.

IP President Beth Kuchar had a chance to interview SCaLE founder Ilan Rabinovitch just before the mad rush into the conference showroom.

Scale Showroom in a panoramic shot, right before the tech masses rushed in.

Here are a some of the vendors and booths sights and sounds at SCale. I definitely got my fill of tchotchke and loot from visiting all the booths. My kids’ favorite is the Tigger tsum tsum from Disney.

Since all of open source tech community is gathering in Pasadena for 4 days straight, there were plenty of tech Happy Hours. I attended two: Synctree Wine Tasting at Everson Royce and Nginx hosted Sellbrite and Friends Happy Hour at Yardhouse. Tech folks like to get their drink-on.

Saturday morning before going back to SCaLe, I dropped off my 6 year old daughter, Olivia, to “Girls Code Camp” by STEAM:CODERS and Code Spark: The Foos. Raymond Ealy pictured leading the girls into class, is a big proponent of introducing STEAM (Science, Technology, Engineering, Arts and Math) to underrepresented minorities and women in tech. We can use more ladies in STEAM!

Finally, here are some of the cool tech toys seen at this Innovate Pasadena SCaLE weekend. The “Girls Code Camp” was hosted at Supply Frame Design Lab, a big supporter of IP, and they have these super cool liquid resin 3D printers. You have to see one in action; it’s like watching Terminator 2 T 1000 morph. At the SCaLE Kids Day on Saturday, I saw an open source robotics Martian Rover kit that will be published in a few months. You too can build a cool Martian Rover like the one pictured above!

Hope you enjoyed the tour of Innovate Pasadena and SCaLE in just three days. Check out the geekery we have here, subscribe to the mailing list on our web site, and together we will make Pasadena innovative again!

By Gene Chuang, Board of Directors, Innovate Pasadena

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