Speaker Series
Software GR: Anthony Glines: The Security of Information, from Past to Present
Abstract of talk:
For thousands of years, people have fought to keep secrets and information hidden, while “hackers” have tried their best to reveal them. While this has always been a neck-and-neck race, methods for protecting this information are continuously improving to have the upper hand.
Enter in a new age… a golden age where technology is plentiful and information is accessible from anywhere. In this talk, we’ll begin with an example of identity theft… that took place almost 500 years ago. We’ll discuss from past to present examples of how information has been protected and stolen. Bringing us to today’s era and what we as programmers can do to protect our client’s most vital asset… their customer’s information.
Bio:
Anthony Glines is a web developer at Springthrough in Grand Rapids. He came to Springthrough in 2012 with over 12 years’ experience as a Web Developer. Currently, Anthony spends a majority of his time writing applications in C# using the MVC framework, AngularJS with RESTful APIs and the Entity Framework. He is a Microsoft Certified Professional, with a focus on Web Applications. When Anthony isn’t glued to a computer screen, he enjoys spending time with his family, reading, watching movies, and spending time outdoors, especially hiking.
Software GR Presents Brandon Keepers: The Loyal Renegade
The Loyal Renegade
What do you do when you think you know a better way of solving a problem and nobody is open to it? I often take a non-conventional approach: benevolent subversion. In this talk I will tell stories of helping organizations move forward through benevolent subversion, not by disrupting progress, undermining authority or attempting to displace leadership. But exactly the opposite: demonstrating what an alternative solution may look like.
About Brandon
Brandon Keepers is a developer at GitHub, where he spends most days orchestrating Ruby, JavaScript, HTML, CSS and whatever else is needed to ship a great product.
Brandon began his professional career in 2002 at the University of Nebraska at Omaha, designing websites, writing PHP and Java, and wrangling servers. After moving to Holland, Michigan, he cofounded Collective Idea in 2006, contracted for a wide variety clients, and led training all over the world. In 2012, Brandon helped Ordered List create SpeakerDeck.com, Gaug.es, and HarmonyApp.com, all of which were acquired by GitHub in 2011.
When his face is not dimly lit by a computer screen, you can find him enjoying good food and drink with his wife, lounging with a book in his hands in Holland, MI, or running with his dog. He shares about his endeavors on twitter as @bkeepers and on his blog at opensoul.org.
Software GR presents Justin Searls: Building First-Class Webapps with Lineman
Justin Searls has two professional passions: writing great software and sharing what he’s learned in order to help others write even greater software. He has a software studio in Columbus called [Test Double], where he’s currently helping clients build well-crafted user experiences for the web.
About the talk:
For too long, we've allowed our server-side code determine how we write applications for the browser. Lineman is one of several tools that can enable your team to build web assets like HTML, CSS, and JavaScript in a project where they're first-class citizens. This talk will review the benefits of physically separating the front-end & back-end into separate projects and will walk through how tools like Lineman can improve your productivity and happiness when building apps for the browser.
*Software GR typically meets on the 4th Tuesday of every month, but we adjusted the schedule for the holiday season.
Software GR presents Brian Anderson, Mike Perry and Alex Jantz: Xamarin development tools
When: November 19, 2013
Are you looking for a solution for building cross-platform apps with maximum code reuse? Do you want to take full advantage of the native device frameworks and have access to leverage everything the device is capable of? Do you want to build custom and friendly UXs that feels like native to the user? Wouldn’t it be great if you could use a common language and have managed code instead of worry about all the low level memory management details? We will show you how you can answer yes to all of these questions and more.
Come join us on November 19th to learn about Xamarin (www.xamarin.com); development tools which lets you write your app entirely in open source C# and share your code across iOS, Android, Windows Phone, Windows and Mac. Mobile devices are proliferating, you can’t just focus on just one platform when your users may be using the others.
About the presenters:
Brian Anderson: Brian founded the custom software development practice at OST in 2008. Since that time OST’s App Dev practice has expand to 30 full-time consultants and employs many more sub-contractors working to solve enterprise business problems with custom software. During his career Brian has served a diverse set of client’s such as Johnson Controls, McDonald’s, Amway, but has also enjoyed working with small and startup businesses along the way. His current focus is to grow OST's application development team, providing strategic direction for the practice, serving clients and building long-term relationships through successful outcomes.
Brian has also co-founded multiple startup businesses including Pay It Square (www.payitsquare.com) and Tourneytopia (www.tourenytopia.com). Pay It Square won PayPal's X Award for Requesting and Receiving Money in 2010. It was then acquired by OST in 2011. Tourneytopia helps companies run white-labeled bracketology contests. It has been used by Microsoft, the Tennis Channel and Time Warner Cable to name just a few.
Mike Perry: Mike has been developing enterprise software for the past 9 years and has a passion for well architected solutions. He is an independent consultant in the Grand Rapids area and currently focuses on Xamarin development for the enterprise. In his spare time he enjoys mountain biking and snowmobiling.
Alex Jantz: Alex Jantz spent 4 years as a Software Engineer before joining OST in early 2012. He is an entrepreneur at heart and has experience in application development, Business Intelligence, and software verification. Alex has a BSE in Electrical Engineering from GVSU and is currently working towards his MBA.
Software GR presents Mitchell Hashimoto
When: October 22, 2013
Mitchell Hashimoto is the founder of HashiCorp, a company whose goal is to make the best DevOps tools in the world, including Vagrant. Prior to HashiCorp, Mitchell spent five years as a web developer and another four as an operations engineer. He speaks at conferences worldwide and is the author of Vagrant: Up an Running.
Abstract of talk: The goal of a tool is to simplify a previously difficult or tedious task and make it repeatable, teachable, and often more enjoyable. Ultimately, the improvements gained by using a tool often result in new abilities or practices that were previously unachievable.
In this talk, I'll present Vagrant (http://www.vagrantup.com) and Packer (http://www.packer.io), two tools being rapidly adopted by tech companies worldwide. GitHub, Heroku, BBC News, Expedia, Yahoo!, and more use these tools every day to improve their site stability and developer productivity. I'll show what problems the tools solve and what new opportunities they unlock.
Software GR presents Tom DeVries
When: September 24, 2013
Tom DeVries is a hybrid business and design strategist focused on guiding organizations to differentiate by serving people. His approach is shaped by his lifelong frustration of observing businesses copy their way into mediocrity.
As a principle and co-founder of Thoughtfull Design, he leads organizations to discover unmet customer needs that are hidden in plain site, which in business terms means unmet demand, then realize the profit and growth opportunities of supplying for it.
Tom is a Human-Centered Design methods expert, holding a masters degree from Chicago’s Institute of Design and has experience leading and advising organizations of all sizes throughout the world including Amway, Autodesk, Deloitte, Motorola, and Pepsico.
About the talk:
Collaboration. It is a buzz word called out as being key to success in nearly every project, yet many projects are accidentally placed on a foundation that yields the opposite - competition with people on the same team, sometimes in-house and other times between clients and consultants. This talk will focus four types of collaborative structures and the implications of each, it will propose a foundational construct for effective collaboration and incite a discussion to draw in the experience and insight of the group.
LMAX Disruptor: Challenging the Status Quo of Concurrent Programming Beliefs
When: June 25, 2013
Carlus Henry will be our guest for the June 25th SoftwareGR speaker series.
This is how Carlus describes the presentation:
"For the past 8 years, I have worked on projects requiring multi-threaded products. While the solutions that I have helped design and develop have met the demands of my customers, after learning of the LMAX Disruptor pattern, I realized that I still had a lot to learn about concurrent programming. During this talk, I will walk you through their Disruptor architecture. I will show you the lessons that they learned that "disrupt" current thinking about concurrent programming, and how they were able to take this information and apply it to the Disruptor.
If you are interested in concurrent programming and want the ability to achieve their lightening fast results in your next concurrent product, then I look forward to seeing you."
Elaina Farnsworth: What should IT Professionals know about managing a Mobile Project?
When: May 28, 2013
Many IT Professionals are tasked with leading Mobile Projects. With the emerging market of mobile growing faster each year, professionals are asking what they need to know about managing mobile projects. In this presentation we will give you an idea of how mobile projects differ from traditional development lifecycles, a few steps you can take to properly identify which mobile tools to use, and how mobile projects concepts vary from the traditional development models. Our experts will introduce the differences in native and HTML5 and give you an idea of what to watch out for in UX/UI and Agile development.
About Elaina
Elaina Farnsworth is a leader in the mobile industry. She is a public speaker, entrepreneur, writer and thought leader. Her passions are technology and education.
Elaina's expertise in mobile technologies began almost a decade ago, by creating text messaging programs to aid first responders in emergency situations. Thereafter, she worked in education to bring about technical literacy for teachers and their students. Her talent for teaching complicated technical concepts to all levels of executives allows her to help organizations create mobile strategies to take advantage of the paradigm shift revolutionizing business today. She passionately advocates the power of mobile to improve the way business and education is conducted.
She speaks nationwide to businesses, educational institutions, corporations and associations about mobile as the new key to transforming the global economy.
Matt Fletcher: Visualization. From skeptic to advocate
When: March 26, 2013
Are you sometimes turned off by the word 'visualization?' I used to be. To me, visualization meant someone was going to slowly draw a crummy picture or show me a meaningless photograph. Why not (literally) say what you want to say?
I was, without a doubt, a visualization skeptic. Now I am one of its biggest advocates.
Over the last year I've been learning more and more about the various forms of visualization. Visualization is much more than crummy pictures and meaningless photographs - when you combine visualization and words, you're best positioned to communicate effectively with others.
Join me as we discuss the various forms of visualization and how they are the ultimate complement to even the best-formed words.
Matt Fletcher is a software product developer at Atomic Object.
Chris Marinos: The State of F#- Why You Should (or Shouldn’t) Care
When: February 26, 2013
In this talk, we’ll discuss the past, present, and future of F# programming. You’ll learn about the latest F# innovations like Type Providers, but more importantly, you’ll gain an understanding of how F#’s unique features can help you solve problems for your clients. You’ll also learn about some situations that are not a great fit for F#, and how to avoid them. We’ll wrap up with a discussion about the future of F#. By the end of this talk, you should have a good idea of what F# brings to the table, and how you do (or don’t) want to use it in your organization.
Bio Chris is a F# MVP and software consultant in Ann Arbor, MI. A proponent of F# since its pre-release days, he has given numerous F# talks and trainings throughout the US and Europe. He has also written articles on F# for MSDN Magazine and his F#-centric blog. His other technical interests and experiences include coffeescript, backbone.js, Rails, Django, C#, Android, and of course, functional programming. When not coding, he enjoys video games, BBQ food, and obnoxiously large TVs.