Speaker Series
Ken Fox: Garbage Collection In-depth
When: December 11, 2012
Ken will be surveying key garbage collection algorithms. He'll be showing how they work, comparing their strengths and weaknesses, and even getting into practical applications unrelated to language implementation.
About Ken
Ken Fox has been programming for over 25 years. He's amazingly lucky to have spent the majority of that time working with technology that we now take for granted: free software, Unix, TCP/IP, 3D graphics and the web. He is also a polyglot hacker with an unhealthy fascination for language runtimes and garbage collectors.
Ken now develops mobile apps and web services for Detroit Labs, a software services company in Detroit. In his spare time he mentors FIRST Robotics team 3322 in Ann Arbor.
John Hauck: Cudafy Me - Graphics Processor Programming in C# on Windows 8
When: October 23, 2012
The ThreadPool is fine for little dips, but this is the year to dive head first into the GPGPU - the General Purpose Graphics Processing Unit. In this talk we will be solving the traveling salesman problem by brute force. That is, we will compute the length of every possible route connecting a series of cities - to find the shortest one. We will do this entirely in Visual Studio C# using three techniques: single-threaded CPU, multi-threaded CPU, and the massively parallel GPGPU. We will spend most of the time learning how to use NVidia's CUDA with HybridDSP's Cudafy. After attending this talk you will see the universe as a massively parallel phenomenon that is ripe for you to model it.
About John
John Hauck has been developing software professionally in Michigan since 1981, and focused on Windows-based development since 1988. For the past 17 years John has been working at LECO, a scientific laboratory instrument company, where he manages software development. John also served as the manager of software development at Zenith Data Systems, and as the Vice President of software development at TechSmith. John loves the Lord, his wife, their three kids, and sailing on Lake Michigan.
John blogs at http://w8isms.blogspot.com.
David Giard: Effective Data Visualization - the Ideas of Edward Tufte
When: September 25, 2012
Software GR is back with a great season coming up! We'll be starting off with Grand Rapids local David Giard who will be sharing his experience on data visualization:
We spend much of our time collecting and analyzing data. That data is only useful if it can be displayed in a meaningful, understandable way.
Yale professor Edward Tufte presented many ideas on how to effectively present data to an audience or end user.
In this session, I will explain some of Tufte's most important guidelines about data visualization and how you can apply those guidelines to your own data. You will learn what to include, what to remove, and what to avoid in your charts, graphs, maps and other images that represent data.
About David
David Giard has been developing solutions using Microsoft technologies since 1993. He is a Microsoft MVP; a member of the INETA Board of Directors; and a past President of the Great Lakes Area .Net User Group. David has presented at many of the conferences and user groups around the Midwest. He is a recovering certification addict and holds an MCTS, MCSD, MCSE, and MCDBA, as well as a BS and an MBA. He is the host and producer of the mildly popular online TV show Technology and Friends. He is the co-author of the Wrox book Real World .NET, C#, and Silverlight. You can read his latest thoughts at www.DavidGiard.com. David lives in Michigan with his two teenage sons.
Jim Weirich: Connascence Explained
When: May 29, 2012
Connascence (noun) is defined as (1) the common birth of two or more at the same tome; production of two or more together, (2) That which is born or produced with another, or (3) the act of growing together.
In software, connascence is a rough measurement of the amount of coupling amount the components of a software system. Components that are "born" together will often need to change together over time. Excessive connascence in our software means that the system is hard to change and hard to maintain.
At least that's the theory. How well does connascence hold up as a measurement tool in evaluating real software? In this talk, we will examine real software examples to illustrate the various aspects of connascence in your code base.
About Jim Weirich
Jim Weirich first learned about computers when his college adviser suggested he take a computer science course: "It will be useful, and you might enjoy it." With those prophetic words, Jim has been developing now for over 25 years, working with everything from crunching rocket launch data on supercomputers to wiring up servos and LEDs on micro-controllers. Currently he loves working in Ruby and Rails as the Chief Scientist at EdgeCase, but you can also find him strumming on his ukulele as time permits.
Dan Klyn - Establishing what "good" means with performance continuums
When: April 24, 2012
In our information architecture work at The Understanding Group we typically conclude the discovery phase of a project with an "alignment session." The objective of this meeting is to develop understanding and consensus within the core client team on key matters of business and experience strategy. Early in our formation we took on a client with profound alignment challenges, and as we scrambled to adapt our nascent process to the situation at hand, we borrowed the idea of "performance continuums" from Richard Saul Wurman's work in the 1970s and ended up with a repeatable methodology that's now a formal part of TUG's discovery process. In 45 action-packed minutes of presentation I'll share the case study from whence TUG's adaptation of this tool emerged, the historical context Mr. Wurman birthed it in, and guidelines for using it in your projects.
About the presenter
Dan Klyn is an information architect and co-founder of The Understanding Group. A native son of West Michigan, Dan's time is spent across TUG offices in Ann Arbor and Grand Rapids and across the country in service of clients including Herman Miller, Thomson Reuters, Macy's and Travelocity. Dan is currently serving on the board of directors of the Information Architecture Institute and he teaches information architecture at the School of Information at the University of Michigan.
Change of Topic - Zach Dennis: "Sand Piles and Software"
When: March 27, 2012
We received notice that unfortunately our originally scheduled speaker is out sick and will be unable to speak. Taking up the torch on very short notice (Thanks Zach!) is Grand Rapids local, entrepreneur, and author Zach Dennis.
Our originally scheduled speakerfor March, Lisamarie Babik, has had to cancel due to illness, so Lisamarie will not be joining us. Instead, Grand Rapids local, entrepreneur, author, and engineer Zach Dennis will be presenting "Sand Piles and Software":
This talk applies a concept from the realm of complex systems to software development using the Bak-Tang-Wiesenfeld sand pile model as the vehicle for exploration. The sand pile model, which can be use to show how a complex system is attracted to living on the edge of chaos, will be used as a both a powerful metaphor and analogy for the process of building software. Software, it turns out, has its own natural attractions to its chaos. In this talk, we'll look at what this means and its implications.
The speaker's hypothesis is that is that by better understanding how complex systems work we can gain insights to better understand and improve the act of building software. This thoughtprovoking perspective will leave you with new ways to think about software development as well as new ways to question it.
About the speaker
Zach is a software craftsman and partner at Mutually Human and with over ten years of experience in professional software development. He believes strongly in taking a pragmatic and practical approach to both software development and testing processes, and is a published contributor to The RSpec Book. He can be found at Continuous Thinking and on Twitter at @zachdennis.
Lisamarie Babik & Ted Layher: Are you a team player?
When: March 27, 2012
If you’ve ever been on a job interview, there’s one question you knew you were going to be asked. You may have even practiced your response.
Finally they asked, “Are you a team player?”
Did you tell the truth?
Experience shows that there is a wide chasm between SAYING you are a team player during an interview and actually BEING a team player in the workplace. Now that the interview is over, how do you help yourself – or others – close the gap?
It starts with the hard work of building TRUST and SELF-CONFIDENCE in your team, of eliminating the FEAR of MAKING MISTAKES.
And practice. Lots and lots of practice.
This session is based on hard-learned lessons from our embarrassingly long careers in the software industry. Come. Benefit from our mistakes. Learn how to make your own team better and maybe, just maybe, you can look your interviewer in the eye next time you answer, “Yes.”
About the speakers
Lisamarie Babik has traveled the USA, Canada, Panama, and Mexico speaking about Agile and its relationship with formal project management. Her presentation style has been described as “wise, honest, humorous, passionate, and knowledgeable,” all of which she consider important factors to a successful presentation. She has been working full-time with Agile teams for about a decade and has worked in the software industry for twenty-*cough*-four years. She holds the Project Management Professional (PMP) credential from the Project Management Institute and is active in several PMI chapters and special interest groups.
Ted Layher is currently a senior software developer at Menlo Innovations with 7 years experience in agile projects. His professional career started in the middle of the dot com bubble and has survived despite several company’s best efforts. Ted’s career began as a unix systems administrator working for a large automotive corporation and small local companies . He has enjoyed evolving into a software developer. Ted brings an interesting mix of operational, systems knowledge and Test Driven Development skills to the team. He influences the team through excellent coaching skills. Ted has a bachelor’s degree in Computer Science from Eastern Michigan University.
Andy Keller: When should you reinvent the wheel?
When: February 28, 2012
When creating software, whether it be a small website or a large custom platform, you repeatedly face the build vs buy dilemma. Should you use raw sockets or a web framework that already speaks HTTP? Should you write javascript directly against the DOM or use a library like jQuery? Should you write a graphing library or find one on the web? Sometimes the answer seems obvious, but making the wrong decision can increase cost, time, complexity, maintenance and support.
In this talk I will start by framing the problem and will provide guidance for making the right decision while avoiding simple cliches like "don't reinvent the wheel". I will then go through specific examples from my experience working on a large mature codebase for a product that evolved considerably over more than 15 years. You'll be surprised by some of our decisions and what we learned from them.
About the Presenter
Andy Keller is the Director of Engineering for Traction Software and principal developer of the Traction TeamPage collaboration and knowledge sharing application.
In his 13 years with Traction, Andy has grown the product from a proof-of-concept to an award-winning platform used by hundreds of organizations globally in a variety of industries, including consulting, industrial manufacturing, pharmaceutical, education, military, law enforcement, and many state and federal government agencies.
Andy holds a patent for his contributions to the collaboration space and was involved in developing blogs and wikis as early as 1998, long before mainstream popularity.
Andy graduated with honors from Brown University with a degree in Math-Computer Science specializing in artificial intelligence.
Patrick Foley - A Developer's Guide to the Ever-Changing Cloud
When: January 31, 2012
"The cloud" is an area of rapid transformation - major vendors release new functionality every month ... what does it all mean? How can you take advantage of it? As a developer, why would you tend to gravitate toward alternatives from Microsoft, Amazon, Google, Rackspace, VMWare, Heroku, or others? Patrick Foley, ISV Architect Evangelist with Microsoft, provides an overview of the cloud, discusses the competitive landscape, and illustrates the key variations of Software as a Service (SaaS), Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS), and Platform as a Service (PaaS) as well as public and private cloud options.
About Patrick Foley
Patrick Foley is an ISV Architect Evangelist with Microsoft, which means he helps other software companies succeed building on the Microsoft platform. In addition to working with hundreds of partners, large and small, Patrick cohosts the Startup Success Podcast with Bob Walsh and produces Smart Bear Live with Jason Cohen.
Justin DeWind - iOS Development
When: November 29, 2011
iOS development has become increasingly popular in the past four years since the introduction of the first iPhone. That popularity has created a vibrant developer community that has introduced a number of great third-party libraries. It has pushed Apple to innovate and improve iOS and its development environment.
During this presentation I will give tour of new features in iOS 5 and explore popular third-party libraries. Participants will be given concrete technical examples and the opportunity to follow along and ask questions.
About Justin DeWind
Justin has been with Atomic Object since 2005 and holds a B.S. in Computer Information Systems from GVSU. He is one of the developers responsible for the widely-used ArtPrize iPhone application.