October At Hackforge

October 16, 2017

We’re Hiring a Program Coordinator!

Hackforge is starting a new workshop series with generous help from the Libro Credit Union – TechBoost aims to improve the digital capacity of small businesses in Windsor and Essex County.

Hackforge is almost entirely volunteer run, but in order to provide this scale of community programming, we need a program coordinator to put it together and keep it running on the rails, and that kind of commitment can’t be handled by a volunteer. We’re looking to hire a program coordinator on a one-year contract at 20 hours per week to make it happen.

If you’re interested, check out the full job posting.

October Events

Detroit Tech Careers Q&A
Monday, October 16 @ 7 PM | Facebook | Meetup

Explore tech career opportunities in Detroit at a special Hackforge Q&A session with Emily Ciarvino, recruiter with U.S.-based IT staffing firm Optomi.

Rebooting Windsor: where do we stand as Project Managers?
Wednesday, October 18 @ 7 PM | Facebook | Meetup

As a follow-up to Rebooting Windsor, and the CBC story on tech jobs disappearance in Windsor-Essex, we would like to hear about the issues you have as an IT/Digital project manager.

Are those struggles the same in other industries?

Come and share your struggles and successes and let’s find solutions together.

Art & The Social Model of Disability
Thursday, October 19 @ 2:30 PM | Facebook | Meetup

David Bobier will introduce the audience to the concept of the Social Model of Disability, explore the cultural history and background and the current practices of the Deaf and Disability Arts globally, nationally and provincially.

You’ll be asked to think about the nature of diversity and inclusion in the arts, consider the excluded and imagine the notion of accessibility for all in the arts and finally to explore ideas, both independently and collaboratively, for integrating accessibility into your creative practice.

Participants will then develop an artistic work that has accessible tools built into it. These works could include sculptural objects, installations, performances.

Hackforge happily hosts this event in partnership with the University of Windsor School of Creative Arts.

Board Game Night
Friday, October 20 @ 7 PM | Facebook | Meetup

Join us for some of our favourite SPOOKY board games, or bring your own horror themed games!

This event is open to anyone and the earlier you arrive the quicker you’ll get into a group playing a game.

Electronics Club – Halloween Electronics Mash
Saturday, October 21 @ 1 PM | Facebook | Meetup

Glowing ghouls, dastardly Daleks, animatronic skulls — oh my!

Come to Hackforge to work on and demo your cool Halloween Electronics projects. Whether you have a finished product, a work in progress, or a budding idea that you’re not sure how to start, all are welcome!

Book Club: Lathe of Heaven by Ursula K. Le Guin
Tuesday, October 24 @ 7 PM | Facebook | Meetup

Read The Lathe of Heaven, by Ursula K. Le Guin, and join us at this event to chat about it!

“In a future world racked by violence and environmental catastrophes, George Orr wakes up one day to discover that his dreams have the ability to alter reality. He seeks help from Dr. William Haber, a psychiatrist who immediately grasps the power George wields. Soon George must preserve reality itself as Dr. Haber becomes adept at manipulating George’s dreams for his own purposes.”

Pick it up at Indigo, Pick it up at Amazon or get the Audiobook through Audible.

Software Guild + Windsor Essex .Net Developers, together again!
Wednesday, October 25 @ 6:30 PM | Facebook | .Net Developers Meetup | Software Guild Meetup

We are now having our Software Guild and .NET Meetups back-to-back on the same night, and everyone’s encouraged to attend for both.

Windsor-Essex .NET Developers @ 6:30PM: Reid Evans will delve into why null is dangerous, and see how code relying on exceptions can become entangled. Then we’ll see why an alternative approach produces code that has fewer defects, is more modular, is easier to test, and is easier to debug.

We will be giving away a 1 year license to any JetBrains IDE or Tool. Thank you JetBrains for the support.

Software Guild @ 7:30PM Jeff Szusz will host an open discussion about how corporate culture drives or hampers software product development. Whether you’re an employee or an employer, bring your questions or opinions about the factors that push and pull between personal freedom and solid work ethics.

Networking: Feel free to join us afterwards at Craftheads for some refreshments while talking shop and socializing.

AWS Users: Global Web Traffic Management with Amazon Route53
Thursday, October 26 @ 7 PM | Facebook | Meetup

Global companies require highly available web sites/apps that provide excellent response times. To improve the end-user experience the systems must be placed closer to users. This introduces requirements to route web traffic between many globally distributed end-points and to monitor health and utilization of those points.

At our October meetup, we are deploying several web server farms around the globe. Once our web farms are up and humming we are applying Route 53 traffic policies that will provide best response times to our global audience and make our web site highly available while taking into account any geographic restrictions we may have. We’ll also roll out a website update with no downtime just because we can.

Border City Data
Monday, October 30 @ 7 PM | Facebook | Meetup

Border City Data teaches aspiring data professionals the ins and outs of wrangling data to find useful insights. Attend to find out what Doug Sartori has in store for us this month.