Revamped and renewed for Spring, the Craftsman Software Guild is back and ready to go. Join the group for computer programmers on Wednesday, May 20th from 7-9PM. The Guild is meeting at a new location, upstairs at Cafe March 21 Bean n Leaf at 480 Pelissier Street, downtown Windsor.
7:00 – 8:00PM – Hack n’ Hang
8:00 – 9:00PM – Talks for Techs
Randy Topliffe Presents “Cat.gif: How to Make Your Cat Internet Famous”
Walk through the programming steps of converting video into awesome gifs by using VLC to take screenshots and working with subtitle files to add text. Randy will be your guide to understanding the process of creating the next viral .gifsensation.
Nerd Meter: Intermediate
Anthony Garreffa Presents “JavaScript: The Fun Parts”
This will be a beginner to intermediate talk about the JavaScript language. It will be a discussion on the parts of the language that defy intuition, but lend to the expressiveness of JavaScript.
Nerd Meter: Beginner – Intermediate
Monthly Maptimes are back in effect! Maptime Windsor-Essex will be meeting on Thursday, 7pm, April 23rd, Fred Israel Room, in the basement of the Windsor Public Library Central Branch (850 Ouellette Ave).
Maptime is simply time set aside to learn how to make maps together. While you are welcome to bring your laptop if you would like to work on something or would like help with something your working on, for this month’s meeting, we’re setting time for the absolute beginner and there will be a presentation on Web mapping by Mita Williams.
Web Mapping: moving from maps on the web to maps of the web
The transition from paper maps to digital maps was a profound one. It was such a sea change that the current shift from Digital Mapping to Web Mapping may have escaped notice even through it brings a fundamental shift of its own. This presentation will introduce you to the new tools of web mapping. These tools allow for new forms of journalism, citizen activism, and scholarship. Web mapping allows more people to tell more stories with maps. This presentation will help you tell yours.”
Saturday, April 11th, Hackforge presents Analog Synthesis: a workshop on the science of electronics creating sound. From 2-5PM at the Fred Israel Auditorium, located in the basement of the Central Branch of the Windsor Public Library (850 Ouellette Ave), Hackforgers Aaron Mavrinac, Nik Steel, and Paul Anderson will guide you to the world of synthesizers.
Join us for a discussion of how electronics are used to manipulate the components of sound to create things the ear has never heard before. Come out and play with modular and monophonic music synthesizers and learn how it all comes together in the music you love.
This event is great for beginners to synthesizers.
Suitable for ages 10 & up.
Sunday, February 22nd wrapped up the weeklong Press Play: Data-Journalism Hackathon at the downtown Green Bean Cafe. Four teams, made up of St. Clair College and University of Windsor students, created four different interactive visualizations about Windsor data.
In honour of Open Data Day, we challenged teams to take on open Windsor Data. Our overall winning team, Cornelius and Clara, visualized the distance to bus stops around Windsor and the barriers it creates. Lauren and Akindele, winning Best Piece of Journalism, went around town to challenge Windsorites to understand the budget and imagined a more interactive, clear version. Best Use of Windsor Data went to Zule and Steven, who broke down election statistics from the last municipal election by number and area. And finally, Most Creative Project went to Amanda and hackathon veteran, Meghan for their exploration of accessibly to local tourist attractions by bus or bike.
Best Overall Team:
Cornelius Froese & Clara Benedek
“Transportation in Windsor”
Best Piece of Journalism:
Lauren Hedges & Akindele Faulkner
“Visualizing Windsor’s Annual Budget”
Best Use of Windsor Data:
Steven Espinoza & Zule Li
“Election Web: Windsor Municipal Election 2014”
Most Creative Project:
Meghan O’Donnell & Amanda Sinasac
“Can We Bus it to the Beach?”
Thanks to our judges: Blake Roberts, Don McArthur, Aisling Douglas, and Bob Price.
Press Play was created with support from EPICentre, Open Data Windsor Essex, Ontario Trillium Foundation, Ontario Centres of Excellence (OCE), Ontario Network of Entrepreneurs (ONE) and WEtech Alliance.
This Sunday, February 22nd, join us for the final reveal of Press Play: Data-Journalism Hackathon. The event takes place at the downtown Green Bean Cafe (300 Ouellette Ave) from 1-3PM. Student teams are working this week to create interactive visualization about open data from Windsor. This event is free and open to the public.
This event is in celebration of Open Data Day and encourages Windsor students to take a look at the local data available to them. Teams, made up of one coder and one journalist, are taking the data and creating news stories within interactive visualizations. This is Hackforge’s first hackathon with a journalism element.
Teams will be competing to win Best Use of Windsor Data, Most Creative Project, Best Piece of Journalism, and Best Overall Team. Our judges determining the winners will be:
Bob Price – Technical Support Analyst at the City of Windsor Aisling Douglas – UI/UX Designer & Computer Girls Program Facilitator and Instructor Donald McArthur – Assistant Managing Editor, Digital at The Windsor Star Blake Roberts – Program Chair of Digital Journalism at the University of Windsor
Press Play was created by University student Lauren Hedges and Hackforge, with support from EPICentre, Open Data Windsor Essex, Ontario Trillium Foundation, Ontario Centres of Excellence (OCE), Ontario Network of Entrepreneurs (ONE) and WEtech Alliance.
