3D Printer Club: RepRap Wilson 2 Assembly Demo
Saturday, January 6 @ 11:45 AM | Facebook | Meetup
Please join us this Saturday, January 6 at 11:45am to see the beginning stages of the assembly of a 3D Printer Kit. Led by Jeffrey Drake, the 3D Printer Club welcomes you to an afternoon showing how the RepRap Wilson 2 Kit is assembled. The kits are available online for about $500.00 USD.
Social Coding
Wednesday, January 10 @ 7 PM | Facebook | Meetup
Come on out with your laptop, bring a project or a tutorial to work on, and write some code in social presence with your fellow Hackforgers. If you need a hand or some guidance, mentors will be there to lend a hand.
Board Game Night
Friday, January 19 @ 7 PM | Facebook | Meetup
Join us for some of our favourite board games, or bring your own! Come on in and we’ll get you set up with a game and a group to play with as soon as there’s an opening. This event is open to anyone and the earlier you arrive the quicker you’ll get into a group playing a game.
The holidays may be over but the lights don’t have to stop! We have some addressable LED light strips. Let’s make ’em shine and experiment with different lighting effects. Feel free to bring your own Arduino and a laptop. A few will be available for use. All experience levels welcome!
Project Management Group
Monday, January 22 @ 7 PM | Facebook | Meetup
This group is for all professionals from any industry, and business owners tocome together and exchange ideas and good practices in Project Management, Agile Product Development and Process Improvement, in a fun and relaxed atmosphere.
Tech Talk: AI for Zero-Sum Games
Monday, January 29, 2018 @ 7PM | Facebook | Meetup
This month, Doug Sartori is delivering the first in a short series covering classic AI algorithms with ‘AI for Zero-Sum Games’.
Book Club: Too Like the Lightning by Ada Palmer
Tuesday, January 30 @ 7 PM | Facebook | Meetup
Read Too Like the Lightning by Ada Palmer, and join us at this event to chat about it!
Goodreads says, “Mycroft Canner is a convict. For his crimes he is required, as is the custom of the 25th century, to wander the world being as useful as he can to all he meets. Carlyle Foster is a sensayer – a spiritual counselor in a world that has outlawed the public practice of religion, but which also knows that the inner lives of humans cannot be wished away.
The world into which Mycroft and Carlyle have been born is as strange to our 21st-century eyes as ours would be to a native of the 1500s. It is a hard-won utopia built on technologically-generated abundance, and also on complex and mandatory systems of labelling all public writing and speech. What seem to us normal gender distinctions are now distinctly taboo in most social situations. And most of the world’s population is affiliated with globe-girdling clans of the like-minded, whose endless economic and cultural competition is carefully managed by central planners of inestimable subtlety. To us it seems like a mad combination of heaven and hell. To them, it seems like normal life.
And in this world, Mycroft and Carlyle have stumbled on the wild card that may destablize the system: the boy Bridger, who can effortlessly make his wishes come true. Who can, it would seem, bring inanimate objects to life…”
Angular and React are two very popular and powerful Javascript frameworks that allow you to organize your Javascript code better.
In this tech talk John Haldeman will show side-by-side examples of both Angular and React from two of his side projects. Attend the talk to see where the frameworks do things similarly and where they differ.
Windsor-Essex .NET Developers: Building Distributed Systems with Orleans Wednesday, January 31 @ 6:30 PM | Facebook | Meetup
Come out and learn about building cloud applications using virtual actors using the Microsoft Orleans framework, presented by Windsor-Essex .NET Developers.
Orleans is a framework that provides a straightforward approach to building distributed high-scale computing applications, without the need to learn and apply complex concurrency or other scaling patterns. It was created by Microsoft Research and designed for use in the cloud.
Orleans has been used extensively in Microsoft Azure by several Microsoft product groups, most notably by 343 Industries as a platform for all of Halo 4 and Halo 5 cloud services, as well as by a growing number of other companies.
Food: We will have food (usually pizza & soda) for free. Thank you to Microsoft for being a financial sponsor.
Giveaways: JetBrains! We will be giving away a 1 year license to any JetBrains IDE or Tool. Thank you JetBrains for the support.
Networking: Feel free to join us afterwards at Craftheads for some refreshments while talking shop and socializing.
Contact: Derek Comartin (derek@codeopinion.com)
Cost: Free (Open to the public). Feel free to invite a friend!
Makers Meetup: Metal Engraving and 3D Model Finishing
Wednesday, December 13 @ 7 PM | Facebook | Meetup
Meet up with local Makers for a double header presentation! Paul Anderson will demonstrate and talk about his metal engraving hobby, and Jeffrey Drake will show some initial stages of finishing 3d printed models.
Board Game Night
Friday, December 15 @ 7 PM | Facebook | Meetup
Join us for some of our favourite board games, or bring your own! Come on in and we’ll get you set up with a game and a group to play with as soon as there’s an opening. This event is open to anyone and the earlier you arrive the quicker you’ll get into a group playing a game.
Book Club: The Man In The High Castle, Phillip K. Dick
Tuesday, December 19 @ 7 PM | Facebook | Meetup
Originally scheduled for November, but moved to December to give everyone more time to read the book.
Read The The Man In The High Castle, by Phillip K. Dick, and join us at this event to chat about it!
Goodreads says, “It’s America in 1962. Slavery is legal once again. The few Jews who still survive hide under assumed names. In San Francisco the I Ching is as common as the Yellow Pages. All because some 20 years earlier the United States lost a war, and is now occupied jointly by Nazi Germany and Japan.”
Topic TBA, but you can bet it’ll be good. Derek always has some great talks lined up! Feel free to join everyone afterwards for some refreshments while talking shop and socializing, too! Check out the Facebook event to get updates on the topic.
Taking a Holiday
The following monthly meet-ups are taking a break in December, but will be back in January:
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.
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
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.”
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.
Creating A Digital Theremin With JavaScript Tuesday, August 1 7:00pm
This workshop will provide an introduction to coding in p5.js and JavaScript to turn your smartphone into a digital theremin. This workshop simplifies programming with p5.js and allows you to begin creating your own interactive project. A fun accessible way to learn coding. All required software is free and open source. Please bring a laptop and smartphone device. Facebook Event Meetup Event
Getting Interactive With Ableton Live Thursday, August 3 7:00pm
Summer Art Festival ’17 presents an AbletonLive demonstration workshop showcasing how David Bergeron uses Max4Live and various tools to incorporate interactivity into creating electronic music, giving a chance to see some of the possible ways of navigating the technologies. Facebook Event Meetup Event
Open Coding Wednesday, August 9 7:00pm
Work on a project, socialize with other devs, get help with a tutorial or show off your latest creation. Facebook Event Meetup Event
3D Printing Club Saturday, August 12 1:00pm The Flash Forge Creator Pro is now ready for action! Learn how to operate the 3D printer we have at Hackforge. In addition, bring your ideas for our first ever Mini Modelling Contest! You can use your new modelling skills to create a 3D printed design and compete to win prizes this Fall. Facebook Event Meetup Event
Board Game Night Friday, August 18 7:00pm
Join us for some of our favourite board games, or bring your own! Facebook Event Meetup Event
Electronics Club: Creating Your Own Circuit Boards Saturday, August 19 1:00pm
Do you have an interest in creating your own circuit boards? Stepan Tuzlov will briefly talk about printed circuit board production as well as share his industry experience in preparing a PCB layout for low volume print. He will demonstrate PCB layout concepts to accommodate for manufacturability and cost. He will also briefly talk about pros and cons of “auto router” feature in CAD software. Facebook Event Meetup Event
AWS Users Group Thursday, August 24 7:00pm In this second meetup, we’ll deep dive into IAM (Identity and Access Management) Roles and Policies. Come join us and become an IAM policy ninja. Facebook Event Meetup Event
Border City Data Monday, August 28 7:00pm
Border City Data teaches aspiring data professionals the ins and outs of wrangling data to find useful insights. August’s Topic will be announced soon! Facebook Event Meetup Event
Book Club: Makers by Corey Doctorow Tuesday, August 29 7:00pm “Barefoot bankers cross the nation, microinvesting in high-tech communal mini-startups like Perry and Lester’s. Together, they transform the country, and Andrea Fleeks, a journo-turned-blogger, is there to document it.” – Goodreads
Software Guild: Lightning Talks! Wednesday, August 30 7:00pm A full slate of speakers will spend 5 minutes each telling you and each other about something cool they know, discovered, learned, built or love. Want to share your own 5 minute talk? Slides optional, email jeff at hackf dot org to secure a slot. Facebook Event Meetup Event
*N.B Project Management Group and .NET Developers will be taking the summer off*
Repair The World (FIELD TRIP) Tuesday, July 4 7:00pm at Green Sun Rising Solar
Meet us at Green Sun Rising Solar for a tour of their space, where they develop solar electricity and thermal systems. Facebook event Meetup Event
Canada150 Indie Game Showcase Thursday, July 6 7:00pm
Play and discover truly homegrown games. A group of local programmers, artists and game developers are celebrating Canada’s 150th anniversary by showcasing a collection of Canada themed video games they have created for the occasion. Facebook event Meetup Event
Board Game Night Friday, July 7 7:00pm
Join us for some of our favourite board games, or bring your own! Facebook Event Meetup Event
Open Coding Wednesday, July 12 7:00pm
Work on a project, socialize with other devs, get help with a tutorial or show off your latest creation. Facebook Event Meetup Event
AWS Users Group Thursday, July 20 7:00pm
Learn how Amazon Web Services handles security, the foundation of your future AWS infrastructure. Facebook Event Meetup Event
Border City Data: Connecting Data (Data Basics 2) Monday, July 24 7:00pm
One of the ways we derive value from data is by connecting it to related data sets. In this beginner-friendly session, Doug Sartori will explain the concepts and demonstrate joining related data with Excel and SQL. Facebook Event Meetup Event
Book Club Tuesday, July 25 7:00pm
Read William Gibson’s The Peripheral and join us at this event to chat about it. We’ll also pick the book for September. Facebook Event Meetup Event
Software Guild: Web APIs and Linux Containers Wednesday, July 26 7:00pm Topics: how to design an HTTP API that looks less like your database tables and how to use Linux Containers (LXD) to scale your infrastructure and simulate the cloud on your laptop. Facebook Event Meetup Event
*N.B Project Management Group and .NET Developers will be taking the summer off*
