At 7:00 pm on March 13, 2018, Windsor Hackforge will hold its Annual General Meeting (AGM) at 255 Ouellette Avenue, Windsor, Ontario.
At this meeting, all members deemed to be in good standing (up to date with member dues) as of March 1st, 2018 are eligible to vote in the election of Directors and Volunteer Representatives.
Intents to stand as a Director or Volunteer Representative must be submitted to the Returning Officer for this election: President of the Board of Directors, Katie Facecchia. Intents must be filed via electronic mail to the Board of Directors email address: directors@hackf.org. Intents should include a covering letter to the Nomination Committee. Please include a preferred contact method, in case the Committee needs further information.
The Nomination Committee will carefully consider all intents filed and prepare a ballot for voting by members at the AGM.
There are two open Director positions up for election.
If insufficient intents are filed by the deadline, or if the Nomination Committee’s choices do not fill the ballot, nominations will be taken from the floor at the AGM.
The meeting agenda, and any other required materials, will be distributed to members at least 48 hours prior to the AGM.
Project Management Group
Monday, February 19 @ 7PM | Facebook | Meetup
This group is for all professionals from any industry, and business owners to come together and exchange ideas and good practices in Project Management, Agile Product Development and Process Improvement, in a fun and relaxed atmosphere. For February, Steve Perpich will present deux use cases of good and bad project management.
Steve has over 30 years experience in the industry and is a professional Project Manager with Beyond Blue Aerospace, as well as Account Manager for FBA.
Board Game Night
Friday, February 23 @ 7PM | 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: Too Like the Lightning by Ada Palmer
Tuesday, February 27 @ 7PM | Facebook | Meetup
We covered chapters 1 through 11 of Too Like The Lightning in January – in February we continue at our leisurely pace. Join us, catch up, and we’ll talk about the next chunk of the book.
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…”
Join the Software Guild and .Net Developers for an epic Lean Coffee – you’ll brainstorm programming or industry related topics YOU want to talk about, and we’ll shred through them in a rapid, structured discussion. Bring your favourite hot beverage.
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.
