Category Archives: Ann Arbor

AAJUG meeting on Java Expert System Shell (JESS) tonight, March 24

The Ann Arbor Java User Group meeting is tonight, Tuesday, March 24, from 6:39-9:30 pm.  Jason Morris will be speaking on an "Introduction to the Java Expert System Shell (JESS).  The meeting is held at

Washtenaw Community College, WCC BE250

Presentation Title:
Introduction to the Java Expert System Shell (JESS)
 

Summary:
Sandia National Laboratory's Jess is a rule engine implemented in Java and based on the Rete pattern-matching algorithm.  The entire Jess distribution consists of the Jess API, a LISP-like scripting language (also called Jess), and an integrated development environment called the JessDE which is an Eclipse plugin.  Any Java developers who write complex business logic will benefit from this talk.  Business rules will be mentioned, but not glorified as the canonical example of Jess's abilities. 

If you want to learn how to add powerful reasoning capability to your Java applications, then this talk is for you.

Keywords:  artificial intelligence, CLIPS, expert systems, inferencing, knowledge engineering, knowledge-base, LISP, rules, rule engine, rulebases

Speaker Bio:
Jason Morris is the owner of Morris Technical Solutions LLC, specializing in Java web-application development and rule-engine applications.  He has more than 15 years in the software engineering field, spanning many application domains and comprising many different functional roles.  Currently, Jason is involved with the USAF to semantically enable human resources information systems via custom ontologies.  He is also a technical marketing and services consultant for Sandia National Laboratories, where he provides custom training and development services for licensees of Jess, the Java Expert Systems Shell (www.jessrules.com).  His latest joint-development effort with the University of Sydney (Australia) is a rule-based expert system called SINFERS for computation of soil properties from field data.

 

From 2006-2007, Jason was a GAAN Fellow at Worcester Polytechnic Institute in Massachusetts where he was pursuing a PhD in Computer Science and working on Intelligent Tutoring Systems.  He holds a B.S. in Applied Engineering Sciences from Michigan State University, a B.S. in Mechanical Engineering from Michigan Technological University, and a M.S. in Engineering and Technology Management from Portland State University.

Lightning talks tomorrow (and a special guest!)

As we normally do on every other Friday, SRT Solutions will hold lightning talks tomorrow at our office.  But THIS WEEK, we have a special guest.  Catherine Devlin, one of our favorite python developers and PyCon and PyOhio organizers, will be joining us!  I first met Catherine at CodeMash 2007,and am thrilled that she's making her way "up north" (from Dayton) this week.  Catherine came to one of our first lightning talks last year.  She always has something interesting to say.

As always, I'm looking forward to lightning talks!  Please join us.

Lightning talks are our way of keeping up to date with what the other SRT developers are doing, as well as what the other developers in the community are doing.  We love it when outside people attend.  People come to listen and to speak (no one is forced to speak).  We'll start at 3:30, with people writing their topics on the whiteboard.  Then we'll start, giving each presenter 5 minutes to talk about the topic of his or her choice, before moving on to the next one.  It's great fun and very informative.

SRT Solutions is at 206 S. Fifth Ave., Suite 200, Ann Arbor.  That's at the corner of Fifth Avenue and Washington.  Entrance to our building is from Fifth.  Take elevator to 2R or take stairs PAST Suite 225 to Suite 200.

Lightning talks at SRT Solutions on Friday

I wanted to remind Ann Arborites and those nearby, that SRT Solutions is continuing with Lightning Talk Fridays, and the next event is on Friday, January 30.  Lightning talks are a series of 5 minute talks about any tech topic (no powerpoint necessary, although some people use it).   Anyone can speak, anyone can come just to listen.

We'll start at around 3:30 pm and go until about 5.

We really never know who will show up, or what will be discussed.  But it's always interesting …

Join us!

Ann Arbor events this week: Continuous Integration and Lightning Talks

Jay Harris will be speaking at the Ann Arbor .NET Developer Group Meeting tomorrow night, October 8.  The topic is Continuous Integration.  Join us at SRT Solutions, 206 S. Fifth, Suite 200.  The meeting is open to everyone and free (donations taken for pizza).  The meeting starts at 6 pm.

On Friday, SRT's Lightning Talks will be held, from 3:30-5 pm.  Also open to all, lightning talks are 5 minute discussions on the topic of your choice. Please come, but don't go over the 5 minutes or you'll get buzzed with a kitchen timer.

 

Lightning talks at SRT on Friday 8/29 from 3:30-5:00 pm

Once again, SRT is hosting lightning talks from 3:30 to 5 on Friday, August 29.  Come to listen, or come to talk at this series of 5 minute talks.  Everyone is welcome to attend, anyone is welcome to speak.  We believe that the entire Ann Arbor community benefits from knowing what others in the area are working on, and what they're learning about.

Hope to see you there!

Ann Arbor Java User Group meeting tonight (8/26)

The Ann Arbor Java User Group is meeting tonight, at Washtenaw Community College, BE 270.  The topic is Java FX, and speaker is Jim Weaver.  The meeting starts around 6:30, with some informal networking.

I was really hoping to attend.  Looks like a great talk!  Unfortunately, I have a conflict tonight.  I'm hoping someone blogs the talk!

Ann Arbor area events this week: JRuby and lightning talks

On Tuesday April 22, Joe O'Brien, famed Ruby developer and Columbus area business owner, will be speaking at the Ann Arbor Java User Group.  He will be discussing JRuby, Ruby that runs on the Java Virtual Machine (JVM).  Sun is putting a lot of resources toward dynamic languages on the JVM.  First, they hired 2 JRuby developers.  Just recently, they hired 2 Jython developers.  Microsoft is similarly loading up, for IronPython and IronRuby.

Anyhow, come out on Tuesday and hear Joe talk about JRuby.  The meeting starts at 7:30 pm at Washtenaw Community College (room BE260), but come early for the networking at 7:00.  Pizza and soft drinks will be provided. 

 And, on Friday April 25, SRT is continuing with the bi-weekly lightning talks.  We're mixing up the format a bit, going to a more traditional lightning talk length of 5 minutes (we had previously allowed 10, but we've babied everyone long enough!).  Instead of starting at 3, we're going to start at 3:30.  But we have an open door policy, so if you break free at 4 and want to stop by, just DO!  This week, we'll have snacks.  It's Nate's last day of working as our intern.  We're sad that he's leaving, but we know that he will do GREAT in Manhattan.

Upcoming Tech Events in the Ann Arbor area (and Ohio!)

Yes, it's the first week of the month again.  The Ann Arbor Computer Society meeting is tomorrow night, April 2, at 6 pm.  Jay Wren will be speaking on the Boo Programming Language and DSLs (Domain Specific Languages).  Boo is a statically typed language that runs on the CLR.  It has Python-inspired syntax. 

AACS meetings are free and open to the public.  Pizza will be provided.   Meeting will be held at SRT Solutions' offices, at 206 S. Fifth Ave, Suite 200.  That's at the corner of Fifth Ave and Liberty, just above the Linux Box.  Take the elevator to 2R or come up the stairs and wind around to the right side of the elevator.

On Thursday April 3 at 7:00 pm, the Michigan Python User Group will meet to discuss EasyExtend, which allows you to extend Python syntax.  New documentation tools may be discussed as well.  Like AACS, the MichiPUG meetings are free and open to the public, and held at SRT Solutions.  Pizza will NOT be served, but people often go out after the meeting.

Next week, on Monday, April 7, there is a Flex Camp in Cleveland, Ohio.  Go to http://flexcampcleveland.com/ for registration and more information.  Looks like a fun and interesting event.

On Wednesday, April 9, the Ann Arbor Dot Net Developer Group will meet, at SRT Solutions. Bill Wagner will be talking about how to make good use of the new releases in Visual Studio 2008.  Meeting is free, starts at 6, is at SRT, and yes, there will be pizza.

Non-technical sessions at the Java Posse Roundup

I decided to break out my summaries from sessions that I attended at the Java Posse Roundup into technical and non-technical sessions.  Last year, I don't recall going to many non-technical sessions. This year, however, I actually attended several, including:

  • Ten Mistakes Not to Make in a Startup
  • Hiring and Retaining Technical Talent
  • Creating a New Company Structure for Programmers
  • Organizing Community Based Conferences
  • Networking for Geeks

I enjoyed each of these sessions and learned something in each as well.  I hope that others blog about them as well, because I will confess to enjoying myself too much to take good notes in most of them!  And, of course, the Java Posse will release each of these sessions on the podcast, and I definitely think that they will be worth a listen.

In "Ten Mistakes", it became evident that a lot of the attendees have been involved in startups (and were OK about revealing battle scars). I thought that one thing that Joe Nuxoll said really nailed it.  He said something along the lines of each company crashing and burning and what a great experience it was.  I know that I learned a lot from crashing and burning in a startup.  For one thing, I really did learn to reframe risk taking.  When I was younger, startups seemed "risky" and I probably wouldn't have gone out on my own to consult.  But after my startup experience, I recalled that my dad's career job disappeared in the 1980's, and what he thought was stable for life was absolutely not that.  That sort of led me down the path to realization that in consulting, at least, *I* am in charge of my own destiny.  *I* know when there aren't contracts out there and it's *my* responsibility to do something about that.  As an employee, it's easy to become complacent, to think that the company is "stable" and will be there as long as YOU want to work there.  In fact, projects get cancelled all of the time, and departments go away.  As Barry Hawkins said (paraphrasing), "As a consultant, I'm very aware that I could be fired at any moment".  All of the decisions I make relate to that: the work that I take on, my savings, etc.  There's a lot of content in this session, and I definitely would urge people to listen to it when the Java Posse releases the audio for the session.

As a result of the "Ten Mistakes" session, I talked to Sean Landis and convinced him to convene a session on "Hiring and Retaining Technical Talent".  Overstock.com, where Sean works, has been hiring a lot of people, and this was an interesting discussion.  We talked a lot about how they hire (recruiters, online advertising, etc.) and contrasted that with how we hire (mainly word of mouth, user groups).     We also talked a lot about what it takes to keep employees happy, including compensation, training, flexibilty, etc.  Overall it was a great discussion, and at the end we tried to brainstorm a bit about what we COULD do rather than what we ARE doing.

 "Creating a New Business Structure for Programmers" was a brainstorming session convened by Bruce Eckel about how companies might organize to satisfy the needs of programmers.  I listened to "Representing the Socially Responsible Enterrpise (B Labs)" on Entrepreneurial Thought Leaders podcast, while in transit to the conference, and while I don't know enough about it, it's definitely an interesting thought.  A lot of discussions centered around loose organization, for a particular job (akin to the Hollywood model for films). I didn't think of it at the time, but a few things came to mind later, like an organization that an Ann Arbor group put together: http://notanemployee.net/.

 From the time that I learned Stephan Janssen had signed up for the Java Posse Roundup, I started looking forward to talking to him about "Organizing Community Based Conferences".  For the past 7 years, Stephan has organized JavaPolis in Belgium. It has grown to over 3000 attendees, which really turned my head, considering that CodeMash (which I help organize) attracts 300-400 attendees and I find the organization pretty overwhelming.  What Stephan has done with JavaPolis is humbling.  We talked a lot about the different conferences and I asked a million questions about how Stephan accomplishes this feat.  I can't wait to listen to this session on the podcast since Stephan had a lot of great advice.  FYI, his lightning talk on promotional ideas for JavaPolis was amusing (albeit R-rated at times).

"Networking for Geeks" came out of both the "Ten Mistakes …" session and some work that I have been doing with Ann Arbor SPARK in terms of helping them figure out how to help the local tech community in Ann Arbor.  In "Ten Mistakes", Joe Nuxoll mentioned how he interacts with the venture capitalists in the Bay Area.  I just don't see that happening here in Ann Arbor.  I guess that there are people who do this, but I don't see it.  I elicited some giggles with my (typical) comparison of traditional networking events with speed dating.  Others weren't quite as repulsed by such networking events. Barry Hawkins and Joe Nuxoll reminded us that user group meetings are NOT networking. People go and listen to the speaker and a few people stand around in the back, talking afterward, but it's not networking. Barry has done something interesting with the Atlanta Java User Group, by inviting everyone to dinner across the street before the meeting.  Contrasted with providing pizza AT the meetings, which people pretty much agreed only brings in the "free pizza crowd", the people who show up to pay for their OWN burritoes evidently are interested in talking.  My husband tells me that a meeting at a brew pub is even more effective (he's held meetings at Corner Brewery in Ypsilanti and people tended to stay afterward for long discussions).  Interesting.  I'm going to have to think more about this. The Python User Group usually adjorns to ABC after meetings.  Maybe they're onto something!  Jim White proposed a technology solution for bringing in people who can't attend and also to attract a younger crowd.  I had a really hard time seeing his point, because for ME, it's all about personal connections with people, and I can't see how this can be effectively accomplished without that personal contact.  I'm on some social networking groups, but they generally only enhance my in-person contact rather than replace it.

Anyhow, I think that's it for the non-technical sessions that I attended.

Next up: technical sessions, including "Why is Agile Hard", "Future of Java", and "What's Scala Missing?".  Also, we video'ed all of the lightning talks and the Posse has promised to get them up on YouTube (along with a very amusing Crested Butte cross country skiing experience). 

 

 

Flex meeting tonight, March 10 at SPARK

An Ann Arbor area Flex meeting is being held tonight, at SPARK.  It's free, and open to all. 

Topic:
Flex: Rich Internet Application (RIA) Demos and Case Studies

Join users of Flex, and others interested in Flex to view demos of Flex applications and talk about how companies are using Flex. Nick Kwiatkowski, manager of the Michigan Flex User's Group will be the guest speaker.

If you're interested in participating in an Adobe Flex User's Group, this meeting will include discussion around starting an official group and talk about its organization. 

If you would like to be involved, please plan on attending this meeting!

Speaker:
Nick Kwiatkowski, manager of the Michigan Flex User's Group (Lansing area)

Date:
Monday, March 10, 2008

Time:
6-8 p.m.

Location:
SPARK Central-330 E. Liberty, Ann Arbor

Cost:
FREE

http://www.annarborspark.org/events/event-calendar/Index.cfm?i=