2020 Talks

2020 Talks

Jan 1st, no meeting

In 2003, Mailinator.com came into being as the first "disposable" email system - that is, not a system where users have accounts - but a website that accepts email for every possible account @mailinator.com. No signup, no accounts, no privacy - completely public. The site was an instant hit and has continued to grow. With that growth, it's had a constant need to grow it's technology stack, algorithms, and infrastructure.

Today, thousands of users use Mailinator every day to sign-up for who-knows-what. Also, thousands of companies use Mailinator's Web, API, and rule system to test Email Workflow with manual and automated testing.

How do you evolve a one-person, one-server side-project to a system with tens of thousands of visitors and millions of emails per day? The answer turns out to be mostly trial, error, and a lot of fun code. This talk covers the technical evolution from it's initial implementation in 2003 (on a single overloaded server with a 10Mbps connection) to the robust system it is today. We'll cover the evolution of server infrastructure, email storage algorithms, analytics, redundancy, automated anti-abuse systems, and security.

About the Presenter

Paul is a veteran technology entrepreneur, speaker, and author. Most recently, he was Chief Technology Officer of Lendingtree.com overseeing all of technology as the company grew from 1B to 5B market cap. Prior to that, he spent 15 years in Silicon Valley working at Google, LinkedIn, and starting 5 companies of his own including Preemptive Solutions, Refresh, and Manybrain/Mailinator. He is the author of one of the first books on Java, the "Java Primer Plus". He received his Ph.D. in Computer Engineering from Syracuse University in 2004.

What are the technological underpinnings of the connected vehicle? How did this connected vehicle come about and where is it headed? How will these new services affect the driving experience and how will they impact vehicle dependent businesses in the future?

About the Presenter

Sanjay Khunger is a senior technology leader leading transformation programs and delivering business transformation through advanced technology innovation. He has over twenty years of multi-industry experience in global corporations with expertise in innovation management, transformative product delivery, architecture and technology planning, product strategy and mergers & acquisitions.

Sanjay is the Managing Partner at 2THEDGE LLC, an advisory and consultancy company that helps accelerate clients’ digital transformation through innovation, testing and experimentation as-a-service.

Sanjay was Chief Technology Officer of Sema Technologies, a product startup transforming software maintenance using machine learning. Prior to that, he was CTO for Harland Clarke Holdings, responsible for enabling business transformation and strategic growth through acquisitions and alliances, enterprise-wide architecture modernization and technology innovation. Previously, Sanjay was Chief Technologist of GM/OnStar, where he oversaw strategic technology planning and technology-enabled business services innovation.

He holds undergraduate and graduate degrees in Computer Science and a Masters in Business Administration.

Determined attackers want your data, your money, to tarnish your reputation, and sometimes to become you through identity theft. How safe is your company's data? Your personal data? We'll look at what motivates modern hackers, how to think like them, and how to use that mentality to increase your security posture. We'll consider every domain an attacker has access to (internal networks, external presence, wireless, social engineering, physical security, others) in Enterprise security as well as our personal lives. What currently keeps you up at night, and what should be keeping you up at night? This talk contains demos and plenty of stories, and attendee questions and interaction are highly encouraged.

About the Presenter

Mr. Walker has over 25 years of Information Technology experience, including 15 years of computer programming and 10 years of network security experience. He spent four years as a senior team member with the US Air Force’s Red Team, and another six providing network security expertise across multiple sectors, including government, legal, medical, financial, industrial, and others. Mr. Walker has a Bachelor’s of Science in Cybersecurity and holds an Offensive Security Certified Professional (OSCP) certification.

R and its leading IDE, RStudio (cran.r-project.org, rstudio.com) are excellent open source analysis software, usually run on the desktop.

Running them on AWS gives more power, allows long jobs to be run without tying up a local computer, and makes it easier to use on larger data sets.

This talk will cover setting up and performing basic statistical analyses using RStudio and AWS. No previous knowledge of RStudio or AWS is needed.

About the Presenter

Barry DeCicco is a practicing statistician/data scientist, working in the automotive and healthcare sector. He's analyzed data for engineers, nurses, doctors, scientists, managers on a wide variety of subjects. He has used R, Python, SAS, SPSS and SQL. His expertise is easing the pain of statistics for non-statisticians. His last job was at Stratacent as a Senior SAS Programmer at Volskwagen Credit, modeling customer satisfaction data and purchase behavior in the auto financing field.

Come experience mob programming, done remotely. Since we’re all not doing face to-to-face meetings or workshops for the foreseeable future, come learn how they can be done entirely remote, as well as the many new things this makes possible: significantly increased geographic reach, increased diversity as a result, and many more results that improve learning.

Expectation:

You will have a Zoom client installed on a machine that has a camera attached or as a part of it, and, you are encouraged in the strongest possible terms to turn said camera on for the duration of the workshop. This is integral to what allows a remote mob to function.

About the Presenter

Coach Bob (aka the Curious Agilist) has been developing, leading, coaching, and learning for more years than he cares to count. Since August of 2013 he's better known as the crazy man who offers a free full day code retreat every month in Ann Arbor.

How was your high school chemistry class? Mine was abysmal. The kids at my lab table insisted on talking over the teachers instructions. When it came time for running the experiment, we did precisely what the teacher told us not to do, we poured glycerin into the tube that was being heated. It did just what the teacher predicted, ruined the experiment. And our chances for a good grade.

Chemistry classes don’t have to be like that. In a small town in the Netherlands, students gather together in small groups at the beginning of the class to review their group’s backlog, plan the class session, and assign work. They then proceed to open their books, get the needed supplies, and run their lab experiments. At the end of the class, they review their progress and assign themselves homework if needed.

These students are using Scrum in the classroom. And from their exemplary grades, very successfully.

This workshop will run a full Scrum simulation, giving the participants hands-on experience in working in a Scrum team. Throughout the workshop we will cover the basics of Scrum, the primary roles, artifacts and events and will explore how Scrum can be used in multiple situations beyond software development.

This will be an online workshop. Be prepared to participate. Join with a computer, a camera and microphone. Your laptop’s embedded camera and microphone are fine. Headsets, ear buds, air pods, etc. are a bonus.

About the Presenters:

Tom Meloche

Tom has overseen the delivery of hundreds of Agile projects with budgets counted in the billions. He has been creating, teaching, and implementing agile methodologies for almost two decades.

Tom was a co-founder of one of the most successful little agile software development houses in the country, Menlo Innovations LLC. He consults on how to leverage ceremony, feedback, and metrics to achieve higher levels of engagement and success.

Tom is a strong advocate for Agile ceremony, something he considers a forgotten art, and authored the book Ceremony: A Profound New Method for Achieving Successful and Sustainable Change, released June 2017.

A Certified Remote Trainer, Tom also co-wrote the book Remote Work For A Better World!: Being... Productive, engaged and sane in today's turbulent times.

Helene Gidley

A co-founder of A2Agile Inc., Helene Gidley, PMP, CSM, has been working as an Agile trainer, mentor, and coach for over fifteen years. She is also a coach of coaches, leading the annual Agile Coach Retreat in Ann Arbor MI.

She has over thirty years of experience in the IT industry at Fortune 500, startups, and mid-sized companies bringing broad experience in coaching and training project teams.

Helene is the founder of Agile Groupies, a Scrum Alliance Meetup, based in Ann Arbor with over 500 members located in the southeastern Michigan and northern Ohio area, and can be found providing training and speaking at Meetups, Agile & Beyond conferences, and PMI Chapter meetings.

A Certified Remote Trainer, Helene also co-wrote the book Remote Work For A Better World!: Being... Productive, engaged and sane in today's turbulent times.

Microsoft continues to aggressively position itself as a data science leader. SQL Server now allows one to write and execute Java, R and Python code inside of SQL Server. Come and explore the new execute-external-script statement.

About the Presenters:

Phil is a programmer. He has been a programmer analyst, data communication systems engineer, DBA, Windows and UNIX system admin and consultant/mentor. He is currently coding for himself.

Slide deck and code

I started Angular with version 2. Now, Angular 10 was released on June 24th, 2020. It has only grown better in the past 4 years.

The Angular CLI adds a standard infrastructure for an end-2-end development process. Come and explore how Angular CLI makes it easy.

PrimeNG is an Angular library developed by Primeface. PrimeNG has over 80 components in the library. The PrimeNG components are well designed and have grown over the years. See how PrimeNG library can enhance your application development.

About the Presenters:

Phil is a programmer. He has been a programmer analyst, data communication systems engineer, DBA, Windows and UNIX system admin and consultant/mentor. He is currently coding for himself.

Slide deck and code

October: -- no meeting --

October 4, 2020 · 6:15 PM at Atomic Object

That is assuming work is defined as people working on their To-Do/Backlog lists, your schedules can become more predictable with a systems approach to work. This presentation will do a high level review of Systems Thinking. Then review the characteristics of Work as a to-do/backlog list. Finally, we will marry the two concepts to find work as a System. During the Q&A we can review how this applies to Scrum, Kanban and Shared Services.

About the Presenters:

Greg Cupal began working in manufacturing where his career advanced by using Lean Process Improvement techniques to build efficiency in his departments. His business insights and technical ability eventually lead him to support, design and testing roles at a major ERP software vendor. Greg's experience with Value Stream Mapping experience directly transferred to working with Business Process Mapping, Test Automation, creating User Journey, and Event Storming. Greg is a Certified Scrum Master (ISM).

Every day that passes we learn about successful applications of machine learning and ways it can be applied in our daily lives. Every industry is working towards leveraging new techniques and tools to solve every day problems and continuously learn from them. Design and engineering are no different. Even though machine learning is not a new concept, applications of machine learning for design and manufacturing are relatively new due to recent developments in overcoming challenges with working with 3D shapes, emulating experts, augmenting data using simulations. In this presentation, I will discuss state-of-the art use of machine learning for product design and manufacturing as well as show some recent applications.

About the Presenters:

Fatma Koçer-Poyraz has received a B.Sc. degree in Civil Engineering from the Middle East Technical University, Ankara, Turkey and MSc and PhD degrees from the University of Iowa in Structural Optimization. After graduation, she joined Visteon to develop processes for design optimization of structural and electromagnetic parts. In 2006, she started in Altair as Product Line Manager for Altair HyperWorks design exploration and optimization products. Currently she works as the Vice President for Engineering Data Science. In this role, she and her team works on engineering data science strategy, development and execution which includes investigating and applying latest technologies in the field, providing feedback to Altair software and supporting customer projects. Fatma Kocer-Poyraz is one of the recipients of Crain’s 2019 Notable Women in STEM recognition.

Linkedin for Fatma