Call for Speakers: February

[billyroh]

We're looking for speakers for our meetup!

How do I submit a talk? You can either comment on this issue or [send us an email](mailto:talks@wafflejs.com?subject=Talk Submission).

When and where will it be? When: Wednesday, February 3 from 7 to 10 PM. Where: Soma StrEat Food Park

What should I talk about? We don’t have a strict formula, but this is the balance we try to strike every month:

• 2x Creative Talks: Creative applications of programming. Past examples are generating lego murals out of static images, and building an in-browser RPG.
• 1x Passion Talk: Something you’re excited about outside of work. Past examples are starting and maintaining an open source project, and using meditation and programming side by side.
• 1x Technical Talk: A deep dive on a technical topic. Past examples are optimizating your code for the V8 JavaScript engine, and using functional programming for developing UI.

Do I need to be an expert to talk? Nope. This meetup is supposed to be fun and casual, so we want everyone to participate. We especially encourage people of underrepresented groups to apply.

How long should my talk be? Ten minutes. There won't be any formal Q&A.

What should be in my talk submission? Just a few sentences describing what you want to talk about would be great.

What's the A/V situation? We'll have a projector and a mic for you to use. Let us know if you need any fancy adapters (we'll have some Apple ones).

[emorikawa]

Hey all! I'd love to talk about building modern desktop apps with React, Node, and Electron. We've been building an open source desktop email client and along the way have been figuring out how to architect and scale this kind of app. JS-devs can build some very cool applications quickly with this tech and I'd love to share tips & tricks and show what you can do. I'm a speaking alum of Brooklyn.js & shortly Manhattan.js, love the community, and love seeing similar awesomeness here in SF.

[groundwater]

I would like to give a talk on runtime-playground a modified version of runtime.js that lets you write a kernel using JavaScript.

I can probably live-code going writing a basic screen and keryboard driver in 10'ish minutes. I've done variations of this style before and it's usually fun.

[billyroh]

@groundwater We like your idea! But unfortunately, we have a policy of not taking talks from sponsors. New Relic is sponsoring through June, so maybe we could try July?

[groundwater]

I don't BUY this. Is this a NEW or an old RELIC of a policy. I certainly wouldn't try to put company adverts into my talk. :grin:

For serious, no problem. Let's try for July.

[MylesBorins]

[potch]

I'd love to talk about a passion project about running genetic algorithms on canvas! http://potch.github.io/genetic-canvas/

[potch]

I do, however, remain unconvinced that February 3rd will ever arrive.

[bengotow]

@potch — that looks really cool! If there's an open slot, I'd love to talk about KidSIM, a project by Apple's Advanced Research Group that pioneered "Programming By Demonstration" in the 90s. (http://acypher.com/Publications/CACM/KidSimCACM.html). KidSIM was a great way to learn object-oriented programming concepts, but it's impact on educational programming tools was curtailed when Stagecast bought the project and associated patents and defended them for a decade. Educational technology has always been a passion of mine and I've been rebuilding KidSIM with JavaScript and other web technologies (https://github.com/bengotow/Codako) since Stagecast shut down last year.

[HankMcCoy]

I'd like to do a talk about elementary cellular automata (ECA for short) with a particular focus on Rule 110, the only ECA proven to be Turing complete. The goal would be to do give folk who were not previously aware of ECA a general understanding of what they are and to sketch a rough outline of how Rule 110 can be used for computation. It would feature quick demos via the ECA simulator I built (source). This topic is useless for any day to day work, but it's a fascinating example of complex behavior arising from very simple rules (simple enough to be expressed within a single byte of information, in fact).

You can see links to slides on JS and Git training I've put together for work on my personal website.

P.S. If you fiddle with the ECA simulator I built I highly recommend trying out rules 110, 30, 90, and 182.

[veryeli]

I'd love to do a talk on "Doing Science to It: The Upsides and Pitfalls of Learning about Learning with A/B Testing." I'm a data scientist at Khan Academy, and we've done a bunch of cool experiments to help kids learn. There's a lot of cool, useful and relatively introductory stuff I could talk about, probably 1) What an A/B test is 2) Broad descriptions of the kind of experiments we ran and their roots in learning theory 3) The common mistakes folks make in their A/B tests and how to avoid them Anyone with a website can run a super simple A/B test, and it's really fun and educational.

[visnup]

all of these talks sound great! we're still trying to pick one last one for February, but timing-wise could all of you do March or later if we can't fit you in for February? we've never had so many talks to try to schedule. I feel rich!

[veryeli]

I could do either February or The Future(tm). Probably not March, but I would be able to do the talk sometime in the spring 🐣or summer 🏝.

[visnup]

@elifeasley now I want to go to Hawaii.

[HankMcCoy]

March would definitely work for me.

[bengotow]

Yep - March and beyond work for me. Looking forward to the talks in Feb!

[montanaflynn]

I'd like to give a talk about creating slack bots using botkit. I made a silly cat bot that returns gifs on command that I could demo and run through how it works. It also Purrrs when you pet @catbot.

[billyroh]

Hiya folks! We've selected our speakers for February, and we've filled a few spots for March and April. We don't like to plan too far ahead, so we encourage you to submit again: https://github.com/wafflejs/wafflejs.github.io/issues/122 :eyes:

To thank you for taking the time to submit a talk, we've sent you all a free ticket to the February event. Hope to see you there! :raised_hands:

[emorikawa]

@billyroh March or April works for me!