Tech Events Roundup Feb. 18 - 24
This week has a nice assortment of networking events, ranging from the Door64 Happy Hours to a new Wireless proponent group to Austin’s security experts (not to be confused with burly men in mirrorshades with bulges in their jackets.) To cap it all off, there’s a shiny new Hackathon taking place this weekend. Hackathons are great places to learn new skills while working on a real world project, enjoy a ton of cross-disciplinary creative energy and do some good, all at the same time. Check it out.
Austin Cloud User Group
Feb. 19, 6:00 p.m.
Pervasive Software
12365 B Riata Trace Parkway
If you are interested in cloud computing, and somewhat close to Austin, this is the group for you! All are welcome. Our February theme is: Encrypt Everything, Everywhere.
PyLadies Austin Social Meetup
Feb. 19, 7:00 p.m.
Apothecary Cafe & Wine Bar
4800 Burnet Rd, Suite 450
PyLadies is a social/professional group for female Python programmers at every experience level. Developers and aspiring developers only, please. (Beginners are always welcome!) Come and unwind after work, and let's talk PyLadies business (or whatever else you feel like chatting about) in a strictly social setting.
The Ghz Wireless Group
Feb. 19, 8:00 p.m.
GHz Wireless
4719 South Congress Avenue #105
The GHz Wireless is a free and open monthly meeting. The group to help people in and around (starting south) Austin with networking and wireless technology. With Austin being so high tech, we want to help people plug into global resources, and unplug. We want to share with as many brilliant people our simple idea of deploying free wireless (wifi) networks via meshing different network using Mobile Mesh, WiMax, LTE and Fiber. We plan to have a monthly meeting in an around Austin, with guest speakers who are experts in wireless/networking, visiting with new technology and services, from the local area.
QA SIG North - Accessibility Testing
Feb. 20, Noon
Plainview
8300 N Mopac Expy
One aspect of testing that is often overlooked is accessibility. Accessibility testing for software includes ensuring that users with disabilities can access an application with few barriers. It may be as simple as establishing that text is rendered larger in an application (user preference change), and it continues to be readable and does not suffer from distortion. Have you performed accessibility testing in your current position or previous ones? We'll also review the takeaways from the Downtown SIG, where we'll be covering the same topic earlier in February. Come join us and share your thoughts!
Door64 North Happy Hour
Feb. 20, 5:30 p.m.
The Park at The Domain
11601 Domain Drive
All science, technology, engineering and math (STEM) professionals are welcome and are invited to the next Door64 Happy Hour in north Austin. We ask that professionals in unrelated fields, including sales, real estate, financial planning and career coaches, please respect the technical focus of the happy hours, and consider some of the other door64 events. Recruiters are welcome, but are asked to make a small contribution for their tickets to help offset the cost of the event, and are asked to consider including title sponsorships and job fair tables in their recruiting plans. Recruiters will receive a special name badge, clearly identifying themselves.
All science, technology, engineering and math (STEM) professionals and are invited to the next Door64 Happy Hour in north Austin. Come out and enjoy a night of networking in a fun, social atmosphere.
Agile Austin Distinguished Speaker Series - Steve McConnell
Feb. 20, 6:00 p.m.
BancVue
4516 Seton Center Pkwy, #300
"Agile projects can't be estimated accurately," some agile practitioners say. "Estimation is not Agile." Are they right? To take advantage of Agile development, do you have to give up the estimation that your business needs? In this talk, Steve McConnell, the award-winning author of "Software Estimation: Demystifying the Black Art," cuts the Gordian knot of Agile Estimation. Differentiating between agile practice and agile culture, Mr. McConnell describes common impediments to estimation on Agile projects, and highlights key practices that lead to a Bold New World of Agile Software Estimation - providing far better results than were ever seen on waterfall projects.
Austin Drupal Users Group
Feb. 20, 7:00 p.m.
Capital Factory
701 Brazos Street, 16th floor
This month we'll have Sam Heuck and Andrew Elster from Astonish Design will show you how to finally get rid of MAMP. Use Homebrew to set up the ultimate AMP stack with MariaDB, PHP 5.3 and more PHP extensions than you can shake a stick at. Never write another vhost configuration again with VirtualDocumentRoot, never touch your hosts file again with dnsmasq, and take control of your environment so you can do what you do best - write amazing Web applications.
Austin Security Professionals Happy Hour
Feb. 21, 5:00 p.m.
Sherlock’s Baker Street Pub and Grill
9012 Research Boulevard
The Austin Security Professionals Happy Hour is a monthly gathering of information security professionals from the Austin area, jointly organized by OWASP and ISSA. It is a time to enjoy some drinks and food provided by our sponsors, and a good opportunity to get to know other InfoSec professionals. Come on down and hang out with a bunch of hackers and geeks!
Door 64 Downtown Happy Hour
Feb. 21, 5:30 p.m.
Annie's Cafe & Bar
319 Congress Ave
If you work downtown, don’t hop in your car and head for the suburbs. Stick around for the Door64 Downtown Happy Hour. It’s the same premise as the North happy hour, but conveniently located right where you work, right after you finish the business day.
Austin Mobile Innovators Meetup, Featuring Whaleshark
Feb. 21, 6:30 p.m.
CanWe Studios
200 E 6th St
We are delighted to announce that this month we are keeping the momentum strong by welcoming our Featured Attendee:Curtis Kadohama, Whaleshark Media. Curtis recently joined WhaleShark Media as the Director of Mobile Products, focusing on the RetailMeNot mobile apps and mobile website, and is looking forward to helping all of you save money while you shop this year. Prior to WhaleShark, he was the Director of Sales Engineering for July Systems, a mobile platform provider, and also managed mobile product development for CBS Sports. Having just relocated to Austin, he's on the lookout for the best breakfast taco in town and would welcome any recommendations or arguments on the matter. We look forward to having all of you join us. As always, will have cold beer and a fun opportunity to continue growing our personal Austin Mobile networks!
Door64 Software Speaker Series and Job Fair
Feb. 22, 9:00 a.m.
Norris Conference Center
2525 West Anderson Lane
The Software job fair welcomes everyone with a background in software development, including programming, user experience design and quality assurance, to meet with employers who are exclusively recruiting for these skill sets at this job fair.
TXST/Ushahidi Hackathon
Feb. 23, 1:00 p.m.
Capital Factory
701 Brazos Street, 16th floor
Texas State students in the SXTXState.com project will be hacking away at the Ushahidi platform for the SXTXStories project (you can see details of the course at sxproject.cindyroyal.net). Ushahidi is an open source platform that allows you to easily set up a mobile, mapping application. It's PHP/MySQL-based and also has its own iPhone application to host deployments and code samples for iPhone and Android custom applications. We'll be hacking all day, but we want to invite you to stop by to see what we are doing between 1-4pm. We'll be doing short presentations at the top of each hour, and then we'll be working on the platform with the help of our two experts, Brandon Rosage of Ushahidi and Blair Mundy of Catch Marketing Services.
