Programs 2008-2009
From Los Angeles ACM Chapter Wiki
(For the latest schedule see: http://ical.mac.com/dondi/la-acm
Contents |
September 08, 2008
Monday — Professional Mixer Meeting
El Segundo Fish Company
Council Meeting — 5:30 P.M.
Professional Mixer — 6:30 at the El Segundo Fishco Restaurant.
September 10,2008
Wednesday — Speaker
Peter Coffee
Director of Platform Research at Salesforce.com
Annual Forecast
About key technologies in Computing, Communications and Business Applications
Joint Meeting of LA ACM and AITP (Association for Information Technology Professionals)
Location:
The meeting was at
The Spitfire Grill
3300 Airport Avenue
Santa Monica, CA 90405
The meeting was started with Peter Coffee's Roundtable at 6:30 P.M with dinner at about 7:00 P.M.
B.J. Johnson and Mike Walsh coordinated the event with Roger Lux.
(Attended by about 49 persons)
Note that this program is in addition to the normal LA ACM monthly meeting.
September 23, 2008
Tuesday — Speaker
David L. Roberts
Georgia Tech College of Computing
Authoring Interactive Virtual Experiences for Entertainment, Education, and Training
Fifth year PhD student David Roberts will describe a class of interactive virtual experiences at the forefront of the design challenges faced by todays game software engineer.
The talk will be at Loyola Marymount University, Doolan Hall, Room 222, at 6:30 PM. More details are on the flyer.
Note that this program is also in addition to the normal LA ACM monthly meeting.
October 06, 2008
Monday — Speaker
Dr. Dondi Dionisio
Loyola Marymount University
This month, we returned to the meeting/presentation format with a talk by Dr. Dondi Dionisio, last years' chair of the LA chapter. He spoke to us on how to "work" a Wiki site. Since the LA ACM has gone online with its Wiki, many of our chapter members need to understand the workings of this useful tool. Dr. Dionisio was instrumental in getting the site set up and running, and is very familiar with its workings. A second advantage to knowing how a Wiki works is that there are many sites, e.g., "Wikipedia", using this collaborative format. Once you learn the basics, you will be able to collaborate on these other sites, as well as on the LA ACM Wiki, and probably other chapters' sites as well.
Location:
The meeting was at
McIntosh Center
University Hall, 3rd floor
Loyola Marymount University
1 LMU Drive, Los Angeles, CA., 90045
Free parking is available under the building.
Agenda:
5:30 to 6:30 — Council meeting; council business, chapter members welcome to attend
6:30 to 7:00 — Dinner time
7:00 to 9:00 — Presentation
More information and details are on the LA ACM blog
Notes to his presentation, which was constructed during the talk itself, can be found under Wiki Tutorial.
In addition, the following links are to videos of the presentation, posted to YouTube:
- YouTube direct links
- LA ACM video links main page
(Attended by 9 persons)
November 03, 2008
Monday — Professional Mixer Meeting
El Segundo Fish Company
Council Meeting — 5:30 P.M.
Professional Mixer — 6:30 at the El Segundo Fishco Restaurant.
December 08, 2008
Monday — Speaker
Dr. Tatiana Tatarinova
Visiting Professor, Loyola Marymount University
This month, we returned to the meeting/presentation format with a talk by Dr. Tatiana Tatarinova, a visiting assistant professor at the Department of Mathematics at Loyola Marymount University.
The title of her talk is "Genome-wide discovery of cis-elements in promoter sequence using gene expression data". This fascinating talk was concerned with the availability of complete or nearly complete genome sequences, which should allow for more accurate identification of cis-elements (regions of DNA or RNA which regulate gene expression). Dr. Tatarinova and her team have implemented a global approach that takes advantage of available expression data, genomic sequences and transcript information to predict cis-elements associated with specific expression patterns. Strong correlation between her results and experimentally determined motifs shows that their method is capable of predicting new functionally important cis-elements in promoter sequences.
Russian-born scientist Tatiana Tatarinova received her MS in Physics from the University of Utah and PhD in Applied Mathematics from the University of Southern California. For 8 years she worked as a computational scientist for the biotechnology company Ceres, based in Thousand Oaks, developing algorithms for biological data analysis.
Location:
The meeting (both parts) was in McIntosh Center
University Hall, 3rd floor
Loyola Marymount University
1 LMU Drive, Los Angeles, CA., 90045
Free parking is available under the building.
Agenda:
5:30 to 6:30 — Council meeting; council business, chapter members welcome to attend
6:30 to 7:00 — Dinner time — food and beverages available in University Hall
7:00 to 9:00 — Presentation
More information and details are on the LA ACM blog
Dr. Tatarinova has made her presentation slides available to us (thank you!!). Copies of the presentation are available in three parts:
(Attended by 6 persons)
January 12, 2009
Monday — Speaker
The "iDeccka" Team
Senior Computer Science Class of 2009
This month, we continued the meeting/presentation format with a talk by the LMU Senior Computer Science students. The topic, The Experience of Developing for Apple iPhone/iTouch enlightened us on their experience of producing a group project intended for use on the Apple iPhone and iTouch platforms. The application is a simple card deck simulation; rather than being a "specific game" with rules and implementation for playing a particular card game, the team implemented a networked deck of cards with which multiple users can play any card game they wish — poker, crazy-eights, go fish, or any other game that the users agree on.
(Attended by 12 persons)
Location:
The meeting (both parts) was in McIntosh Center
University Hall, 3rd floor
Loyola Marymount University
1 LMU Drive, Los Angeles, CA., 90045
Free parking is available under the building.
Agenda:
5:30 to 6:30 — Council meeting; council business, chapter members welcome to attend
6:30 to 7:00 — Dinner time
7:00 to 9:00 — Presentation
More information and details are on the LA ACM blog.
February 02, 2009
Monday — Professional Mixer Meeting
El Segundo Fish Company
Council Meeting — 5:30 P.M.
Professional Mixer — 6:30 at the El Segundo Fishco Restaurant.
February 18, 2009
Wednesday — Speaker - Special Event!
Peter Coffee Redux, a.k.a.
"Surf's Up?"
Joint Meeting with IEEE-CCC
This will be our second meeting at which Mr. Peter Coffee, Director of Platform Research for salesforce.com, will be the featured speaker. It is also our second collaborative meeting this year, this time with the IEEE-CCC group.
Abstract
Ted Nelson once wrote, "If computers are the wave of the future, displays are the surfboards" ‐‐ twenty years before people talked about "surfing the Web." There's just something that appeals to people about the image of finding a source of energy and riding it to new places. Join us for an evening of exploring compelling visualizations, global wireless connections, ubiquitous sensor networks, and other candidates for the role of your personal surfboard on the high‐tech waves that are breaking today.
Peter Coffee has been with salesforce.com for two years, following 18 years as Technology Editor of the enterprise IT journals PC Week and eWEEK. He was previously the first manager of PC planning at The Aerospace Corporation, where he also worked in space asset management applications of AI techniques. Before that, he was a Senior Engineer in arctic project management, chemical facility construction, and synthetic fuels project planning for several divisions of Exxon.
He holds an engineering degree from MIT and an MBA from Pepperdine University; he has been a faculty member in IT management at Pepperdine and also at UCLA (computer science) and Chapman College (business analytics). He is the author of two books, How to Program Java and Peter Coffee Teaches PCs.
Meeting Details:
Place: Chef Hannes, 411 1/2 Main Street, El Segundo, CA 90245, (310) 640 - 0164 meeting at the Train Room
RSVP: By Feb 13 to Ms. Irena Kageorgis, irenakageorgis@ieee.org
Information: Dr. Antonio Mendez, mendezRDA@aol.com
Dinner: $20/IEEE & ACM Members, $25/Non-members, $10/Student Members
6:00 – Chef Hannes Dinner and Professional Networking
7:30 – Presentation (no fee for the presentation)
A complete flier, in PDF format, with a map and picture of the restaurant for easy reference, is posted here.
Many thanks to Dr. Antonio Mendez for setting this up and including us!
March 02, 2009
Monday — Speaker
Attempting to branch out, we will be enjoying another speaker from a different area of expertise this month. Mr. Thomas Ousterhout, a senior Psychology student at Loyola Marymount University, will present a talk called The Matrix Has Us Part Two. The talk explains the realism behind the imagination behind the popular film "The Matrix". This presentation should spark some stimulating discussion!!
Abstract:
The current state and future development potential of various fields of military technology can and will establish dominance over humans with machines and autonomous vehicles programmed with strong intelligence exponentially superior to humans. Today there are robots and machines everywhere. They are increasingly given more capabilities to take care of responsibilities originally designed for humans. Autonomous vehicles have been designed to cross the Mojave desert by coordinating direction and movement all by themselves and have even proven able to navigate through open traffic by changing lanes, following the rules of the road, and parking. Such technology has proven useful for the Military, providing autonomous ground, air, underwater, and surface vehicles, some of which have even been equipped with weapons effectively rendering them autonomous combat vehicles that make navigation and hostile engagement decisions on their own. Instead of trying to program advanced forms of artificial intelligence into the machines, researchers have found ways for machines to problem solve and learn about the world in a manner similar function to human children. Theoretically, machines will soon become smarter and faster than humans and potentially will be able to control themselves to establish global dominance.
Location:
The meeting (both parts) will be in McIntosh Center
University Hall, 3rd floor
Loyola Marymount University
1 LMU Drive, Los Angeles, CA., 90045
Free parking is available under the building.
Agenda:
5:30 to 6:30 — Council meeting; council business, chapter members welcome to attend
6:30 to 7:00 — Dinner time
7:00 to 9:00 — Presentation
More information and details are on the LA ACM blog.
April 06, 2009
Monday — Speaker
B.J. Johnson, LA ACM Chapter Chair
Software Engineer, Boeing Space and Information Systems
Instructor, Loyola Marymount University
This month, we continue the meeting/presentation format with a talk by the current chair of the LA ACM chapter. B.J. Johnson will give a presentation called "A Programmer's Garden of Configuration Management". The talk will focus on the programmer's perspective, and will encompass some concepts and methodologies, why CM is important to programmers, issues of scaling CM plans for different size projects, and a bit of SQA/CMMI processes and involvement.
Location:
The meeting will be held at Chef Hannes Restaurant, 411 ½ Main Street, El Segundo, CA. 90245 310.640.0164 We'll probably be in the downstairs room. Link to their website
Agenda:
5:30 to 6:30 — Council meeting; council business, chapter members welcome to attend
6:30 to 7:00 — Dinner time
7:00 to 9:00 — Presentation
Complete information and details will also be on the LA ACM blog in late March.
May 04, 2009
Monday — No Program This Month
By unanimous vote at last month's meeting, there will not be a program or presentation this month. Instead we will spend the entire meeting time discussing and finalizing several issues which plague us as a chapter.
These issues are itemized in the meeting minutes from April. A summary is:
- What to do about the fact that we have no one to fill several council positions
- What to do about the "free" datalink subscriptions which are being provided
- Updating/amending the by-laws to cover the situation in bullet one
Location:
The meeting will be held in the Faculty Conference room in Doolan Hall on LMU campus. This seems to be a central enough location for most council members, based on past experience. All current council members should know this location. If you don't know, feel free to contact me at <a href='mailto:bjohnson05@gmail.com'>bjohnson05@gmail.com</a> for further details.
Agenda:
5:30 to 6:30 — Council meeting; council business, chapter members welcome to attend
6:30 to 7:00 — Dinner time -- we can go to the LMU Lair for food, or we can order pizza or something else delivered from one of the fine restaurants in the area, at members' discretion
7:00 to 9:00 — Discussion continues on council business as described above.
June 08, 2009
Monday — Program Topic To Be Announced
