Practical tips for increasing diversity in tech companies – Auckland – 26 November 2018

What

Increasing gender diversity in business is a key part of success. Studies have shown that a more motivated, diverse thinking team deliver increased sales, customer satisfaction, better margins AND more innovation.

But increasing diversity is an outcome, not an action itself. In this seminar, two tech leaders will discuss the practical actions and steps they’ve taken at their companies to be a more inclusive workplace and increase diversity.

This is NOT an event for women alone – its aimed at all business leaders who want some practical ideas on how to ensure their workforce better reflects the wider market, and see the value in a better balanced team. From recruitment, to onboarding, to retention, Amanda and Eva will talk through some ideas that you can apply in your own businesses.

Our main speaker Amanda Santos is a high-growth CEO, sales expert and sought-after business advisor, providing governance and strategic support to over 150 enterprises within New Zealand.

Formerly Chief Executive of Tekron, a global market-leader in high-precision atomic and GPS precision timing hardware for power, telecommunications and enterprise industries, Amanda is unafraid to break the traditional CEO stereotype and inspires others to do the same.

When and Where

NZTE
139 Quay Street
Auckland

5pm – 7pm
Monday, 26 November 2018

How Much

Free

More

Information and Registration

 

R-Ladies Auckland: Telling Stories With Data – Auckland – 29 November 2018

What

We are very excited to have Kate Newton from RNZ at this month’s meetup.

Description: R has rapidly become a coding language of choice for journalists around the world who create “data journalism”. In this workshop, we’ll explore what data journalism is, how R helps journalists to tell those data stories, and then collectively hack the code behind a recent story published by RNZ that used data analysis and visualisations as part of the reporting process.

Bio: Kate Newton has been a journalist for a decade and is currently a reporter for RNZ’s new In Depth team (https://www.radionz.co.nz/news/in-depth/368436/universities-face-a-crisis-of-the-humanities), which focuses on long-form and investigative journalism. Known among her colleagues for being “good at maths” (an extremely low bar in journalism), she has only recently discovered R and its power as a data journalism tool. She is gradually learning and incorporating R into her research and reporting, including publishing her extremely messy code so she can learn from the veterans!

What to bring: Laptops. We’ll use Kate’s Github repo (https://github.com/katenewtonnz/humanities) , and for anyone who’s interested in learning more about data journalism, The Data Journalism Handbook (https://datajournalismhandbook.org/) is a great online resource.

As with all our meetups all levels of R welcome, from beginners to regular users. Our meetups are about sharing knowledge and inspiring others. https://rladies.org/about-us/

Please read the code of conduct before attending this meetup.

When and Where

29 November 2018
6:00 PM to 8:00 PM

Xero
96 St. Georges Bay Road Parnell, Auckland.

How Much

Free. Please reserve your seat here.

More

Meetup event: Telling Stories With Data.

R-Ladies Auckland Meetup, twitter @RLadiesAKL | auckland [at] rladies.org (email) | https://github.com/R-LadiesAKL

Movie Night: Overlord – Auckland – 17 November 2018

What

JJ Abrams, director of a couple of my favourite movies including the Cloverfield series, Star Trek, and Super 8, brings us a WWII movie with a twist. As if war wasn’t horror enough, what if there’s a supernatural element to it? Join the Auckland Horror Club to check it out!

**NOTE: This meetup is movie only and it will be the late show. Theatre to be determined. There is no restriction on number of people. We will also be going to dinner beforehand, but I will post that meetup the week of with the location and time.

What we’re about

Horror movie lovers rejoice! Have you been searching for people to share the enjoyment of sitting down and watching flicks from this infamous genre? Let’s get together to watch the good, the bad, and the ugly of all things horror! Feel free to post movie ideas, or anything else horror related that might be interesting.

When and Where

Saturday, 17 Novemeber 2018
9pm – 11pm

Event Cinemas Broadway
77 Broadway
Newmarket, Auckland

How Much

Normal movie fee

More

Movie Night: Overlord Meetup page
Auckland Horror Club Meetup Group

“Cowboys” and Agile – A Project Managers worst nightmare, or is it? – Palmerston North – 29 November 2018

What

Sharon, a seasoned project manager from Massey will be the presenter at the next meetup.

Can Cowboy developers, an Agile methodology and Project Managers all exist in the same sphere? Some would say NO, I say yes.

Does the free-thinking lone developer, who is huddled away in a dark corner never to see the light of day still exist in this new world of Agile projects?

Can Agile bring a “Cowboy” into the 21st Century?

This is the rescheduled talk from September

As usual our hosts Objective will be sponsoring pizza

When and Where

Thursday, November 29 2018
5:30pm – 7:30pm

Objective
114 The Square
Palmerston Noth

How Much

Free

More

Meetup page for “Cowboys” and Agile event
Palmerston North Software Development Meetup

Lightning talks at WordPress meetup – Wellington – 6 November 2018

What

Dear all, in November we have a few lightning talks. We need two more speakers with 5-10 min presentations. Please, let us know if you are keen to do that!

Talk 1 is about speed optimisation and image compression from our WordCamp speaker Peter Warwick-Mahoney.

Website speed is so important, but with the plethora of tools available, what should you use? Peter takes us through the gamut of configurations he regularly uses to half a WordPress site’s loading time.

Peter is SEO expert, web developer & designer, all-round nice guy, and ravenous information devourer. Peter’s focus over the past decade has been on SEO (although it’s been a feature he’s offered since the late 90s), while making sure he keeps his typing fingers in the site creation pie too.

Talk 2 is about what is wrong with lists of must-have plugins from Maria Skatova.

Maria works with lots of bloggers and small business projects, doing lots of ‘fixing a problem’ work for websites, built by their owners. Her experience shows that plugins cause trouble quite often, and ‘must-have’ lists of plugins are the worst. Maria will also share her own ‘must-have’ list 🙂

Maria is married to WordPress for more than 10 years, and they have a gazillion of little websites together. She also is a co-organiser of WordPress Wellington meetup.

Talk 3 opens our Page Builders series with Thrive builder review from Peter Williamson.

Peter will share how he uses Thrive and why he prefers it to other page builders.

Pete Williamson has worked with WordPress for over 4 years now, having previously been involved in theatre and Audio-Visual industry.

Yours truly,

WordPress Wellington meetup organisers

When and Where

6 November 2018
5:30 PM to 7:00 PM

Biz Dojo (new location)
3 Market Lane, Wellington

How Much

Free. Please RSVP here.

More

November WordPress meetup – lightning talks.
WordPress Wellington Meetup, Facebook WellingtonWordPress and Twitter @WPWgtn.

AUT Creative Tech Student Showcase – Auckland – 9 November 2018

What

It has been a while! Although the Creative Tech meetup group hasn’t met for a year, we’ve kept the meetup group so we can start meetups again once we have the human resources to curate presentations.

Coming up on November 9th, we’re teaming up with the AKLgamedev Meetup, UI/UX Meetup and the Anim + VFX Meetup for a Design + Creative Tech Mega Meetup.

The presentations will still be separate for all meetups so you’ll need to decide which to go to.
– AKLgamedev Meetup – no presentation – demos on level 9 + 11
– UI/UX Meetup – WG Room TBA
– Anim + VFX Meetup – WG906
– Creative Tech Meetup – No presentation – demos on level 9 + 11

Because there’s going to be so much to see, we wont be having a presentation in the usual format this month just come along and see what the AUT Creative Students have to show, network and enjoy some drink and nibbles.

The doors will open up at 6 and we’ll launch straight in to the networking and demonstrations.

Let’s also start the discussion of how to revive the Creative Tech Meetup presentations.

If you have content to show at a future Creative Tech Meetup or know people who would want to run a Creative Tech Meetup please contact ben.kenobi@aut.ac.nz and we’ll sort something out.

I’m looking forward to seeing you there. Come find me, I’ll be wearing the lanyard that reads Ben Kenobi.

When and Where

9 November 2018
6:00 PM to 8:00 PM

AUT City Campus, Colab Open Studio, Level 11, WG Building,
2 Governor Fitzroy Pl, Auckland

How Much

Free.

More

Event announced at AUT Events and Meetup.

Microservices in the age of Digital Transformation – Auckland – 13 November 2018

What

Two Talks

API Gateway

What makes a good API Gateway?

The age of digital transformation.. are you ready?

As your business embraces digital transformation, you’re presented with new industry trends, from microservices and containerization to multi-cloud connectivity. Understanding how these emerging technologies could apply to your existing ecosystem and the integration best practices required, is central to success.

When and Where

IBM’s new venue
Level 4, 30 Gaunt St
Wynard Quarter, CBD, Auckland

Tuesday, November 13, 2018
5:30pm – 8:45pm

How Much

Free

More

Meetup page for this event
Auckland API and Microservices Meetup

Refactor – Auckland – 21 November 2018

What

Wahoo! It’s the last Refactor for the year. We’re so excited to welcome speakers Natasha Lampard, Uttara Nataraj and Vic Jack. We’re back at the amazing Warren & Mahoney studio in Wynyard Quarter. Read on to learn more or grab your ticket now!

Speaker Profiles

Natasha Lampard

Natasha Lampard (@tashmahal) is the co-founder and director of Webstock; co-founder of Lil Regie and creator of Extraordinary Tales of Strength & Daring. Natasha fell in love with the web and its possibilities in 1999 and has been working on it in various capacities, ever since. She now wears a number of hats including event manager, designer, writer, usability advocate and entrepreneur. She loves soup, the work of Joan Hickson as Miss Marple and the creation of delightful spaces – both online and IRL.

Uttara Nataraj

Uttara (Utts) is currently working as an Agency Development Manager at Google NZ, where she works with New Zealand’s top independent agencies and their small to medium business clients, to help them grow using Google products. Utts is an Engineer by background (she studied Engineering Science and The University of Auckland) and prior to Google was working in Management Consulting at EY for six years across Sydney and Auckland. Over this time she worked on numerous projects across various industry sectors including: FMCG, Retail, Media, Real Estate, Airlines, Government and Power & Utilities. Utts is also a big advocate of mentoring and has been a mentor for the UoA Business School Women’s Mentoring Programme for the past two years. On the weekends you’ll likely find Utts exploring art galleries and eating her way around Auckland!

Vic Jack

Vic has a background in advertising and design from London and was part of the digital boom in the late 90’s where she worked as UX Designer. And advocate for life-learning she returned to University in 2014 to complete a Masters in Design. She works on projects that embrace systems thinking and sustainable business practices that provide real social impact. A future thinker, Vic has a comprehensive knowledge of nascent technologies that include blockchain technology, IOT, AI and machine learning. She is a strong advocate of decentralised technology that provides us with the mechanism to have increased control and sovereignity over our own data. She is the founder of Maslow, a boutique recruitment agency that focuses on attracting, engage and retaining women into positions of management and leadership inside the creative and tech industries.

When and Where

Wednesday 21 November 2018, 6-8:30pm

Warren & Mahoney Architects
139 Pakenham Street West

How Much

Tickets $25 – open to all. Buy tickets.

More

Refactor: Auckland November 2018.

Refactor’s Code of Conduct and a Privacy Policy.

 

 

Star Gazing and Aurora Chasing – Oamaru – 26 October 2018

What

Star Gazing and Aurora Chasing
Adventures in Astronomy Around and Above New Zealand.

We are fortunate to engage Dr Ian Griffin, Director of Otago Museum, for a free talk on Astronomy at the bookshop. He’s an inspiring, knowledgeable speaker and we look forward to hearing more about the Museum and Planetarium in Dunedin, stargazing and Aurora hunting in our area.

There will be announcements on an upcoming evening, Friday 26 October, about Oamaru’s Observatory by our local astronomer Damien McNamara. We’re lucky to have Dark Sky Reserves here in Otago and South Island, Mount John Observatory near Tekapo, another Planetarium at Mount Cook Hermitage and plenty to see in the Southern night skies. Aurora postcards with photos of those magical displays taken from Oamaru will be available, and space exploration news will be talking points at the evening event.

It is always fun to learn from others, and all of our Slide Night talks end up expanding our conversations along with our sense of wonder.

When and Where

26 October 2018
7pm drinks and nibbles
8pm lecture

Adventure Books,
7 Harbour Street, Oamaru.

How Much

Free.
50 seats only. Reservations essential.

More

Facebook post.

Adventure books on Facebook

Figure.NZ: Seeing Aotearoa Clearly Through Data – Auckland – 19 November 2018

What

Lillian Grace, Chief Executive Officer of Figure.NZ, will explain their vision for all New Zealanders to better understand and use data and some of their motivation and journey to get to where they are today.

Lillian will also talk about some of the technical challenges faced and how they have solved them through a combination of tools and bespoke development.

Open Data in NZ Meetups are for sharing the passion and success around the release of open data with like-minded people. These Meetups will consist of sharing innovative ideas and information, success stories and an open forum to discuss hot topics happening within your region and the wider global community.

When and Where

Monday, November 19, 2018
6pm – 7:30pm

State Services Commission
(Auckland Policy Office)
45 Queen St
Auckland

How Much

Free

More

Figure.NZ: Seeing Aotearoa Clearly Through Data
Auckland Open Data Meetup