Robots Under Antarctica’s Ice..and One Day in Space? – Dunedin – 21 August 2018

What

Robotic Vehicles Under Antarctica’s Ice… and One Day in Space?

In 2021 NASA will launch the Europa Clipper mission to explore Jupiter’s moon, Europa. One of the most enticing targets in the search for life beyond Earth, Europa’s icy outer shell hides a global ocean, powered by immense tides. If its interior is active today, this ocean may provide the energy to help sustain a biosphere.

In this talk Dr Britney Schmidt from the Georgia Institute of Technology will outline how researchers are using the autonomous underwater vehicle Icefin, to explore the harsh environments beneath the Antarctic ice shelves as a test bed for developing vehicles that may one day explore below the surface of Europa.

Come and hear about our own cosmic backyard. In partnership with the University of Otago and Antarctica New Zealand, learn about the exciting Ross Ice Shelf Programme and how it’s using this new robotic capability to better understand both climate and planetary science.

When and Where

5:30pm
Tuesday 21 August 2018

Hutton Theatre
Otago Museum
419 Great King St
Dunedin

How Much

Free

More

Talk page at Otago Museum website
Eventfinda Page

Ansible Windows Automation: Myth or Truth? + Ansible Vault Integration – Wellington – 16 August 2018

What

Have you thought about how to automate both Linux and Windows infrastructure using a Centralized tool for ease of management?
If you have, then let’s talk about it.

Mike Calizo will share his interesting journey and how to use Ansible for Windows Automation.

In addition, Tom Eastman will talk about how to incorporate
Hashicorp Vault in Ansible for dynamic secret generation.”

Ansible is a New Zealand Group for bring together people building out automation stacks using Ansible and share learnings, provide training and networking.

When and Where

5:30pm to 7:30pm
Thursday 16 August 2018

Location TBA
Wellington CBD

How Much

Free

More

Webpage for this Meetup event
Ansible New Zealand meetup group (Wellington)

Postgres window functions in Rails, Thor gem & Android + Turbolinks – Auckland – 23 August 2018

What

Auckland Ruby meetup is a monthly group that explores the use of Ruby. We welcome anyone interested in the language!

We have 3 talks this meetup:

  • Rebecca Pinheiro from Nectar will talk about Postgres window functions in Rails
  • Ricky Hurtado from Trineo will show us how to use the Thor gem
  • James Scott Tayler will build a real world Android app using the Turbolinks Android wrapper with a Rails backend

When and Where

Thursday 23 August 2018
6:30pm to 9:30pm

MYOB Office
Level 5
12 Normanby Rd
Mt Eden
Auckland

How Much

Free

More

Meetup Page for the event
Ruby Nights: The Auckland Ruby Group

Spark Festival – Hamilton – 6-9 August 2018

What

Get inspired while you learn, share and connect face-to-face with creative visionaries who hail from the USA, Australia and New Zealand at Spark’s 20th Festival. This week long series of talks, workshops, exhibitions and performances will be held on Wintec’s city campus with other events happening in the heart of Hamilton city.

Speakers will share their knowledge in talks and workshops on everything from being a social influencer, to making it as a freelancer, finding creative people-centred solutions to difficult brand problems, and building collaborative creative and inclusive communities in an increasingly connected world.

Step out from behind your screen and be part of this two-way exchange at these critical, and intimate, conversations. Share knowledge and fuel your curiosity at this week-long, creative experience.

The festival is free to attend and open to all, though there are limited places at each event. For entry, students bring your Wintec ID and for anyone else get your Eventbrite Ticket at no cost here. To sign up for workshops click the register link on the website and find out all you need to know.

When and Where

Monday 6 – Thursday 9 August 2018
8am to 8pm each day

Wintec Campus
Gate 5
Tristram St
Hamilton

How Much

Free

More

Website – www.spark.net.nz

 

Visual Analytics Meetup: GapMaps, Making Data Meaningful – Auckland – 2 August 2018

What

This Visual Analytics Monthly Meetup is on the 1st Thursday of every month to discuss all things data, and using Visual Analytic tools like Tableau and others to help people understand data.

Its all about spatial, geolocation, seeing your data answer questions with a spatial reference! We’ll have our traditional introduction and a question for you – – then bring on our presentation for the night!

GapMaps – Making Data Meaningful – https://gapmaps.com

We make data meaningful. Using demographic, government and industry data, viewed through a simple to use mapping platform, we impart powerful, cost-effective insights to our clients. We enable them to create revealing market intelligence for fact-based decision-making.

I’m Alex Wardle – a banking professional most of my career, I was accountable for BNZs network investment, customer experience and change programmes for the branch and ATM network. Now I help people in roles like my old one to make sense of big data, to get the competitive edge and de-risk decisions regarding their investment. In NZ we work with great businesses from Briscoes to BP, McDonalds to Hirepool and Childcare to auto servicing.

When and Where

5pm – 7:30pm
Thursday 2 August 2018

Sweat Shop Brew Bar
7 Sale Street
Freeman’s Bay
Auckland

How Much

Free

More

August 2018 Meetup
Visual Analytics Meetup Page

Code Craft Dunedin: August Meetup – Dunedin – 7 August 2018

What

We are a group of people interested in software development, learning and getting together. The group consists of members of the local IT development and educational community.

The August meeting will be held at the Polytech and we currently have two speakers lined up:

Matt Kraemer: A crash course introduction to machine learning

Matt works with AI and machine learning on a day to day basis and is going to introduce some of the tools and techniques to the group. There has been a lot of interest in these topics within the group so please let anyone you think may be interested know about Matt’s talk.

Thomi Richards: Zapier: What we do, what I do specifically, and how we hire people. Thomi has recently moved virtual companies… something I think is only going to become more common in the IT field and it will be interesting to hear from him on his experiences working for a completely remote organisation.

When and Where

5:30pm to 7pm
Tuesday 7 August 2018

D102
D Block
Otago Polytechnic
Forth Street
Dunedin

How Much

Free

More

Meetup page for the event
Code Craft Dunedin Meetup Page

2018 Rutherford Lecture: Life and Times of Supervolcanoes – Invercargill – 25 July 2018

What

2018 NZ Rutherford Lecture
The Life and Times of Supervolcanoes

There is no denying that as New Zealand sits astride the Indo-Australian and Pacific tectonic plates our land is subject to tremendous natural forces. We may commonly experience this as a gentle but sometimes a severe shuddering of earthquakes. Yet with Aotearoa dotted with cones and calderas, Kiwis should also keep in mind that the Taupō Eruption was actually the world’s most violent volcanic eruption in the last 5000 years!

Colin Wilson has gathered many accolades for studying volcanoes, and in particular, those giant examples known as supervolcanoes. He likens his work to that of a crime scene investigator, where he travels the world piecing together the dual puzzle of why such cataclysmic explosions occur and why they are joined by much smaller eruptions. He aims to forecast volcanic phenomena with enough warning so that communities can respond. But although Colin is digging deep in the Earth’s crust to find the triggering mechanisms, volcanic systems are not letting their secrets go easily…

Royal Society Te Apārangi is proud to partner with GNS Science, EQC and Victoria University of Wellington in presenting the 2018 New Zealand Rutherford Lecture. Strong support from these organisations comes from the belief that New Zealanders will greatly benefit both from learning about and gaining a better awareness of this ‘sleeping’ giant in our midst. From late July to early September, Professor Wilson will head to 22 towns and cities to explain the nature of supervolcanoes, the ways in which such volcanoes operate and can be studied, and whether the next eruption is still likely to take us by surprise.

About the speaker

Professor Colin Wilson FRS FRSNZ, Victoria University of Wellington

In 2017, geologist Professor Colin Wilson was awarded Royal Society Te Apārangi’s highest honour, the Rutherford Medal, for his research into understanding large, explosive supervolcanoes and the dangers they pose. Yet although significant eruptions are still rare, threats from volcanic activity are considered a very serious natural hazard for Aotearoa New Zealand.

The 2018 New Zealand Rutherford Lecture is proudly presented by Royal Society Te Apārangi in partnership with GNS Science, EQC and Victoria University of Wellington.

When and Where

Wednesday 25 July, 2018
6:00pm – 7:00pm

SIT Centrestage Theatre, 33 Don Street, Invercargill, Southland 9810

How Much

Free.
You are welcome to turn up on the day, however, due to their expected popularity, to guarantee your seat(s) please register here.

More

Press release: 2018 New Zealand Rutherford Lecture: It’s a super tour!

The Life and Times of Supervolcanoes | Invercargill

The 2018 New Zealand Rutherford Lecture is proudly presented by Royal Society Te Apārangi in partnership with GNS Science, EQC and Victoria University of Wellington.

Refactor – Auckland – 22 August 2018

What

Refactor has an amazing international line-up for August. We’re so excited to welcome Lara Hogan and Deepa Subramaniam all the way from New York, and they will be joined by HYPR’s Gillian Clark. We’re back at the amazing Warren & Mahoney studio in Wynyard Quarter.

Speaker Profiles

Lara Hogan

Lara Callender Hogan (@lara_hogan) is an engineering leader, coach, and consultant at Wherewithall. She is also the author of Designing for Performance (O’Reilly, 2014), Building a Device Lab (Five Simple Steps, 2015), and Demystifying Public Speaking (A Book Apart, 2016). Lara champions engineering management as a practice, having built and led engineering organizations as an Engineering Director at Etsy and VP of Engineering at Kickstarter. In her world tour to advocate performance to designers and developers alike, Lara has keynoted the Velocity Conference, presented at Google I/O, and given talks at companies like The New York Times to help shift them toward a culture of performance. While at Etsy, Lara co-created the initial physical device labs, and co-authored a tutorial and book for companies interested in building their own lab. Lara also believes it’s important to celebrate career achievements with donuts.

Deepa Subramaniam

Deepa Subramaniam (@iamdeepa) has spent 15+ years leading large product teams to collaboratively build innovative digital products with mass reach. She is the co-founder of Wherewithall, an advising company dedicated to helping tech startups and non-profits strategize, grow and execute with ease. Deepa is on the Board of Directors for DonorDrive which has helped worthy causes raise over $1 billion. Prior to Wherewithall, Deepa was Vice President of Product and Design at Kickstarter. Before Kickstarter, she was the Director of Product at Hillary for America where she helped lead product for Hillary Clinton’s presidential campaign focusing on online fundraising, hillaryclinton.com and bespoke policy and rapid response digital products. Before Hillary for America, Deepa led product at charity: water, a non-profit dedicated to bringing clean water to the developing world. She started her career at Adobe, first as a Computer Scientist and later as a principle product manager on Creative Cloud. She champions data-driven design iteration, achieving high-velocity team output in fast-paced environments, and building collaboration and joy into company culture.

Gillian Clark

Gillian Clark (@gillian_clark) is the CEO of HYPR Innovation. She has spent her entire career in IT after giving up on the idea of being a Flying Doctor in Australia after realising she couldn’t stand the sight of blood or vomit! She needed something that involved less bodily fluids, and IT sounded pretty safe. Little did she know the horrors of some projects felt like she really was metaphorically cleaning up messes! After completing a Computing Science degree (having the dubious honour of using a Hollerith Punch machine to write her Cobol code), her career path went through a traditional route of programmer to analyst to IT Manager then to CIO and then out to Consulting. Gillian has always been searching for a better way to do things. Those messes kept on turning up, and she wanted to find a way to make them smaller, more manageable, or even not happen. She began a journey of discovery of a Lean/Agile mindset, taking her to SAFe® (one of 50 SAFe® trainers in the world). This way of working was so inspiring that she formed HYPR so she could share her experience with others, and has now helped over 90 companies develop better software.

Please respect Refactor’s Code of Conduct.

All thanks to our awesome sponsors AUT, vend, & Pushpay.

When and Where

Wednesday, August 22, 2018
6:00 PM – 8:30 PM

Warren & Mahoney, 139 Pakenham Street West, Auckland. (Map)

How Much

$25

More

Refactor: Auckland August 2018

 

Introduction to openHAB and Android Things – Wellington – 26 July 2018

What

Wellington Home Automation Hackers are a meetup group of like minded people who are interested in home automation, whether it’s plugging in off-the-shelf IoT lightbulbs, or soldering your own PCB designs doing BLE – and everything in between!

For our second meetup, we have two exciting presentations lined up.

David Cole is going to do an introduction to openHAB, including comparing some of it’s key differences with Home Assistant (as featured last time).

And Dave McKelvie is going to do an introduction to Android Things, Google’s platform for building smart/IoT devices.

When and Where

5:30pm to 7:30pm
Thursday, 26 July 2018

Schedule
17:30 – 18:00: Casual chat
18:00 – 19:00: Presentations
19:00 – 19:30: Casual chat

Sailthru,
Level 1 14 Blair Street,
Wellington

How Much

Free

More

Meeting Page
Wellington Home Automation Hackers Meetup Group Webpage

Agile Hamilton: Data Driven Product Development – Hamilton – 26 July 2018

What

Interested in Product Development?
Data driven decision making?
Splunk?

Come along to our July event

Introducing our featured talk for our meet up:

Listen to a case study from LICA about the pursuit of embedding a data driven mindset to product development.

Nick Winter and his team at LICA will take us through the theory behind the strategy: Observe, Orientation, Decide and Act.

We will hear an open discussion about the common behaviours and pitfalls that happen when product companies execute on the strategy.
As well as showcasing the tools LICA currently use to make data driven decisions and offer real time and proactive support to both their domestic and international product base.

When and Where

7pm – 9pm
Thursday July 26 2018

The Alumni Room, by Peta Pit
WINTEC Hamilton
Hamilton CBD

How Much

Free

More

Data Driven Product Development Meetup
Agile Hamilton Meetup Group