nerd nite 26: of words, dialogue, and accessibility
Happy New Year, nerdlings! We hope your 2015 is AMAZING.
We’re back for another year of Nerd Nite Wellington – our fifth, if you can believe such a thing.
And we’re kicking off the year with a great selection of speakers, so come join us at:
- Hotel Bristol
- 26th Jan 2015
- 6:00pm (speakers starting at 6:30pm).
- Sign up for our calendar to make sure you don’t miss it!
Remember, good tables can go fast, so don’t rock up at the last minute and expect a decent spot 🙂
And as always, NNW is free, with 2 for 1 specials on some mains, so bring your mates!
Poster! Click to enlarge and print out for your school/workplace/laboratory/lair.
Our lineup for NNW 26 (though not necessarily in this order) is…
Workplace dialogue: the science and skill of communication
John Rusk, @agilekiwi
Part science, part autobiography, and part hand-drawn stick figures, this talk is about how anyone can learn people skills… even the nerdiest of nerds (like me). You can use these skills to communicate more successfully and persuasively.
The talk presents a simple but effective mental model of successful communication and introduces a few of the specific skills you can learn. Hopefully, we’ll also bust a few myths along the way.
A classic “introvert” by inclination, John thought he was on safe ground when he started working in IT. But he soon found otherwise. Even in technical fields, success typically hinges on people reaching wise agreements. So John set out to learn the mysteries of “people skills”. Eventually, after much learning and several false starts, he was surprised to find himself enjoying and succeeding in the people side of work.
Today, he leads agile software developers at OSPRI, where he recently helped deliver the multi-award-wining “Insite” project.
An Accessible Web: Can’t you just see it?
Jason Kiss, @jkiss
The web was conceived and constructed to be accessible to all users, regardless of disability. What does that mean? How do people with disabilities use the web? How do you make a website accessible? Why does it matter, anyway?
Jason is from Canada, and he apologises. He has an active interest in web accessibility. He also works for the Department of Internal Affairs where he manages the New Zealand Government Web Standards, the bulk of which are about ensuring that government websites are accessible to all taxpayers.
Scrabble®: a return to the tile bag
Steven Brown, @hazhapard
Steven first spoke about general Scrabble®-related nerdery* at Wellington Nerd Nite 5 (back in April 2011) mostly covering anagrams, algorithms, intellectual property, and more anagrams.
This time, his talk will take a look at some nerdish aspects of tournament Scrabble® in particular, including who plays whom (the draw), the wordlist* and adjudication, the ratings system(s), and Scrabble® variants that may or may not get played in the evening between days of proper Scrabble® (and that may very well involve anagrams).
Steven has been involved in club Scrabble for 20-mumble years, and has been playing in tournaments for almost as long. He has represented New Zealand in the Trans-Tasman Challenge five times, but has never managed to qualify to play at a World Champs. He is the ratings officer for the New Zealand Association of Scrabble Players, and also administers a couple of mailing lists for New Zealand Scrabble® players.
He is still employed putting words together in support of a part of the democratic process, but is also trying to get his dev skills back up to speed.
* these asterisks will be explained in the talk.
Posted in nerdnite wellington | 
Tags: accessibility, agilekiwi, communication, dialogue, hazhapard, jason kiss, john rusk, Scrabble, steven brown, web