Posts Tagged ‘Jonathan Todd’

nerd nite 12: of (funda)mentals, data(vis), and Mongolian madness

UPDATE: The prezis from the talks are available here.

Our twelfth nerd nite is going to be a bit different!

Still happening at the Hotel Bristol, September 17th,and starting at 6pm, this one will be a little simpler, and shorter.

Update: details below! We’re only having two talks this time, as we expect the one on Mongolia to last for longer than 20 minutes 😛

Further update: We now have three speakers. This happens 😛

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A triptych on knowledge: a talk that will raise your IQ and lower your certainty

Jonathan Todd (@billymoose)

Writer/Filmmaker Jonathan (Billy) Todd returns (after his well-received talk at nerd nite 5) with another playful wide-ranging examination of fundamental questions.

Expect something amusing, and filled with a highly organised scatology of awesomeness.

Jonathan (Billy) Todd is a writer, musician and filmmaker. No one knows (to this day!) if there is really a person beneath all the hair.

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Data-Driven Storytelling (+/- Wild Hand Gestures)

 Keith Ng (@keith_ng)
Data Visualisation Nerdcenary Keith Ng will present a zoo of data-driven storytelling techniques, from simple static designs through to some bitchin’ multidimensional and hierarchically explorable interactive whatchamejigs. Only useful things will be discussed: No bullshit infographics, no data art.
He’ll flail his arms with as much wild abandon as Hans Rosling (+/- 50%), skim past Edward Tufte, and gush over Amanda Cox.
Having wandered the Earth for years as a hobo freelance journalist, Keith is now exploring the Batman-model of journalism: Making money elsewhere so he can do whatever the hell he wants. Well, making money doing very nerdy things so he can do more nerdy things for free.By day (and night) he designs and builds data visualisations like these. Later at night till early in the morning, he does nerdy data journalism on public policy and economics in NZ.
He is also a volunteer medic with St John and would make a great addition to your post-apocalyptic band of survivors.
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Surviving the Mongol Rally, or, how we lost our boundaries and gained our freedom

aimee whitcroft (@teh_aimee) and Dane Foster (@dene)

nerd nite founder/host aimee whitcroft and nerd nite tech wrangler Dane Foster will discuss the 2012 Mongol Rally, which they not only survived, but kicked arse at.

Featuring never-before-seen footage, photos, and more! Also, we’ll be taking your questions. Any of ’em (we no longer have any boundaries) 😛

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As always, nerd nite is a FREE event, so bring everyone you know!

nerdnite wellington 5: of hardware, spaceware, brainware and wordware

UPDATE: videos available here, prezis from the talks available here.

18th April at Bodega, Wellington!

More geekery will be delivered to your eagerly-awaiting grey (and white) matter on this most auspicious of Mondays.

nerdnite #5 will cover topics such as antennae, narratives, open hardware and scrabble!

In no particular order, then (since I’m still deciding), may we present the Order of Things to Come!

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Antennas, Everywhere.
Jon Brewer

There are more antennas in New Zealand than there are sheep. Many, many more.

From millimeters long to kilometers across, these little guys touch every part of our lives: communications, electricity, entertainment, food safety, medicine, retail shopping, transportation, and more.

In this talk we’ll walk through the lot of them, with a dive in to how they work, where they’re hiding, and what we’d do without them.

Jon Brewer has spent the last seven years of his life obsessing about antennas.

 

Consciousness and Reality, Story, and Bad SF movies
Jonathan Todd

An exploration of the nature of consciousness and reality, explicated via the nature of the stories we tell ourselves, facilitated by the common nerd-language of bad science fiction movies. Also contains comic books and cosmic gibberish.

Jonathan (Billy) Todd is a writer, musician and filmmaker. No one knows if there is really a person beneath all the hair.

 

Beyond Arduino
David Zanetti

“Beyond Arduino” will be about going a layer lower and learning from the Arduino designs to implement custom embedded electronics, from the perspective of challenges and lessons attempting to a complete self-contained Stratum-1 NTP server board.

David Zanetti has been in and around IT for the past 16 years professionally, and a geek well before that. Most of the time it’s with Open Source systems, and currently as a contractor with a multinational running Open Source systems for a variety of large New Zealand customers.

 

On becoming a Scrabble® nerd
Steven Brown

What does it take to go from being a mere Scrabble player to meriting the designation Scrabble nerd? This talk will touch on a few of the possibilities, including anagrams, algorithms, intellectual property, and more anagrams.

Steven has been involved in club Scrabble for around 18 years, and has been playing in tournaments for almost as long. He has represented New Zealand in the Trans-Tasman Challenge five times (so far), but hasn’t qualified for a World Champs (yet). His day job is not important, but note that his full name anagrams to BRAW GOVERNMENTESE. (It also anagrams to SNOWMEN ABET VERGER or BROWSER AVENGEMENT, but those are not nearly as relevant.)

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Remember, new venue is Bodega. With oodles of room, so bring everyone you know! And yes, it’s still a free event. Because knowledge wants to be shared 🙂