eBay Community Lounge

RSVP https://www.meetup.com/Google-Development-Group-GDG-PDX-Meetup/events/265156026/

Will Beebe - Google Cloud Engineer will be talking about CI / CD in 2019. Best practices, and the good / bad / ugly of how our largest customers do this at scale. If we have time we'll be talking about gaps in OSS, and what this means for the future of CI / CD.

Light food will be provided by our generous sponsor - eBay.

Let's get together and study Kotlin!

In addition to this being our final session of the series hosted by Matt and Ann, Travis Castillo, Senior Android Developer at an athletic company in town, will be joining us to share his experiences transitioning to Kotlin.

Dinner and beverages will be provided.

While we will review some of the material during the meetings, to make this study group the most productive, please review the lessons ahead of time and come prepared to ask questions and/or demo your work.

Developing Android Apps with Kotlin by Google: https://www.udacity.com/course/developing-android-apps-with-kotlin--ud9012

Lesson 9 & 10

Note: We're meeting on the final Thursday of the month this time.

Tech Interviews Part 1: What Employers Want Mark Hayden, Engineering Manager at Lytics, will be talking about what managers are really looking for when interviewing a candidate for a technical role. Feel free to bring questions.

Bonus: Get the details on hack nights in 2019.

Please read and follow our code of conduct for all Epicodus Alumni events: https://tinyurl.com/epiconduct

There are 6 difficult problems frameworks and libraries try to solve in JavaScript, but never quite get there. Learn how these problems (and more!) are solved by ClojureScript and how it can provide a platform for new solutions.

Are you tired of constantly chasing after the next framework? Do you ever feel like frameworks don't solve the hard problems, like callback hell, state management, and correctness checking? Are you looking for something that could make your software radically simpler and let you code better features? ClojureScript could be the answer. In this talk, you'll learn how ClojureScript solves really some tough problems in JavaScript and how it provides a platform for new solutions.

Note: This is a special edition meeting at a different time and place than normal

Hello PDX Legal Innovators!

For our first meetup of 2016, we're excited to host attorney Shemia Fagan. Shemia practices employment law in Portland, is an Oregon Legislator, founded the Efficient Attorney community, and hosts the Working Parents Lawyer Podcast. 

As you might imagine with all those activities, Shemia relies on a number of technology tools to support her busy schedule and maximize her productivity. For this month's meetup we're going to try a more interactive format, with John interviewing Shemia about her favorite legal productivity tools, how she uses them, and what she'd like to see that nobody has built yet. And of course we'll take questions from the audience as well.

We are applying for CLE accreditation in Oregon for this session--we'll let you know the details when we have them. We may ask for a small donation from those who seek credit to cover accreditation fees.

Finally, we're looking for presenters throughout 2016, so if you've got a legal innovation you'd like to share or know someone who does, definitely get in touch!

--John & Jason

Designing for Connections

Dwayne King, Pinpoint

Humans have a deep-seated evolutionary drive to congregate and organize themselves into communities. Modern-day communities provide protection, commerce and connection. Social resources like trust and shared identity make it easier for people to work and play together, creating a more productive and prosperous society. Productivity and prosperity are normally measured in objects and people, but these resources also reside in social relations among people. This extends the idea of capital beyond physical, financial and human to include social capital. Social capital provides a framework to make deliberate investments to develop resources that inhere in social relations. Research shows that increased social capital improves health, safety, education, government and the economy.

In this presentation, Dwayne King will give an overview of the Community Experience Design (CxD) process, explaining how it draws from techniques successfully used in other disciplines. He’ll explore what he considers its core principles: co-design, systems thinking, prototyping, and habitat, and explain how its research and testing methods differ from those of UxD.

Please join us for what promises to be an enlightening and entertaining evening!

About the Speaker

Dwayne King is the President of Pinpoint, a design strategy agency located in Portland, OR.

Event Info

Date: Wednesday, January 20th, 2016

Time: Informal networking is from 6:30 – 7:00, with Dwayne’s talk to begin promptly at 7:00

Please note: If you arrive after 7:00 pm, you will not be able to get into the building. Please plan to arrive at least a few minutes before then, as there won't be anyone downstairs to let you in.

Special thanks to eBay and Tami Wood for hosting this event!

About This Organization...

The PDX Design Research Group is a multidisciplinary networking group focused on the role of research in the design of products, services and systems in business, government and non-profits. We welcome perspectives from all disciplines, including human-computer interaction, design, market research, and the social sciences, and others. Meetings are held every other month in downtown Portland, and include speakers, panel discussions, workshops, and other events, with opportunities to network and discuss relevant topics with fellow research professionals.

As many of us consider ways to use technology and process to disrupt the status quo of legal services delivery, there are a few brave souls aiming to hack Big Law from the inside. Michael Callier and Andy Peterson of DWT De Novo, the “R&D Lab” inside Davis Wright Tremaine, will join us to show how they’re leveraging process and data analysis to change the way their 500-lawyer firm serves clients.

Andy Peterson will kick off the session with a discussion of how DWT is using data and data visualization to improve decision-making. Andy is the Innovative Solutions Strategist for DWT De Novo. Over the past four years, he has helped DWT lawyers respond to the changing nature of client requests for assistance, beyond simple problem-solving and into proactive trend-spotting and technology solutions. He’ll show us how DWT stumbled into the data game, and how they then began to proactively structure data collection and analysis. He’ll also show us some of the more interesting external and internal projects he’s worked on lately, including an international regulatory heat map that earned him a fairly aggressive phone call from a General Counsel in Mexico City.

Michael Callier will follow up by talking about how he is leveraging data in his process improvement efforts. Michael is the Legal Process Strategist for DWT De Novo, which means he helps DWT to deploy design-build projects and create people-process-technology systems that enhance legal service delivery.  As a process improvement practitioner, Michael builds quality into his systems by incorporating mechanisms to track and measure key process performance indicators.  He’ll show us a project where he layered DMAIC over the traditional legal service engagement model to create a standard and repeatable system, with business intelligence capabilities, that helped to increase stickiness with a major client. 

The work of DWT De Novo was a major factor in DWT recently being named the Innovative Law Firm of the Year by the International Legal Technology Association. Andy and Michael will be happy to take questions about their work, as well as questions from any law firm personnel interested in creating innovation efforts within their own firm.

"The Road to 100 Million Downloads"

Please join us to learn a bit more about Android development on a massive scale. We'll be reviewing the formation of the eBay Portland office as well as lessons learned over the past five years on the way to 100 million downloads.

Doors will open at 6:00pm and eBay will be providing food and drink (including beer and wine for attendees who can prove they're over 21).

After folks have eaten and networked to their heart's content, the presentation will start at 7:00pm, followed by a Q&A session and more networking until 8:00pm.

Please be thinking of interesting topics and/or speakers you'd like to see at future Meetups. We'd like to keep momentum up and try to have Meetups once a month, if possible.

Happy November!

This month’s Tech Tuesday falls two days before Thanksgiving, and who wants to pay attention to speakers and take notes and ask questions and tweet and, and, and, two days before Thanksgiving? Not us, and we’re guessing probably not most of you.

As such, we’re going to do this Tech Tuesday (almost) completely different than usual: We’re throwing you a little holiday party to say thank you for 11 months of supporting eBay Tech Tuesdays. We launched this Meetup in January, and now, just over 11 months later, we’ve had ten great evenings, and we’re 690 members strong. Who woulda thunk it?!

Please join us on November 24th for appetizers, treats, holiday beverages (both alcoholic and non-alcoholic, beer, wine, and a local jazz trio playing some of your favorite holiday (and non-holiday) music.

Although this event is purely social, in the spirit of the Season - and also Tech Tuesdays - we’ve asked Oregon Food Bank and Free Geek to join us. Both of these non-profits will be on hand to share what they do and accept donations.

Oregon Food Bank will be accepting food donations as well as monetary donations. Their most wanted foods are: Canned meats; canned or boxed meals; peanut butter and other nut butters; canned or dried beans and peas; pasta, rice, cereal (whole grain preferred); canned fruits and vegetables; shelf-stable milk; cooking oil; 100% fruit and vegetable juice (canned, plastic, or boxed).

Free Geek will also be accepting donations of stuff and things, as well as money. We say "stuff and things", because they accept nearly everything that plugs into a computer or uses electricity. Smart phones, tablets, e-readers, video game systems, printers (including extra ink and toner), scanners, routers, digital cameras, PDAs, cell phones, old gadgets…. The list goes on and on. Even if it doesn’t work, they’ll take it. There are a few things they won’t take, though. Click here for that info.

We look forward to celebrating you all and ringing in the holidays. We hope you'll join us!

• Please RSVP here: http://www.meetup.com/eBay-Tech-Tuesdays/events/226683535/

** As usual doors open at 6pm and the event runs until 8pm. The exterior lobby doors lock at 7pm, but someone will be available to let you.

Speaker: Ken Luke Topic: Assembly Language

The meeting time is 6:30 but you are encouraged to arrive between 6 and 6:30.

For meeting reminders, join our Google group at https://groups.google.com/forum/#!forum/pdx-cocoaheads

CocoaHeads is a group for anyone who writes software for OS X or iOS devices, or aspires to.

October's Tech Tuesday will be incorporating three of our favorite things: music, tech, and accessibility, into one evening – and we are so excited.

October's Tech Tuesday will be incorporating three of my favorite things: music, tech, and accessibility, into one evening – and we are so excited!

We recently had the pleasure of being introduced to Myles de Bastion, Founder and Executive Director of CymaSpace. CymaSpace is a non-profit technology incubator and performance venue in SE Portland that’s using cymatic technology to do some very cool stuff with the performing arts and accessibility.

Cymatics is the science of wave phenomena (especially sound wave phenomena) and their visual and tactile representations.

We found Myles to be incredibly inspiring and motivational, and were absolutely thrilled when he agreed to participate in this month’s Meetup. He’ll be sharing his personal experience with hearing impairment, the motivations and passions behind CymaSpace, and the technologies being developed there.

There will be demos of CymaSpace’s hardware and software technologies during Myles’ presentation. The demos will include an acoustic singer/songwriter performing original songs, accompanied by a Certified Deaf Interpreter performing interpretive ASL, and a musical duo playing various instruments to demonstrate a full range of sonic frequencies translated into light.

If we’re lucky, there will be some other cool demo surprises as well.

This event is all-ages and with ASL interpreters for both the verbal presentation and demos, it is designed to be fully accessible to the Deaf community. As always, our Meetup is open to the public, so please spread the word.

As usual, doors open at 5:45pm and the presentation starts at 6:30pm. We expect this one will run a little longer than usual, though, ending closer to 8:15ish.

More about CymaSpace:

http://www.cymaspace.org/

CymaSpace’s mission is to make the performing arts more accessible and inclusive to Deaf and Hard of Hearing communities by supporting research and development of new and emerging cymatic technology, hosting workshops and forums, and supporting an in-house team of tech innovators.

CymaSpace also presents live performing arts events enhanced by specialized equipment and installations which translate audio information into sight (light) and touch (vibration).

RSVP now and we'll see you on the 27th!

“Testing your Metal in the Portland Tech Scene”

Here at eBay Portland, we believe strongly in having mettle. 

From http://www.vocabulary.com: “Mettle is the courage to carry on. If someone wants to ‘test your mettle,’ they want to see if you have the heart to follow through when the going gets tough… Having the mettle to do something means you have guts. In short, you're a pretty impressive person.“ 

We also believe strongly in listening to Metal. 

Metal is a part of our culture at eBay Portland. “Metal Shirt Friday” is a long-standing weekly tradition, we have a conference room decorated with covers of metal albums, and on any given afternoon you’re likely to hear metal blasting from the speakers of our 9th floor break-room.

So for this Women Who Code event, we’re taking the old saying about testing your mettle and putting an eBay Portland spin on it!

Speakers:

- Gail Fredericks, Senior Director of Commerce OS at eBay
- AJ Hall, Senior Product Manager
- Elizabeth Hernandez, Software Engineer, iOS QA
- Padmashree Koneti, Lead Product Manager, Technical
- Peggy McDonald, Manager, Product Management
- Diana Dukart, Software Engineer

Program

6:00-6:30 - Check-in + Networking 
6:30-6:45 - Women Who Code Intro + eBay Intro 
6:45-7:45 - Panel: “Testing your Metal in the Portland Tech Scene”
7:45-8:30 - Networking + Wrap-up

Who Should Attend? 

Anyone is welcome to attend. 

About eBay Portland:

The Portland eBay office is focused on building and powering the eBay mobile apps. From design, to project and product management, to engineering, our folks are doing it all – and rockin’ it.

More about eBay:

(NASDAQ:EBAY) is the world’s most vibrant marketplace for discovering great value and unique selection. eBay connects millions of buyers and sellers around the globe, empowering people and creating opportunity through Connected Commerce. Our vision for commerce is one that is enabled by people, powered by technology and open to everyone. We partner but never compete with our sellers and create stronger connections between buyers and sellers with product experiences that are fast, mobile and secure. As we celebrate our 20th anniversary, we're just as passionate today about connecting buyers and sellers as when we founded the company in 1995. 

For more information, visit ebayinc.com.

Mara Zepeda is the co-founder and CEO of Switchboard, an online community building platform often described as a non-creepy Craigslist. She will share some insights into how the feminine approach to work is different than the masculine approach (and how that's okay).

You'll leave feeling inspired to embrace your feminine strengths!

“Games that Change Us (For the Better!)” with Emily Treat, Games for Change

Emily regularly facilitates the creation and distribution of social impact games that serve as critical tools in humanitarian and educational efforts. Come listen in as she shares her experience and views as an expert game design instructor, game development advisor and game interaction designer, about behind-the-scenes techniques for creating games that really make a difference in the world.

Happy September!

This month's Tech Tuesday is just a few weeks away, and we're shifting gears a bit and bringing the focus back around to the entrepreneur.

During the course of starting, running, and growing a business, almost every founder will ask themselves at least once, but more likely numerous times, “Should I sell?” And then they will go back and forth tossing around all the reasons why or why not, usually losing a lot of sleep and sanity in the process.

For September's Tech Tuesday we've put together a panel of local founders who answered that hard question. You'll hear about why they chose to sell, what factors came into play at what points during the company's lifecycle, if they’d make the same decision if given the opportunity again - or do anything differently next time, and more.

Panelists:

· James Keller, former co-founder of Small Society which was purchased by Walmart Labs in 2011

· Josh Reich, CEO & co-founder of Simple, which was purchased by BBVA in 2014

· David Nelsen, Investor and Entrepreneur, and former CEO and Co-Founder of Giftango Corporation, which was purchased by InComm in 2012

Moderator: Sara Morrow, Talent Partner, ebay Marketplaces

Not only do I expect this will be a very interesting – and entertaining - evening of insights, experiences, and shoulda/coulda/wouldas... but what you learn might help you stay a little more sane and rested when it comes time to ask yourself, "To sell or not sell?"

RSVP here: http://bit.ly/1OboEbC

See you on the 29th!

--

Doors open at 5:45pm and we’ll have pizza & sodas for you. Presentation starts at 6:30pm.

Hey PDX Legal Hackers:

We are on for our regular last-Thursday Meetup this month. We'll be back a the eBay lounge, and our presenter will be our very own Jason Gershenson. 

From what I've seen recently, Jason is one of the most innovative users of technology for legal practice in Oregon, if not the country. He is doing some really interesting things using a number of different cloud-based technology tools, all connected to the API aggregator Zapier to help them communicate with each other and automate workflows.

Jason will be sharing his methods and tips for handling client intake, automated document assembly, Agile project management, time tracking & billing, and many other topics. He'll also talk about avoiding the "software for lawyers" trap by using top-shelf products instead of their legal-specific knockoffs.

For the lawyers in the group, this will be a great opportunity to learn about some ways to leverage the most modern technology to improve your practice. And for technologists, it will give you an interesting real-world look at how at least one lawyer is using APIs to create a robust practice management solution from off-the-shelf components. Not to mention it will give you an opportunity to poke holes or help improve Jason's system (he welcomes both!).

Please promote the Meetup to your networks, and hope to see you on Thursday!

--John 

Our August Tech Tuesday on the 25th will be the second part of our two-part series on accessibility for people with disabilities.

As mentioned at the June Meetup, this second evening of conversations will be focused on accessibility as it pertains to developing technologies, websites, apps, and more.

We’re lucky enough to be hearing from Megan Lawrence from Cognito again. (If you were here in June, she was the speaker who opened the evening talking about her experiences with her post-doctorate advisor who was blind.)

Megan’s specialty is accessibility and universal design. She will speaking on designing products, services, and technology for people with disabilities.

Our second speaker has yet to be confirmed. This event will be updated as soon as they are secured.

If you’re involved in product or technology development on any level, you'll definitely benefit from the knowledge and experience our presenters will be sharing.

As usual, doors open at 5:45pm and we’ll have pizza & sodas for you.

Presentation starts at 6:30pm.

We look forward to seeing you!

As a joint meetup with the R User Group, we'll be hosting a double-session. The first hour will be Exploratory Analysis in R for beginners. The second hour will be an intermediate-level session on defining and using Custom Functions in R, with a focus on time series data. Intermediates are encouraged to come to the first hour to help the beginners.

Exploratory Data Analysis with R will be led by Joshua Galbraith, Chief Data Scientist at Network Redux. This workshop is target at the beginner looking to get started using R for their data exploration.

Custom Function in R will be led by Hoyt Emerson, R programmer and Digital Marketer. This workshop is targeted at the intermediate who is looking to optimize their workflows and do what's not 'just built-in'.

Schedule:

• Doors Open 6:15.
• Meetup starts with getting your environment set up at 6:30.
• Exploratory Data Analysis starts at 6:45 and will last until around 7:45.
• Custom Fucntion starts at 8 and will last until around 9.

The new PDX Git Together is fast-forwarding into the future!

Puppet is graciously providing food sponsorship, so remember to thank them.

Bart Massey will be talking about workflow design and implementation, including how he publishes Inform 7 code on Github and generic shell scripts he has created for dealing with single-person small repo workflows.

Jason LaPier will also be speaking about how his small team at Elemental uses Atlassian Stash and how it is different than the more common Github workflows.

Would you like to present at a future PDX Git Together? Send an email to the pdxgit mailing list and/or contact Duke at [email protected] .

Would you like to sponsor food or other stuff for future PDX Git Togethers? Contact Duke at [email protected] .

Join us for PDXALTA's first networking event on Monday, August 10th from 6-8pm!

We'll have a few short presentations, but mostly we'll be focusing on getting to know each other! If you'd like to present, sponsor or help out with this event in any way, email [email protected].

Program:

6:00-6:30 - Check-in + Networking 6:30-7:30 - Short presentations (to be announced at a later date) 7:30-8:00 - Networking + Wrap-up

There will be light snacks (including vegan and gluten-free options) and beverages. Admission is free.

Our events are intended for all those who identify as black and latino. Select events may be open to the general public, but they will be clearly noted in event descriptions. If you have any questions (or identify differently and want to attend), please send an email to [email protected].

We're looking forward to meeting you! And if you haven't already, you can join our Meetup group here and visit our website here.

Hi All:

We're very excited about our combined July/August meetup. We've got a demo on tap from Wong Meng Weng of legalese.io, an open-source spinout project from a business accelerator in Asia. Their vision is to be a Turing-complete contract tool based on the simple idea: 'what if contracts could be written in a formal language first, and then compiled to natural language?'

We will be back at eBay this time around, please RSVP and help spread the word!

--John & Jason

PS For more on Legalese.io, check out

http://www.legalese.io/­
http://www.legalese.io/turing.html­
http://www.jfdi.asia/blog/an-operating-system-for-startups

It’s summer!

Summer is for kids!

Summer is also for ice cream!

So July’s Tech Tuesday is about kids and ice cream!

Okay. It’s about kids - but we’ll have ice cream.

This month we’re bringing in three local organizations who are working with kids and teens to help them build the skills necessary for careers in technology. Leaders from ChickTech, iUrban Teen, and Girls Inc. will be talking with us about who they are, what they’re doing, and how you can get involved in their efforts.

These folks are doing really awesome things for youth and we’re excited to have them in the eBay house.

As Whitney Houston crooned, “Children are our future. Teach them well and let them lead the way.” So come, listen, and learn about what you can do to help shape the bright young minds that are the future of tech - and really, the future in general.

See you July 28th!

Details:

Doors open at 5:45pm, presentations start at 6:30pm.

Pizza, sodas, and ice cream (and a non-dairy option) will be available.

eBay is hosting PDXWIT and we are welcoming the ladies of OSCON. This event will include networking and 30 minutes of speaking from special OSCON guests!

PDX Women in Tech exists to celebrate professional women in the Portland-metro area who work with, manage, lead or have an interest in technology. Whether you are developing event-driven, non-blocking applications in node.js or setting technology strategy for a Fortune 500 company - or anything in between - come join us! No specific agenda, just network and have fun!

Join us at the next PDX Design Research Group meeting on Wednesday, July 15th, 2015!

Tell Us How You Really Feel: Subconscious Metrics Meet Product UX Elise Lind, Thug Design

The variety and scope of project requests from clients is an interesting and often complicated part of agency work. Elise Lind will discuss what happened when one of Thug's clients wanted to use subconscious measurements to evaluate the user experience of a product. She and her team had to put aside their initial skepticism and figure out which of the various methods would be useful for design research. Explored methods included: EEG, galvanic skin response, forced-choice reaction times, guided visualizations and micro-expressions. Elise will share the good and bad parts of that journey, and talk about recent advances to help improve the value of these methods.

Elise is a senior research strategist and UX researcher at Thug Design, a Portland agency specializing in UX research and design. She has been doing a mix of user research and interaction design for the past 20 years, in agencies and with in-house groups at Intel.

Date: Wednesday, July 15th, 2015 Time: Networking 6:30 – 7:00 pm, presentation 7:00 – 8:00 pm Location: eBay's downtown offices, 1400 SW 5th Ave., 3rd Floor

Informal networking is from 6:30 – 7:00, with Elise’s talk to begin promptly at 7:00.

Please join us for the launch of Food Bytes on Wed, July 8 and meet fellow foodtech enthusiasts in the Portland area. We are entrepreneurs, community advocates, thoughtful eaters, home cooks, makers, and innovators who want to create positive change in our food system.

Our group will explore what's taking place at the intersection of food + tech. We are a platform to share ideas, create inspiration, and develop solutions with a focus of building a community in the Portland area.

Come share your interests and inspirations in food and tech. Tell us what you're working on or what you'd like to see, and let's start building a vibrant FoodTech community in Portland!

Find us online at:

Meetup - http://www.meetup.com/foodbytes/

Facebook - https://www.facebook.com/foodbytespdx

Twitter - https://twitter.com/foodbytespdx

This month's Tech Tuesday will be Part 1 of a two-part series on accessibility for people with disabilities. The focus of the evening will be on how employers and employees can work together to create an environment where every member of the team can thrive.

Our speakers will be sharing their personal and professional insights on accessibility in the workplace. Please understand that this evening isn’t about policies and procedures, although chances are good you’ll learn something on that front. Instead, it's designed as an opportunity to have conversations about attitudes, perspectives, and stigmas about disabilities.

Speakers:

• Cory Klatnik, Data Center Social Media & Community Manager, Intel

Cory was one of the organizers for last year's Startup Weekend Access and is legally blind. He'll be speaking about his personal experiences in the workplace, as well as sharing his thoughts on what employers and co-workers can do to create a more inclusive workplace.

• Incight.org

Incight.org is a 501(c) 3 non-profit that supports and empowers key life aspects of education, employment, and independence for people with disabilities. A representative from the organization will be speaking on attitudes, perspectives, and stigmas, as they pertain to employees with disabilities.

• Diana Laboy-Rush, Mobile App Developer, Aruba Networks

Diana recently worked on a small team developing a product for people with significant hearing loss. Her team members included one person who was completely deaf. She will be talking about what she expected, what the reality was, what she learned about her own perceptions, and what she would recommend for others who find themselves in her place.

As usual, I'm really excited about these speakers. I think the combination of experiences and perspectives and knowledge are going to lead to some really interesting and thoughtful conversations and questions.

Part 2 will be happening Tuesday, August 25th. That Meetup will be focused on accessibility as it pertains to developing technologies, websites, apps, and more. Please save the date!

Both evenings we will have an ASL interpreter during the presentations and Q&A.

As usual, doors open at 5:45pm and we’ll have pizza & sodas for you.

Presentation starts at 6:30pm.

We look forward to seeing you!

We'll have two speakers. The first is Nathan Skalsky, who'll talk about his adventures with VERY large format 3D Printing. The second is R&D Plastics who'll talk about the plastic injection process and open a discussion for how it differs from 3D printing.

Still want more? We're going to try a couple new things this time.

New to 3D printing? We'll have a mini-workshop where you will learn how to 3D print your own name badge using TinkerCAD. Come at 6pm sharp! Bring a laptop and $5 to cover the cost of the print.

Iron PRINT - our design+print contest based on Iron Chef, (three master chefs battle it out by creating a full meal using a surprise ingredient). Here's how it'll go down.

1. We'll unveil a mystery theme before the Meetup.

2. Design something amazing using this theme. There are prizes for Best Print and Best Design. Need help with design? This is the time to ask! If you're going for Best Print, bring your printer, because you must print it entirely onsite!

3. The crowd will vote for the Best Print and Best Design.

Please bring any laptops, software, 3D printers and filament. Participate by printing someone else's design! Are you up to the challenge?

When: Wednesday, May 27, 2015 6:00 PM

Where: eBay community Lounge
1400 SW 5th Ave., 3rd Floor, Portland, OR

Agenda for 6/24:

6:00pm - Networking

7:00pm - Introduction & community time. Kick off your print!

7:30pm - Nathan Skalsky - Large Format 3D Printing

8:00pm - R&D Plastics - Injection Molding

8:30pm - Printing stops. Vote for your favorite print!

8:45pm - Votes tallied, winner announced!

The (mostly) unspoken reality of startups is that success is the rarity. So, when you’re fighting the battle every day to make things work, yet only hearing about Company A getting yet another round of capital, or Business Z being acquired, it’s easy to feel like you’re a failure.

But your success doesn't have to look like everyone else's. Which is good, since it probably won’t. And honestly, sometimes failure isn't so bad.

This month’s Tech Tuesday is about the difficulties faced in building, launching, and keeping a startup afloat. We’ve put together a panel of local entrepreneurs who will be sharing their stories, talking about the struggles they’ve faced as founders, and discussing what they’ve learned so far.

We’ll also have an Advisor to numerous startups sharing his perspective, insights, and tips.

Panelists:

• Kevin Dewhitt, Founder, PDO Technologies, Inc

• Josh Carter, CEO/Co-Founder, Plunk

• Paul Wagner, CEO/Co-Founder, CloudEngage

• Paige Hendrix, Founder, ClientJoy

• Dylan Boyd, Advisor

Moderator:

• Sara Morrow, Talent Partner, eBay Marketplaces

The combined backgrounds, experience, and personalities of our panelists should provide for a fun, interesting, and educational evening. I hope you’ll join us!

RSVP here: http://bit.ly/1e02bPw

• Pizza and sodas will be provided

• Doors open at 5:45pm, Presentation begins at 6:30pm

• The main lobby doors lock at 7pm. Someone will be available to let you in after 7pm, but please plan accordingly.

Whether you call it a living style guide, pattern library or a design system one thing remains true about the style guide; it in itself is an experience. It can serve as a contract, a learning tool, and single source of truth for not just engineers but for designers and product owners. An understanding of each stakeholders' needs will better inform the design and process fit of your style guide.

In this talk UTI Worldwide UX Architect Edward Irby will explain the five basic factors of successful style guides.

• Workpace

• Components

• Animations & Interactions

• Namespace

• Utility Styles

He'll then go into detail about finding process fit, dealing with uncertainty (unknown/changing codebases), and imbuing your style guide with intent.

This is our monthly VR meetup time for May. Come try out some demos and talk about the latest VR news.

E-mail me at [masked] if you'd like to speak or present on anything.

Demo Logistics
If you have an Oculus Rift or have any other interesting VR hardware or software to share, please consider bringing it along for the demo and show and tell portion of the event. Add a comment below if you plan on bringing either an entire VR rig to show a demo of your own (or a demo you really love). Also leave a comment if you have a gaming laptop that you're willing to bring for someone with a Rift without a portable & fast enough computer. Location Logistics
Doors open at 6:30PM, speakers start at 7:00. Doors automatically lock at 7pm, so please plan accordingly. There will not be any food, and so please plan accordingly.

If you arrive after 7pm you can call[masked] for access.

eBay is located at 1400 SW 5th Avenue (southeast corner of 5th and Columbia). General access and ADA access are through the main doors on 5th Avenue. The Community Lounge is located on the 3rd floor. As you exit the elevators walk straight ahead through the double doors, then go through the open doorway on your right. Parking: There is a pay-to-park lot directly behind the building, with a single door leading into the backside of the lobby. (This door locks at 7pm). There is also an ample amount of street parking, as well as several other pay-to-park surface lots and parking structures within easy walking distance.

Whether you're a teacher, software developer, or sales soldier ignorance about privacy and security just won't fly anymore. Trusting software engineers to know everything about security can put your students and business at risk. With the NSA leaks inundating the media, everyone is asking: How safe is my data?

Join us at eBay's Community Lounge for an informed discussion on privacy and security with speaker Bill Fitzgerald who focuses on educational technology security. You can follow him on Twitter.

Space is still open for quick pitches for this event. Also looking ahead, we need a main speaker for June. Spread the word.

SPONSORS:

The Math Learning Center

Northwest Education Cluster

eBay

Coursetto

For this meetup, we are going to be doing a joint meetup with the DataStax Cassandra Portland Users group.

Archaic database technologies just don't scale under the always on, distributed demands ​of modern IOT, mobile and web applications. We'll start this Intro to Cassandra by discussing how its approach is different and why so many awesome companies have migrated from the cold clutches of the relational world into the warm embrace of peer to peer architecture. After this high-level opening discussion, we'll briefly unpack the following:

• Cassandra's internal architecture and distribution model
• Cassandra's Data Model
• Reads and Writes ​​ You'll go home with enough Cassandra basics to get your feet wet and some resources to get your hands dirty.

In today’s world of smartphones, tablets and MacBooks, it’s easy to forget that these computers evolved from machines that filled entire rooms. But they did!

The Living Computer Museum, located in Seattle, Washington, is dedicated to preserving, maintaining, and displaying working examples of the computers that have led us to the information technology we enjoy today. (You can even interact with the computers there!)

The collection was assembled by Microsoft cofounder Paul G. Allen as a way to preserve the history that put him and Bill Gates on the path to founding the company, and presents the milestones in the evolution of computers and how people use them.

For our April Meetup, Bob Barnett from the Living Computer Museum will be joining us to talk about the museum, computers, and how we got to where we are today. We first met Bob when he came to eBay Portland to talk to our team, and we thought what he shared was so interesting we wanted to bring him back for all of you. (Also, he made us laugh, and we like people who make us laugh.)

Here's a short bio Bob put together at our request:

"After spending 4 years in the Air Force, Bob was accepted into the Computer Science program at Hughes Aircraft in El Segundo, California. After completion of the program he joined the Operating Systems group and then moved on to set up the Hughes Network in Arizona and California.

Bob later took a job with aerospace company, TRW where he joined the RODS project to write the first Real Time Operating system in the US for The Bonneville Power Administration in Vancouver, WA.

After writing a Microwave Communication System, Bob worked with the Portland Police Dispatch System design team while working at Boeing Computer Services.

In the mid-70s, Bob joined Pat Terrell to grow a chain of Byte Shops in the Northwest.

Bob has an entrepreneurial side and, as such, has founded a software company and joined several start-ups over the course of his career. His most recent venture has been joining forces with his longtime friend, Paul Allen, to start the Living Computer Museum in Seattle, WA."

Whether you nerd out over computers, or you’re just interested in spending an evening learning something new, (or hearing from someone new), you’ll want to join us on Tuesday the 28th.

RSVP now!

• Pizza and sodas will be provided

• Doors open at 5:45pm, Presentation begins at 6:30pm

• The main lobby doors lock at 7pm. Someone will be available to let you in after 7pm, but please plan accordingly.

This is our monthly VR meetup time. Come try out some demos and talk about some news.

I'll be returning from the IEEE VR and 3DUI conferences in France, and can talk about highlights from these two academic VR conferences.

We've had a team of VR meetup members working on the Oculus mobile game jam, and we can report back our initial progress for developing for the Gear VR.

E-mail me at [masked] if you'd like to speak or present on anything.

Demo Logistics

If you have an Oculus Rift or have any other interesting VR hardware or software to share, please consider bringing it along for the demo and show and tell portion of the event. 

Add a comment below if you plan on bringing either an entire VR rig to show a demo of your own (or a demo you really love). Also leave a comment if you have a gaming laptop that you're willing to bring for someone with a Rift without a portable & fast enough computer. 

Location Logistics 
Doors open at 6:30PM, speakers start at 7:00. 

Doors automatically lock at 7pm, so please plan accordingly. There will not be any food, and so please plan accordingly.

If you arrive after 7pm you can call[masked] for access.

eBay is located at 1400 SW 5th Avenue (southeast corner of 5th and Columbia). General access and ADA access are through the main doors on 5th Avenue. 

The Community Lounge is located on the 3rd floor. As you exit the elevators walk straight ahead through the double doors, then go through the open doorway on your right. 

Parking: There is a pay-to-park lot directly behind the building, with a single door leading into the backside of the lobby. (This door locks at 7pm). There is also an ample amount of street parking, as well as several other pay-to-park surface lots and parking structures within easy walking distance. 

If you build it, they will come.

Maybe.

How many times have you seen a product or app and thought to yourself, “Who would ever use that,” or dealt with the frustration of trying to operate something that feels like you need a degree in rocket science to figure out.

Or maybe you don’t interact with the product much, but the noise it emits, or vibrations its function causes, drives you batty.

Now, imagine that your company designed that product, built that website, deployed that app… and countless users are muttering your name under their breath. Hundreds and thousands of hours and dollars have been wasted and you have to go back to the drawing board.

Did you do the research to ensure your product or technology would appeal to human wants, needs and desires? Factoring in the human element seems like common sense, but that piece of the equation is often left out.

If you’re involved in building a product or developing a technology that is or will be used by humans, you’ll want to join us for the March 31st Tech Tuesday. We’ll have Marcelino Alvarez, CEO of Uncorked Studios, a local product design agency doing awesome things, talking with us about the importance of incorporating human factors and intuitive use into the design of products and digital environments.

We’ll also have Renny Gleeson, Global Director, Interactive Strategy, and Oonie Chase, Director of Experience Design, from Wieden+Kennedy talking about brand building and failing harder at the intersection of strategy and human-centered design.

The evening's discussions should provide some interesting and engaging conversation. We look forward to seeing you there!

• Doors open at 5:45pm, Speakers start promptly at 6:30pm

• The main lobby doors lock at 7pm. Someone will be available to let you in, but please plan accordingly.

• Pizza and non-alcoholic beverages will be provided.

For the February edition of eBay Tech Tuesdays we'll be bringing in some of the fine folks over at Marmoset, a boutique music agency here in Portland, to talk music and technology.

Ryan Wines, Managing Partner and CEO; Shane Geiger, Digital Team Lead; and Ryan Rebo, Developer, will be talking about their website and app, sharing their thoughts on how technology has changed their business so far, what they're seeing currently, what they foresee coming down the road, and what unknowns have them scratching their heads.

Marmoset also has a super secret band coming in from out of state to play. So secret we're not even allowed to know who they are... But this is what we've been told:

• Instrumental electronic pop that borrows from the playbook of Justice and Daft Punk, at least in terms of mystique

• One could say that they sound like an ’80s synth-rock band, but it goes deeper than that. They have a fanatic following from the people who have listened and seen them live. The way they present themselves is a sincere approach to combine art and music.

And we've been guaranteed they're rad.

RSVP now to attend, then check out Marmoset to learn more about who they are and what they do.

Web: https://www.marmosetmusic.com Twitter: https://twitter.com/marmosetmusic Vimeo: https://vimeo.com/marmosetmusic

Ryan Webber - Step into AngularJS series

Josh Rivers - Dots will Echo: Prototypal inheritance and love with Angular and Javascript

Justin Podzimek - RESTful services in AngularJS

Dan Martensen - Site-wide search feature for bodybuilding.com

“How do we get more women in tech?”

The tech industry provides stability and great opportunities for career advancement, so it’s an important question - and one being asked around the world. Companies like Intel and eBay are answering by launching initiatives to increase the number of female engineers in their workforces. Non-profits are responding by establishing programs that teach girls to code so they can grow up to be developers. Universities are contributing to the conversation by offering scholarships to young adult females who choose to pursue degrees in Computer Science.

While there’s no argument that all these solutions are valuable and will help further the cause, what about women who want to work in tech, but aren’t interested in coding? What options do they have? In an effort to provide answers to these questions, eBay Portland will be hosting a special WIT Startup Week event focused on looking beyond engineering roles for women in tech.

Five women from the local tech community will be talking about their individual jobs and sharing their experiences as non-technical women working in an industry that is predominantly focused on technical roles. Kirsten Golden, Program Manager at PIE, will be emceeing the event.

Presenters include:

Gina Hudson, Office Manager/Operations, eBay Portland Heidi Tretheway, Director of Marketing Communications, Urban Airship Susan Wheeler, Director of e-Discovery Services, Streamline Imaging Grace Andrews, Co-Founder Business Development, GraphAlchemist

The WIT talk will conclude with a short Q, after which attendees are invited to stay for an hour of networking and have their resume critiqued by recruiters and HR representatives from eBay, Jama Software, Simple, Puppet Labs, Treehouse, and Tech Talent Link.

Date: Thursday, February 7th, 2015 Time: 4:30pm - 6:30pm, Doors open at 4pm Location: eBay Community Lounge, 1400 SW 5th Avenue, 3rd Floor, Portland

This event is free and open to the tech community as well as the general public. If you’re working in tech, interested in working tech, or simply exploring career options, please RSVP now to join us!

**Please note that in order to ensure that this event is a safe place for attendees, guests will be required to sign in and present picture ID upon arrival. Anyone refusing to do both will be asked to leave.

Everett Toews, Developer Advocate at Rackspace Hosting, will share his experience using Git and Markdown to make it easier for the community to propose changes to their documentation. Please arrive by 6pm. I want to start sort of promptly, by 6:05. (I'll be there by 5:30.) The building entry doors will be locked at 7pm. I'll appreciate help cleaning up, so we can depart by 8:30.

A common complaint against many open source projects is documentation. Insufficient, incorrect, non-existent, hard to find, and difficult to update are things we typically all hear. There are a lot of different ways to tackle these problems. There's no silver bullet but one of my favorite tactics is lowering the barriers for absolutely anyone to contribute documentation.

Ideally, lowering the barriers means:

• using a common and well understood documentation markup language

• using documentation editors that are commonly available

• not requiring your contributors to install and configure tools

• providing a preview of the updates to make reviews reviews easier

Learn how Apache jclouds has enabled walkup contributions to our project documentation. We've benefited from better documentation, shorter review times, and building community through contribution.

We are working on getting a speaker lined up, but in the mean time I wanted to at least get a placeholder on everyone's calendar. Hope to see you there!

“Culture” was the Merriam-Webster word of the year in 2014. In the startup world, the word permeates job interviews, board room meetings, and conversations around the water cooler. But what does culture actually mean when applied to tech companies of all sizes?

To answer this question, eBay is launching it’s monthly Tech Tuesday series with a panel-based conversation about culture. We’ve gathered new voices in thought leadership to bring fresh ideas to this topic, while considering and respecting what we’ve learned from the past.

Panelists include:

Lindsay Wolff Longsdon , Co-Founder/Advisor, Culture Lab @WolffLogsdon Bruce Yarnall, Director of Mobile QA, eBay Marketplaces Donald Truxillo, Ph.D., Professor, Industrial/Organizational Psychology

Moderator: Sara Morrow, Talent Partner at eBay Marketplaces @PDXsaram

We purposely expanded the typical HR heavy culture panel to a manager of technical teams, a startup founder, and a professor who researches both methods employers use to hire workers and perceptions of potential employees during recruitment and hiring.

These panelists will help us illuminate how culture is applied throughout the whole process of engaging an employee: from attraction to a company, hiring, integrating, ongoing development, to promotions or exits. The end result? Some common understandings of what culture means, as well as, how we can navigate the nuances as employers and/or employees.

RSVP through Meetup to attend “The Evolution of Culture in Portland Tech.” We look forward to seeing you!

http://www.meetup.com/eBay-Tech-Tuesdays/events/219520529/

Join us for the inaugural Portland Virtual Reality Meetup!

This is an important moment in the history of virtual reality. For decades VR has been available only to high-budget research laboratories. But that is changing quickly. True immersive VR is finally making its way into the hands-and homes-of early adopters. Come and meet fellow VR enthusiasts, experimenters, and developers, and let's help each other explore this fascinating new frontier together.

We expect to have several speakers, with plenty of time for demos, show and tell, etc.

Confirmed Speakers:

• Kent Bye - (Portland Virtual Reality Organizer) Introduction and vision for Portland Virtual Reality
• MORE SPEAKERS TBD

If you have a project that you would like to share with the group, or a topic you would like to speak about, please contact Kent Bye.

If you have an Oculus Rift or have any other interesting VR hardware or software to share, please consider bringing it along for the demo and show and tell portion of the event.

Doors open at 6:30PM, speakers start at 7:00.

The doors open to the event at 6:00pm and we will start the talk at 6:30pm sharp!

Our Topic Windows 8. Chromebook Pixel. Ubuntu Phone. These devices shatter another consensual hallucination that we web developers have bought into: mobile = touch and desktop = keyboard and mouse.

We have tablets with keyboards; laptops that become tablets; laptops with touch screens; phones with physical keyboards; and even phones that become desktop computers. Not to mention new forms of input like cameras, voice control and sensors.

One of the core things that responsive design has taught us is that we have to be comfortable with the ambiguity of not knowing what the size of our canvas is going to be. Input has that same ambiguity. It is transient. It is unknowable.

Reconciling that understanding from a design and implementation perspective is going to be as big a challenge if not bigger than the one we faced coming to grips with responsive design.

We've learned how to respond to screen size. Our next challenge is learning how to adapt to different forms of input.

Our Presenter, Jason Grigsby In 2000, Jason got his first mobile phone. He became obsessed with how the world could be a better place if everyone had access to the world's information in their pockets. But WAP was crap so he headed back to the desktop web for several years. Now Jason spends far too much time thinking about mobile. Jason is a mobile strategist, co-founder of Cloudfour and frequently speaks about mobile technology and strategy.

Join us after the event for a short walk to The Raven & Rose for food & libation.

Our Venue, eBay

eBay's Portland office is located at 1400 SW 5th Ave, in the Community Lounge on the 3rd floor. Please arrive prior to 6:30.  

If you work with the World Wide Web, you’ve encountered a RESTful API. If you’ve retweeted a message, you’ve used a RESTful API. If you’ve searched for data on ESPN, you’ve made a RESTful API call.

But what of developers who need to automate this process, to make calls to potentially thousands of RESTful API endpoints?

They need documentation. Sure, they can read the code of the people who developed the RESTful APIs, but what they really need are examples. As one of the speakers at the Write The Docs ’14 conference noted, “Developers are people too.”

Jody Bleyle and Jennifer Rondeau will give us some insight into RESTful APIs, what they are, how you can interact with them, and what they have done to document their RESTful APIs.

They will also show us some options for automating RESTful API documentation.

Jennifer and Jody will give us some clues. :)

Here at PIE, we like to think of our Demo Day as a community event. So we're always looking for ways to ensure we can get our awesome startup community together in person to take part in it. Although we've run out of room at our main location, we're pleased to announce that our friends at eBay have been kind enough to host a PIE Demo Day simulcast. And they have room for 100 folks to join them.

We invite you to join our hosts for PIE Demo Day, October 24, 2014, at the brand new eBay Community Lounge. Doors open at 1:30pm, presentations will begin at 2:00pm.

This year will feature presentations from our funded companies and highlights from our latest experiments. We'll also take a look back at five years of PIE and the amazing startups with whom we have had the pleasure to work.

Please RSVP

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