Bring your projects and your desire to learn!

This is the place to get help from a mentor, join a peer study group, find an awesome learning project, and to level-up!

We started out in Ruby, but we've been working with JS and Python groups and it's been so awesome, we decided to broaden the field.

All languages welcome - check in for updates about featured mentors in different specializations each week we meet.

Bring your projects and your desire to learn!

This is the place to get help from a mentor, join a peer study group, find an awesome learning project, and to level-up!

We started out in Ruby, but we've been working with JS and Python groups and it's been so awesome, we decided to broaden the field.

All languages welcome - check in for updates about featured mentors in different specializations each week we meet.

Bring your projects and your desire to learn!

This is the place to get help from a mentor, join a peer study group, find an awesome learning project, and to level-up!

We started out in Ruby, but we've been working with JS and Python groups and it's been so awesome, we decided to broaden the field.

All languages welcome - check in for updates about featured mentors in different specializations each week we meet.

Just this week - sorry everyone, too many people are out of town for the holidays and I think we all could use a Tuesday off! :)

NOTE: Cancelled in favor of the awesome Winter Code Social. Please go there! It's amazing! http://calagator.org/events/1250465234

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Bring your projects and your desire to learn!

This is the place to get help from a mentor, join a peer study group, find an awesome learning project, and to level-up!

We started out in Ruby, but we've been working with JS and Python groups and it's been so awesome, we decided to broaden the field.

All languages welcome - check in for updates about featured mentors in different specializations each week we meet.

An exploration of the purpose of rules ...

We're iconoclasts who reject arbitrary constraints yet long for understandable, predictable, changeable applications. We want code that follows rules yet we refuse to let rules to get in our way. We're deeply attached to the little rules that help get things done (No trailing whitespace! Indent using two spaces!) and despise the big, complicated ones that impose one-size-fits-all straitjackets on otherwise sane programming problems.

This talk proposes 5 'little' rules for writing object-oriented code. These rules are determinedly simple yet produce code that experts love and novices can be trusted to change; they fill the space between anarchy and order with practical, common sense. The rules guide without impeding, help without hindering and constrain without binding, and let you create applications that are easy to change and fun to work their whole life long.

This is the 4th event in a series of free monthly FutureTalks from disruptive Developers, innovative Technologists and world-changing Creatives. Doors open at 5:30p for food, drinks and networking. The presentation will begin right at 6p.

Please RSVP via Eventbrite HERE

Sandi Metz is a programmer. In the past 30+ years she has written innumerable applications, many of which are still running today. Dealing with long lived applications has left her deeply biased towards practical solutions that produce working software that is easy to change. She is also someone who explains things, but has difficulty speaking without drawing on the whiteboard and feels inarticulate unless the conversation includes at least three colors. She believes in simplicity; simple code, and straightforward explanations, and strives for it in her code and in her writing.

You can follow her on Twitter @sandimetz or at sandimetz.com

› FutureTalk is brought to you by New Relic in collaboration with PIE and TAO

Unity Developer/Artist meetup covering topics from: getting started, to memory management to 3d asset workflow.

Beer and Pizza Provided!

A conference celebrating the creative, original, static (no backend) web sites, both old and new, that stand the test of time.

It's time to rediscover and bring back the lost art of web site creation. Let's build some weird, interesting, quirky web sites!

At this February meetup, we will focus on an insightful interview with Katie Schenk, Business Systems Supervisor at Moda Health. She joined there just a few weeks ago and is excited to share the journey leading up to a pretty cool job there.

The experience and value you will get from this meetup is going to be unlike any other you ever saw... You have my personal guarantee!

Here's the agenda: 6:00 - 6:10 Networking 6:10 - 6:20 Audience Self-introductions 6:20 - 7:00 Guest speaker intro, interview plus Q&A 7:00 - 7:15 Company research strategies 7:15 - 7:45 More networking

Oh, as always, this meetup is POWERED BY FREE PIZZA :)

At this month's meetup, we will focus on an learning more about Mik Gimenez-Peterson, Site Reliability Engineering Manager at New Relic. He joined New Relic just over a year ago and is excited to share the journey leading up to a pretty cool job there.

The experience and value you will get from this meetup is going to be unlike any other you ever saw... You have my personal guarantee!

Here's the agenda:

6:00 - 6:10 Networking 6:10 - 6:20 Audience Self-introductions 6:20 - 7:00 Guest speaker intro, interview plus Q&A 7:00 - 7:15 Company research strategies 7:15 - 7:45 More networking

Oh, as always, this meetup is POWERED BY FREE PIZZA :)

At this month's meetup, we will focus on an learning more about Greg Truax, Director of Engineering at Elemental Technologies. He joined Elemental 7+ years ago when the entire company was the founders and a handful of engineers! He will share his experience of growing rapidly with the company and what the new Amazon acquisition means for Elemental...

The experience and value you will get from this meetup is going to be unlike any other you ever saw... You have my personal guarantee!

Here's the agenda:

6:00 - 6:10 Networking
6:10 - 6:20 Audience Self-introductions
6:20 - 7:00 Guest speaker intro, interview plus Q&A
7:00 - 7:15 Company research strategies
7:15 - 7:45 More networking

Oh, as always, this meetup is POWERED BY FREE PIZZA :)

Love New Relic as a venue? Love to hear from folks who successfully navigated their careers? Then you are in luck! At this month's meetup, we will focus on an learning more about Jon Billow, CTO at Peak Hosting. He joined Peak Hosting just over an ago and has advanced from a VP engineering to CTO! He will share his experience of running several companies, his military background and what it takes to have a successful career growth in tech.

The experience and value you will get from this meetup is going to be unlike any other you ever saw... You have my personal guarantee!

Here's the agenda:

6:00 - 6:10 Networking
6:10 - 6:20 Audience Self-introductions
6:20 - 7:00 Guest speaker intro, interview plus Q&A
7:00 - 7:15 Company research strategies
7:15 - 7:45 More networking

Oh, as always, this meetup is POWERED BY FREE PIZZA :)

Join Girls Inc. of the Pacific Northwest and New Relic for a fireside chat with 3 young women from the greater Portland area who participate in the Girls Inc.'s Eureka! program. We will hear about their experiences in tech, what inspired them to explore STEM as a future career and how the Girls Inc. programming is helping them to be strong, smart and bold. Attendees will also learn about how you can dedicate time as a Girls Guide for groups in the Pacific Northwest!

Eureka! is a 5-year program inspiring young women throughout the Pacific Northwest to explore careers in science, technology, engineering, and math. Click here for more information about the Eureka! program

Event Overview:

• 5:30pm: Doors open - networking happy hour

• 6:00pm: Presentation begins - Introduction to Girls Inc. Programming

• 6:15pm: Fireside chat with our 3 amazing Eureka! participants

• 7:15pm: Q&A

Doors open at 5:30pm for a 30 minute happy hour and networking event and program will start promptly at 6pm.

Come join us for Pythonic talks!

This month, we're proud to present talks covering both advanced and beginner-friendly topics.

Thanks to our speakers Emily Cain and Allan Feldman!

Emily Cain Purrsistent Debugging

One of the most important skills for a software developer is debugging. How do we approach debugging? What tools do we learn? What skills are involved, and what habits do we pick up as we learn them? How do we teach and communicate about these skills?

In this talk, programmer, writer, and technology educator Emily Cain will explore these issues. Beginners will learn about key tools like PDB and the browser's debugger, as well as learning to inspect code and function outputs to look for patterns. Meanwhile, more advanced coders will learn techniques for understanding and discussing these skills, and gain a better perspective on how to help their more junior colleagues advance beyond the "Googling StackOverflow" stage of debugging. And everyone will get to look at adorable pictures of a particularly dedicated cat as she "debugs" her way into an infinite supply of snacks.

Allan Feldman Reference cycles: what are they, how to detect them, and how to fix them

Let's talk about garbage! Ever had a long-running Python process whose memory usage seemed to grow over time? In this talk, Allan Feldman, Senior Software Engineer at New Relic, dives into Python internals to show how reference cycles can happen, how to find them in your code, and how to fix a cycle once found. You'll never look at garbage the same way again!

We'll also open things up for some 3-5 minute Lightning Talks afterward. Are you working on something cool or did you discover a new tool or package? Get up and talk about it!

Submit proposals for talks here: http://bit.ly/portland-python-proposals

All speakers and attendees must follow our code of conduct: http://www.meetup.com/pdxpython/pages/Code_of_Conduct/

Join us after the meetup at Bailey's taproom at 213 SW Broadway to continue the discussion over a beverage.

Join us on Monday, May 14 for the next edition of FutureTalks featuring New Relic employees Brent Miller and Honey Darling unpacking the "Team Health Assessment" — an organizational practice we've just undertaken as part of our commitment to continual reinvention which will help us understand how teams work and how product is built at New Relic.

The best human achievements are team efforts. How do you know if your teams are healthy? It’s a complex problem, with no easy answers. Two years into a seemingly successful agile transformation at New Relic, we found ourselves wondering how well our teams had taken to the new system, and didn’t really know. We knew that execution was much improved. What we didn’t know was why. Did our leadership all magically turn into serious taskmasters? Did our engineers seriously level up? Did our product managers start making perfect decisions? In order to find out, we crafted a set of team health standards, conducted a facilitated self-assessment with each team, and then asked each team to put together a plan to improve their health. We learned a lot along the way, about how to understand team health, and also about the shape, function, and dysfunction within our org.

In this talk we will share our journey, help you understand how to create psychological safety around a team health assessment, and show the kinds of things that we learned about the org. We will examine the project from a high-level project flow perspective, from an organizational change perspective, and share one team’s experiences on the ground.

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Doors will open at 5:30 for networking with light food and drink before the program starts at 6pm. The program will conclude with a Q&A around 7:00pm.
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About our presenters:

Brent Miller:
Brent is a botanist turned engineer turned agilist, whose work is now at the center of the spicy Venn diagram of humans, technology, and organizational design. He enjoys systems thinking and continuous improvement, and somehow continuously improved himself into his current career. He lives in Portland with his wife and two kitties.

Honey Darling:
Honey has built strong teams in a number of companies. She's a thoughtful leader: results-focused, calm and directed, and someone who builds teams that work together in the same direction. She is passionate about technology and people, and especially the intersection between the two. Honey believes in the power of collaboration, creativity, and continuous improvement.

Please join us on Monday, November 5 for our next installment of FutureTalks! This month, we'll be joined by Google Software Engineer Jaana B. Dogan for a discussion about Distributed Tracing.

Distributed tracing is a golden tool but it is too hard for the newcomers. We need more consensus from the industry in order to improve things and make distributed tracing a common tool. In this talk, we will cover some of the critical use cases of distributed tracing and discuss the gaps in efforts and standardization.

Doors will open at 5:30pm with light appetizers and drinks and networking. The program will begin at 6pm, and conclude with a Q&A session around 7:00pm.

About our speaker: Jaana B. Dogan works on making Google production services more monitorable and debuggable. Previously, she worked on the Go programming language at Google and has a decade-long experience in building developer platforms and tools. Jaana can be found online @rakyll.

Join Beth Long, DevOps Solutions Strategist at New Relic, at the Nike Tech Talks on March 14. Beth will give a talk titled, Brains, Bytes & Blowups: How Humans Learn to Keep Complex Systems Alive.

Enjoy snacks and beverages, as you network with fellow tech enthusiasts before and after the talk.

Abstract: As software systems become more complex, we look for strategies to move faster and produce more reliable systems. Yet the price of success is new and more challenging failures. If failure is inevitable, how do we cope? How do we learn from incidents and other types of failure? And how do our ways of collaborating shape the systems we create?

Bio: Beth Long is a software engineer who sneaked into a solutions strategist role at New Relic. Many years ago, she abandoned a potential career as a rocket scientist to tinker with websites. She has written, tested, broken, rescued, and taught code. She's the project lead for New Relic's collaboration with the SNAFUcatchers research project, investigating how tech companies cope with complexity and learn from incidents, a project which has caused her to randomly point and declare, "joint cognitive system!"

Big thanks to Accelebrate (https://www.accelebrate.com/) and New Relic (https://newrelic.com/about/culture) for sponsoring us this month!

Come join us downtown at New Relic for Pythonic talks!

We've got two great talks this month!

TALK 1: Python >= Super Glue How Python was used to integrate various hardware and programs into a free and open source music center that can even be run on the Raspberry Pi.

By Athan Spathas

This talk will discuss the development of the Glass Beatstation, a modular interface for making music on Linux

Athan Spathas makes music, is involved with Snowdrift.coop, teaches robotics, and works to support Free / Libre / Open source software: particularly Linux-based music production. He is a self taught Python programmer, it is by far his favorite programming language.

TALK 2: What PHP learned from Python

By Adam Harvey

In 2015, the PHP project released version 7.0 of the PHP language. An advantage PHP had was that Python had gone through a similar process with Python 3 seven years earlier. I’ll discuss the lessons taken from the Python 2-3 transition, and how they were applied.

Adam is a software developer who has worked on a number of interesting and occasionally even useful things in his two decade career. These include prototyping the worst mesh network of all time (based on Android phones), discovering how to reliably lock up a Windows computer by writing an in-browser video editor, and (most usefully) removing the original mysql_* API from PHP.

Today he works at New Relic on their PHP and C language support.

Join us on our python.org mailing list (http://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/portland) and on #pdxpython on Freenode. All are welcome!