This will be the first event in a series we're doing on Natural Language Processing.  It will be a highly accessible workshop covering the concepts of n-grams and bag-of-words.  We will work within the Python Notebook (Jupyter).

Allen Grimm will be presenting content / guiding the workshop.  With years of experience in modeling and predicting user behavior, he has recently begun several NLP projects and is looking forward to sharing the first steps of his journey.  Contact him through: GitHub, LinkedIn, Twitter, 

Event Structure:

• 6:45 - Doors open.

• 7:00 - Assistance with Jupyter installation and a mini-course in using the notebook will begin at 7.

• 7:20 - The NLP content will begin.

• 8:00 - Networking.

• 8:30 - We'll head to The Upper Lip, where we dig deep into data science topics over a beer

Come join us every Sunday at the Tech Academy. This is an interactive discussion group, with digital projector and whiteboard. Anybody can jump up, give their opinion or ask a question. We cover from fundamentals to advance. Everyone is a teacher and student.

We discuss everything from predictive analytics, machine learning, data pipelines, autonomous vehicles to Python and R programming.

With tens of millions of items in its collections, Internet Archive is one of the largest libraries in the world. It provides free and open access to all of its materials to anyone with an internet connection, making it a treasure trove for researchers, historians, and curious individuals.

Of course, having a collection that large doesn’t help anyone if it’s difficult to access. To help with this, Internet Archive has released a number of open APIs and tools to allow people to upload and download items, as well as data mine the metadata for the entire collection.

In this session we will:

Give you a tour of Internet Archive and its collections
Introduce you to the APIs and tools you can use to access and contribute to the Archive
* Show examples of how other people and institutions are using the Archive

Speaker Bio:

In VM (aka Vicky)'s nearly 20 years in the tech industry she has been an analyst, programmer, product manager, software engineering manager, director of software engineering, and C-level technical business and open source strategy consultant. Vicky is the winner of the Perl White Camel Award (2014) and the O'Reilly Open Source Award (2016).

Vicky occasionally blogs at http://anonymoushash.vmbrasseur.com, often writes and is a community moderator for opensource.com, and frequently tweets at @vmbrasseur.

It’s understood that great documentation is essential to use software properly, but in a world with ever-changing specifications and hot new features, how can documentation remain fresh and easily accessible? We’ll discuss how New Relic has approached this, from the process of making sure the latest correct information is available, to updating the interface to make it easy for users to find exactly what they’re looking for, to analyzing our users’ habits and feedback to provide necessary tools and updates in the future.

We’ll take a stroll down memory lane to visit some of the early layouts of the documentation site,  and we’ll discuss the present iteration of the site and the UI changes that were made and why. We’ll also look into the future and provide a glimpse into what we can expect from the site in the months to come.

Speaker: Phil Mills
Software Engineer
Customer Success Enablement Team

Come join us for a panel discussion with Larry Gonzales, an internal recruiter from Intel, and others, in the Hillsdale Library Meeting Room. It is a large room with a capacity of upto 46 people.

The host and panel will discuss what recruiters look for for data-driven positions, from your Resume, Linkedin profile, Kaggle, Github accounts, etc. Lots of tips and advice from the "inside".

Questions will then be opened to the attendees.

Automation is the future of computing and conversational interfaces are the future of human-computer interactions. However, creating these systems requires us to reverse engineer some of the most fundamental aspects of life, which can be difficult and overwhelming — especially if you don’t know where to start. 

 Designing Intelligence will: 
• Help the you understand what’s happening in the artificial intelligence space and where it’s been. 
• Explain why you’ll be making one of these systems sooner than you think. 
• Teach you how to create the products that will thrive in the age of automation. 
• Give you language to help you sell your ideas to your team and bring your dreams to life. This is one talk you’ll regret missing.

Guest Speaker Joe Toscano will be presenting - @realjoet.

Formerly an Experience Designer for R/GA, Joe worked as a consultant for Google, where he and his team oversaw the Google product ecosystem and helped Google take products to market. This meant he and his team had to understand how each product strategically fit within the Google ecosystem now, how each product would evolve, over time, and how the decisions being made by individual teams would affect Google’s larger business goals, as a whole. Understanding this allowed him and his team to be confident that the decisions they were making would strategically move Google’s business forward.

Joe has since left his job at R/GA to pursue writing his book, Designing Intelligence. The book is being written to help people understand the current state of automation, where it's been and where it's going, how to design products that will thrive in the age of automation, and what role we, as technical talent, play in creating an inclusive future through automation. He hopes to help create ethical automation designers who not only understand best practices of making these systems but also understand the impact they'll be making on the world, through automation.

Note the earlier-than-normal start time of 6p.

11:00 - noon : Instruction ,
noon - 2pm : Social / Discussion ,

Come join us every Sunday morning at the Tech Academy.This is an interactive and immersive instructor lead meeting. This week we will cover the basic foundations of preparing datasets, simple and multiple linear regression, decision trees, ensemble methods and confusion matrices.

We use a digital project and whiteboard. The course is given at a comfortable pace, so that any attendee can interrupt and ask a question. No question is too small or wrong.

We ask all the attendees to be patient so that everyone attending learns at the same pace so that all attendees are at the same level at the end of the hour.

Attendees are encouraged to stay for our following event Hack Days, which is a open discussion, projects and socializing for beginners to advance.

Abstract

Many technical writers and documentarians benefit immensely after attending relevant conferences. These events offer networking opportunities, access to Subject Matter Experts, and impetus to pursue novel solutions to work conundrums.

The annual Write the Docs conferences offer glimpses of what is possible in my work environment. After Write the Docs NA 2017 event, I initiated several new projects/processes to elevate the state of internal communication, raise awareness for customer-facing documents, and organize tech communication community at work. The initial results have been encouraging.

We’ll explore how ideas from past and present Write the Docs events have acted as catalysts to overcome challenges and obstacles. We’ll also discuss why the conference is relevant for tech writers, regardless of their industry affiliations.

Bio

Mo Nishiyama is a Technical Writer at Oregon Health & Science University’s Information Technology Group. His professional passions include transforming dense engineer-speak into customer-friendly support articles, cultivating a community of tech writers in the workplace, promoting a human-centric work culture, and sharing career/life experiences through public speaking.

NOTE: This will be a 90 minute *workshop*, and we may stay as late as 8:30 pm.

This workshop is an introduction to writing about identity in technology. Taught by the editor of The Responsible Communication Style Guide, this workshop covers how to write effectively, efficiently, and appropriately about topics tied to individuals' identities, including accessibility, gendered terms, and pronouns. It also covers how a style guide can be an effective part of the workflow when creating and promoting technology projects (including open source), writing documentation, and even developing software.

Bio: Thursday Bram is the editor of The Responsible Communication Style Guide. She writes about intersectional feminism, cryptocurrencies, kitchen sinks, and anything else that catches her interest. She organizes conferences, sticker swaps, and potluck dinners on a regular basis. You can find Thursday online at ThursdayBram.com.

The Write The Docs NA conference returns to Portland in May. The call for proposals (http://www.writethedocs.org/conf/portland/2018/) was announced recently, and the deadline for proposals is January 10 (midnight PST).

For the fourth year, we'll give people who want to propose a chance to test things out, either by speaking briefly, or by brainstorming their proposals.

FYI, O'Reilly has an excellent guide to creating conference proposals, "Propose, Prepare, Present". If you navigate to http://shop.oreilly.com/product/0636920027096.do , you can get the eBook version for free.

We'll start with a brief networking session from 6-6:30. Note: Food will not be provided, but is available for order. At 6:30, I'll make a few announcements --

Anyone who wants to try out a "preview" of a conference talk (5-10 min), or just present their draft proposal for comments, can speak to the group (or ask questions) after that.

We're looking forward to seeing you!

We'll be at PDX Code Guild, on the 2nd floor. Plenty of street parking available.

Bring a dish to share! There are microwaves and fridges/freezers if needed.

Agenda:

3-3:45 Welcome, introductions, eating, conversation

3:45-4:15 Presentation (and Q&A) from Oz duSoleil: http://ozdusoleil.com/

4:15-5:00 Announcements, more eating and conversation

Accessibility notes:

There is an elevator in the lobby of the first floor, when entering in the front door on Corbett Ave.

Some chairs in the room have arms and others do not.

Background noise will likely be low-level, aside from participant volume

Join us for this month's meetup and explore the topic of translation. Documentarian and translator Amy Coulter will lead us through the process of buying translations.

"Can't we just run this through Google Translate? Can't my colleague translate that, isn't she from that country? Can we just lob this over the fence to a big LSP and be done with it? Can we find a freelancer ASAP?
Local editor, translator and writer Amy Coulter will be happy to answer all of these questions for you (and more), giving you some tools for tackling a translation-related action item."

Join us for light refreshments and conversation. Please arrive by 6:15 as the doors lock after that time.

Erin Grace and David Bastedo had a chance to attend the Support Driven Expo conference in June and will be here to share their experiences and what they learned. Support Driven Expo is a conference that brings together customer support professionals to learn from each other and share best practices through talks, workshops, and unconferences. Learn more about how documentation plays a role in customer support and other trends in the support community.

Join us for light refreshments and conversation. Please arrive by 6:15 as the doors lock after that time.

We'd like to welcome Portland Accessibility and User Experience group (@pdxa11yux) as we host a joint meetup/workshop for writing more inclusively.

We’ll share inclusivity guidelines and tips, then break into groups and apply and share what we’ve learned. Together, we’ll uncover solutions to make your writing more inclusive. Please bring any burning accessibility comments or questions and any samples of relevant work you'd be willing to share and discuss.

Hi folks! We've been out of commission for a while but we're relaunching! I
I'll be sending out the location soon (suggestions welcome), but I'd like to meet so that we can talk about what we want and need from this Meetup. Tab and I started it to build community and we have done that, a little. We could do so much more!
We could be a hub for job/contract opportunities.
We could have working dates.
We could bid on contracts together.
We can and should help one another to grow and be successful in every way possible. I subscribe to "I am because we are. We are because I am." also known as "Ubuntu".
We’ll be meeting at 1000 SW Broadway. There will be food and drinks, but bring anything you want to share. Lock in that time on your calendar. If you have something special you want to be addressed, email me here or [masked]
one love
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Our December meetup features a presentation by Mike Jang (Senior Staff Technical Writer at ForgeRock), as well as several very important announcements for the community. You don't want to miss this!

Here's a teaser for Mike's presentation, "Minimum Viable Documentation for RESTful APIs":

To paraphrase a James Bond movie, "Swagger is not enough..."

...You've done the work to set up OpenAPI specification REST calls for your APIs (Inaccurately known as "Swagger"). You have reference information. But you discover that few users are actually trying REST calls on your system. You're wondering: "What else do I need?"

This presentation will describe the Minimal Viable Documentation (MVD) for RESTful APIs, also known as "What do I need for my developer portal?"

Based loosely on Kristof Van Tomme's presentations on Developer Experience, Mike will describe the MVD for a developer portal, what will help your developers try out your APIs.