Our February meetup will feature several short-length Lightning Talks by Write the Docs Portland community members. Instead of a full-length feature presentation, these Lightning Talks are short, focused topics that are about 5-10 minutes long.

Our presentations include: Kristen McKee: "UX RedUX: Words are design" Mo Nishiyama: "Docs of Ages: Lessons Learned in Evolving Support Articles" And others to be announced.

Interested in web application security? OWASP is for you. The Open Web Application Security Project aims to improve the security of software. Portland has a vibrant chapter and this is our regular chapter meeting.

Unfortunately, our speaker this month has come down with laryngitis so we're going to be showing a few of the talks from this year's AppSecUSA conference with pizza. To vote on which talk you would be interested in viewing go to this tweet

Panel Discussion - Join local industry practitioners as they discuss the best practices used in getting superior results from your Pen Testing. Also share your ideas on Dos and Dont's of Pen testing.

Moderator - Brian Ventura

Panelists - Alexie Kojenov, Ian Melven, Benny Zhao, and Scott Cutler

Alexei Kojenov is a Senior Application Security Consultant with years of prior software development experience. During his career with IBM, he gradually moved from writing code to breaking code. Since late 2016, Alexei has been working as a consultant at Aspect Security, helping businesses identify and fix vulnerabilities and design secure applications. Aspect Security was recently acquired by Ernst&Young and joined EY Advisory cybersecurity practice.

Ian Melven is Principal Security Engineer at New Relic. He has worked in security for almost 20 years, including roles at Mozilla, Adobe, McAfee and @stake.

Benny Zhao is a Security Engineer at Jive Software. His experience focuses on identifying code vulnerabilities and securing software by building tools to help automate security testing.

Scott Cutler has been interested in computer security since he was a kid, and started attending DefCon in 2004. He got his Computer Science degree from UC Irvine in 2009 while working for the on-campus residential network department for 4 years. After graduating he worked first as QA for a SAN NIC card manufacturer, then switched to essentially create their DevOps program from scratch. From these jobs he has gained a lot of experience with networking, build processes, Linux/Unix administration and scripting, and Python development. In 2012 Scott began working in the security field full time as a FIPS, Common Criteria, and PCI Open Protocol evaluator for InfoGard Laboratories (now UL Transaction Security). During this time he got his OSCP and a good understanding of federal security requirements, assessment processes, and documentation (ask him about NIST SPs!). In 2015 scott switched over to Aspect Security (now EY) to put his OSCP to good use and became a full-time application security engineer, doing pen-tests as well as developing both internal and external training.

Abstract: Most web application security testing efforts are concentrated around penetration testing which is an art based on a hacker’s psyche, thought process, and determination to exploit vulnerabilities. But, does it yield a high level of confidence and sense of security in a developer’s mind? The answer is a “maybe” especially when the bad guy is obsessed with figuring out new exploits to hack your application. The web application developers have to think about intrinsic security - that is, building security throughout the SDLC. We build applications based upon well-formed customer requirements. Why should we not, then, build our applications based upon the fundamental principles of security and then harden security from the hacker’s perspective?

Bio: Principal consultant at Gupta Consulting LLC., Bhushan Gupta is passionate about development methods and tools that yield more secure web applications especially in the agile software development environment. As a researcher he has keen interest in understanding and applying fundamental principles and known methodologies to develop dependable and secure software solutions. His interests extend to Social Engineering and Attack Surface Analysis. Bhushan worked at Hewlett-Packard for 13 years in various roles including software quality lead, engineer, software process architect, and software productivity manager. He then developed a strong interest in web application security while working as a quality engineer for Nike Inc. Bhushan has been studying various facets of web application security and promoting how to apply common sense approach to build secure solutions. He is a certified Six Sigma Black Belt (HP and ASQ) and an adjunct faculty member at the Oregon Institute of Technology in Software Engineering. To learn more about Bhushan’s contributions to SDLC, visit www.bgupta.com

Registration through Eventbrite [https://www.eventbrite.com/e/pdx-women-in-tech-pdxwit-introduction-to-bitcoin-the-blockchain-and-cryptocurrency-tickets-41217187718] is required to avoid having to manually check-in at the event

Note: Food and drink will not be provided, though you may bring your own.

Do you want to learn how Bitcoin and Ethereum work, how cryptography plays a key role in securing funds, or how a network of untrusted computers guessing random numbers quadrillions of times per second adds security to the blockchain? Join Scott Bigelow, Back-end Developer at Augur, in an introduction to the blockchain and some common blockchain-based applications. New technologies, such as the blockchain and Ethereum, can provide new opportunities in the startup-rich ecosystem of Portland. Additionally, understanding these revolutionary new design principles can help illuminate new ways of designing your own systems.

No previous working knowledge of cryptography or other supporting technologies necessary, as this will be a ground-up introduction.

Agenda:

12:00 - Introductions

12:10 - Workshop starts

12:50 - Q&A

Event FAQ:

Q: Will there be gender neutral restrooms?

A: Yes

Q: Is the space ADA accessible?

A: Yes

Q: Will there be food and drink?

A: No, though you may bring your own food/drink to consume.

Q: What is the parking situation?

A: Street parking only.

Q: Is there secured bike parking?

A: No

Q: Should I consider using public transportation?

A: Yes

Purpose:

PDXWIT is a community-based non-profit organization. Our purpose is to strengthen the Portland women in tech community by offering educational programs, partnerships, mentorships, resources and opportunities. We are unifying a supportive environment for current and potential women in tech, all of whom are committed to helping each other. Our goal is to bring together and empower women in tech and to encourage others to pursue tech careers. This is our step towards reducing the gender imbalance in the industry and addressing the current negative effects of that imbalance on women.

Our events are inclusive. ALL people who support our purpose are welcome.

Abstract

A well known security expert and cryptographer, Thomas H. Ptáček, once said:

"If You're Typing the Letters A-E-S Into Your Code You're Doing It Wrong".

Wait, what?!? Doesn't everyone use AES? Of course we do. Is AES broken? Nope. In this developer-oriented talk I'll explore the kinds of mistakes programmers commonly make when implementing cryptosystems; just how easily these problems can be exploited in the real world; and what Thomas meant by his statement.

Speaker's Bio

Tim taught himself how to write software at the age of twelve and has been a die-hard technologist ever since. After earning his computer science degrees (B.S., Harvey Mudd College and M.S., Northeastern University), Tim spent 8 years helping build a Boston-based information security consulting practice that was recently acquired. In 2014, Tim founded Blindspot Security where he has continued his work as a security consultant, helping his customers understand how digital intruders can gain access to their critical business assets through network, application, and comprehensive security assessments.

Technology teams are increasingly turning to microservices to solve common problems associated with the traditional, monolithic architecture style. While many become focused on the system architecture itself, the value of microservices cannot be fully realized without a mature CI/CD capability to go with it. This technology benefits the lower side of coding, therefore inviting less errors and being lower maintenance, but is it right for every business?

Join us Oct 3rd for a multi-regional event featuring experts from HealthSparq, IDX Broker and FiveTalent as they review the path their companies experienced when they adopted microservices principles.

The session will bring up a discussion on the people, process and technology considerations that are required to move to this type of lightweight, flexible software delivery model. Additionally, our panelists will be sharing their learning lessons inclcuding how and why microservices has worked for them, as well as areas of improvement.

We are often encountered with making non-trivial decisions about Appsec. Participate in an exciting open discussion with the experts on the following (and more) aspects of Appsec:

• Challenges in establishing a Secure SDLC
• Growing pains with increased need for security
• Critical things to focus on for an effective security/Appsec program
• Effectiveness and use of developer training on Appsec
• Relevance of OWASP top 10 in today's security landscape?

Bring your burning questions to ask the panel and take this opportunity to share your experiences with others.

Panel Member's Bio:

Brian Ventura – Security Architect at the City Of Portland focused on Information Security program management, Brian also is a SANS Instructor and ISSA education director.

Ian Melven - Ian has worked in the security field for over 15 years in various roles at companies such as @stake, McAfee, Adobe and Mozilla. He currently leads product security at New Relic.

James Bohem - James is the Chief Security Architect at WebMD Health Services in Portland, OR. For the last 16 years he has held Information Security architect and consulting positions, with experience in application security, architecture and compliance strategy across healthcare, technology, retail, financial and manufacturing industries. Before focusing on security, he was a software developer and architect on the UNIX kernel, microkernels, distributed applications and standards development.

Eric Jernigan – Eric is the IT Security Manager at Genesis Financial Solutions and has broad security experience in financial industry.

The Open Web Application Security Project (OWASP) is a 501c3 not-for-profit worldwide charitable organization focused on improving the security of application software. To sign up for future meeting notes and to discuss security topics with local gurus, sign up on the OWASP Portland mailing list: https://lists.owasp.org/mailman/listinfo/owasp-portland

Meetings are free and open to the public.

Mobility in the automotive space is more than just current and future technology being put into vehicles. Mobility highlights the intersection of our lives – infotainment, connected cars, ADAS, autonomous driving, electric vehicles – with the automotive industry and the effect that has on us.

Jaguar Land Rover and Jama Software invite you to join us as we showcase the people and stories behind this fast-moving "new economy" - and the impact mobility will have on the world moving forward.

Speakers: Ryan McManus, AVE AutoMedia Eric Nguyen, Jama Software Tim Navarrette, ReachNow Nathan Aschbacher, PolySync Agenda and additional details coming soon!

RSVP here - https://www.eventbrite.com/e/pdx-women-in-tech-pdxwit-presents-most-likely-to-succeed-viewing-tickets-28317818357

PDX Women In Tech, Jama Software and Code Fellows are partnering to screen Most Likely to Succeed, a documentary about the school systems that are preparing our kids with skills relevant to the modern work place. This documentary has an emphasis on STEM education, hands-on experience, a "makers" mentality to solving problems and using creativity in all aspects of life.

Director Greg Whiteley (Mitt, 2014 Sundance Film Festival) locates the source of the problem not in the economy but in our educational system, which was developed at the dawn of the Industrial Age to train obedient workers. With a world of information available a click away, and the modern workplace valuing skills like collaboration and critical thinking, our rote-based system of learning has become outdated and ineffective. Watch as the documentary unfolds and shows viable solutions.

Here are some articles that summarize the film and provide some insight into why you should take this opportunity for this screening to come watch it with us-

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2015/04/24/most-likely-to-succeed_n_7129926.html https://www.fastcocreate.com/3043107/most-likely-to-succeed-shows-how-classrooms-modelled-after-real-life-can-help-kids-succeed-i

PDXWIT is a community-based non-profit organization. Our purpose is to strengthen the Portland women in tech community by offering: educational programs, partnerships, mentorships, resources and opportunities. We are unifying a supportive environment for current and potential women in tech, all of whom are committed to helping each other. Our goal is to bring together and empower women in tech and to encourage others to pursue tech careers. This is our step towards reducing the gender imbalance in the industry and addressing the current negative effects of that imbalance on women.

Social engineering (an act of exploiting people instead of computers) is one of the most dangerous tools in the hacker’s toolkit to breach internet security. The Ubiquiti Networks fell victim to a $39.1 M fraud as one of its staff members was hit by a fraudulent “Business Email Compromise” attack. Thousands of grandmas and grandpas are victim of phishing emails and are forced to pay ransom to have their data released.

In this new millennium, the cyber security game has changed significantly from annoying harmless viruses to stealing vital personal data, causing negative financial impact, demanding ransom, and spreading international political feud. Anyone with presence in the Cyber space has to protect himself/herself, the infrastructure, customers, and also deal with the legal repercussions in the event of a breach. In this talk Bhushan will present the different types of social engineering practices including use of social networks such as Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, the bad guys successfully use. The victims can range from the “C” levels (CEO, CFO, CTO) down to the individual contributors in an organization to a grandparent on her laptop. The presentation will also discuss a variety of ordinary but effective measures such as awareness campaign that organizations can take to minimize the risk of breach.

Speaker Bhushan Gupta

A principal consultant at Gupta Consulting LLC., Bhushan Gupta is passionate about the integration of web application security into Agile software development lifecycle. His interests extend to Social Engineering and Attack Surface Analysis. Bhushan worked at Hewlett-Packard for 13 years in various roles including quality engineer, software process architect, and software productivity manager. He then developed a strong interest in web application security while working as a quality engineer for Nike Inc. After 5 years at Nike, he retired and since has been studying various facets of web application security. Bhushan is a certified Six Sigma Black Belt (HP and ASQ) and an adjunct faculty member at the Oregon Institute of Technology in Software Engineering. To learn more about Bhushan, visit www.bgupta.com.

This meeting will be recorded! Feel free to tune in live, or catch the recording later (~24hrs after event).

The Open Web Application Security Project (OWASP) is a 501c3 not-for-profit worldwide charitable organization focused on improving the security of application software. To sign up for future meeting notes and to discuss security topics with local gurus, sign up on the OWASP Portland mailing list: https://lists.owasp.org/mailman/listinfo/owasp-portland

Meetings are free and open to the public.

Nearly every marketer has been through a rigorous brand or rebrand exercise. We invest hours, weeks, and months conducting interviews, brainstorming which car or dog breeed or luxury brand we relate to most closely. Posters and detailed pwer points are made and distributed and the work pays off, for a while...

Frequent use fades into a quick glance and, after a few months have passed, the posters end up out of sight and out of mind. Despite the time and effort invested, everyone goes back to their off-brand routines and inconsistency creeps back.

Join the TAO Marketing Committee as we host a panel of brand strategy experts and cover practical ways to keep the momentum going long after your branding project is complete.

On Tuesday, June 21st a panel of Oregon's tech marketing leaders who will share real-world stories and advice from the school of hard knocks. All attendees are encouraged to engage in the conversation, share experiences, and seek answers to their questions in this interactive event.

Working as an international HR professional is a challenge in so many ways. How can you best prepare for success in your role? Our international HR colleagues are willing to share their ideas and experiences with you and answer any questions you may have. This is a great opportunity to collaborate and create HR contacts around the world.

The TAO HR Committee is excited to bring together a panel of international HR leaders to discuss the opportunties and challenges we face when expanding into global markets. This event will include a panel presentation with topics such as:

-How to Hire Internationally -Employment Contracts -Benefits -Labor Law -Culture

The event will also include time to connect individually to explore questions for those curious about entering into EMEA, APAC and India.

This has been one of the top requested topics by HR leaders/practitioners in both large and small organizations so we hope you are able to attend!

The term DevOps did not use to be widely known, now it has become a fairly common term. With that wide adoption also comes misuse and misunderstanding. Join Tom as he talks about his journey through modern software development and his quest for the adoption of the culture and mindset of DevOps rather than making it a a title that causes recruiters emails to flood his inbox. This will be an interactive session where Tom shares stories and examples from the last several years of building teams and changing cultures within organizations in Portland.

We will be working again to revise the code behind the Shift Calendar, which is the technology behind Pedalpalooza and other social bike rides happening in Portland (http://shift2bikes.org/cal/). We will be using html, css, jQuery, mustache, and php. Our code repo is here: https://github.com/sdobz/shiftcal/tree/as-api

Our task list is here:

https://docs.google.com/document/d/1t7bRrTXDFlBIg83secBjrbHNieh_pbOr2i25WkoxSwI/edit?usp=sharing

This month's topic is "Antivirus in the Enterprise - is it dead yet?" Read almost any article about antivirus today, and there will be an opinion somewhere in the writings about the applicability and effectiveness of antivirus software in the enterprise today. Some say yes; some say no. We will open this meeting with a pro/con presentation by security professionals Tony Carothers and Timothy D. Morgan, followed by discussion and debate in a panel style, about antivirus software and it's effectiveness in software security today. Refreshments will be provided.

The Open Web Application Security Project (OWASP) is a 501c3 not-for-profit worldwide charitable organization focused on improving the security of application software. To sign up for future meeting notes and to discuss security topics with local gurus, sign up on the OWASP Portland mailing list: https://lists.owasp.org/mailman/listinfo/owasp-portland

Meetings are free and open to the public.

We will be working again to improve the software behind the Shift Calendar (http://shift2bikes.org/cal/). We are almost finished with making a mobile-friendly version (http://www.shift2bikes.org/testcal/view2week-bs.php ). Our code repo is here: https://github.com/ShiftGithub/shiftcal

Agenda:

• Final touches before deploying mobile site to beta
• Setting up the beta in a more publicly accessible, removed-from-the-live-site manner.
• Posting a link to the live site that encourages people to "try the beta version" of the calendar
• Adding Facebook functionality

If you plan to come later than the start time of 11AM, please bring a cellphone. There will be a phone number posted on the door that you'd call to be let in.

We're launching ProductTank here in PDX! ProductTank is an opportunity for Product professionals to learn and network. For our first meetup, we have a great speaker lined up and hopefully one more to announce!

Samuel Hulick

Growing Your User Base with Better Onboarding

Frustration drives people to sign up for products in hopes of improving their lives. The space between the intolerable “before” and the ideal “after” is your project’s “improvement trajectory.” And once this is defined, it’s easier to identify key moments in the customer journey and match them to design patterns.

Samuel shares strategies that help you stop hemorrhaging signups. You’ll learn to create quality onboarding experiences that target your users’ frustrations and move them from A to B in their lives, instead of just A to B in your app.

About Samuel

Samuel Hulick runs UserOnboard.com and is the author of The Elements of User Onboarding. He’s combined UX savvy and a cat-like curiosity for measuring UX impact to become an expert in onboarding. His approach is shaped by over a decade of web experience, theories taken from behavioral psychology, cognitive development, video game design, and even filmmaking.

Hello all!

We are hoping that you and yours are having a most excellent summer so far. We've had such a busy summer we overlooked the July meeting! Our plan is to get things started back up this second week of August. I wanted to get the date down for everyone. I don't have any plans finalized for speakers, if you'd like to propose a talk you can do it publicly here, or PM the organizers; I was asking folks to use the google group for this previously, but it seems easiest for you all to use meetup.com directly.

There's been great lightning talk participation later in the evenings from everyone, please come with something fun/interesting to show folks!

Schedule will be up soon once we nail down some speakers!

Thanks to all who attended our meeting last month, and to Asa Miller and Eric O'Connell for presenting!

-=== Event Details ===-

Jama Software has graciously offered their event space again for this meeting. Food will also be provided by Idealist.org, please come at 6pm to enjoy some dinner and socializing. If you are new to the group, welcome! We hope that you find this community a friendly and open one. To new and existing members, please take a look at the code of conduct for our group.

The presentation will start promptly at 6:30.

Looking forward to a great meetup!

Hello all!

Many thanks to Areeb for taking the time to come up to Portland and share his talk with us this past meetup. In case you missed our last meetup, Michel was kind enough to film and edit it for us, so a big thanks to Michel as well. Here's a link to the video: https://youtu.be/9qcBlN6-qwY

Proposed Schedule

For June Asa Miller will be presenting on a weekend app he built using React Native. We also plan to have someone from our team at Idealist.org talk about our experiences with React + i18n.

If you would like to speak at any of our meetups: we are always looking for people, please send a message to the moderators on meetup.com or use the google group.

-=== Event Details ===-

Jama Software has graciously offered their event space again for this meeting. Food will also be provided by Idealist.org, please come at 6pm to enjoy some dinner and socializing. If you are new to the group, welcome! We hope that you find this community a friendly and open one. To new and existing members, please take a look at the code of conduct for our group.

The presentation will start promptly at 6:30.

Looking forward to a great meetup!

=== UPDATE 6/11/2015===

I wanted to let you know that Jon from O'Reilly Media will be giving a brief announcement about OSCON, he will also be raffling a bronze ticket (valued at $1495) to attend the conference Wed-Fri. O'Reilly will be our food sponsor this month, so many thanks to them for their support of our community up here in Portland.

Hello all!

We had an awesome meetup last week at Jama with some great talks. Thanks to everyone that took time from their schedule to come out.

In May, we're very excited to announce that Areeb Malik from Facebook's Ads Team will be presenting his talk, "Going Big with React", which will focus on the strengths of a unidirectional data flow architecture in apps with several engineers and megabytes of client-side code. Here is a link to this talk from last year. Areeb will be catering this talk to our React users community here, so please come prepared to ask questions and expect an interesting conversation after his talk.

Jama Software has graciously offered their event space again for this meeting. Food will also be provided by Idealist.org, please come at 6pm to enjoy some dinner and socializing.

The presentation will start promptly at 6:30.

Looking forward to a great meetup! Please RSVP at meetup.com so we know how many people are coming. Thank you!

Greetings Reagents!

We had an awesome meetup at Jama with some great talks. Thanks to everyone that took time from their schedule to come out.

We're still looking for some talks from the Portland community. Please let us know if you'd be interested in speaking at this or any future meetings. We have some things brewing for the May meetup that we're excited to share with you next month.

Jama Software has graciously offered their event space again for this meeting. Food will also be provided by Idealist.org, please come at 6pm to enjoy some dinner and socializing.

Presentations will start promptly at 6:30.

== Proposed Schedule ==

• Observables and React (or, 'Yo dawg, I heard you like reactive programming, so I put some Reactive Extensions in your React so you can react while you React’) - (Ian Irvine)

Ian takes us on a tour of JavaScript Observables via RXJS, and explores some potential use cases within the realm of React.

• TBA!!!

Some members have mentioned wanting to see and hear a talk on a rewrite of an app from [something] to React. Have you done this? You should talk about it! Are you interested in trying this? Try it! Then show us how it went.

An Introduction To Data Modeling Techniques in Cassandra

Steve will discuss NOSQL, CAP Theorem, eventual consistency, and data modeling techniques in Cassandra. Following that will be a demonstration of some shell commands to create and query tables. We will discuss wide and narrow rows in Cassandra, storage options, and capacity planning. We will take a brief look at Titan, a graph database that can use Cassandra as a backing store. We will take a look at partition keys, clustering columns, time series data, and how these choices affect the storage and performance of the solution. We will discuss some of the real world challenges that come up, the trade offs associated with materialized views, plus compare and contrast this to a typical relational model. Time permitting we will discuss some real world use cases, and how Nike Social is using Cassandra to meet them.

Speaker

Steve Hall is a software engineer with over 15 years of experience. Steve is currently a full time engineer with Nike Digital, where he focuses on REST, social networks, and social network integration.

Greetings to all!

We're excited to announce our second meeting and presentation night! We already have some great talks lined up from Dave McCabe and Asa Miller. We're hoping to set aside some time for lightning talks as well. Please join the mailing list and let us know if you are interested in presenting or participating in lightning talks.

Jama Software will be hosting us at their new office in downtown Portland. Catering will also be provided, more details on that soon.

== Proposed Schedule ==

Using React with Real-time data from Firebase. (Asa Miller)

Asa will discuss setting up real-time communication between desktop and mobile and how to to configure it for communication between components instead of passing props.

Notes on the Design of Components. (Dave McCabe)

A discussion on what we've learned about designing React components: Techniques for promoting simplicity, reuse, statelessness, and separation of concerns, and for dealing with asynchrony.