Connective DX

This month we're excited to have Josh Nelson join us to talk through making in-browser, multiplayer games, using a recent project called PlinkoJS as an example.

PRESENTATION DETAILS

Making a game is simple, right?

How about adding physics to it? What if we ran it in the browser and made it a real-time multiplayer?

I think you can see that very quickly what was once a straightforward challenge has ballooned into a much more significant undertaking. The browser is not a particularly friendly environment for multiplayer games, especially those that need to be responsive and real-time.

This presentation will walk us through core challenges that every developer will face when trying to make an in-browser game and how they can overcome them. Josh will highlight key concepts and solutions using a game he recently built in Node and React as an example, PlinkoJS.

The following topics will be covered:

• Games in the browser - The building blocks for a local, in-browser game
• Network architecture - Connecting players over the internet
• State synchronization - Creating and maintaining an authoritative game state
• Optimizations - Reducing bandwidth and latency estimation

SPEAKER DETAILS

Josh Nelson is a software engineer with a management background from Portland State University. He has experience working with technologies such as React, Node, Rails, Backbone, and more. He enjoys tackling challenging problems and working with others to build robust systems.

• PlinkoJS: www.plinkojs.com
• GitHub: https://github.com/joshcnelson

EVENT DETAILS

​Food, drinks, and conversation beginning at 6:30. The talk begins around 7:00.

Paid parking is available in the lot directly across the street from the Connective DX office on Pettygrove. On-street parking is available in the neighborhood as well, of course, if you can find it. There are also bike racks available just inside the entrance to the building.

Join us June 13 for the first meetup in our new format, featuring Zach Babb, Principal Technologist from Daimler's moovel divison sharing a view into their Conversational Experiments. Following Babb will be a tour of Cognigy's Conversational UI platform.

Doors will open at 5:30pm for beer by Baerlic Brewing, soda, pizza and conversation

6:30pm – 7:00pm Zach Babb, Principal Technologist at Daimler moovel will share a view into their lab efforts specific to conversational interfaces such as Alexa and Facebook Messenger, why they shelved them and why now might be the perfect time to pick them up again. Checkout the latest news about the Daimler/BMW mobility merger which includes moovel, Reach Now and many more https://www.nytimes.com/2018/03/28/business/daimler-bmw-car-sharing.html

7:00pm – 7:30pm Demonstration of Cognigy’s Conversational AI platform http://www.cognigy.com which allows for rapid development and deployment of experiences across Slack, Alexa, Facebook Messenger and more

7:30pm – 8:00pm Discuss topics and interesting presenters for future meetings

Unfortunately, tonight's speaker Micah and his family have come down with the flu, and he will not be able to speak tonight. We'll still hold the meetup, but we'll set up for a Bring Your Own Project night: bring a project to share (or get help with), or come ready to give help to others.
We're working on rescheduling Micah for February. We'll leave the talk description up for now to give you an idea of what's coming.

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For the final Meetup of 2017, we welcome back Micah Godbolt to talk design systems!

About the talk:
HTML and CSS are all you need to create a Design System that unifies the visual appearance of your products, but as soon as you want to create consistent behavior between applications, you'll need to turn to JavaScript. More often than not, using a modern framework such as React, Vue, or Angular will save you lots of time, and keep you from reinventing the wheel.

In this talk, I will discuss how moving interactivity into the Design System is not only a good choice today, but is most certainly how you will be creating Design Systems in the future. I'll also be discussing the React-powered Design System I've been helping to create which powers a few apps you might have heard of, including SharePoint, OneDrive, and Outlook for the web.

About the speaker:
Micah Godbolt, a Senior Design Developer at Microsoft, is a Front-end Architect, author, speaker, trainer, blogger and developer from the Portland area.

Event Details

​Food, drinks, and conversation beginning at 6:30. The talk begins around 7:00.

Parking is available in the parking lot directly across the street from the Connective DX office on Pettygrove. There are also bike racks available just inside the entrance to the building.

In this talk we will help you learn how to use AI to your advantage in your job search.

Believe it or not HR departments and Companies are harvesting social media data and all other available information about you to filter out candidates. It gives them an unfair advantage while hiring. Can the unfair advantage be balanced by Job seekers? The answer is - Yes.

Join us to find out how

Talk covers the following;

1. Introduction to Artificial Intelligence

2. Why and How to use Watson AI for job search

3. Science behind Watson AI

Due to an exciting opportunity with TEDMED and OHSU, we invite you to join OHSU and Connective DX, along with your peers from the Oregon and Southwest Washington healthcare community, for the live broadcast of TEDMED 2016. Seating is limited, so RSVP today.

https://www.eventbrite.com/e/tedmed-2016-with-ohsu-at-connective-dx-tickets-28848303051

Moderated by Voices of VR Podcast's Kent Bye, this panel will bring together 360 degree videographers, VR technologists and experience designers to examine the state of user experience in virtual reality, the skills needed to design 360 degree experiences, the challenges of this new medium, and the joys of working inside new realities.

Start your Friday right with hand pies from Pacific Pie Co. and Portland Brewing beer, and then join the conversation with some of the area's brightest minds working in experience design and virtual reality.

The Panel

Matt Rowell—Co-Founder 360 Labs @360labs

Gavin Farrell—Co-Founder Panogs @panogs

Gabe Paez—Founder Wild @builtbywild

Teressa Chizeck—Interaction Designer, Intel

The Schedule

5-5:30 eating, networking, demos 5:45-7 panel discussion 7-7:30 questions, networking

You, Me and SVG

Description

Icon fonts! CSS-only illustrations! High-resolution GIF animations! Today's web designers still regularly and enthusiastically employ these techniques... yet they're all a better fit for SVG, a powerful vector image format that's already old enough to drive a car.

Join Cloud Four's Lead Designer Tyler Sticka for an impassioned introduction to your new favorite image format: What it is, how it works, and why it's so awesome.

Speaker

Tyler Sticka leads the Design Practice at Cloud Four, where he helps vanquish complex responsive design challenges for clients like Walmart Labs while blogging about SVG and other web ephemera. He's also a fan of side projects, co-founding Backabit (makers of iOS games like Ramps and Lotsa Blocks) and launching Colorpeek (and its accompanying Chrome extension) in his spare time. He complains about mail apps on Twitter as @tylersticka.

Don't Change My Chainsaw: Challenges­ in designing a tool for a skeptical audience

In this presentation, Michael Oilar (MDC Research) will talk about a project involving research for a new battery-powered chainsaw design. They tested several iterations, from paper prototypes to high fidelity models. Their research revealed conflicting needs of different user audiences, as well as some resistance to change. Michael will talk about how they worked to resolve those conflicts in the final design.

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

About the Speaker

Michael Oilar is the President of MDC Research, a market research agency located in Portland, OR.

Event Details

Time: Informal networking is from 6:30 – 7:00, with Michael's talk to begin promptly at 7:00. Light dinner to be provided from World Foods deli. Please RSVP on our Meetup site and let us know if you'll be attending. http://www.meetup.com/PDX-Design-Research-Group/

Special thanks to Connective DX 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.

First up is Christoph Saxe, Senior Software Engineer and the front end team lead at Connective DX, presenting “Culture of Collaboration: the Craft of Team Practice,” exploring how regular team practice meetings keep teams growing their craft and their process running smoothly.

Then the team from Portland startup Civil will be discussing their recently launched drop-in JavaScript comments platform and its goal of fixing internet comments by bringing civility and respectful debate to online comment threads.

Food and drinks will be available at 6:30 with the first speaker starting up around 7:00.