Happy Saturday, everyone! Here on Global Nerdy, Saturday means that it’s time for another “picdump” — the weekly assortment of amusing or interesting pictures, comics,
and memes I found over the past week. Share and enjoy!
Hint: √(1 + tan2) = sec
Here’s what’s happening in the thriving tech scene in Tampa Bay and surrounding areas for the week of Monday, September 15 through Sunday, September 21!
This list includes both in-person and online events. Note that each item in the list includes:
✅ When the event will take place
✅ What the event is
✅ Where the event will take place
✅ Who is holding the event
This week’s events
- Monday, September 15
- Tuesday, September 16
- Wednesday, September 17
- Thursday, September 18
- Friday, September 19
- Saturday, September 20
- Sunday, September 21
Monday, September 15
Tuesday, September 16
Tuesday at 10:00 a.m., online: Computer Coach presents Transition to a Career in Tech. Whether you’re an aspiring coder, a seasoned professional looking to pivot, or someone curious about the vast opportunities in the tech industry, this virtual workshop is your gateway to a new and exciting chapter.
Find out more and register here.
Tuesday evening at 5:30 p.m. at Green Bench Brewing (St. Pete): St. Pete Connects presents Happy Hour at Green Bench Brewing! It’s an intentional meetup for tech entrepreneurs, founders, and community partners helping to create friendships and a network in St. Pete.
Find out more and register here.
Tuesday evening at 6:30 p.m. at Embarc Collective (Tampa): Indo-US Chamber of Commerce presents Practical AI: Turning Technology into Business Value.
Want to learn how AI can be used in your business or career, meet key people from Tampa Bay’s dynamic South Asian community, and enjoy some Indian food? Then you’ll want to attend the Indo-U.S. Chamber of Commerce’s panel, Practical AI: Turning Technology into Business Value.
Find out more and register here.
Wednesday, September 17
Wednesday at 12:30 p.m., online: This is an interactive webinar where you’ll get an inside look at Tampa Bay Tech and discover how their corporate enterprise memberships can benefit you and your team.
You’ll find out:
-
Who Tampa Bay Tech is and what they do
-
The value of joining Tampa Bay Tech
-
Ways to get involved in Tampa Bay’s thriving tech community
-
About Tampa Bay Tech’s membership and partnership tiers
Find out more and register here.
Wednesday at 7:00 p.m. at Cigar City Brewing (Tampa): Central Florida CitySec is hosting CigarCitySec, whose goal is to discuss topics of interest in a non-work, non-vendor setting; preferably while drinking!
Find out more and register here.
Thursday, September 18
Thursday at 6:00 p.m. at Coppertail Brewing (Tampa): It’s Tampa Bay New-in-Tech’s Social-Mixer Style Connect! Join Tampa Bay New-In-Tech for an evening of tech exploration and connect. Whether you are interested in startup businesses, self-help, or simply unwinding after a busy day, this event promises to offer something for everyone. It’s open to all — come solo or bring a friend!
Find out more and register here.
Thursday at 6:30 p.m. at Wild Rover Brewery (Tampa): It’s the Tampa edition of Lean Beer for All Things Agile, a “lean coffee”-style meetup, but in the evening, and with beer (or your preferred beverage, with or without alcohol).
They discuss any topics on Agile and Lean that are of interest to whomever is gathered. You suggest the topics, then the group prioritizes that list democratically, through a good ol’-fashioned vote.
Find out more and register here.
Friday, September 19
Friday from 11:15 a.m. to 1:15 p.m. at GuidePoint Security (Tampa): OWASP Tampa Chapter’s September Lunch and Learn will feature Tim Erlin, VP of Product at Wallarm, who’ll present a talk on the newly-published “Business Logic Abuse Top 10” list, including the methodology behind it.
Find out more and register here.
Saturday, September 20
Sunday, September 21
About this list
How do I put this list together?
It’s largely automated. I have a collection of Python scripts in a Jupyter Notebook that scrapes Meetup and Eventbrite for events in categories that I consider to be “tech,” “entrepreneur,” and “nerd.” The result is a checklist that I review. I make judgment calls and uncheck any items that I don’t think fit on this list.
In addition to events that my scripts find, I also manually add events when their organizers contact me with their details.
What goes into this list?
I prefer to cast a wide net, so the list includes events that would be of interest to techies, nerds, and entrepreneurs. It includes (but isn’t limited to) events that fall under any of these categories:
-
- Programming, DevOps, systems administration, and testing
- Tech project management / agile processes
- Video, board, and role-playing games
- Book, philosophy, and discussion clubs
- Tech, business, and entrepreneur networking events
- Toastmasters and other events related to improving your presentation and public speaking skills, because nerds really need to up their presentation game
- Sci-fi, fantasy, and other genre fandoms
- Self-improvement, especially of the sort that appeals to techies
- Anything I deem geeky
Last week’s panel event, Back to the Future of Work, was featured in Tampa Bay Business and Wealth!
Taking place at the Reliaquest Auditorium in Tampa startup space Embarc Collective, the event featured a discussion about different ways to think about how we measure the value of work in the new world of AI, remote work, ubiquitous internet, and economic uncertainty.
On the panel were:
- Moderator Fatin Kwasny, founder and CEO of Fractio
- Wendy Sellers, CEO, The HR Lady
- Joey de Villa, Yours Truly
- Nicolas Genest, Chief Technology Officer and founder and CEO, Codeboxx Academy
- Phil Nahajewski, Partner and Chief Financial Officer, Florida CFO Group
- Christina Adames, founder and CEO, Corus Innovation Labs
Check out the article, From hours to outcomes: Tampa panel explores the future of work in an AI world!
Want to learn how AI can be used in your business or career, meet key people from Tampa Bay’s dynamic South Asian community, and enjoy some Indian food? Then you’ll want to attend the Indo-U.S. Chamber of Commerce’s panel, Practical AI: Turning Technology into Business Value, taking place next Tuesday, September 16th at 6:30 p.m. at Embarc Collective!
The tl;dr
- What: Practical AI: Turning Technology into Business Value
- Organized by: Indo-U.S. Chamber of Commerce
- When: Tuesday, September 16, 6:30 – 8:30 p.m.
- Where: Embarc Collective (802 E. Whiting Street, Tampa)
- Cost: FREE!
- Bonus: A complimentary Indian dinner will be served!
- How to register: Register HERE
Why Attend?
-
Learn how AI can be applied beyond theory to solve real business challenges.
-
Hear from leaders in academia, entrepreneurship, and applied technology.
-
Network with Tampa Bay’s growing AI and tech community.
-
Enjoy complimentary Indian cuisine while connecting with innovators and peers.
Speakers & Moderator
-
Moderator: Sam Kasimalla
Sam’s one of the movers and shakers in the Tampa tech scene, and helped grow one of its most active meetups, Tampa Java User Group. An accomplished developer and business leader, he’s worked with hundreds of customers to achieve business objectives through technology. -
Dr. Sudeep Sarkar
He’s the Launch Dean of University of South Florida’s newly-created Bellini College of AI, Cybersecurity, and Computing. It’s Florida’s first dedicated AI & Cybersecurity college, educating 3,000+ students across 15+ programs. -
Priya Balasundaram
She’s the Founder and CEO of Nimitta Technologies and President of ITServe Alliance Florida. She’s a champion of women entrepreneurship, innovation, and minority inclusion with over 20 years in tech and leadership. - Joey de Villa
Yours Truly — Tampa Bay’s top tech advocate, developer advocate at Kforce for HP’s new ZGX Nano AI workstation, organizer of Tampa Bay AI Meetup and Tampa Bay Python, and accordion impresario.
Register for this event!
Once again, this is a free event, and there’ll be a complimentary Indian dinner. Register now!
Here’s what I consider to be a pretty good deal for the aspiring AI developer: for $18, Humble Bundle’s The A-Z of Machine Learning provides 19 video courses from Packt Publishing on all sorts of machine learning topics:
You may have had the expression pictured above when you saw that The A-Z of Machine Learning comes from Packt, of all places. Given their reputations for “shovelware” books, I’d be suspicious too, and I was even a technical reviewer for one of their books:
My new gig doing developer relations for HP’s ZGX Nano AI station will require me to create a lot of tutorials, so I purchased The A-Z of Machine Learning as well as the Humble Bundle below to get a better feel for the sorts of AI tutorials that are out there.
Having gone through a couple of the courses in The A-Z of Machine Learning and skimming the others, I can say that it’s not bad. I’d feel robbed if I paid full price for all 19 courses, but at 18 bucks — less than a buck each — it’s a pretty good deal, and an inexpensive way for the beginning AI/ML developer to get started.
(While I generally only buy Packt’s stuff when it’s on Humble Bundle, there are exceptions. The iOS books by Tampa’s own Craig Clayton are quite good, and I paid full price for them.)
At the time of writing, The A-Z of Machine Learning will be available for 14 more days.
Also worth checking out is the Create the Future Now bundle, a set of 21 books and online courses from Manning’s Early Access Program (or MEAP for short) for $25:
-
Open Source LLMs on Your Own Computer: 3 Project Series (liveProject)
-
Four AI Algorithm Projects with Python: 4 Project Series (liveProject)
-
Modern CSS for a Portfolio Page: 4 Project Series (liveProject)
-
Build Your First Microservice: 3 Project Series (liveProject)
-
Building an AI Voice Assistant: 4 Project Series (liveProject)
-
Moving to C#: 4 Project Series (liveProject)
This one’s a little pricier that the Packt offering, but it’s from Manning, which has a stronger reputation than Packt’s, and goes beyond just Python and AI. If you’re looking for a mix of books and online lessons and want to be a little more well-rounded, this Humble Bundle is for you!
I also purchased this bundle. At the time of writing, the Create the Future Now bundle will be also be available for 14 more days.
Categories
R.I.P. Vincent Tang
In every thriving community, there are a handful of people you can point to as the ones who acted as the catalyst, the one who brought people together and helped them become something larger than the sum of its parts. In the Tampa Bay tech community, Vincent was a catalyst.
He was a co-founder of Tampa Devs, a non-profit organization that’s been bringing together programmers, technologists, and people who work in the technology field together since September 2021. They’ve held meetups, hackathons, socials, and all manner of get-togethers that have made the tech scene here in “The Other Bay Area” so much better than it was.
Vincent was a key part of the change in the local tech community, bringing his enthusiasm, energy, spirit, and curiosity to whatever project he took on. I had many long chats with him about what he wanted to do during the quieter moments at big tech gatherings.
Near the start of last year, Vincent went off to see the country. He asked me about a few places I’d been to, and I told him about some favorite spots and even made some introductions to some friends in other cities. He’d occasionally send me a text with photos from wherever he was a the time — Dallas, Chicago, and a couple of wide-open spaces he didn’t identify — with the last message from him earlier this year.
I hadn’t heard from him in months, and that happens with friends who travel; also, life sometimes just gets in the way.
So it was a surprise to find out last week that Vincent had died. He was too damned young, and even if he’d lived to a ripe old age, he was so sweet a guy that it still would’ve been too soon.
Requiescat in pace, Vincent.
There will be a visitation for Vincent this Saturday, September 13, at Woodlawn Memorial Park & Funeral Home (400 Woodlawn Cemetery Road in Gotha) from 12:00 p.m. to 2:00 p.m..
The visitation will be followed by a funeral service from 2:00 p.m. to 3:00 p.m. at the same location.
After that will be the committal service, which will run from 3:00 p.m. to 3:30 p.m. at the same location.
These seem reasonable.