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!
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Here’s what’s happening in the thriving tech scene in Tampa Bay and surrounding areas for the week of Monday, June 9 through Sunday, June 15, 2025!
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, June 16
- Tuesday, June 17
- Wednesday, June 18
- Thursday, June 19
- Friday, June 20
- Saturday, June 21
- Sunday, June 22
Monday, June 16
Tuesday, June 17
Wednesday, June 18
Wednesday from 6 – 8 p.m. at Embarc Collective (Tampa): Tampa Bay Artificial Intelligence Meetup and Tampa Bay Python present Intro to AI agents with MCP: Model Context Protocol!
MCP is short for “Model Context Protocol.” Introduced to world by Anthropic not too long ago, it’s an open source, open standard that gives AI models connection to external data sources and tools. You could describe MCP as “a universal API for AIs to interact with online services.”
You’ll learn what MCP is, why it was made and how it came about, and then show you actual working code by building a simple MCP server connected to an LLM. Joey will demonstrate a couple of examples of MCP in action, and they’ll be examples that you can take home and experiment with!
Find out more and register here.
Thursday, June 19
Friday, June 20
Saturday, June 21
Sunday, June 22
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
Categories
Wearing the red shirt
Here’s a screenshot of my half of a Zoom meeting that I was on earlier this morning. I assure you that I had a valid, strategic reason for wearing an old-school Starfleet command/engineering uniform.
I’ll post more details later as events warrant.
Back in mid-March, the Tampa Bay AI Meetup hosted a session at Embarc Collective called Build an AI job application helper app, where we did just that: we built an application that helps you apply for jobs.
I’ve since refined the app and posted it on GitHub, where you can download it and try it out for yourself.
According to the Silicon Valley-based career guidance service Pathrise, job seekers who sent 20+ job applications every week got more interviews and landed a job sooner.
That’s a lot of work, especially since the general advice is to customize your résumé for every job application, and then write a cover letter too. This app makes it easier to take on this big task by taking your résumé and the description of the job you’re applying for, then uses an LLM to generate a résumé and cover letter optimized for that job application.
The app is written in Python and uses Jupyter Notebook as a platform. I wrote this as a Jupyter Notebook rather than a regular command-line Python app because Jupyter Notebooks also allow me to mix explanatory documentation with my code:
Give it a try! You can either clone the GitHub repo for this application, or simply download a .zip file containing all its files.
Categories
Saturday picdump for June 7, 2025
Another Saturday has come around, and so has another “picdump!” This is the article where I post the technology- and work-related memes, pictures, and cartoons floating around the internet that I found interesting or relevant this week. Share and enjoy!
Here’s what’s happening in the thriving tech scene in Tampa Bay and surrounding areas for the week of Monday, June 9 through Sunday, June 15, 2025!
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, June 9
- Tuesday, June 10
- Wednesday, June 11
- Thursday, June 12
- Friday, June 13
- Saturday, June 14
- Sunday, June 15
Monday, June 9
Tuesday, June 10
Tuesday, from 6 to 8 p.m. at Hays (Tampa): Tampa Bay Product Group is hosting Hardcore Soft Skills for Product Managers!
In this session, you will learn about tools and techniques to master critical “soft skills” (I prefer to call them people skills) as Product Manager to keep the product team motivated and your customers satisfied.
Find out more and register here.
| Event name and location | Group | Time |
|---|---|---|
| Gulfport show and tell Gulfport Beach |
Saint Petersburg FPV drones | 6:00 PM to 7:00 PM EDT |
| Hardcore Soft Skills for Product Managers Hays |
Tampa Bay Product Group | 6:00 PM to 8:00 PM EDT |
| Tampa Ai Meetup University boba tea house |
Tampa Artificial Intelligence Applications Meetup Group | 6:00 PM to 8:00 PM EDT |
| Weekly Open Make Night 4931 W Nassau St |
Tampa Hackerspace | 6:00 PM to 9:00 PM EDT |
| 3D Printing Bootcamp! – week 2 – 3D Modeling Basics w/ Blender! MakerSpace Clearwater |
Makerspaces Pinellas Meetup Group | 6:30 PM to 8:30 PM EDT |
| Python Dinner Orlando |
The Orlando Python User Group | 7:00 PM to 8:30 PM EDT |
| Woodshop Safety (Members Only) Tampa Hackerspace West |
Tampa Hackerspace | 7:00 PM to 10:00 PM EDT |
| Be Stress Free Online |
Chill and Chat | 7:00 PM to 8:00 PM EDT |
| Return to the top of the list | ||
Wednesday, June 11
Wednesday at 6:30 p.m. at New World Music Hall: Pints of Science features three esteemed area scientists who’ll share their current projects and passions while you enjoy New World’s excellent beer and pizza!
The speakers:
- Ana Maria Quintero (USF St. Petersburg Geography degree focused on Conservation, minor in Environmental Policy):
Worms at Work: Composting Magic from the Ground Up
Discover how red wiggler worms can transform your food scraps into nutrient-rich compost. Learn the basics of worm farming and how to use castings and worm tea to naturally boost your garden. - Elise Pickett (Former Marine Biologist, Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission; Degree in Wildlife Biology and Conservation, Minor in Zoology):
Set It and Forget It: The No-Maintenance Summer Garden That Works for You
Keep your garden healthy and weed-free all summer long—without lifting a finger. In this talk, you’ll learn how to use low-effort summer cover crops to protect and nourish your Florida garden during the hottest months. - Meryl Stout (Urban Agriculture Coordinator & Executive Director – Coalition of Community Gardens) and Nathan Farley (Urban Agriculture Specialist Coalition of Community Gardens):
Community Gardens
Community gardens are powerful tools for improving physical and mental health. Research shows they reduce stress, boost mood, support nutrition, and encourage physical activity. These benefits can also help prevent chronic diseases. This talk explains how to get involved locally and start growing your own health.
Find out more and register here.
Thursday, June 12
Thursday from 1 – 4 p.m., both online and at Guidepoint Security: Tampa Bay ISSA presents Warren Shane, Sales Director at Cyberint, with a talk about AI security, prompt injection, and insider threat, followed by a happy hour.
Find out more and register here.
Thursday from 6 – 8 p.m. at the Entrepreneur Collaborative Center (Tampa): Tampa Java user Group presents Building Reliable Applications with Temporal!
What if you could guarantee that any series of services would never fail? What if there is a better way to create, test and debug reliable applications?
Temporal is an open source programming model that simplifies your code, makes your applications more reliable and helps you deliver more features faster. It abstracts away the complexities around retries, rollbacks, queues, state machines, and timers so that developers spend their time focused on writing business logic, instead of all of the failure conditions. It introduces a new paradigm that helps you manage simple tasks or a series of complex procedures so that they are executed reliably until completion, or they will elegantly fail. Testing becomes as easy as writing and running unit tests.
Find out more and register here.
Thursday at 6:30 p.m., online: Tampa Bay Women in Agile will feature Unlocking Enterprise Agility: From Chaos to Clarity, featuring presenter Apinder Bedi.
Explore why up to 70% of enterprise Agile transformations silently fail and how organizations can overcome these pitfalls by embracing true enterprise agility. It challenges the notion that adopting Agile frameworks equals business agility and outlines actionable shifts leaders must make to unlock real, sustainable value.
Find out more and register here.
Thursday at 7 p.m. at Neon Temple (Tampa): The Temple’s BlondeTechie will present Grow Strong: Gardening for Mind and Survival, where she’ll share how she started her Florida garden with two goals — building food security and finding peace. From humble beginnings to the vision of a full food forest, she’ll also highlight resilient crops perfect for our local climate.
Friday, June 13
Saturday, June 14
Sunday, June 15
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
After seeing my previous post about laptop stickers, a couple of people noted that they thought I was a Windows guy. I’m more of an “anything programmable” guy, and I do have a Windows machine that I use regularly (in fact, there’s an interesting story behind how I bought it).
Pictured above are the stickers on my Windows laptop.