Monthly Meetup 🌙

Hey fellow Astorians,

Hope you're all healthy, sane, and inside during these times.

We won't be hosting a physical meetup this month, but fret not, the show will go on!

This Wednesday evening, we'll be getting together in cyberspace to catch up, talk tech, and hear about community projects.

We'll be hearing from Kyle Tomanelli about the Volunteer Dispatch app/slackbot that he and a few volunteers built over the last week (in coordination with Astoria Mutual Aid Network)!

After that, we'll brainstorm on how we can put our tech skills to use to help our neighborhood and city in this time of crisis.

So since we shouldn't be outside anyway, come join your neighbors in our open group Zoom call!
https://us04web.zoom.us/j/181990538

AGENDA:
6:30 - 7:00: Open discussion & hang
7:00 - 8:00: Volunteer Dispatch review and other COVID projects/ideas

Hey Astorians and friends!

I know it’s hard to believe, but the end of February is already upon us. But look on the bright side: time for another Astoria Tech Meetup!

This month, instead of our usual invited speaker, we’ll be trying something new: opening the mic up to you, the community.

Whether you’re working on something cool, excited about a new library, or just have a fun tech story, come out and share! And of course, even if you have nothing to share, all are welcome to just come listen, learn, and laugh.

See you all next Wednesday!

AGENDA:
6:30 - 7:15: Open discussions (submit & view topics online*)
7:15 - 7:45: Open mic
7:45 - 8:30: Community project planning

• Members of our community built our discussion web app, which allows anyone to submit topics that they'd like to discuss during the first part of the meetup. Feel free to submit any tech or tech-adjacent topics:
  https://discuss.astoria.app

Hey neighbors!

Hope you've all shaken off the holiday haze, 'cause your favorite neighborhood tech meetup is back, and better than ever (at least by a little).

We're starting the decade with a treat for all the creative tech folks out there. If you've dealt with digital art, chances are you know about Processing. In short, Processing is a library and IDE which makes creating dynamic visuals easy with minimal programming.

And to make your creative projects even more accessible, there is a JavaScript Processing library called p5.js. It lets you run create and run your projects right in your browser.

So this month, we're excited to have one of our members give an intro workshop to the library!

Come hang, talk, and learn how to be a sick digital artist, yo. 🎨

AGENDA:
6:30 - 7:15: Open discussions (submit & view topics online*)
7:15 - 7:45: Intro to p5.js
7:45 - 8:30: Community project planning

• Members of our community built our discussion web app, which allows anyone to submit topics that they'd like to discuss during the first part of the meetup. Feel free to submit any tech or tech-adjacent topics:
  https://discuss.astoria.app

Astorians!

Here we are, at the last Astoria Tech Meetup of the decade. Time moves so fast, doesn’t it? Phew. Existential crisis aside, come join us at our usual time and place for a night of discussion and learning!

To close out the year, we’re excited to welcome our guest speaker, Jimmy Marsanico. Be it for security or strategy, data is quickly becoming one of the most valuable resources in the modern age. As a data scientist and Head of Data at Imgur, Jimmy has spent years focused on all aspects of an organization’s data. He will speak about how to understand and leverage it and its respective analyses to your advantage.

After the talk, feel free to continue discussions or join us for our community project planning.

See you all there! And stay warm until then! ❄️

AGENDA:
6:30 - 7:15: Open discussions (submit & view topics online*)
7:15 - 7:45: "How Product Analytics & Data Governance Will Make You Better At Your Job" by Jimmy Marsanico
7:45 - 8:30: Community project planning

• Members of our community built our discussion web app, which allows anyone to submit topics that they'd like to discuss during the first part of the meetup. Feel free to submit any tech or tech-adjacent topics:
  https://discuss.astoria.app

Hey Astorians!

Our 14th monthly meetup is coming up at our usual place, but one week earlier than usual! So come join us the week before Thanksgiving for a night of bits, bytes, and apps.

This month, in the spirit of community, we are excited to welcome Sadie Coughlin-Prego from the Queensbridge Tech Lab. As Queens Public Library’s hub for tech and innovation, the tech lab’s goal is to train and provide both digital and physical resources to the community, from both professional and creative perspectives. As lead instructor at the lab, Sadie will share about her experiences and ongoing initiatives.

After the talk, feel free to continue discussions or join us for our community project planning.

See you all there!

AGENDA:
6:30 - 7:15: Open discussions (submit & view topics online*)
7:15 - 7:45: “The Library and the Lab“ by Sadie Coughlin-Prego
7:45 - 8:30: Community project planning

• Members of our community built our discussion web app, which allows anyone to submit topics that they'd like to discuss during the first part of the meetup. Feel free to submit any tech or tech-adjacent topics:
  https://discuss.astoria.app

Hey Astorians!

Our 13th (spooky~ 👻) monthly meetup is coming up at our usual time and place! It's just a couple short blocks from Broadway station, so if tech interests you in any way, come on by.

For our talk this month, we’re excited to welcome NYC Mesh organizer Jillian Murphy! NYC Mesh is a local volunteer organization (like us!) dedicated to building, expanding, and maintaining a community-run & community-owned network. Those who’ve been to the previous meetups know that we’ve been planning/talking about building our own network out here in Astoria, so the talk will be especially informative for us.

And as usual, after the talk, we'll go discuss our ongoing community initiatives (which are usually web apps). Volunteers with any kinds of skills are always welcome; our resident experts will bring you up to speed.

So come use that pre-Halloween energy to be productive and have fun at the same time!

AGENDA:
6:30 - 7:15: Open discussions (submit & view topics online*)
7:15 - 7:45: "NYC Mesh: Building a Neighborhood Network" by Jillian Murphy
7:45 - 8:30: Community project planning

• Members of our community built our discussion web app, which allows anyone to submit topics that they'd like to discuss during the first part of the meetup. Feel free to submit any tech or tech-adjacent topics:
  https://discuss.astoria.app

Hey Astorians!

Our 12th monthly meetup is coming up at our recent home, The Strand Smokehouse. It's just a few short blocks from Broadway station, so if tech interests you in any way, come on by!

This month, James Quigley, one of our core members, will be giving an intro talk on Terraform! A cloud infrastructure provisioning tool by the famous Hashicorp, Terraform allows you to codify any mix-and-match of cloud services into one unified set of config files. Need to spin up a few Azure servers, GCP databases, and AWS buckets? Terraform has your back.

And as usual, after the talk, we'll go over and plan our current community initiatives. A few web apps are mid-development, and we'll be showing off some new hardware we received to start building our corner of the NYC Mesh! Volunteers with any kinds of skills are always welcome; our resident experts will bring you up to speed.

So come celebrate the first week of autumn in good company. And hopefully even a learn a thing or three!

AGENDA:
6:30 - 7:15: Quick discussions (submit & view topics online*), project show-and/or-tell
7:15 - 7:45: "Terraform (your infrastructure, not Mars)" by James Quigley
7:45 - 8:30: Community project planning

• Members of our community built our discussion web app, which allows anyone to submit topics that they'd like to discuss during the first part of the meetup. Feel free to submit any tech or tech-adjacent topics:
  https://discuss.astoria.app

Hello fellow Astorians!

Our 11th meetup is coming up at The Strand Smokehouse, right by the Broadway station. So whether you're in tech or just interested, come on by.

This month we're welcoming Peter Berg, resident of Astoria and founder of Forward who will be giving a talk titled, "Never rewrite your code again".

Peter's talk will touch on techniques he's used to manage and help engineers achieve maximum productivity and growth. As the former CTO of multiple startups, Peter has years of experience in developing engineers and scaling out technical teams. So if you are a senior developer or just breaking into the industry, come out to hear his secrets!

After the talk, we'll go over the progress of our community projects, and plan next steps. Maybe we'll even come up with a few new ideas!

AGENDA:
6:30 - 7:15: Quick discussions (submit & view topics online*), show-and-tell of projects
7:15 - 7:45: "Never rewrite your code again" by Peter Berg
7:45 - 8:30: Community project planning

• Members of our community built our discussion web app, which allows anyone to submit topics that they'd like to discuss during the first part of the meetup. Feel free to submit any tech or tech-adjacent topics:
  https://discuss.astoria.app

Hey fellow Astorians!

Our tenth (!!!) meetup is coming up at the same time, but different place! To accommodate our growing numbers, this month we'll be at The Strand Smokehouse, right by the Broadway station. So whether you're in tech or just interested, come on by.

Over the past few meetups, microservices have come up a few times. It's been a hot topic in the tech world, especially given the rise of containers. And as with any hot topic, lots of fancy new tools have been coming out to help make working with microservices easier.

So this month, we're welcoming Shon Urbas, CTO and cofounder of Pandium, to talk about his experience developing microservices using an awesome tool called Telepresence. The tool specifically works with Kubernetes clusters, but don't worry, the talk won't be assuming any Kubernetes knowledge.

After the talk, we'll be going over the progress of our community projects, and plan next steps. Maybe we'll even come up with a few new ideas!

AGENDA:
6:30 - 7:15: Quick discussions (submit & view topics online*)
7:15 - 7:45: "Developing Microservices with Telepresence" by Shon Urbas
7:45 - 8:30: Community project planning

• Members of our community built our discussion web app, which allows anyone to submit topics that they'd like to discuss during the first part of the meetup. Feel free to submit any tech or tech-adjacent topics:
  https://discuss.astoria.app

Hey fellow Astorians!

Our ninth monthly meetup is happening at our usual time and place. Whether you're in tech or just interested, all are welcome.

At the last meetup, we discussed Flutter, Google's cross-platform mobile app framework (like React Native). None of us had experience with it, though, so one of our regulars decided to bite the bullet and give an intro talk on it!

So this month, our main event will be a presentation on Flutter by Omar De Leo. He'll cover his early experience with the framework, and walk us through a simple app.

After that, we'll discuss next steps for our community projects. We're building some fun/useful apps specifically for Astoria, and anyone is welcome to contribute, so come put your skills to use!

AGENDA:
6:30 - 7:15: Quick discussions (submit & view topics online*)
7:15 - 7:45: "Intro to Flutter" by Omar De Leo
7:45 - 8:30: Community project planning

• Members of our community built our Meetup web app, which allows anyone to submit topics that they'd like to discuss during the first part of the meetup. Feel free to submit any tech or tech-adjacent topics:
  https://meetup.astoria.app