GT ACM

There are two Zynga info sessions this week:

1) Thursday, March 4 at 11:00am in Skiles Bldg, Room 002

2) Friday, March 5 at 12:00pm (noon) in Klaus 2447.
(We’ll have Chic-fil-a)

Zynga is the company behind games like Farmville, Mafia Wars, Yoville, and many others – they’re the number one social gaming company in the world, and their games are played by more than 200 million active users each month.

Bring your resume!

It’s that time of the year again! Yahoo! and GTACM are once again bringing you Hack Week – a week of great presentations, competition, and good clean geek fun. This year’s Hack Week will take place from March 9 – 13th; you can find a full listing of the planned events below. These events are also on our Google Calendar for your subscribing pleasure. Yahoo!’s official HackU page, which has details about the program, info from past events, and other cool hack stuff  is http://developer.yahoo.com/hacku.

Stay tuned here and via our twitter feed for updates.

Thursday, March 4

Pre-Hack U Event: Intro to Hack

The prequel to Hack Week! Specifically targeted at first time hackers, people who can’t make the kickoff event, and anyone searching for team members. Come hear what Hack Week is all about, meet fellow hack wizards, and hear from some of our past entrants – and winners! Come enjoy the food, listen a bit, and then hang out with other Hack Stars.

Location: Klaus 1116
Time: 6:00pm
Food: Dinner (Calzones!)
Giveaways: iPod Shuffle Raffle!

Tuesday, March 9

Hack U Kickoff

The official start of the week! Come hear what Hack Week is all about, see just how easy it is for you to make an entry that could win you amazing prices, and get your first taste of the great hack culture that will be here all week!

Location: Klaus Atrium
Time: 6:15pm
Food: Dinner (Moe’s)
Giveaways: Hack U t-shirts, Y! swag & Raffle prize

Wednesday, March 10

Event: Open Tech Lunch

Come hear about some cool APIs, technologies, frameworks, etc – all centered around open development culture! Also, see demos of how to use them in your hacks. It’s a great chance to learn from those who know it best. Update: Chris’s slides are here.
Location: CoC Third Floor (Follow the Arrows!)
Time: 11:30- 1PM
Food: Yes – lunch (BBQ)

Event: Office Hours + Informal Talks

Location: CoC Commons
Time: 1:30PM – 4PM
Schedule:
1:30- 2:30: How to Hosting / Joyent + PHP
2:30 – 3:30 : How to Javascript / YUI
3:30 – 4 : How to Webservice / YQL

Food: Lunch: Firehouse Subs

Event: Guest Lecture: Douglas Crockford: Javascript the Good Parts (part 2)

Come hear from the creator of JSON as he continues his discussion of some of the most common pitfalls in JavaScript, how to avoid them, and how to best take advantage of this powerful, pertinent, and prevalent language.

Location: Klaus 1116
Time: 6:15pm
Food: Dinner: Chick-Fil-A

Thursday, March 11

Event: Hadoop Talk

Want to get technical? Hadoop is a free framework for working with extremely large data-sets and distributed operations. It’s even been used in past hacks – come hear how you can get started making something that could scale like crazy!

Location: Van Leer Auditorium (W200)
Time: 11:30AM-12:30
Food: Lunch: Firehouse Subs

Event: Office Hours + Informal Talks

Location: CoC Commons
Time: 1PM – 4PM
Schedule:
1- 2: How to Hosting / Joyent + PHP
2- 3: How to Javascript / YUI
3- 4 : How to Webservice / YQL

Event: YUI / UED / Design

Location: Klaus 1116
Time: 6:15pm
Food: Dinner – Italian/Pasta
Giveaways: YDN T-shirts, stickers, swag

Friday, March 12

Event: Official 24 hour hacking kickoff

Let the Hacking begin! Ongoing talks, food, music, games, raffle prizes and fun throughout the day/night in central base camp area. “How to” breakout sessions will take place throughout the day/night!

Location: CoC 102 (room with tables) from 1PM on; add CoC 101 (social room) from 4PM on.
Time: 1PM Friday – 1PM Saturday
Schedule:
3 pm : How to Hosting / Joyent + PHP
5 pm : How to Javascript / YUI3
7 pm : How to Webservice / YQL
9 pm : How to Auth / OAuth
11 pm : How to App Platform / Open Social + YAP
1 am : How to Demo (and you show your stuff)
3 am : How to Juggle
5 am : How to Glow-In-The-Dark Frolf
6 am : How to Calesthetic
8 am – 12 pm : How to finish your hack (No talks)
Ongoing: Wii Rock Band, games, snacks, hacking
Food: Lunch, Dinner, Snacks (throughout), Breakfast, Lunch; including Pizza (Mellow Mushroom?), Quizno’s, Wingnuts…Sublime doughnuts, Einstein’s bagels
Giveaways: Hack U final T-shirts, Y! swag; Ongoing talks, Food, Music, Games, raffle prizes and Hacking throughout the day/night in central base camp area

Saturday, March 13

Event: Hack Demos, Judging and Awards

Time to show off your Hack for a chance to win Netbooks, Ipods, Headphones, Thinkgeek.com gift certificates and of course, the grand prize trip to the Open Hack Showdown in California.

Time: 1PM
Food: Lunch – Moe’s
Schedule:
Food 1PM-1:30
Presentations 1:30-4
Food: Lunch
Categories:
Hack for Good
Metro (Front page Apps)
Best Mobile
User Experience & Design
Hardware Hack
Student Organization Hack
Best Overall (1st, 2nd & 3rd)
Giveaways: Prizes

RIM info session tomorrow (Tues 2/23) @ 11am in Van Leer, room 241. There will be food!

Due to overwhelming interest, out first TectTopics series is full to capacity.   If you have not registered yet, we are sorry but we don’t have room for anyone else.  If you have registered, the first class in this series will be this coming Friday, Feb 19, at 4pm-5:30, Bunger Henry, room 311.  We will email you more details before it starts.

Keep checking for more information about upcoming TechTopics this semester!  We will be posting a mailing list sign up soon, so you can keep up to date with our latest classes.  Some of the TechTopics in the works include:

• Client-side web scripting with javascript and AJAX
• Android mobile development
• C# and .NET programming, taught by Microsoft engineers!

Have you ever wanted to learn website design or programming, mobile development, game creation, or any other useful topic not taught in Georgia Tech’s academic classes?  GT ACM’s new TechTopics program offers you a guide to these and many more interesting subjects.  Taught by industry professionals, GT instructors, and students such as yourselves, these informal “classes” teach everything from the basics to the advanced.  Look for many engaging TechTopics classes to be taught throughout this semester and into the future.

Our first TechTopics series will introduce you to web development with PHP, one of the most widely used web scripting languages.  Taught by student Blair Daly, a CS teaching assistant and creator of several successful online communities, this series will introduce PHP and help you get started with this exciting technology.   This series is targeted at beginners, so don’t be afraid to come and learn something new, even if you haven’t touched web development before. Classes will begin the week ending in February 13, but the exact day and time will be determined by responses to the sign-up form.  We will be following up with more advanced classes later in the semester.

This series will consist an hour-long meeting once a week for 5 weeks, moving from the basics to the intermediate topics.  While it is not mandatory to attend every class, and there is no grading or homework, we strongly encourage you to come to each session, as they build upon each other.  Please fill out the sign-up form to get started, and let us know what schedule works best for you.




Sorry, registration is now closed.

Thanks for coming out to the PowerPlan Info Session! If you are interested in working for them, send your cover letter (optional), resume, and academic transcripts to: Amy Arra at aarra@pwrplan.com

Photos from the event are on Flickr here: GTACM PowerPlan info session

Date/Time: Thursday 6:30pm-7:30pm
Description: See below for more about them.
Food: Junior’s!

And here’s a note from PowerPlan:

My name is Matt Crye with PowerPlan Consultants. PowerPlan is a medium sized consulting and software company specializing in providing financial systems to very large, capital intensive companies such as utilities (Southern Company), telecoms (AT&T), railroads (Norfolk Southern), and petrochemical (Chevron) companies. Although we have clients located across the US and Canada, we are principally located in Atlanta. In 2009 we had revenues of $38 million, 125 clients, and a staff of 75 consultants.

PowerPlan Consultants provides an excellent and exciting environment for career development. As the recognized leader in financial systems for some of the largest and most asset intensive corporations in the US, our consultants develop and maintain broad skill sets including accounting, software design and development, change management, and process design. We are a compact and efficient team, with individuals assuming responsibilities and roles suited to their nature and talents.

To summarize, PowerPlant Consultants offers an opportunity for candidates to become part of an entrepreneurial business at a key moment in its history:
• We’re the leader within our market segment, recognized as best-in-class and have significant momentum to win remaining market share;
• We’re small enough for you to establish yourself quickly as a key member of the team;
• We have product dominance in several areas, resulting in natural opportunities for growth in adjacent products, services and vertical markets.

Over the years, PowerPlan has hired many outstanding individuals from Georgia Tech principally with backgrounds in Industrial Engineering, Computer Science, Electrical Engineering or Mathematics. Specifically, we seek candidates with the following characteristics:

- Strong Analytical Skills
- Self Motivated – Entrepreneurial
- Proven Leadership Ability
- Good People Skills
- Must Have Excellent Grades – 3.5+
- Demonstrated Ability to Learn

We are experiencing exceptional growth and have immediate positions for May and December 2010 graduates. In the last 18 months we have hired 12 engineering graduates with an average GPA of over 3.65. They represent the top of their class.

Please reply to Amy Arra at aarra@pwrplan.com with an attached resume and an electronic copy of your academic transcripts to be considered for a preliminary interview. We look forward to meeting you in person.

Best Regards,

Matt Crye

Firm Overview and Technology Overview

Thursday January 28th, 2010
11:05am-11:55am
Van Leer C240

Description:

Citadel is a leading global institution with a diverse business platform that is built on a foundation of exceptional talent and technology. Our deep bench of talent embodies a culture of dedication and commitment.
To capitalize on tomorrow’s opportunity, we must uncover meaningful insights that transcend today’s markets. But we cannot gain these insights alone—we collaborate with our clients to define opportunities together. The opportunity to innovate, perform, and excel. The opportunity to set new standards of market efficiency, client success, and institutional excellence. The opportunity to see in new ways and execute upon new ideas. For our clients. For our partners. For the market as a whole.

Google UX Information Session by Henderik Mueller (GT HCI MS alum)
Wednesday 5:30pm (food at 6pm)
Klaus 1116

Google Tech Talk by Bruce Johnson
Wednesday 6:30pm
Klaus 1116

Hi again (for the last time),

A couple people have asked me for the minutes/notes from last night’s meeting since they weren’t able to make it, so I thought I’d go ahead and share them with everyone.

The most important point is that Roger Pincombe and Neiloy Mukerjee are the new co-coordinators (or whatever titles they select) of the program. Roger and Neiloy will probably reachable at topics@gtacm.org soon. Expect all future emails to come from them.

The major points below are the items as they appeared on the agenda, and the minor points are what we discussed and decided.

• Class Format and Scheduling
  • 1 class per week
  • 1 or 1.5 hours per class
  • Up to 5 weeks at most
  • Might avoid scheduling 6-7:30 PM on Tuesdays because of CS mentor meeting
  • Might avoid scheduling Wednesdays for fraternity meetings
  • Friday starting around 4PM, Saturday around 12PM-2PM, and Sunday evenings were agreed upon as the best times for this semester. (Things may change in the Fall due to football gamedays)
• Topic: Intro to PHP
  • Our first class will be an introduction to PHP, a very popular web programming language, taught by Blair Daly.
  • Blair is a former CS teaching assistant and has created multiple successful online communities.
  • This class will take place later this month or early Februrary
• Do you know anything that you’d like to teach?
  • Ajai knows a few people that he thinks would like to teach topics on Ruby (possibly on Rails) development, as well as a person that already teaches “How to not be a Social Media Douchebag” somewhere else
  • A couple of gaming strategy classes were mentioned as fun breaks from standard classes
    • Discussed limiting sillier classes to just a couple per semester
• Is there anything you’d like to learn that isn’t already in our scope of recruiting?
  • Not really. In previous meetings, surveys, and polls, it looks like we’ve gathered pretty much all the popular ideas.
• Patrick is graduating and moving away, so the program needs a new coordinator
  • Roger Pincombe and Neiloy Mukerjee both stepped up and decided that they might be most effective working together to spearhead the program. From here on out, all TechTopics information will most likely come from them, and all questions should be directed to them.
• We probably need a website, even if just a simple one, to manage registration and scheduling.
  • Ajai volunteered to do this. He plans to do it by adding some functionality to the current GTACM wordpress installation (gtacm.org)

Soon, we should have a mailing list ready for anyone that is interested in our TechTopics program.

We did not discuss this as in-depth, but we plan to have Kristin Marsicano, instructor in the College of Computing, teach a topic on Android Development soon as well. Hopefully, we’ll get it going as an immediate second class.

Anyway, that ends my time at Tech, and I hope you guys get this off to a great start this semester.

–
Patrick Eisenmann
Former TechTopics Coordinator
GT Association for Computing Machinery
gtacm.org