Bits of Good Atlanta

Though not strictly open-source, my guess is they'll be using a lot of it. This from today's Ga Tech e-newsletter:

For students who can code, or want to get better at it, and also want to make a difference in the local community, Bits of Good lets you do just that.

The new student group is part of the College of Computing and is now recruiting students for its fall semester software projects. Students from any major are encouraged to apply, and students with varying levels of expertise are welcome.

“You must have some coding experience to be selected, but by no means do you need to be an expert in web development,” said Anna Herrera, a computer science major and vice president of community outreach for Bits of Good. Preliminary training is provided when students join the projects.

This semester, Bits of Good will work with five local groups to serve various types of digital needs, including content management systems, websites, and other applications. The groups include Rebuilding Together Atlanta, Enchanted Closet, World Water Relief, Draw Change, and Midtown Assistance Center. See the full scope of each project at bitsofgood.org/2017-Projects.

Students who join a project are asked to commit 3-5 hours per week for the duration of the semester. Applications close Wednesday, Aug. 30.

“Bits of Good offers a great opportunity to impact your community through service while developing marketable skills,” Herrera said. “For CS majors especially, many companies are looking for students who pursue projects outside their curriculum, and Bits of Good offers a great opportunity to accomplish that.”

Learn more at bitsofgood.org, and apply for a project at bitsofgood.org/2017-Application.

Bits of Good will also host a kickoff event for the year on Tuesday, Aug. 29, from 6:30 to 8 p.m. in Room 347, College of Computing Building. Students will be able to learn more about opportunities; hear from the group's industry sponsor, Blackbaud; and snack on free food and drinks. More information on Facebook.

Ruby Southeast In Nashville

Hello everyone,

There is a great Ruby conference coming up this fall that's only a few hours drive. Check out the details below

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Southeast Ruby is a regional conference for Ruby developers of all levels. Attending Southeast Ruby provides an opportunity to hear from fantastic speakers such as Avdi Grimm, Kinsey Ann Durham, Ernie Miller, Ben Orenstein, and more.

Attending this year is a chance to be apart of the inaugural year of the conference. Topics range from managing Large Rails Applications, Code Organization, Authentication, Databases, Dealing with Burnout, Chatbots, and more.

Join us in Nashville, TN on October 5-6.

For our friends in the Atlanta Ruby Meetup Group, we're offering a $15 discount using the code RUBYFRIENDSATL during checkout.

If you have any questions feel free to reach out on twitter or at This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.

New Open Source Data Science Meetup

From today's e-mail bag, an announce meetup of a new ODSC Atlanta group: 

The focus of this meetup group is to present informative lectures, hands-on tutorials, and networking events to help grow the use of open source languages and tools within the data science and data-centric community. As such our specific goals are:

1. Host data science talks specific to our goals 
2. Promote the use of open source languages and tools amongst data scientists and others. 
3. Host educational workshops
4. Spread awareness of new open source languages and tools that can be used in data science 
5. Contribute back to the open source community

Who is this meetup for? 

• Data engineers, analysts, scientists, and other practitioners
• R, Python and other software engineers who work with data
• Data visualization developers and designers 
• Non-technical team leaders, executives and other decision makes from data centric startup and companies looking to utilize open source

How can you get involved?

• Attending events, network and precipitate! 
• Give a talk or workshop that meets our goals
• Volunteer to help the group (social media, website, blogging) 
• Provide us with a venue 
• Sponsor food and beer.

 

A Couple of New WordPress Meetups

A couple of new WordPress meetups popped up on my email today:

Woodstock WordPress Meetup and Conyers WordPress Meetup.

Is there an official WordPress Meetup Starter Kit? The descriptions of these two groups are strangely similar. Check it out.

Make and Repair

I think the makerspace movement should join forces with the RepairCafe movement. Those that are good at making things are probably also good at repairing things. This would generate positive press for their local makerspace and be an effective community service.

ALE Central Moving!

In Today's Mailbag:

Hi Everyone!

As many people know, our hosting at Emory University with the BioMedical Informatics department in the School of Medicine is coming to an end. With the upcoming move to the department's new space comes new security policies that will be problematic for access for non-Emory people. Not to mention being 6 blocks (uphill both ways) away from parking!

So ALE-Central will be moving it's meetings to the Decatur Makers space (605 W. Ponce De Leon Ave, Decatur, GA) a very short walk away from The Marlay House (a nice Irish pub) and a short drive away from the The Brickstore Pub and Twains and Mac McGees (3 wateringholes I have personally attended many times - Twains has pool and shuffleboard and is a brewpub!). Beginning in March 21, ALE will also shift the meeting time for ALE Central to the third TUESDAY of each month.

None of this will affect the other ALE meetings/meetups so if you don't make the monthly, formal meetings, no problem.

Counterpoint Hackerspace

• makerspace,

There's a new hackerspace in Roswell called Counterpoint Hackerspace. They've just moved in to their new space as of October 2016. Their website doesn't have a lot of info as of yet. From their Meetup Page:

We are Counterpoint. Counterpoint is a hackerspace for technical-creative projects, doocratically run by our members. We are a non-profit educational institution intended for public benefit. Come and visit our space located in Roswell, Georgia. We teach, we learn, we share.

New Kubernetes Meetup

There's a new Kubernetes meetup forming. From their Meetup page:

Meet other developers and users of Kubernetes. Kubernetes is an open source orchestration system for Docker containers. It handles scheduling onto nodes in a compute cluster and actively manages workloads to ensure that their state matches the users declared intentions. Kubernetes can run almost anywhere, including Google Compute Engine, Vagrant, CoreOS, Azure, vSphere, RackSpace, etc. Learn more about Kubernetes at http://kubernetes.io