PAST MEETINGS

Thu, Feb 12 2026 at 06:00 PM at Slalom Build

Bots, Androids and Academia: A Tail of Fraud Detection.
(30 Minutes)
By: Hugo Seguin
Experience Level: Novice

In this presentation, I will summarize my experience dealing with malicious actors who attempted to infiltrate my research study. I will discuss what happened, outline the stages we went through, the fixes we implemented, and our decision-making process. I will also conclude with a broader discussion of the state of behavioral science in addressing such cyber threats. More generally, I will discuss how technology companies and tech-savvy individuals can help the social sciences/Academia protect themselves from deceptive actors and raise awareness among academics about potential pitfalls.

Different Package, Same Snek?
(15 Minutes)
By: Weezel
Experience Level: Novice

You can build Python from source, use a Docker image, install it with a package manager, or use the version that comes with your operating system.  They're all the same Python, right?

Yes and no.  This talk will 1) define Python, and 2) look at what changes, depending on how you install it.   

 

29 Python enthusiasts attended this meeting.


Thu, Jan 15 2026 at 06:00 PM at Tegus (by AlphaSense)

Slow, Inaccurate and Brittle: How I Built The World's Worst Data Pipeline
(15 Minutes)
By: MK Barton
Experience Level: Intermediate

"There is nothing so permanent as a temporary solution". Come learn how a combination of misunderstanding, bad assumptions, tech debt and general chaos created the world's worst data pipeline.

It's slow. It's inaccurate and sadly it lived in production for 3 years. Learn from my mistakes!

Hack Finance with Wayy Research!
(20 Minutes)
By: Rick Galbo
Experience Level: Intermediate

Have you ever wanted to do some financial research, but struggled. Well maybe not, but if you're here with us tonight, maybe check out some packages that Wayy Research has been creating. Even if you're not a seasoned fin-head, you might be wondering how to get started in quantitative finance. And if you were, boy, are you in luck!

 

We will go over 3 packages:

Wayy-Research/wrdata - a financial data gathering package

Wayy-Research/fracTime - a time series forecasting library

Wayy-Research/wrtrade - a quantitative trading libarary

 

All of these will allow you to get started with quantitative trading right in the comfort of your own home. This will be a lightning round covering the basics and we will get you from zero - to - hero faster than you can say Benoit Mandelbrot. So bring your thinking caps and lets get ready to do some digging!

51 Python enthusiasts attended this meeting.


Thu, Dec 18 2025 at 06:00 PM at American Planning Association (APA)

What's new in the OWASP Top 10 for 2025
(5 Minutes)
By: Weezel
Experience Level: Novice

The 2025 OWASP Top Ten release candidate came out on November 6.  Let's look at what's changed since 2021.

 

 

What's new in Python this year
(15 Minutes)
By: Phil Robare
Experience Level: Intermediate

I read the release notes to you don't have to.  A quick tour of changes that have gone into Python this year.  Some significant, most of which are invisible until you need them.

Effective Data Visualization
(5 Minutes)
By: David Giard
Experience Level: Novice
Slides Link

We spend much of our time collecting and analyzing data. That data is only useful if it can be displayed in a meaningful, understandable way.

Yale professor Edward Tufte presented many ideas on how to effectively present data to an audience or end user.

In this session, I will explain some of Tufte's most important guidelines about data visualization and how you can apply those guidelines to your own data. You will learn what to include, what to remove, and what to avoid in your charts, graphs, maps and other images that represent data.

LibreLane and Open Silicon
(10 Minutes)
By: Andrew Wingate
Experience Level: Novice

Python runs on chips. Python can be used to help make chips. 
A little on making chips, open silicon, and the state of the industry. 

Cropping Multiple Lens film photos with OpenCV
(5 Minutes)
By: Josh Martin
Experience Level: Intermediate

Hello,

I love film cameras. Especially multiple lens film cameras that take photos all at once or in a sequence. The true pain is getting my scans back from the film lab I use and a set of photos being put into one photo because of how the cameras take the photos in the first place.

In this talk I will show how to perfectly crop a set of images into multiple images even if the vary in size.

38 Python enthusiasts attended this meeting.


Thu, Nov 13 2025 at 06:00 PM at Slalom Build

Ultron in Your Codebase: How to Stop AI from Becoming the Villain
(30 Minutes)
By: Daksh Guard
Experience Level: Intermediate

AI coding assistants are now generating more code in three days than developers previously wrote in three years, fundamentally transforming how software gets built. 

Yet our research shows 48-62% of AI-generated code contains security vulnerabilities, with these PRs being rejected 3x more often than human-written code despite their speed.

Just as Tony Stark's attempt to create a peacekeeping AI resulted in Ultron nearly destroying the world, giving AI unrestricted access to our codebases without proper constraints leads to cascading failures in production systems.

Through analyzing 1000+ AI pull requests, we've developed a six-stone framework that determines exactly when AI should draft code (Jarvis mode), when it needs human review (Vision mode), and when it should never touch the code at all (preventing Ultron mode).

Reading surprising data with pandas
(10 Minutes)
By: Jonathan J. Helmus

We will examine how pandas can be used to read data files with different formats. There will be some surprising results!

45 Python enthusiasts attended this meeting.


Thu, Oct 09 2025 at 06:00 PM at American Planning Association (APA)

Life Without pip install
(10 Minutes)
By: Aly Sivji
Experience Level: Novice
Slides Link

In this lightning talk, I will demonstrate how to import packages that have not been installed in a virtual environment.

Automating Large-Scale CD Archiving with Python, Docker, and Observability
(30 Minutes)
By: Max McCann
Experience Level: Intermediate

Ripping and archiving thousands of music CDs for personal use can be a daunting task—especially when you care about safety, automation, and system reliability. In this talk, I’ll share how I built a secure workflow using Python, shell scripts, and Docker to ingest and organize a large CD collection into a Plex server. I’ll demo the Nimbie disc autoloader (“the hopper”), explain how containerization helps isolate untrusted media, and show how I monitor throughput and reliability using Datadog metrics. This session focuses on the technical challenges of automation, security, and observability in large-scale media archiving.

49 Python enthusiasts attended this meeting.