RECENT TOPICS

Web App for Caregivers By: Shannon Cochran
Date: Jan. 14, 2016, 7 p.m.
This presentation will cover the Django project I completed with my mentor, Adam Bain. The idea for this project came from my former work as a caregiver for a child with Autism. As a caregiver, there were many times behavioral issues came up and I often wondered what other possible interventions people may have tried. The child I worked with was nonverbal which made discipline and finding out the source of a behavior much trickier. Every case of Autism is different but there are still some behaviors which are more common, especially as a result of the inability to communicate. For example, self-injurious behaviors are common and usually associated with the frustration of not being able to communicate needs. My idea is to create an app where caregivers are able to share their solutions to behavior problems and search for other caregiver’s solutions as well. The app will have a space for people to share both problem behaviors they want to decrease in their client or child and positive behaviors they want to encourage. This project allows caregivers to search for problem behaviors as well as positive behaviors and find out how other caregivers addressed the behavior and whether those interventions were successful or not.
Building a BusTracker Tracker By: Ellie Anderson
Date: Jan. 14, 2016, 7 p.m.
First, I’ll discuss a data-gathering pipeline that uses AWS Lambda functions written in Python to scrape CTA’s BusTracker prediction service and interpolate actual arrival times. Then I’ll detail an API written in Django REST Framework to select and analyze a range of data. Finally, a simple JavaScript-based front-end visualizes the data provided by the API.
Using Python for Kaggle competitions By: Hana Lee
Date: Jan. 14, 2016, 7 p.m.
(Lightning talk as part of ChiPy mentorship) I'll be talking about using Python to develop a classifier for a Kaggle competition looking at crime data in San Francisco
*half time special* imposter syndrome. By: David Beazley
Date: Jan. 14, 2016, 7 p.m.
Seeing as this winter marks 20 years of my using Python, I might be inclined to say a few short words about imposter syndrome.
Dustin Shapiro's Python 101 Menteeship! By: Dustin Shapiro
Date: Jan. 14, 2016, 7 p.m.
This is a brief overview depicting where I started before this mentorship, through the various projects me and Ray worked on, and where I plan to take it moving forward!
SQLAlchemy: Beyond ORM By: Will Engler
Date: Dec. 10, 2015, 7 p.m.
Before I started my new job, I thought of SQLAlchemy as "that ORM people use with Flask." Well, it is that - and more! With this talk, I want to give the audience a taste of SQLAlchemy's philosophy and capability. Outline: 1) Picking the right abstraction: SQLAlchemy's ORM and Core layers. 2) Transaction management: The Unit of Work pattern (SQLAlchemy) vs. the Active Record pattern (Django models, Rails ActiveRecord). 3) In the wild: code samples plus practical concerns like migrations.
Meet the micro:bit By: Naomi Ceder
Date: Dec. 10, 2015, 7 p.m.
You may have heard of the BBC micro:bit - a tiny (2" x 2.5") ARM based single board computer that every 11 year old in Britain will be receiving in a few months. (And if you haven't, well, as for everything else, start with Wikipedia.) Even better, the micro:bit runs Python 3 (MicroPython, to be exact). The Python Software Foundation is a partner in the project. (see http://ntoll.org/article/story-micropython-on-microbit for more) The micro:bit will be released in the UK some time around February, and should be available commercially shortly after that. Even though the micro:bit has't been officially released yet, a few have made their way out the door. So I happen to have one these precious few devices in the wild. I'd be happy to give a 30-45 minute talk about the background of the micro:bit and getting Python on it, about the teaching implications, the development done so far, and what's needed for the future, as well as the world tour that several of the devices are on. There would also be a live demo of the device.
An Introduction to the Portable Format for Analytics (PFA) and to Python-based Titus Scoring Engine By: Robert Grossman
Date: Dec. 10, 2015, 7 p.m.
The Portable Format for Analytics (PFA) (www.dmg.org) is an emerging standard for predictive analytics that addresses some of the limitations of the Predictive Model Markup Language (PMML) and was designed for today’s big data environments, including Hadoop, Storm and Spark. In this talk, I give an introduction to PFA, model deployment, and Titus: Open Data's Python toolkit for building, inspecting, and modifying PFA scoring engines. Robert Grossman is the Founder and a Partner at Open Data Group, which has building predictive models over big data for its clients since 2002. He is also a Professor in the Division of Biological Sciences at the University of Chicago, where he leads a research group in bioinformatics with a focus in managing and analyzing large genomic datasets for advancing the understanding of human disease.
Python at Nokia (by MacGregor Felix) By:
Date: Nov. 12, 2015, 7 p.m.
Python is known to be a multi-purpose and multi-paradigm programming language. Come see how the Reality Capture & Processing (RCP) group of Nokia HERE is making use of Python’s versatility. We will show you how HERE RCP uses Python’s Object Oriented constructs to represent business models in production systems. You will see how Python’s functional lambdas are used to elegantly facilitate the handling of big data. We will discuss the use of Python not only in production code but also in test code. We not only use Python for production purposes but also to build utilities. We hope to show you how we utilize Python's versatility and closeness to the operating system to build sophisticated tools for development and operational productivity. You’ll see our Test Driven development effort while building Python products and how we use Python in Behavior Driven Development to code language-agnostic acceptance tests for the evolution of software and services. We will also give you a pick at our Python packaging and distribution.
Python-fu in the GIMP By: Tanya Schlusser
Date: Nov. 12, 2015, 7 p.m.
GIMP (the GNU Image Manipulation Program) is great all by itself but is even better with Python-fu. This talk demonstrates a little Python-fu to manipulate images in GIMP, with a little (slightly ugly) hacking to add external libraries.