RECENT TOPICS

Lexical Graphs with Natural Language Processing using NLTK
Date: Jan. 9, 2014, 7:02 p.m.
Brian will talk about his experiences using Python and NLTK http://nltk.org/ to run language comparisons to generate lexical difference graphs like the one mentioned in the "Lexical Distance Among the Languages of Europe" article. http://bit.ly/1cS46Ba The focus will be on the NLTK and how its internals work to process a language. This talk will be his best one ever.
Garbage Collection w/ Ref. Cycles By: Aaron Brady
Date: Jan. 9, 2014, 8 p.m.
Reference counting is very useful but it has an odd problem. We employ a technique from graphs to approach it. The solution works but it's a bit slow.
A Visual Guide To Pandas By: Jason Wirth
Date: Dec. 12, 2013, 7:40 p.m.
Pandas is the data-munging Swiss Army knife of the Python world. Often you know how your data should look but it's not so obvious how to get there, so I'll present a visual approach to learning the library and data manipulation.
The Chicago Process: How Braintree Develops Software By: Adam Forsyth
Date: Dec. 12, 2013, 7:01 p.m.
Braintree needs to be highly available and secure, while still maintaining a rapid development pace and strict backwards compatibility. In order to achieve that, we use what has become known as the "Chicago Process". This involves pairing, strict TDD, a team structure, and weekly iterations, all to empower the devs to make decisions and get work of a high quality done while avoiding siloing.
Storm (with python (and a side of clojure)) By: Philip Doctor
Date: Dec. 12, 2013, 8 p.m.
A walking tour of Storm, what it is, what you can do, and how you can use it with python.
What happened at #aaronswhack? By: Sheila Miguez
Date: Nov. 14, 2013, 9 p.m.
Many python programmers showed up to participate in the Chicago #aaronswhack. Here's a list of what they worked on, and here are pointers to local projects as well as worldwide projects.
Python heart Open Source Hardware By: Paul Ebreo
Date: Nov. 14, 2013, 10 p.m.
Open Source Hardware is going to change the world. But the hardware is still going to need software to control it. Can Python take the lead and become the de facto language of open source hardware control? Paul Ebreo talks about the three keys to Python's success in open hardware.
CivicLab and Between the Bars By: Benjamin Sugar
Date: Nov. 14, 2013, 7:33 p.m.
In this talk, I will present on a slice of the maker movement called "civic making" and a new space that has opened up in Chicago to encourage this type creation, CivicLab. As an example of "civic making" I will discuss Between the Bars, a paper based blogging platform for those who are incarcerated, built in Django. I will also discuss our choice in framework and the pros/cons of our approach.
Monoids in Python By: Philip Doctor
Date: Nov. 14, 2013, 7:44 p.m.
Monoids are largely badly explained, but actually quite beautiful. I would like to take a brief tour of what a monoid is and how they can help out with mundane every day tasks in python.
PyData Recap Lightning Talk By: Jason Wirth
Date: Nov. 14, 2013, 11 p.m.
Recap of last weeks PyData conference in NYC.