December 2019 Meeting:
Our Guest Speaker is Fiona Patten, Leader of the Reason Party and Victorian State Parliamentarian. Fiona will talk about the challenges of being a micro-party MP, learning the ropes in Spring Street, yarns about discrimination and support from the "big boys", i.e. the human, behind the scenes, side of the job.
David Stonier-Gibson presents the Presidents Report.
Our In-house speakers tonight are from the Science and Tech Projects Group and will introduce members to their Hydroponic Build.
George Skarbek hosts the Q and A and what's New segments.
November 2019 Meeting:
This meeting includes our Annual General Meeting.
The outgoing Presidents Report was given by John Hall.
The Annual General Meeting was held next.
Our New president, David Stonier-Gibson gave an introduction to the new committee.
Our In-house speaker tonight is Tim McQueen - tonight Tim Talks Tech!
October 2019 Meeting:
Our guest speaker is Dr. Lynette Bettio, a Senior Climatologist at the Australian Bureau of Meteorology. She will talk to us about the data collection, computing and climate modelling work she is involved with.
Lynette has a PhD in climate science and works in the Climate Monitoring section at the Bureau. The Climate Monitoring section is responsible for the preparation and analysis of Australia's instrumental climate record. Lynette examines and communicates on changes to Australia's climate including long-term trends in rainfall and temperature and the interaction with extreme events. Another focus is drought across Australia and how the Bureau can best communicate and inform around this.
Our in-house speaker is Jan Whitaker, long time Melbourne PC User Group member, who will take us through the whys and wherefores of getting started discovering your family history, including her own beginnings in genealogy, online and offline tools, as well as where to go for more help.
September 2019 Meeting:
The keynote speaker this month is Catherine Newington. Catherine is the leader of the ICT Educators Program at the Australian Computer Society. This program is designed to support teachers delivering the Digital Technologies Curriculum across Australia. Catherine will be talking about her experiences leading this program.
Our in-house speaker this month is John Hall - his topic : SIG Groups - Why we need them.
August 2019 Meeting:
Australia's first computer - CSIRAC
Barbara Ainsworth is the Curator of the Monash Museum of Computing History (MMoCH), located within the Faculty of Information Technology at Monash University. Barbara will be talking to us about Dr Trevor Pearcey and the development of CSIRAC, one of the first stored-program electronic computers in the world. Born in Woolwich, London, he graduated from Imperial College in 1940 with first class honours in physics and mathematics. He emigrated to Australia in 1945.
Barbara completed a Masters in Public History at Monash University and has been the Curator at the MMoCH since 2006. In this role, she cares for the Museum's physical collection and researches aspects of the history of computing at Monash University.
Barbara co-authored 'The Relevance of Computing Research History - The Monads-PC: A Case Study' (2013), co-authored 'Computer History on the Move' (2016), and wrote a short biography of Trevor Pearcey for the UK's Computer Conservation Society Journal (2014). Barbara is the chosen biographer for Pearcey's forthcoming entry in the Australian Dictionary of Biograph
Our in-house speaker this month is George Skarbek - his topic: The Fastone Photo Editor.
July 2019 Meeting:
Fighting cybercrime
Our guest speaker this month is Professor Asha Rao. In 2018, Asha attended the 4th Intergovernmental meeting on Cyber Crime, organised by The UNODC (United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime) at the UN Head quarters at Vienna. Her talk will outline the lessons learned from her observation of this meeting, what different countries are doing about tackling cybercrime, and what it means for educational programmes in cyber security.
Asha Rao is currently Professor and Associate Dean (Mathematical Sciences) within the School of Science at RMIT University, Australia. She is an Australian 2019-2020 Superstar of STEM. An algebraist by training, she has applied algebraic techniques to communications, resulting in highly ranked publications. The impact of her research in risk which addresses issues such as fraud and money-laundering has resulted in invitations to participate in national and international bodies.
Our in-house member presentation this month will be of interest to all gardeners: one of our new young members, Paul Hattam, will be giving a talk about the difference between dicots and monocots, two different branches of angiosperms or flowering plants. He will be showing the difference between the two, from those you can see with your own eye to the microscopic. Paul has a background in both healthcare and horticulture.
June 2019 Meeting:
Our guest speaker this month is Riz Akhtar. Riz is a young startup entrepreneur who will be sharing some of his experiences. The topic he will be covering is "Building a disruptive technology startup without a technical background". He will be sharing his journey of starting a web technology startup without any background in software/hardware but on the basis of pure passion for technology and cars.
Riz graduated from RMIT with a mechanical engineering degree and went through the corporate path for 3 years and decided it was not for him. Riz has been on the technology startup (Carloop - www.carloop.com.au) journey for the last 3 years working through multiple ideas until finding the one that he really connected with and wanted to solve. That is what he's doing today.
Our in-house speaker this month is Brian Heywood, who will give a presentation on Adobe Acrobat Reader DC.
May 2009 meeting:
The Data Science Revolution - A User's Guide
Our guest speaker is Michael Brand, whose career has been centred on data in all its forms. The topic of digital disruption through data analytics is nowadays continuously in the news. But what is data analytics? How is it done? What value is gained from it? And with all the terms thrown around – Deep Learning, Artificial Intelligence, Machine Learning, Data Science, Predictive Analytics – where does the hype end and reality begin? In this talk, Michael will make some order in the mess, clarifying both the technical realities of advanced analytics and its business realities, and will lay out a roadmap of how any organisation can make data part of its business strategy.
Michael Brand is the founder and head of the analytics consultancy firm Otzma Analytics, providing analytics training, consulting and auditing. He has had over 25 years of cutting-edge, international industry experience in advanced analytics, in which he developed industry-defining solutions at every scale from on-chip to Big Data, and from real-time to high-powered computing.
Our in-house speaker this month is Tim McQueen, who will continue his series of fascinating and scintillating chats about a varied and eventful career in computing / EDP / MIS / IT or whatever it will be called next year!
April 2019 Meeting:
Our guest speaker this month is Tim Dunlop and his topic is "The Future of Work". The future of work is inseparable from the future of technology. Artificial intelligence, machine learning, 3D printing and other breakthroughs are changing the work we do and therefore changing our society in other ways too. In this talk, author Tim Dunlop will give an overview of these changes and discuss some of the key challenges that are likely to confront us over the next 20 years.
Tim Dunlop is the author of three books, all of which have won international recognition. He is regularly invited to speak with governments, businesses and other organisations, in Australia and overseas, offering insights into politics, the media and the future of work. His latest book is The Future of Everything: Big, Audacious Ideas for a Better World.
For our in-house presentation this month we are trying something new. Steve Zuluaga and Hugh Macdonald are both keen photographers but with very different approaches. They will have a public discussion about digital photography. Everyone will be welcome to join in.
March 2019 Meeting:
Our special guest speaker this month is Professor Graham Farr who will be telling us about William (Bill) Tutte. Tutte was a contemporary of Alan Turing, working at Bletchley Park at the same time during WW2.
Graham Farr is a Professor in the Faculty of Information Technology, Monash University. He is co-convenor of the Discrete Mathematics Research Group and leads Computer History Tours of Melbourne, a day-long tour that combines walking and tram travel to visit a selection of places in Melbourne with links to the history of computing.
Our in-house speaker this month is former club treasurer and secretary Geoff Keenan will tell us about the NAS (Network Attached Storage) he has built at home, which provides 18TB of instantly available space to the devices in his house.
February 2019 Meeting:
Our Guest Speaker is James Harland, Associate Dean, Student Experience, in the School of Science at RMIT University, where he has been an academic staff member since 1994. He is also a Professor of Computational Logic, and has an international reputation for his research into logic programming, automated reasoning, agent programming and computer science education.
His current research interests include reasoning methods for intelligent software agents, which deliberate over the appropriate courses of action to take in order to achieve their specific goals (such as the Mars rover), development of methods for managing interactive narratives via computational reasoning, investigation of abstract computational models such as universal Turing machines, and investigation of threshold concepts for theoretical computer science.
Our in-house speaker this month is Rob Brown, who will present an overview of our new QR attendance management system. Rob will describe the hardware, and Peter Boin will outline the front-end software that feeds into the CiviCRM membership management system.