RSVP to IndieWeb Summit – June 26-27, 2018 – Portland, Oregon

RSVPed Attending IndieWeb Summit - June 26-27, 2018 - Portland, Oregon
The eighth annual gathering for independent web creators of all kinds, from graphic artists, to designers, UX engineers, coders, hackers, to share ideas, actively work on creating for their own personal websites, and build upon each others creations.
I can’t wait!

📅 RSVP for WordCamp Orange County June 9-10, 2018

RSVPed Attending WordCamp Orange County 2018

WordCamps are conferences that focus on everything WordPress. WordCamps are informal, community-organized events that are put together by WordPress users like you. Everyone from casual users to core developers participate, share ideas, and get to know each other.

WordCamp Orange County 2018 is going to be held at The Cove at UCI Applied Innovation for the third year running. It will be held on June 9-10, 2018

The Cove at UCI Applied Innovation
5141 California Avenue, Suite 200 & 250
Irvine, CA 92697

There is plenty of free onsite parking.

What better way to RSVP to a WordCamp than by posting your RSVP using your own WordPress website? I just bought my tickets! Who else is going?

Following @OCWordCamp and the camp hashtag #WCOC on Twitter in preparation. There are only 66 tickets left, so get yours soon as they go pretty quick.

📅 RSVP: Innovate Pasadena: Friday Morning Coffee Meetup–Coffee with the Mayor

RSVPed Attending Innovate Pasadena: Friday Morning Coffee Meetup--Coffee with the Mayor
Friday, May 4, 2018
8:15 AM to 9:30 AM
Cross Campus, 85 N. Raymond Avenue · Pasadena, CA

While Pasadena is consistently named one of the best cities to live year after year, City leaders also want to make it a great place to work. Mayor Terry Tornek and City Manager Steve Mermell will be stopping by on May 4th to check-in with Pasadena’s innovators and talk about the latest developments and initiatives happening in Pasadena. But, they’ll also want to hear from you! This is your chance to engage with local officials and share your thoughts on ways the City can make Pasadena even more attractive for business and talent.

Bio: Terry Tornek
Terry Tornek was born and raised in New York City and moved to Pasadena from Massachusetts in 1982 to accept the position of Planning Director. He was hired because of his history of neighborhood improvement and historic preservation while serving as Planning Director of Springfield, Mass. He also served as a member of the Springfield City Council. Terry was Pasadena’s Planning Director for 3 years and helped to rewrite the Zoning Ordinance, the General Plan and establish the redevelopment plan for Old Pasadena. After leaving city government, Terry built a career in real estate as a developer and manager of residential & commercial properties all over Southern California.

He remained active in Pasadena affairs through his 20 year service as a Board Member of Pasadena Neighborhood Housing Services, a non-profit organization devoted to affordable housing in Northwest Pasadena.

In 2005, Sid Tyler appointed Terry to the Planning Commission. He also served as a member of the Design Commission. He was elected to represent District 7 on the City Council in April, 2009, was reelected in 2013 and was then elected as Mayor in April, 2015.

Mayor Tornek serves as Chairman of the Finance Committee, is a member of the Municipal Services, Public Safety, and Legislative Policy Committees, is the City Council appointee to the Fire and Police Retirement Board, is Pasadena’s representative to the San Gabriel Valley Council of Governments, and is President of the Burbank Airport Authority. He is deeply involved in the City’s financial planning, affordable housing and the City’s planning and development decision-making process. Terry graduated from Princeton University’s Woodrow Wilson School with a degree in Public and International Affairs. He also earned a Master of Science in Urban Planning from Columbia University’s School of Architecture. He served in the Army National Guard and Reserves for 6 years. Terry and his wife Maria have been married for 50 years. They have 3 children and 7 grandchildren.

Bio: Steve Mermell
Steve Mermell was appointed City Manager by unanimous vote of the City Council and assumed his duties February 15, 2016. As City Manager he is the Chief Administrative Officer of the City and is charged with supervising, coordinating, and administering the various functions of the City. He has direct responsibility for all departments, divisions, and offices of the City with the exception of the City Attorney/Prosecutor and City Clerk which are separately appointed by the City Council.

RSVP to Friday Morning Coffee Meetup: 13 Questions to Help You Cut Out Small Talk and Build Genuine Connections

RSVPed Attending Friday Morning Coffee Meetup: 13 Questions to Help You Cut Out Small Talk and Build Genuine Connections

Tom Amestoy, Founder & CEO of Focus Out, talks about the missed opportunities to genuinely connect with others when we engage in “small talk.” Scientific studies have revealed that the types of conversations we have truly impact our wellbeing. These findings show that the good life is social and conversationally deep rather than isolated and superficial. Tom will tell us about groups that have banned small talk to great effect. He will offer tips on how to host such an event and will share 13 questions to start great conversations that lead to deep and genuine connections.

Friday, April 27, 2018
8:15 AM to 9:30 AM

Cross Campus
85 N. Raymond Avenue
Pasadena, CA

Venue is located on the 2nd floor. Free street parking until 11:00 am; except where valet signs are posted. 90 minutes free parking is also available at nearby parking lots.

RSVP to Innovate Pasadena: The Power of Social Capitalism

RSVPed Attending The Power of Social Capitalism
I am excited to share the story of Rosebud Coffee; a social enterprise dedicated to helping homeless and transitional age youth find economic stability through the coffee industry. Local businesses are uniquely positioned with social capital to help those in need flourish with the support of the local community. And when those in greatest need flourish, so does everyone else!

Bio: Dan Davidson is the Lead Pastor of Rose City Church in Pasadena, CA; a historic Free Methodist Church he and team reopened in 2011. Dan is also the co/founder and Executive Director of Rose City Coffee; a barista training program for homeless and transitional-aged youth soon to open as a local coffee shop. Most recently Dan led a team to open Rosebud Coffee as a local cafe in the City of Pasadena to hire the youth trained by Rose City Coffee. As a socially minded cafe, Rosebud seeks to help the emancipated youth of our city flourish while also providing a space for community events. Dan enjoys collaborating with the City of Pasadena, local businesses and non-profits who share the same goal of ending homelessness and improving the lives of local neighbors. Dan believes that with such partnerships the relationships that keep communities healthy will thrive.

Contact Email: dan@rosecitycoffee.org

Friday, March 30, 2018
8:15 AM to 9:30 AM

Cross Campus
85 N. Raymond Avenue, Pasadena, CA
Venue is located on the 2nd floor. Free street parking until 11:00 am; except where valet signs are posted. 90 minutes free parking is also available at nearby parking lots.
This sounds like an interesting topic for tomorrow morning’s coffee.

📅 RSVP yes to WordPress Pasadena General Meetup, March 2018 Edition! on 3/27

RSVPed Attending WordPress Pasadena General Meetup, March 2018 Edition!
Oh man! 2018! Welcome!!!! Who'd a thunk it? We made it out of 2017!! 2018 is another chance to see if we can ply our knowledge in the ever changing world of web tech. We're back at it again for our monthly WordPress user meetup. Come curious with your wonderful questions.
My Fall/Winter math class is over and I’m free to catch up with the gang again.

📅 RSVP No to Innovate Pasadena: Women in Blockchain

RSVPed Unable to Attend Innovate Pasadena-Friday Coffee Meetup: Women in Blockchain
Blockchain is poised to become one of the seminal developments in technology, and some talented women are leading the way in adapting blockchain technology across a wide array of industries. Blockchain spending is expected to grow 81.2% annual from 2016 – 2021. $945 million was spent on blockchain solutions in 2017, with the spending expected to skyrocket to $2.1 billion this year. Women in Blockchain and Crypto want to enable women to thrive in the booming blockchain space by growing our network of like-minded women to create opportunities for networking, education, and professional advancement in the blockchain space. Two female leaders in blockchain will give a presentation on the current landscape of blockchain, the applications of blockchain technology across a variety of industries, and also discuss their own projects including putting AI on the Project PAI blockchain and exploring uses for blockchain in healthcare. Sho Guo is the VP of Marketing and Partnerships at ObEN, an artificial intelligence company developing Personal Artificial Intelligence (PAI), a 3D intelligent avatar that looks, talks and behaves uniquely like its human counterpart. ObEN is an early adopter of Project PAI, a fully decentralized blockchain based network designed to give people trackable ownership and management rights to their PAI. Prior to ObEN, Sho was the Director of International Marketing for Caesars Entertainment and spent 5 years working in television and production, including work on the Beijing Olympics for NBC. Sho is an Emmy award winner with an MBA from UCLA Anderson, B.S. in Management Science and B.A. in Film from UC San Diego. Stacy Jain is a Director of Strategy and Program Execution at Kaiser Permanente, one of America’s largest and most innovative integrated health care providers. An experienced executive consultant with a demonstrated history of delivering large, complex healthcare systems and programs in the hospital & health care industry, Stacy has continuously driven business solutions via technological innovations along with her exceptional leadership in building trusting partnerships across multi-disciplines. Previously she has worked with other healthcare organizations such as Dignity Health, Catholic Healthcare West, and L.A. Care Health Plan. Part of her current mission is to execute an agile transformation strategy to enable the business to quickly adapt, make investments at the right places and to improve speed to market. With more than 15+ years in defining, shaping and evolving the delivery of patient care, she has a relentless passion to stretch and advance digital healthcare, especially in mental/behavioral health care. Stacy has recently been looking at applications of blockchain in healthcare with an emphasis on security, medical record sharing and humanistic information economy. Stacy is also working on building women-led communities in AI and blockchain. Her goal is to build communities in the Los Angeles area which would empower more women to participate in the blockchain industry. Twitter Handles: @ObenMe @ProjectPAI Speaker emails: Sho Guo: sho@oben.com Stacy Jain: Stacy.Jain@gmail.com
Sadly, it looks like a deadline is going to prevent me from attending.

📅 WordCamp Orange County, June 9-10, 2018

RSVPed Attending WordCamp Orange County, June 9-10, 2018
WordCamp Orange County is a great place to learn meet, talk, and immerse yourself in everything WordPress. From the absolute beginner to the hardest of hardcore developers, WordCamp Orange County will have something for you.
Putting this on my calendar to attend later this year. Waiting patiently for tickets to go on sale.

📅 Friday Coffee Meetup: Building Companies While Running Startup Accelerators on Three Continents

RSVPed Attending Building Companies While Running Startup Accelerators on Three Continents
From Hong Kong, to Los Angeles, to the Vatican. How running three very different startup accelerators over five years changed the way I think about entrepreneurship. Multiple program formats, 100+ companies, tens of millions in funding, lots of customers, exits, all across three continents. The talk will focus on: • Commonalities growing companies face across locations. • Getting results: How I try to trick people into learning. • Next steps in thinking about the future of company growth. Bio Paul Orlando enables companies to grow. He is Incubator Director and Adjunct Professor of Entrepreneurship at USC. Paul has founded and operated successful startup accelerator programs in Hong Kong (focused on mobile development), Los Angeles (focused on growing a wide range of companies with founders affiliated with USC), and Rome (the Laudato Si accelerator, partnered with the Vatican and focused on environmental technology). Companies Paul has worked with have raised tens of millions in capital, served millions of customers, and have been acquired. He has authored several related academic case studies available on Harvard Business Publishing. Paul also helps larger institutions innovate, develop, and grow, especially in lowering the risk of innovation projects, speeding up learning cycles, and transitioning past legacy business models and products. Paul has been featured in media including Forbes, TechCrunch, Fast Company, and the Wall Street Journal. He was a winner at the TechCrunch Disrupt Hackathon. Paul has a BA from Cornell, an MBA from Columbia, and speaks Mandarin. Twitter handle: @porlando Speaker email: paul.orlando@gmail.com Date: Friday, February 23, 2018 from 8:15 AM to 9:30 AM Location: Cross Campus, 85 N. Raymond Avenue · Pasadena, CA Venue is located on the 2nd floor. Free street parking until 11:00 am; except where valet signs are posted. 90 minutes free parking is also available at nearby parking lots.

RSVP to Pasadena Startups: Past, Present and Future

RSVPed Attending Topic: Pasadena Startups: Past, Present and Future
Talk a walk down memory lane with Gene as he tells stories of Pasadena Startups Past, Present and Future. I am the Forrest Gump of Internet - I have worked in the worked with some of the pioneers and innovators all with origin stories to Pasadena: GoTo, Overture, Yahoo, YP, Chegg, WhatsApp, Tinder, Google Adword/AdSense/Photos, Sellbrite. So come take a seat on the bench and listen to my story. Pasadena tech is like a box of chocolates - you'll never know what you're gonna get. Bio: Gene is a software veteran and Internet executive known for his expertise in mobile, social, cloud, Big Data, search marketing and eCommerce. He is currently VP of Engineering at Sellbrite.com a eCommerce SaaS startup in Pasadena. Before that he was CTO of Synctree.com a Ruby/Node and DevOps-as-a-Service boutique development shop. He was the CTO of Oversee.net a $100M Consumer Mobile and Domain Monetization company. Before that he was Director of Engineering at Chegg, an online network for college students that offers assistance with homework, course selection and textbook rentals. He was also Executive Director of AT&T Interactive, building and leading teams for YP Mobile, Data Systems and Buzz.com. He also served as Director of Engineering at Yahoo Search Marketing/Overture where he built large-scale search marketing platforms. Gene is currently a on Board of Directors for Innovate Pasadena, a mentor for Mucker Labs, as well as advisor to mobile startups. Gene is a frequent speaker at tech industry events and has received numerous industry awards. He graduated Magna cum Laude with a B.S. in Biochemistry from the University of California, Los Angeles and lives in San Marino with a very supportive wife Jacki and 3 kids.

📅 Domain of One’s Own Workshop for Admins

RSVPed Might be attending Domain of One's Own Workshop for Admins
After hearing from a number of schools running Domain of One’s Own, we thought it might be useful to host an in-person workshop that focuses specifically on implementing this project on your campus. Workshop of One’s Own is a two-day, geared towards the instructional technologist who assists with managing DoOO on an administrator level, but also focuses on project conceptualization, instructional uses, and empowering their community from a teaching/learning standpoint. You’ll not only be receiving the in-person, focused attention from the entire Reclaim Hosting team, but you’ll also get a chance to brainstorm with folks from other schools who are running their own Domain of One’s Own projects. We’ll work through common troubleshooting tips, SPLOTs with Alan Levine, cPanel application case studies, and more.
I’m almost painfully tempted to attend this workshop on March 15-16 with the idea of and setting up a side business to specialize in hosting WordPress and Known sites for IndieWeb use. While it could be a generic non-institutional instance for academics, researchers, post docs, graduate and undergraduate students who don’t have a “home” DoOO service, it could also be a potential landing pad for those leaving other DoOO projects upon graduation or moving. Naturally I wouldn’t turn down individuals who wanted specific IndieWeb capable personal websites either.

Either way it’s an itch (at an almost poison ivy level) that I’ve been having for a long time, but haven’t written down until now. It would certainly be an interesting platform for continuing to evangelize the overlap of IndieWeb and Educational applications on the internet.

I think there are almost enough IndieWeb friendly WordPress themes to make it a worthwhile idea to have a multi-site WordPress install that has a handful of microformats performant themes in conjunction with tools like webmentions and micropub that allows easy interaction with most of the major social silos.

I think the community might almost be ready for such a platform that would allow an integrated turnkey IndieWeb experience. (Though I’d still want to offer some type of integrated feed reader experience bundled in with it.) Perhaps I could model it a little bit after edublogs and micro.blog?

Who wants to help goad me into it?

 
h/t:

📅 RSVP for WPCampus Online: A Virtual Conference for WordPress in Higher Education

RSVPed Attending WPCampus Online: A Virtual Conference for WordPress in Higher Education
Our next (free) conference, WPCampus Online, will take place Tuesday, January 30. It will be a free event and completely virtual. View the schedule and join us for a full day of professional development. No travel required! The WPCampus Online schedule is filled with 16 free sessions focused on using WordPress in higher education.
This looks like a cool event at the end of the month. I’m curious to see what and -esque things they may be touching on during the day.

📅 RSVP for IndieWebCamp Baltimore – Jan 20-21, 2018 – Baltimore, Maryland

RSVPed Interested in Attending https://2018.indieweb.org/baltimore
IndieWebCamp Baltimore 2018 is a gathering for independent web creators of all kinds, from graphic artists, to designers, UX engineers, coders, hackers, to share ideas, actively work on creating for their own personal websites, and build upon each others creations.
I really want to go to IndieWebCamp Baltimore not only for the IndieWeb portion, but it’s in one of my favorite cities!

If you’re interested in some of the most interesting things happening at the bleeding edge of what the web has to offer, this is the place, and these are the people. Bring your ideas and creativity for an excellent Bar Camp style weekend of fun!

RSVP to MATH X 451.43 Introduction to Algebraic Geometry: The Sequel | UCLA Extension

RSVPed Attending MATH X 451.43 Introduction to Algebraic Geometry: The Sequel
Algebraic geometry is the study, using algebraic tools, of geometric objects defined as the solution sets to systems of polynomial equations in several variables. This course is the second in a two-quarter introductory sequence that develops the basic theory of this classical mathematical field. Whereas the fall-quarter course focused more on the subject’s algebraic underpinnings, this quarter will concentrate on geometric interpretations and applications. Topics to be discussed include Bézout’s Theorem, rational varieties, cubic curves and surfaces (including the remarkable 27-line theorem), and the connection between varieties and manifolds. The theoretical discussion will be supported by a large number of examples and exercises. The course should appeal to those with an interest in gaining a deeper understanding of the mathematical interplay among algebra, geometry, and topology.
I’m definitely attending the Winter Quarter!