16 Sep 2008
10:50 - 12:15
Turman Room, Preston Library
David Wood
Software is arguably the most remarkable achievement of Twentieth Century science. Hardware is limited by physics, but software is limited only by human imagination. Yet much of produced software is of very low quality, riddled with bugs and impossible to maintain. We are still learning how to make good software. Is it possible to maximize the potential of software by changing some of our philosophical presumptions about how to think? Challenging some of the presumptions of Western thought reaching back to the ancient Greeks may be the key to unlocking software's potential.
Slides (PDF)
24 Sep 2008
19:45 - 21:00
Turman Room, Preston Library
Dr. Peter Rodgers
The Web Architecture has proven to be an incredibly scalable and robust model for information systems. To date it has primarily been regarded as a networked application platform. In this talk we will introduce Resource Oriented Computing in which abstract information resources form the basis of an information system and computation naturally occurs as a side-effect of requiring reified instances of the information. We will show how this apporach relates to the Web, Unix and even the formative ideas in computation of the early 20th Century. We will also show how ROC can dramatically change the computational energy costs of realworld computing.
Slides (PDF)
7 Oct 2008
10:50 - 12:15
Room 514, Nichols Engineering Hall
Dr. Eric Miller
The World Wide Web is the largest and most rapidly changing information system ever designed by humankind. Dr. Eric Miller, recently the Semantic Web Activity Lead at the World Wide Web Consortium, discusses the research, standards, tools and techniques of the future Web.
21 Oct 2008
10:50 - 12:15
Turman Room, Preston Library
Brian Sletten
Java was supposed to be the one language to "rule them all": Write Once, Run Anywhere. However, something happened to along the way to ubiquity. While it clearly has been a very successful language, it feels old and crufty and is not where the "cool kids" are hanging out these days. Languages like Python, Ruby and Groovy have gained a lot of attention, but aren't yet as widely used in Enterprise software. As we adopt Web and Resource-oriented architectures where implementation details clearly do not matter as much as they have, we see a new surge of languages like Clojure, Erlang, Haskell and Scala that are helping define a new development landscape. So, are computer languages important or not?
Slides (PDF)
4 Nov 2008
10:50 - 12:15
Room 135, Mallory Hall
Andrew Glover
The spectacular success and market penetration of the iPod, Agile software development principles, Twitter, and even Google are just a few examples of minimalism in action. Yet, there are countless counterparts to each success previously listed that, unfortunately, didn't make it; what's more, each counterpart tried to solve the same complex problem. Was it market timing, smarter people, access to capital, savvy marketing, or a combination of any of these aspects that made the difference? Or was it because when it comes to coding, design, functionality, project teams, and even testing, less is, indeed, more?
Slides (PDF)
25 Nov 2008
10:50 - 12:15
Turman Room, Preston Library
Ajay Sravanapudi
Why is the Web free? Who pays for search, content, social networking, music, video, etc? Why is Google such a threat to Microsoft? How is technology powering this ecosystem? How are your skills applicable to this economy, which is mostly invisible - unless you are in online advertising? You have questions? I have answers - right or wrong - but delivered with conviction! I have transformed myself from a "regular engineer" (the guy with short sleeves, bad tie, and pocket protector), into a self taught geek, and then into a entrepreneur in the online advertising space. My story will convince you that a software background can be the most versatile of all foundations.
9 Dec 2008
10:50 - 12:15
Turman Room, Preston Library
Bernadette Hyland
Bernadette Hyland, a three-time software entrepreneur, explores software as an agent for change in the American economy. Why doesn't Microsoft Office work as well as iTunes? Why can't corporate I.T. departments provide applications that work like Facebook, Flickr, Amazon and eBay? The rapid growth of online information is forcing companies to change their internal communication styles and even their organizational structures as the Internet generation enters the workplace.