Open Tech Calendar

We're excited to announce Mode 2 Meetup Episode 17.

Mode 2 is a regular meetup about IT innovation within large companies across central Scotland. We're sponsored by Infinity Works and episode 17 is hosted by Solarwinds.

Each meetup will feature two short talks and a chance to connect with IT innovators in a relaxed environment with free beer/wine and pizza. The talks for this meetup are:

1: Martina Pugliese, Data Science Lead, Mallzee

I work as a Data Science Lead at Mallzee, Edinburgh-based tech startup helping retail making better decisions, aided by data. I’ve always got a bit of fetish for collecting data points, extracting patterns and visualising information, so back then I had decided to study Physics, just to preserve more of my sanity really. I believe and support the democratisation of knowledge, and that using data ethically makes us all better informed and freer.

“Remaining sane in the Age of Data”

Working with data isn’t about using the latest AI research finding. Fundamentally, it is about collecting data that is informative to your question, digging into it to understand its strong and weak points, and battling your own human biases and opinions. One of the easiest mistakes to do is inferring insights from some data points that aren’t proven. Some media use this all the time, and have always done so, however today we are all much better equipped to spot lies. Carefully analysing your data first is something that Big Data hasn’t killed yet, and no off-the-shelf AI tool can do it for you. It’s the human side of Data Science, the most interesting and the hardest. Working with data in a startup also means being flexible and wearing a variety of hats as each day is different. I will explain a bit what I’ve learned along the way about doing “Data Science”, how to not disregard the actual foundations of this discipline and what this field, born out of (often inflated) expectations is developing into.

2: Mark Smith, Senior Developer Advocate, Vonage

Mark is a Senior Developer Advocate at Vonage. He stumbled into Developer Relations 3 years ago when a job advert appeared listing every esoteric interest he had, along with a strong background in engineering and the ability to talk to a crowd. Since then he's discovered that he'd accidentally been doing Developer Relations for years without even realising it was a discipline.

"What the Hell _is_ Dev-Rel?"

Maybe you've met a Developer Evangelist, but you've maybe never heard of a Developer Advocate, and you almost certainly don't know what a Developer Educator is... but it's something to do with _Developers_, right? These, and more, are all roles encompassed by Developer Relations - which may also be a term that's new to you, but may just be something your business needs.
Developer Relations is a difficult thing to pin down, but is fundamentally the discipline of talking to and learning from developers. It's been around for a while now, surprisingly, but it's still a discipline that's in its infancy. This talk will explain what Developer Relations _is_, what it _isn't_, why you might want to do it, and how you can get started. So next time you meet a Developer Advocate you won't have to ask "What the hell _is_ dev-rel?"