Events New and Old
DIY Usability Lab: Testing With Little Or No Budget
September 12, 2017 at 7:00pm
Usability testing uncovers problem areas with your website. But not many do it, or do too little because of perceived complexity and cost. When you have limited time and budget, build your own usability lab and get results. A low-cost usability lab will be demonstrated using readily available hardware and software and results from testing our Acadia University library website will be shared.
#ScratchFest
June 24, 2017 at 12:00pm
Calling all Scratchers #ScratchFest is a weekend (June 24th and June 25th) Scratch-a-thon for kids interested in creating amazing original work with the Scratch programming environment. During #ScartchFest, kids will brainstorm an idea, develop their project, and showcase a final prototype. This weekend warrior event provides an excellent opportunity for Scratch coders to invent their own projects and demonstrate their knowledge in Scratch within a collaborative, creative, and playful environment.
Against Flat Screens: Learn 3D Design
June 17, 2017 at 12:30pm
In this Hoist teen design talk, Max Caplan will introduce us to 3D design using Blender. Blender is a professional 3D computer graphics software used for creating animated films, visual effects, art, 3D printed models, interactive 3D applications and video games. Max will walk us through installing, using, and designing your first Blender project: an awesome robot. Pizza + workshop + building Bring your own laptop. A small number of laptops will be available to borrow.
Digitizing Your Mouth: 2 Decades of Digital Dentistry in Wolfville
June 13, 2017 at 7:00pm
Henry Schein is a distributor and producer of health care products and services with a presence in 33 countries. The company is a Fortune World’s Most Admired Company and is ranked number one in its industry for social responsibility. Its Wolfville operation is at the forefront of digitizing dentistry with its wide range of home grown software solutions. Come help the Henry Schein Woflville team christen its new office. Product Manager Sandy Macdonald will talk about the state of digital dentistry and how our Wolfville team is working on pushing its edges.
Bootstrapping The Web
May 13, 2017 at 12:30pm
For our first Hoist meetup, we’ll be learning how to use the Twitter Bootstrap code library to create beautiful front-end websites. Bootstrap is a combination of HTML, CSS, and JavaScript that allow you to write very little but get a whole lot. We’ll start with the basics of HTML and CSS and then dive into using Bootstrap to jump-start your web project. Pizza + workshop + building Bring your own laptop.
The Startup Life: Youth Gone Wild
May 9, 2017 at 7:00pm
Aristides Milios is possessed. In 2014 he co-founded Microcent Technologies. As CTO he focused on incubating hyper-local location technology for use in small-to-mid sized businesses. In 2015, he co-founded Hoist Halifax: a monthly series of workshops for teens interested in design, entrepreneurship and tech. That same year, he graduated from Propel ICT Accelerator Program. In 2016 he graduated from High School. In this fireside chat, come learn what drives Aristides towards the tech startup trenches, and how he is building a youth entrepreneurship culture in Nova Scotia.
Project Management Sucks
April 11, 2017 at 7:00pm
Project management seems to be one of those areas of necessary evil. Disconnected project managers who don’t really understand your work coupled with never ending meetings, charts, spreadsheets, forms, paperwork, complicated management software… Project management can feel like it is more of a barrier than a help to team productivity. In this talk, Mike Caplan, a reluctant Software Development Manager, will explore a lightweight tool for overseeing the project processes. Based on a simple board, this technique helps visualize workflow, expose operational problems, and reduce wasted time from excessive multitasking.
Maker Meetup
February 21, 2017 at 7:00pm
Calling all makers, inventors, artists, entrepreneurs, tinkerers, and the like. Join Refresh Annapolis Valley and Annapolis Valley STEAMspace for what we hope will be a regular meetup for the Valley maker community to gather, share ideas, and build community. Projects galore to explore! Ian McKay will be demoing a magic cauldron, CNC stuff and a possible new product. Max Caplan will show off a homebrew handheld gaming console. And you…?
Forecasting: Using Machine Learning Techniques in Energy, Environment and Agriculture
January 10, 2017 at 7:00pm
Dr Daniel Silver will review a series of projects undertaken by the Acadia Institute for Data Analytics . These amazing projects can estimate crop yield from smart phone images, do solar energy forecasting, manage building energy, determine stream flow rate and aquifer recharge prediction, sales forecasting, and classifying objects in UAV agriculture field images. Many of these problems utilize high resolution observed and forecasted weather, high definition and multi-spectral digital images, and 5 minute through 60 minute data flow rates.
Creative Computing Course 2017
January 9, 2017 at 6:00pm
Creative Computing is a course developed by an international network of educators passionate about exposing kids to the computer sciences. Broken up into 7 units, this course uses the popular Scratch programming environment to aid young people (aged 8 to 13) in learning the basics of software development. Scratch is used over the world by students to easily create animations and games while acting as a stepping stone to the more advanced world of computer science.