May 2022 Meeting – Open Meeting on Transformation

Register for the May 12 meeting.

This year we will alternate open members meetings with presenter meetings. Last month we had an engaging discussion with BundlAR President & CTO Matt Wren. He provided insight into how AR and VR are currently being applied as solutions across different industries. He also showed us how virtual work spaces are being utilized and explain their benefits and costs. 

This month we will return to an open format to discuss these insights as well as work on our new Teams site. Our open members meetings will encourage dialogue on growth topics for members – whether coursework, certifications, job opportunities, or personal growth topics. An ITKAN Advisory Team member will moderate the meetings, but we encourage member ownership. They will offer topics for discussion only if the meeting isn’t energized – and based on history that shouldn’t be an issue! 

DATE AND TIME
Thu, May 12, 2022
5:30 PM – 7:00 PM CDT

LOCATION
On-line

ITKAN has been a community since 2008 that takes care of its own, and we’re proud of that. Members have secured 1st careers, transitioned careers, and made life-long friendships.  We are perpetual learners and active community members, and through ITKAN and it is our hope that with the focus this year on transformation it will help us to continue this legacy. 

April 2022 Meeting – Virtual Reality and Immersive Technology

Register for the April 14 meeting.

Virtual Reality, or VR, has a longer historical footprint than the headgear that enables us to experience gaming, concerts, travel and other immersive environments . This is a fascinating timeline of the progression of the earliest technology contributing to the transformative experiences we know today as VR. Join ITKAN as we explore the immersive experience that VR is in present state and what the future may look like. Our presenter will be Matt Wren, President & CTO of BUNDLAR, an augmented reality solutions company serving individuals, businesses and institutions. He will discuss how AR and VR are currently being applied as solutions across different industries. He’ll also show us how virtual work spaces are being utilized and explain their benefits and costs.

DATE AND TIME
Thu, April 14, 2022
5:30 PM – 7:00 PM CDT

LOCATION
On-line

Matt Wren is the Co-founder and Chief Technology Officer of BUNDLAR, an augmented reality solutions company serving individuals, businesses and institutions. He has been a VR enthusiast for over twenty years, professionally developing VR & AR applications since 2016. Matt regularly speaks about immersive technology at events, providing thought leadership on content, strategy, innovation, and the business benefits of virtual and augmented reality. He is the previous Chicago Chapter President of the VR/AR Association. Matt is a technology adviser to Loyola University Chicago’s Ignite Lab for Entrepreneurship, an entrepreneurship advisor to Illinois Institute of Technology’s Kaplan Institute for Innovation, and a Designer/Developer member and mentor at 1871 (the World’s #1 Tech Incubator). Matt founded VRAR Chicago, whose “The Next Evolution” event series has been connecting and growing the XR community in Chicago since early 2017. In July of 2018, Matt led several local groups to host the first Chicago XR Summit, showcasing 25 Chicago based VR and AR companies to over 300 attendees.

March 2022 Meeting – Open Meeting on Transformation

Register for the March 10 meeting.

This year we will alternate open members meetings with presenter meetings. Last month we had an engaging panel discussion with Dr. Angela Sullivan of Joliet Junior College (JJC) and Dr. Behnam Roohani of City Colleges of Chicago (CCC) and Malcolm X College. They provided expert insight to the skills an IT professional needs to acquire to be successful in today’s changing landscape, and they discussed transformational offerings at JJC and CCC that members can leverage to accelerate their careers and development.

This month we will return to an open format to discuss these insights as well as work on our new Teams site. Our open members meetings will encourage dialogue on growth topics for members – whether coursework, certifications, job opportunities, or personal growth topics. An ITKAN Advisory Team member will moderate the meetings, but we encourage member ownership. They will offer topics for discussion only if the meeting isn’t energized – and based on history that shouldn’t be an issue!  

DATE AND TIME
Thu, March 10, 2022
5:30 PM – 7:00 PM CDT

LOCATION
On-line

ITKAN has been a community since 2008 that takes care of its own, and we’re proud of that. Members have secured 1st careers, transitioned careers, and made life-long friendships.  We are perpetual learners and active community members, and through ITKAN and it is our hope that with the focus this year on transformation it will help us to continue this legacy. 

February 2022 Meeting – Community Colleges and Professional Transformation

Register for the February 10 meeting.

Throughout 2022 ITKAN will focus on Transformation – of members, technologies, or careers. In support of this theme, our February 10^th meeting will highlight how Community Colleges continue to evolve their offerings to assist IT Professionals in transforming their skills in an ever-changing landscape. Today’s IT professionals are often required to have both academic degrees in technical disciplines and certificates or badges which demonstrate specific expertise. Community Colleges are well positioned to offer courses and a community which can help transform skills an IT professional requires in both areas.  These offerings are often more affordable and accessible than other options, and delivered by experts who are both highly credentialed and committed to student success.

Featured in this meeting will be Dr. Angela Sullivan, Advisor and Professor, Fine Arts Department at Joliet Junior College (JJC) and Dr. Behnam Roohani, Director of Information and Simulation Technology at City Colleges of Chicago (CCC) and Malcolm X College.  They will provide expert insight to the skills an IT professional needs to acquire to be successful in today’s changing landscape and discuss transformational offerings at JJC and CCC that members can leverage to accelerate their careers and development.

DATE AND TIME
Thu, February 10, 2022
5:30 PM – 7:00 PM CDT

LOCATION
On-line

ITKAN has been a community since 2008 that takes care of its own, and we’re proud of that. Members have secured 1st careers, transitioned careers, and made life-long friendships.  We are perpetual learners and active community members, and through ITKAN and it is our hope that with the focus this year on transformation it will help us to continue this legacy. 

January 2022 Meeting – Open Meeting on Transformation

Register for the January 13 meeting.

As our title suggests, 2022 will focus on Transformation – of members, technologies, or careers. After 2021 many of us are looking to transform our lives, and ITKAN is transforming itself as well. In the coming year we will alternate open members meetings with presenter meetings. Our open members meetings will encourage dialogue on growth topics for members – whether coursework, certifications, job opportunities, or personal growth topics. An ITKAN Advisory Team member will moderate the meetings, but we encourage member ownership. They will offer topics for discussion only if the meeting isn’t energized – and based on history that shouldn’t be an issue! 

DATE AND TIME
Thu, January 13, 2022
5:30 PM – 7:00 PM CDT

LOCATION
On-line

ITKAN has been a community since 2008 that takes care of its own, and we’re proud of that. Members have secured 1st careers, transitioned careers, and made life-long friendships.  We are perpetual learners and active community members, and through ITKAN and it is our hope that with the focus this year on transformation it will help us to continue this legacy. 

October 2021 Meeting – Machine Learning by Example, Reprise

Register for the October 14 meeting.

Join us as SPR’s Chief Architect, Pat Ryan, reprises his February presentation on the topic of Machine Learning. He’ll show some interactive examples of how to apply it while he explains the what’s and why’s of the technology. No programming skills are required.

After a general overview, Pat will cover the following topics:

• Autonomous driving
• A “The Titanic” survival simulation
• Image categorization
• Facial recognition
• Pose detection (*New Addition*)

DATE AND TIME
Thu, October 14, 2021
5:30 PM – 7:00 PM CDT

LOCATION
On-line

Pat Ryan: Pat Ryan likes to work on problems that matter. He applies software tools and techniques to the problems we have around us, with the goal of making the world a better place because of it. At SPR, Pat works closely with clients to understand their needs and craft solutions to help make them more successful. He also work directly with various engineering talents to pull together highly functioning teams. Pat is a player-manager. That means, he stays current with as many technologies as possible so he can understand and empathize when a team is struggling, and help them at a very concrete level. Pat continually builds his knowledge by reading technical books, attending classes, and coding something every day. Pat’s career has seen it all – from managing teams, to building a company from the ground up, to dreaming up software and devices that have gone on to solve client problems.

August 2021 Meeting – Intelligent Healthcare Workshop Virtual Tour

Register for the August 12 meeting.

The Intelligent Healthcare Experience is a collection of five kiosks that comprise 70+ different demonstrations following the journeys of 10 different characters who work together to help a patient recover from a medical emergency. Microsoft expertise in the Experience showcases Virtual and Mixed Reality, AI, Machine Learning, and Big Data among others. 

Our host on our Virtual Tour will be Charles Drayton, MTC Chicago’s Chief Technical Architect and Healthcare & Life Sciences Experience Lead.  

So plan to join us for a virtual experience that promises to impress!

DATE AND TIME
Thu, August 12, 2021
5:30 PM – 7:00 PM CDT

LOCATION
On-line

Charles Drayton is the Chief Technical Architect and Healthcare & Life Sciences Experience Lead at the Microsoft Technology Center (MTC) in Chicago, Illinois. Charles is the creator and designer of the Intelligent Healthcare Experience, which is the largest showcase of healthcare technology anywhere at Microsoft.

June 2021 Meeting – Carbon Footprint Digital Assistant – Carby

Register for the June 10 meeting.

Join us as ITKAN continues its journey on artificial intelligence, machine learning, and data science with a presentation by data science / machine learning award-winning practitioner Kevin Hartman. He will discuss and demonstrate Carby, an app that provides consumers quick access to information about the products we choose related to their impact on our environment simply by snapping a photo! Using the power of Ai, Carby will reveal the product’s carbon score and suggest lower impact alternatives if they exist.

The team that Kevin is part of recently won the World Innovation Day Hackathon, an international competition to demonstrate the creative use of technology to address our global challenges in achieving a more sustainable future. See the app and learn how the team plans to build Carby into a production-capable system that includes more Ai models and an automated data pipeline.

DATE AND TIME
Thu, June 10, 2021
5:30 PM – 7:00 PM CDT

LOCATION
On-line

Kevin Hartman is a fastidious problem solver, an expressive communicator, and a career learner. He loves solving complex problems using technology and data, turning the result into something simple and effortless. His specialty is formulating high-impact solutions that leverage technology innovation. From this passion he became versed in the skills of Product Management, Software Engineering and Data Science, and has education in all three. He has inspired, influenced, and led the creation of hundreds of digital products; working from both inside and alongside teams of researchers, scientists, designers, engineers and enthusiasts.

April 2021 Meeting – Augmented Reality with BUNDLAR

Register for the April 8 meeting.

Imagine all the problems augmented reality (AR) could solve if a simple tool existed that allowed anybody to create AR experiences in minutes. Matt Wren, CTO of BUNDLAR, a web based platform that provides a no-code, drag and drop interface for authoring, editing, publishing and accessing AR, will discuss how novice users can learn to publish AR in as little as 30 minutes. While simple to use, the BUNDLAR platform provides a powerful set of features that make it easy to publish and access on-demand training, performance support, and instructional materials. This real time demonstration will cover how to publish an AR bundle using the BUNDLAR platform, a marketable skill that anybody can learn. Demand for augmented reality development is increasing as this technology is rapidly being adopted. Nearly every major technology company in the world has already committed to AR as an integral part of communication in the coming years.

DATE AND TIME
Thu, April 8, 2021
5:30 PM – 7:00 PM CDT

LOCATION
On-line

Matt Wren is the Co-founder and Chief Technology Officer of BUNDLAR, an augmented reality solutions company serving individuals, businesses and institutions. He has been a VR enthusiast for over twenty years, professionally developing VR & AR applications since 2016. Matt regularly speaks about immersive technology at events, providing thought leadership on content, strategy, innovation, and the business benefits of virtual and augmented reality. He is the previous Chicago Chapter President of the VR/AR Association. Matt is a technology adviser to Loyola University Chicago’s Ignite Lab for Entrepreneurship, an entrepreneurship advisor to Illinois Institute of Technology’s Kaplan Institute for Innovation, and a Designer/Developer member and mentor at 1871 (the World’s #1 Tech Incubator). Matt founded VRAR Chicago, whose “The Next Evolution” event series has been connecting and growing the XR community in Chicago since early 2017. In July of 2018, Matt led several local groups to host the first Chicago XR Summit, showcasing 25 Chicago based VR and AR companies to over 300 attendees.

February 2021 Meeting – Machine Learning by Example

Register for the February 11 meeting.

Join us as ITKAN kicks off the new year with a presentation by SPR’s Chief Architect, Pat Ryan. He will introduce the topic of Machine Learning and show some interactive examples of how to apply it. No programming skills are required.

• General Overview
• Autonomous driving with an 8-bit simulation of a car driving on a track. Imagine… Pong meets Tesla
• Can we use data from the Titanic to predict if Jack or Rose would survive?
• Using Machine Learning to categorize images. Can we train a model to tell the difference between a picture of a highway and a beach? Can we train a model to classify pictures of cats and dogs? What happens if we try to classify a highway picture for the Animals model? We will look at 2 data sets:
  1. Scenes from highway, forest, ocean dataset
  2. Animals from Cat, Dog, Pandas dataset
• Use reinforcement learning to teach a system to find the winning square while avoiding the losing square. As the system plays the game, it starts to learn what moves will bring positive rewards and what moves will bring negative rewards. In the end the system almost never loses!
• Facial recognition is a very controversial topic and technology. But how does it work? We will look the basic algorithm behind facial recognition to gain a better understanding of some of the details.

DATE AND TIME
Thu, February 11, 2021
5:30 PM – 7:00 PM CDT

LOCATION
On-line

Pat Ryan: Pat Ryan likes to work on problems that matter. He applies software tools and techniques to the problems we have around us, with the goal of making the world a better place because of it. At SPR, Pat works closely with clients to understand their needs and craft solutions to help make them more successful. He also work directly with various engineering talents to pull together highly functioning teams. Pat is a player-manager. That means, he stays current with as many technologies as possible so he can understand and empathize when a team is struggling, and help them at a very concrete level. Pat continually builds his knowledge by reading technical books, attending classes, and coding something every day. Pat’s career has seen it all – from managing teams, to building a company from the ground up, to dreaming up software and devices that have gone on to solve client problems.