Category: Uncategorized

NNB XXIII – Feb 12, 2020

Hey Baltimore Nerds! Welcome to our Nerd Nite # 23! Come out February 12th, grab a beer and settle in for the best 2 hours you’ll spend on a Wednesday! Scroll down to see talk descriptions….

Nerd Nite Baltimore (NNB) is part of an international community of Nerd Nites in over 90 cities around the world! This event combines imbibing and learning.

Join us for a night of educational drinking!

Talks at Nerd Nite are 15- 20 minutes with a rollicking Q&A afterward. The barkeeps at De Kleine Duivel will keep your glasses full of delightful Belgian beer and spirits.

Doors open at 6:30…event starts at 7:00pm. We accept cash or card at the door. Tickets are $5 online and $6 at the door.
We have a great line up for this month!
Tickets available here: (https://www.eventbrite.com/e/90874037693)

Talk #1: Speaker: Rebecca A. Adelman on “If her loose lips sink ships, what can her other parts do?: Policing women’s talk in wartime”

Summary: During World War II, the “loose lips” blamed for “sinking ships” frequently belonged to women, and posters reminded amorous GIs not to share sensitive information in attempts to impress the ladies. Today, OPSEC (Operational Security) materials for military families warn wives to scrub their social media and keep their husbands’ deployments secret. While men telling women to be quiet is hardly novel, it is noteworthy that in these cases, talkative women are portrayed as not just irritating but lethally dangerous. These chatterboxes will be our guides through a history of the U.S. military’s approach to the problems of its men liking women, and those women liking to have contact with the outside world.

Bio: Rebecca A. Adelman is herself a talkative woman and an Associate Professor of Media and Communication Studies at UMBC, where she teaches and writes about things like visual culture, militarized violence, surveillance, and media theory. Her newest book is Figuring Violence: Affective Investments in Perpetual War.

Talk #2: Speaker Dr. Ernesto Chanona on “Board games make your life awesome”

Summary: When I say “board games” most people think of Monopoly, Sorry or the game of Life, which were popular in decades past. But there’s an exciting new world of board games out there. My talk will reveal new classes of games, what they’re like and the benefits of this experience in the context of our screen-dependent, digital age.

Bio: I’m an avid board game player and board game designer. I founded my design studio, the Ministry of Dice in 2017. I’m currently working on a choose-your-own-adventure style game with a friend of mine. In my day job, I’m an economic developer for the biotech industry in Maryland.

Talk #3: Speaker Dr. Marie van Staveren on “Teaching and learning in higher education: a pedagogy nerd shares some thoughts”

Summary: K-12 teachers are required to take significant coursework in the area of teaching and learning, and there is a robust research literature about how college students learn best. However, most college professors receive little or no training in pedagogy. As a result, college classes can be rather dull and ineffective, and subpar pedagogy tends to reinforce existing societal inequalities. I’m gonna share with y’all several of my favorite teaching techniques and theories, namedrop several Serious People in Pedagogy who I love, and generally try to convince you that learning should be both more fun and more easy than it usually is in college.

Bio: Marie van Staveren is a Lecturer of Chemistry at UMBC, where she teaches advanced lab courses in blowing things up, shooting lasers at stuff, and how to be awesome. She spends her professional energy reading All of the Books About Teaching and endlessly revamping her courses to be better.

NNB XXII – Dec 11, 2019

Amateur Radio, the Philosophy of Brexit, and turtles!

Hey Baltimore Nerds! Welcome to our Nerd Nite # 22! Come out December 11th, grab a beer and settle in for the best 2 hours you’ll spend on a Wednesday! Scroll down to see talk descriptions….

Nerd Nite Baltimore (NNB) is part of an international community of Nerd Nites in over 90 cities around the world! This event combines imbibing and learning.

Join us for a night of educational drinking!

Talks at Nerd Nite are 15- 20 minutes with a rollicking Q&A afterward. The barkeeps at De Kleine Duivel will keep your glasses full of delightful Belgian beer and spirits. (This is a 21 and over venue)

Doors open at 6:30…event starts at 7:00pm. We accept cash or card at the door. Tickets are $5 online and $6 at the door.
We have a great line up for this month!

Talk #1: Speaker: Christopher Broholm on “Amateur Radio: Independence and the Forgotten Beauty of Radio”

There are so many things you can do in Amateur Radio and you can spend a lifetime exploring its capabilities. We’ve been misled to believe that Radio communication is not relevant any more. We’ve become so dependent on these vast and complex communications systems that we cannot fathom our lives with out them. We may think that all of this is new technology. But it’s all been done before and tinkered with by ham radio operators. Consider this: The first people that make contact after catastrophic natural disasters are Ham Radio operators. During the communications blackout of Kashmir it was ham radio operators making contact with the outside world!

About the Speaker:
Chris Broholm Is a proud resident of Baltimore city, and originally from Ellicott City. He’s a production sound mixer for film and TV and ham radio enthusiast. He teaches audio at Baltimore school for the Arts and plays music around the city. At the time of writing this, he holds a technician class license for amateur radio, but hopes to soon upgrade his license class to General.

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Talk #2: Kiki Malomo-Paris Speaker: on “Because Brexit: Why Parliamentarism trumps Presidentialism”

With the exception of the United States, all countries that are considered to be stable democracies have adopted, at least partially, parliamentary governance. This alone should be telling. However, when a small country with one of the oldest parliamentary systems decided to have a little referendum, it became a little more apparent. This talk will explain that the reason Brexit is breaking the UK is also kind of why presidential systems are inferior to parliamentary systems.

About the Speaker:
I am Kiki, born in Nigeria, raised in Northern Ireland. I have been in the US for nearly 10 years. I am currently a Ph.D. candidate in Public Policy, a graduate research assistant at The Hilltop Institute, and for the past 2 years, the chair of the Legislative Concerns Committee for the UMBC Graduate Student Association. When I am not waxing poetic about politics and policy, you can find me ranting about soccer, playing rugby or drinking whiskey.

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Talk #3: Speaker: Rebecca McKee on “Let’s talk turtles- More than you ever wanted to know about testudines”

About the Speaker

Rebecca is a wildlife ecologist and a lecturer of zoology at Towson University!

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Contact with questions or accessibility concerns

NNB XXI – Oct 23, 2019

Hey Baltimore Nerds! Welcome to our Nerd Nite number 21! Come out October 23rd, grab a beer and settle in for the best 2 hours you’ll spend on a Wednesday! Scroll down to see talk descriptions….

Nerd Nite Baltimore (NNB) is part of an international community of Nerd Nites in over 90 cities around the world! This event combines imbibing and learning. Anyone with a passion can be a Nerd Nite speaker! Join us for a night of educational drinking!

Talks at Nerd Nite are 15- 20 minutes with a rollicking Q&A afterward. The barkeeps at De Kleine Duivel will keep your glasses full of delightful Belgian beer and spirits. (This is a 21 and over venue.)

Doors open at 6:30…event starts at 7:00pm. We only accept cash at the door.

Door tix are $5.

We have a great line up for this month! ***Keep scrolling…****

Talk Descriptions in no particular order….

Talk #1: Speaker: Alex Abdoulaev and Caitlin Farthing on “Western Classical Music in Anime”

Western Classical Music in Anime and Japanese Pop Culture: A discussion of the role, interpretation, and significance of Western European classical music in Japanese popular culture and anime. Touching on “Your Lie in April”, “Ouran High School Host Club”, “Yuri on Ice”, “Neon Genesis Evangelion”, and more!

About the Speakers:

Alexandre Abdoulaev is a musicologist, composer, arranger, and a classical and jazz pianist. He is currently a Professor of Music Literature at the University of Delaware, Westchester University, and Boston University.  He has been a featured speaker at several international conferences as well as a number of local anime conventions.

Caitlin Farthing is a bookbinder, artist, art historian, and fine art conservator. She currently holds a position as a private practice Conservator/Restorer. She has been featured as an artist and speaker in a number of and anime conventions shows across the mid-Atlantic region.

Talk #2: Speaker: Emma Richardson on “What the Futtock?: what archaeologists do when they find surprise ships”

What happens when four historic ships are found underneath some of the most valuable real estate in northern Virginia? First, a polite face-off between archaeologists and developers. Second, science! Also, a whole lot of trying to scrub historic tar out of every pair of pants you own and a bit about parasites.

 

About the Speaker:

Emma Richardson was raised above an old-timey post office and general store on the eastern shore. She got her degree in finding old things in the ground at Warren Wilson and her masters in taking care of those old things at Morgan State. When she’s not working for the City of Alexandria’s archaeology division finding even more old things in the ground, she plays old-time fiddle.

Talk #3: Speaker: Amar Vamsi Krishna on “Incredibly Exciting Field of Rehabilitation Robotics”

Prepare yourself to learn about medical robots—rehabilitation robots in particular, the need for robots in rehabilitation, the clinical requirements, and (of course) challenges. We will look briefly at the history and evolution of this relatively new field in robotics. The fundamental physics behind this technology will be presented (jargon-free!). Robots currently in use in the market, newer robots under development, current trends, shortcomings, and future of this field will be discussed. It will be a presentation filled with examples, pictures, and videos. 

About the Speaker:

Hi, I am Amar Vamsi Krishna – a robotics systems engineer at NextStep Robotics – a Baltimore based rehabilitation robotics startup. Currently working on developing a wearable ankle robot to reverse the effects of foot-drop, a very common condition post-stroke. I have a bachelors degree in Mechanical Engineering and a masters degree in Systems Engineering specializing in robotics. I have been working on technologies for stroke rehabilitation for the last 2.5 years now. 

Find out more about Nerd Nite at http://nerdnite.com/

Contact with questions or accessibility concerns