Join us on the first Wednesday of every month!
Next event is 5 February at Little Andromeda (Note the venue!)
5 February Speakers
“Why Should You Care About Binary Numbers?“
by Henry Hickman
Binary numbers are everywhere. They are the atoms that make up the digital world we so often live in. But does it matter to the average person? Why should you care? Let’s find out together!
Henry Hickman is a PhD student studying Computer Science, with a focus on how best to teach programming to high school students. He is also an avid stand-up comedian and Survivor fan, which you can find him talking about every week on YouTube. He recently spent a week in Germany talking to other nerds about why binary numbers are so cool and is excited to bring that to you all!
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“Steganography in music”
by Judith Bell
Is there a secret message in this song? Steganography is about hiding messages in plain sight, and we’ll look at examples from military codes to maths puzzles in music.
Judith is a musician surrounded by a family of musical digital technology nerds. As an advocate for the importance of music education, one of her strategies and investigations has been to hijack ideas from digital technologies curriculum for teaching music.
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“Russell J Stanford and the Enshittification of the Creation of Knowledge”
by Anton Angelo
Scholarly communication – the way we tell each other about new knowledge – is very broken, and Russell J Stanford is a big part of the problem. With trust in science at an all time low, we need to cancel Russell, and start a new, more gentle, robust and humane path to improving the way we publish our research.
Anton Angelo is a long time snarky knowledge boffin (read: Librarian) at the University of Canterbury. Rampant ADHD means he hasn’t held a job anywhere for long, and collected far too many degrees, but a career in service helping people access knowledge through the entire protocol stack means he has a ‘certain set of skills’. Currently hyperfocussed on scholarly publication he’s discovered a bit of a scandal, and has a plan for improving the trust and robustness of academic publishing.