January 2023: Monthly Dinner Meeting

Speaker: Mike Pavlak

Mike Pavlak has been working with IBM midrange solutions since 1992 and IBM Mainframes before that.  After years of developing applications using RPG & CL he managed IT development and IT for power protection manufacturer Tripp Lite.  Mike was instrumental in developing the adoption of PHP as the first open source language on IBM i and later joined Zend Technologies.  Today, as a Solution Engineer with Perforce (Zend), Mike helps companies approach the challenges of modernization and open source technologies.  In addition to several roles as a volunteer with COMMON Mike also teaches PHP & Python classes part time at Moraine Valley Community College in Suburban Chicago.

 Mike lives in suburban Chicago constantly searching for the best microbreweries in the Midwest and elsewhere.

SESSION INFORMATION: 

What is Open AI and why should you care?
Open AI and specifically Online GPT has captured the latest in IT headlines. In this session we will discuss the history of Open AI, how it has matured and the goals of the team behind the technology. We'll also explore (speculate) on it's impact to education, finance and most assuredly, Information Technology. We'll wrap up with a live demo!
(4:30pm - 5:30pm)

Test Driven Development with examples in Python
User Acceptance Testing should not be the only testing tool in your arsenal. Building a solid Python application is easy if you automate the boring testing process. And EVERY SOLID DevOps process depends on automated testing. In this session we’ll explore how easy automated testing can be in Python, get it done with several examples and understand the steps involved in TDD so it can be applied in ANY programming language.
(7:30pm - 8:30pm)