Title: December Meeting: Annual Social
Location: Wild Wing in Kanata
Link out: Click here
Description:

This is our annual social.

This year we will be at Wild Wing in Kanata, Eagleson @ Stonehaven in the mall with the Harvey’s and Starbucks. 19:00 as per usual. The reservation is under my name.

If you could respond and let me know you are coming and if you are bringing an additional person, I can adjust the numbers. Don’t forget that significant others are invited.

Title: November Meeting
Location: The Second Cup, Bells Corners
Link out: Click here
Description: We just have a couple of topics for November:

• Effective documentation systems
• LISA XXV - Boston
• December social

Start Time: 19:00
Date: 2011-11-17
End Time: 21:30

O’Reilly just just put up an offer for a pretty complete getting started in data analysis library. It doesn’t say when the offer ends, but if you are looking for some books on data manipulation, this might have everything you are looking for. ( Link)

Data Science Starter Kit
The Tools You Need to Get Started with Data

This kit includes everything you need from analysis, visualization, to management.

“The success of companies like Google, Facebook, Amazon, and Netflix, not to mention Wall Street firms and industries from manufacturing and retail to healthcare, is increasingly driven by better tools for extracting meaning from very large quantities of data. ‘Data Scientist’ is now the hottest job title in Silicon Valley.” – Tim O’Reilly

I’ve been a little slow posting, not sure it’s laziness or just wasn’t feeling up to it. The main topic starting out was the certification item Jim had mentioned. There was a discussion about a year ago on the SAGE mailing list about such a thing and both Kelwin and I had both posted responses.

I won’t post Kelwin’s response, but I will duplicate mine below:

Not wanting to sound like I’m in the extreme end of either for vs. against certifications, I am a full time consultant and I live in a government town. In order to even qualify to bid on government and a large number of private sector contracts, I have to meet their certification requirements. As all of the local agencies also have large government contracts, they ask for them as well in order to contact me with possible gigs. I happen to have a couple, mostly taken at theurging of employers to meet some odd requirement.

Thanks to Jim, I’ve corrected the calendar entry. The meeting is next week, not tonight (Oct 13). If you are looking for a meeting to atend tonight, the ocbug (ocbug.ca) meeting is tonight.