NERD Summit 2024!
March 8-9, 2024 at UMass Amherst. Note NERD Summit is not happening in 2025.
NERD Summit is an inclusive, community-building tech event in New England.
A note about NERD Summit 2025
Unfortunately, NERD Summit 2025 is off. There are two main reasons for this:
- Rick Hood stepped off as lead organizer and no one was willing to fill that slot.
- No one was willing to fill the lead on getting sponsorship.
We did have volunteers for many of the other jobs, but we really needed these two jobs to be filled in order to commit to 2025. Sponsorship has been getting tougher over the years. Last Call Media (Kelly Albrecht) had to plug the hole in 2023 and 2024, which is greatly appreciated, but not really sustainable. We did plan on reducing from 2 days to 1 day, which more or less halves the cost.
FYI some of you may be interested in this event on June 6, 2025: www.evolvedrupal.com.
Keynote Speakers
Keynote #1 - Friday
Knowledge without Understanding: The Light Cast by Our AI Nightmares
We are thrilled to announce that our keynote speaker for Friday will be David Weinberger. David has been writing about the effect of technology on our ideas about ourselves and the world since the 1980s. His most recent book, the award-winning Everyday Chaos (HBR, 2019), presents a unique perspective on the rise and importance of machine learning.
Keynote #2 - Saturday
The Inventure Mindset: Future-fitness on the Frontier
Jessica Cobb will be our keynote speaker on Saturday. This should be a fun one! Jessica is an international emerging technologist and the founder of Mission Control Lab. She asserts that as agents of “inventure” we can cultivate future-fitness for ourselves while influencing the causeways shared between humans, nature, and machines.
2024 Program
In 2024 the summit will be held on Friday & Saturday, March 8-9, with sessions and training on both days.
Sessions will include talks, panels, and group discussions on a wide variety of topics. NERD Summit has been an incredible success thanks to excellent presenters, generous sponsors, and an enthusiastic community.
Mission
The mission of NERD (New England Regional Developers) is to collaborate with the regional community to ensure that the annual Summit and events throughout the year offer everyone, regardless of background or finances, a diverse curriculum for relevant skill building and valuable networking opportunities. This supports our vision of creating positive and supportive learning opportunities for people who work or want to work in web and related technology. Too many smart, passionate people have been traditionally excluded from tech careers, and we're changing that.
Look for the app on the iOS App Store, thanks to Lou Franco.
SCHEDULE
Workshops require an additional ticket - link to tickets is in each workshop description.
FRIDAY March 8
Registration and continental breakfast
Please attend the welcome session for information and orientation about today's schedule.
NOTE: RAFFLING OFF THREE EVERYDAY CHAOS BOOKS BY TODAY'S KEYNOTE DAVID WEINBERGER
This training is designed for those new to using AI in programming. It offers a comprehensive introduction to using AI as a coding assistant, covering everything from setting up AI tools to effectively utilizing them for coding tasks. With a focus on practical, hands-on learning, this guide is perfect for programmers of any level who are eager to explore the benefits of AI in their coding endeavors and enhance their programming skills.
Join us for an interactive discussion about Women in Tech: Strategies for Building a Strong Culture.
Panelists:
- Marie-Ange Delimon, Community Impact Manager, Tech Foundry
- Bridget Haley, Director, MassMutual
- Shanice McKenzie, Digital Fellow, Tech Foundry
The talk will cover the basics of infrastructure as code using Terraform.
The OWASP Top Ten is an industry standard list of the most common vulnerabilities that can affect web sites. This session will start with an overview of the Top Ten and then take a more detailed look at a few of these vulnerabilities in the context of Drupal. We will review some actual Drupal security advisories.
This session will help teach you about good "web hygiene" and what you can do to make your site more secure. It will also help you recognize when you need to rely on an expert.
Ticket required see: TICKETS
A hands-on training with a Raspberry Pi microcontroller. Materials will be provided. A computer is required, so please bring your laptop.
Disabled designers have long been some of the biggest movers and shakers in the field. This talk will cover the dark history that propelled the medical model of disability to its modern-day prevalence, the Disabled Civil Rights Movement, the endless contributions disabled designers have made to our field, and steps your firm should take when approaching inclusive design.
When working with color on the web, we’ve always had a few choices. What are the new color options in CSS, and what do they add to the variety of color choices we already have?
In this talk, I will discuss:
- What’s new in the CSS Color Module Levels 4 and 5
- An overview of color spaces available today
- How to use some of the new CSS color functions
Attendees will come away from this session with a deeper knowledge of the new color spaces and CSS color functions to make adding color to your site even easier!
SATURDAY March 9
Registration and continental breakfast
Please attend the welcome session for information and orientation about today's schedule.
NOTE: RAFFLING OFF THREE DRUPALIZE.ME MEMBERSHIPS: ONE ANNUAL AND TWO MONTHLY
WordPress is the most popular CMS online today, comprising around 30% of the world's websites. With over 30 years of WordPress experience combined, Matt Baya and Nicole Ouellette will talk about tips and tricks of WordPress you might not know both for website visitors and website administrators. They'll discuss their favorite themes and plugins, WordPress security, and functionality they've used with their clients (and themselves) to save time, give a better user experience, and otherwise make websites better.
Ticket required see: TICKETS
For all ages! (children 6+, under 9 with a parent)
-No previous experience required-
Make a smart wearable by crafting flexible circuits without using conductive thread! In this no-experience necessary workshop, you will create a project where light is controlled through movement. You can choose to BYOP (Bring Your Own Project) or create your own custom designed smart textile!
For more information about Jessica and these workshops, see this YouTube video: Inventure Workshops.
Brian Autumn, Software Concept Accelerator, takes you on a journey from the very beginning of the web to the current day as he talks about how the core technologies of HTML, JS, and CSS have evolved.
My programmer pastebin site dpaste.com serves thousands of legitimate users every day, but like most web apps also attracts its share of spam, vulnerability probes, and other attacks. This talk details some of the techniques I use to mitigate these threats and shows how I identify the problem requests for fast automated response.
Ever felt like interviews are a puzzle with missing pieces? Join this session to uncover what’s beyond the LeetCode clichés. Tech interviews are icebergs, with coding as just the tip. Learn to leverage job descriptions, navigate the six interview dimensions, and refine your approach. Bid farewell to the mundane STAR method for behavioral interviews; embrace a fresh perspective.
Location
NERD Summit is held in the Murray D. Lincoln Campus Center Google Maps link to parking
Drive times: Logan (BOS) Airport: 2 hours, Bradley (BDL) Airport: 1 hour, New Haven: 1.5 hour, NYC: 3.5-4 hours.
The most convenient parking is the Campus Center Parking Garage at a cost of $1.75/hr.
We will have passes at the registration table that cap that at $6.50 per day.
Accommodations
There are many hotels in the area close by to UMass.
Hotel UMass has reserved a block of rooms for the event until February 8. Update: These are sold out now.
Thursday, March 7, 2024 | 6 rooms | $159 *
Friday, March 8, 2024 | 30 rooms | $199 *
Saturday, March 9, 2024 | 3 rooms | $199 *
*per night plus applicable fees, currently 6% plus $1.00 per room, per night
About
New England Regional Developers
NERD Summit is a product of New England Regional Developers (NERD). NERD creates positive and supportive learning opportunities for people who work or want to work in web and related technologies in the New England area.
Read more at: nerd.ngo
Code of Conduct
Attendees are encouraged to read the NERD Summit 2023/2024 Code of Conduct.
Contact
To volunteer, email Rick Hood at rick@nerd.ngo.
Masks are optional. We will have masks and hand sanitizer available.