Past Meetings - Descriptions and Summaries

Thursday 24 April 2008

8.00pm at the offices of Steria Limited, Hemel Hempstead

Enterprise Architecture

Paul Mukherjee, Chief Architect, BT Health London

The global increase in major IT transformation programmes has placed a significant focus on the role of architecture to ensure that IT investment results in the required business benefits. Paul will talk about how architecture contributes to the delivery of such programmes, and some of the challenges and possible solutions. Architecture is an emerging discipline and Paul will offer his views on areas for improvement and possible future directions.

The slides from Paul's presentation on this developing technology may be found here. We hope to have Paul's list of the books he found most useful, in due course.

Tuesday 25 March 2008

8.00pm at the offices of Steria Limited, Hemel Hempstead

Perfect Programs Every Time

Nicolas Connault, Moodle Developer, Paris

Testing has always been the Cinderella of the program development pantomime. Typically, by the time testing is possible, the project is well behind schedule so it is usually skimped, resulting in much embarrassment and further delay after the system is delivered. Unit Testing can change all that and this presentation will show how. The main emphasis will be on principles and practices applicable to any OO development, illustrated with pseudo-code. Real-life examples of test-driven development using PHP in the development of the new gradebook for Moodle 1.9 will also be presented.

The slides from Nicolas's instructive talk may be found here (3.45 Mb pdf file).

Friday 22 February 2008

7.30pm at 553 Watford Way, Mill Hill Park, NW7 2QS

UCL Observatory Visit

Visit to UCL Astronomical Observatory as guests of the Physics and Astronomy department. Our visit will include the opportunity to observe the skies (weather permitting) through a 24" Allen Reflector Telescope and to discuss computer related technology and developments in digital image enhancement with the Computing & Instrumentation Officer.

We had a very interesting and informative tour, being shown all their telescopes. Unfortunately the weather had been overcast all day, but around 9.30pm the clouds parted and the Fry refractor (a real antique) was brought rapidly into operation and we were able to view saturn (the only planet I was likely to recognise).

Wednesday 30 January 2008

8.00pm at the offices of Steria Limited, Hemel Hempstead

Method-based problem diagnosis

Paul Offord

Method-based problem diagnosis is rarely understood and even more rarely practiced, and yet it offers an effective means to solving intermittent or long-running IT problems. In this presentation Paul will outline an IT specific problem resolution method called RPR and describes the core principles. He will describe how you can benefit from the approach and illustrates the effectiveness of RPR with two case studies from the finance industry.

Speaker Profile: Paul has a 29-year career in the IT industry, working in the UK, the US and Germany for companies such as IBM, National Semiconductor and Hitachi. In 1989 he founded advance7, an independent consultancy specialising in IT performance and stability. In August 1990 advance7 launched a critical problem resolution service called REACT, since when the company has helped over 250 of Europe's leading companies solve chronic IT problems.

We were very grateful to Mr. Paul Offord who agreed, at short notice, to give a presentation at this meeting. The method he described, provides a means of forcing order from the chaos of contending interest groups scrapping with each other, while trying to fix seemingly insoluble problems with complex systems. Anyone with such a problem, could profit from the slides from his presentation. (1.2Mb pdf file)

Wednesday 28 November 2007

8.00pm at the offices of Steria Limited, Hemel Hempstead

Revolution In Computer Prices

Malcolm Appleford, BCS Hertfordshire Branch

Would you like to own a laptop bristling with innovations? Whose internals have no moving parts, which is robust, long lasting, dustproof and waterproof? A laptop which comes with webcam, Wi-Fi, etc., a generous helping of software, which will run for weeks without recharging from the mains, and all for $100 originally (minimum order 1 million units). It's now (November 2007) up to $200 each for small orders.

This is what is being promoted for impoverished children in Africa, and maybe you could get one for double that if you're an affluent westerner.

Is this the dawn of the third world economic miracle, another misdirected donor initiative or just hype? Come and hear the story and give your opinion.

The slides from Malcolm's interesting presentation may be found here (929 Kb pdf file).

Wednesday 17 October 2007

8.00pm at the offices of Steria Limited, Hemel Hempstead

Virtualisation

Hardev Sanghera, Systems Engineer, VMware Corporation

Server Virtualisation is arguably one of the hottest topics in IT today. Hardev will introduce the topic, explaining how server virtualisation works in general, where it is applicable in the IT environment, and, most importantly, what the business benefits are. Concepts such as encapsulation, live workload migration and virtualised desktops will also be discussed.

The slides from Hardev's very informative presentation may be found here (782 Kb pdf file).

Thursday 27 September 2007

8.00pm at the offices of Steria Limited, Hemel Hempstead

Google Hacking

Peter Wood, Chief of Operations, First Base Technologies

Google provides web surfers with an easy-to-use guide to the Internet, with a range of features that make web navigation simple enough for even the novice user. Unfortunately, Google's deceptively simple components are the same features that generously unlock security flaws for the malicious hacker. Vulnerabilities in website security can be discovered through Google hacking, by identity thieves and even terrorists, to uncover secure information. This talk explains the advanced features of Google and the techniques pioneered by malicious Google hackers and explains how to defend against them.

The slides from Peter's entertaining and most informative talk may be found here (1.46 Mb pdf file).

Top