Nerd Nite RETURNS to the legendary Stardust Video & Coffee on Thurs, Feb 8th at 7pm with new speakers and new presentations. Be there & be square.

Hosted by Ricardo Williams

Guest speakers:
Waldo Grunenwald
Victor Hurlburt

After multiple wins, Nerd Nite veteran Ed Petersen returns to ‘Jeopardy!’ Thursday night. We will kick off Nerd Nite with a watch party and cheer on Ed while he competes in the Jeopardy Champions Wildcard!

PRESENTATION #1:
“Little Known Facts About Machu Picchu” by Victor Hurlburt

This is neither a travelogue, nor a boring vacation slide show, nor does it provide answers to probing questions like “how’d they do that?” Instead, the focus of this presentation is
to share information about numerous interesting features to be aware of at the same time you are being overwhelmed by the grandeur, mystery, and mystique of the amazingly fascinating Inca ruins of Machu Picchu. Pay attention – don’t miss seeing (not just looking but seeing) features no matter how small. The experience of visiting one of the seven wonders of the world is certainly awe inspiring just on its own, but there are also interesting features hidden in plain sight that can easily be overlooked.

Victor is a semi-retired environmental engineer with over 54 years of experience in water and wastewater conveyance and treatment projects in the US and Puerto Rico. He has been summoned to Nerd Nite to explore Machu Picchu and admits that there’s an engineering skew to the subject matter, but there are also historical facts thrown in along with pop culture information as well.

PRESENTATION #2:
“Argue Better with Active Listening” by Waldo Grunenwald

Have you ever gotten into an argument because the statement that you made wasn’t understood as you meant it? Have you ever seen a simple disagreement go rapidly off the rails, and turn into a shouting match?

Rather than quipping at one-another (like UDP), there is a technique for resolving disputes or conflicts that is more akin to TCP. It is called “Active Listening”.

In this talk, I’ll show you how this technique reduces the likelihood of a shouting match by drastically slowing the escalation and forcing each side to listen & comprehend what the other person is trying to say.

Waldo is a geek, and if you find him odd, there are plenty of things you could blame that on.  He’s a long-time Sys/Ops Engineer, enjoys leading teams, and is active in the DevOps community.  He may or may not be Batman.  He is pretty keen on helping orgs stop hurting themselves, insight tooling (trending / monitoring / alerting), and automation in general.  He takes joy in helping teams and orgs to stop hurting themselves.  Despite being a raging introvert, he enjoys public speaking.  In his spare time, he enjoys collecting hobbies that he doesn’t have the time to engage in.  He hates writing about himself in the third person, and aspires to one day be a better bio writer.