nerdnite – Austin

Nerd Nite is turning 1!1!!1one!

Help us blow out the candles with some well-known Austinites.

As ever, it would be a great help if you can vote us up on:

To join us in the celebrations, we have:

A Brief History of Texas Politics
Gardner Selby

W. Gardner Selby, who’s been the Austin American-Statesman’s chief political writer and weekly politics columnist, currently is editor of PolitiFact Texas, the first state-level effort affiliated with the Pulitzer Prize-winning truth-testing effort launched nationally by the St. Petersburg Times in 2007. His background includes many newspapers and a stint in Texas state government. He’s open to any suggestions on how to pay for college for his stellar senior at McCallum High.

How Mathletes Saved Baseball: Sabermetrics and the Slow Process of Teaching Statistical Analysis to Jocks
Chris Magyar

Baseball is by far the nerdiest of America’s major sports, especially its fascination with statistics. But the last decade has seen a wholesale acceptance of outsider number-crunching analysis by the professional baseball establishment. A history of the sport’s ongoing war between jocks and brains, as well as a brief overview of what OPS+, FIP, WARP, pERA and other obscure stats are talking about.

Chris Magyar is a writer and editor who didn’t understand anything about math until he fell in love with baseball cards. He’s now developing his own dorky tabletop baseball simulator with ten-sided dice and more charts than you can shake a Gary Gygax biography at.

Let’s Learn from Professional Wrestling
Chris Trew

Chris Trew (AKA Terp2It) has been performing comedy and watching wrestling nearly his entire life. He is the Artistic Director of The New Movement and frequently tours the country with his comedy duo Chris and Tami.

PLUS – Free pool & shuffleboard to attendees!

FREE (21+)

Well well well… talk of penile cankers, adolescent wet dreams and sexual consummation of satanic pacts seemed to steel the nerds against the rain and made Nerd Nite Austin the biggest ever. By our count, there were 115 of you there last night. Thank you so much!

Thanks, also, to Liz, Diana and Jessica for 3 fantastic talks and for sharing their wisdom at our sexpert panel; I think Austin is just that little bit more informed than it was 24 hours ago.

Welcome to Lewis as our third nerd-in-chief. He was finally knerded in recognition of his sterling work behind the scenes making Nerd Nite what it is.

Keep your eyes and ears open for news of next month’s Nerd Nite… it’s our first birthday, y’all!!!

Nerd Nite Ten is here. With it being the month of Valentine’s Day, we’re having a Love In!

As ever, voting us up on Yelp! and Do512 is greatly appreciated:

Yelp: http://www.yelp.com/events/austin-nerd-nite-x—the-love-in
Do512: http://do512.com/event/2010/02/04/nerd-nite-x-the-love-in

As ever, entry is free, but Buffalo Billiards is a 21+ venue, so don’t forget your ID!

February 4th – 7pm

Syphilis: We’re all Affected, Even if We’re Not Infected
Liz Simmons

Syphilis is more than just a good reason to use condoms. This sexually-transmitted infection has plagued our loins and our history books for hundreds of years, affecting everything from great works of art and patients’ rights to the role of wives and the advent of a PC world. So how has syphilis affected you?

Liz Simmons, a lifelong bio nerd, married a physics nerd and has a bun in the nerdy oven.

Strategies for Getting Laid in 19th-Century German Literature
Jessica Plummer

If you’re looking to improve your success rate with the ladies/gents, this presentation offers some inspiration from the old Old Country. We’ll look at some of the zanier cases of seduction in major novels, poems, and plays written by German speakers in the 19th century.

Jessica Plummer is a graduate student in Germanic Studies at UT. She’s young, strong, and needs a summer job.

The Canon of Judy Blume and its Effect on Third-Wave Feminism
Diana Grisanti

Judy Blume has created generations of kickass feminists. And Diana Grisanti will tell you why.

Diana Grisanti is a playwright and fiction writer from Louisville, Kentucky. She has read ‘Are You There God? It’s Me Margaret’ one million times (approx.).

Plus

A very special Knerding

Just a quick note to let you all know that there will be no nerdnite in Austin this January. We reached out to a lot of our potential speakers, but so many were out of town that it became clear that nerdnite in January is something of a non-starter.

We wish you all a very happy close to the year, however you celebrate or mark it.

Can’t wait to see you at your very nerdy best in Feburary in 2010!

Dan and JC got interviewed by The Statesman’s man about town, Michael Barnes, at nerdnite nine, last week and you can see the interview here.

For those of you who were not able to make nerdnite nine (or are still on the fence about ever attending), here’s some footage of one of the talks that you missed. It’s split into three parts:

nerdies,

Thanks again for a fantastic nerdnite. In particular, thanks to Michael, Everett and Jeff for their entertaining and informative talks. Bands, Beauty and Beer… what a combination.

For those of you wracked with concern at the fate of the laptop, after liberal application of damp paper towel and hair dryers, the laptop did, indeed, boot (and, you might say, rally) this morning. A faint aroma of beer from the keyboard is the only reminder.

Thanks to you all for making nerdnite rock its way through 2009. Looking forward to even greater height in 2010

Howdy nerdlings,

nerdnite nine is just around the corner and we know that you want to help spread the joy. As a result, we’ve uploaded our flyer for you to download, print and plaster upon every spare inch of wall space that you own… you know you want to!

nerdnite nine flyer

It’s hip to be square – nerdnite nine is the squarest nerdnite in months… you really shouldn’t miss it! As ever, it’s the first Thursday of the month: December 3rd

Don’t forget to vote us up at
http://do512.com/event/2009/12/03/nnn-nerd-nite-nine and
http://www.yelp.com/events/austin-nnn—nerd-nite-nine

You can attend the event at: http://www.facebook.com/event.php?eid=185589911446

Here’s what we’ve got for you:

Why Form Doesn’t Follow Function, Function is Form’s Bitch
Everett Hiller

100 years ago Frank Loyd Wright said the phrase “form follows function.” Soon after he changed his mind and said “form and function should be one, joined in a spiritual union,” but it was too late, and besides, the first phrase sounded way better, and less like a lame poem. So the damage was done. Many a poor product has made it to market under the guise that after function, there simply wasn’t enough time or money to create a proper form. I will attempt to show that in today’s world of iPhones and Tivo’s, function now follows form, or at least shows up a minute or two later.

Everett Hiller is a graphic and interactive designer with more than 13 years experience in visual communication.  He enjoys talking about typefaces (fancy word for fonts), poorly designed products, star trek, and scotch.

Marching Bands and Drum Corps in America
Michael Drapkin

Marching music in America has come a long way since the days of John Phillip Sousa.  Today’s competitive bands and corps are some of the largest competitive groups, achieving excellence in youth.  This lecture will trace the evolution of marching music, from the early days of parade competition, to today’s intracate and ultra competitive bands and drum corp field shows, and the changes that have occurred.

Michael Drapkin is a marching band music judge for the United States Scholastic Band Association, and has judged marching band contests in New York, Texas, New Jersey, Connecticut, Pennsylvania and Virginia and has adjudicated over 400 marching band performances.

Chemical Flavor Analysis of Beer
Jeff Young

Beer is made up of thousands of flavor compounds.  From buttery vicinal diketones to smokey 4-vinyl guaiacol, you don’t have to be a chemist to taste a beer, but it doesn’t hurt!
Jeff Young is a professionally trained brewer by night and a pharmaceutical analytical chemist by day.  Working to open up the world’s first co-operatively owned brewpub, Black Star Co-op Pub & Brewery, Jeff will design and brew beers for the Austin community.  An affinity to Lewis-dot diagrams and metabolic pathways has led Jeff to assess and construct his beers on the molecular level.

Thank you, once again, to our speakers at this month’s nerdnite. Dan, Steve, Lewis and Dan did us proud.

Thanks, also, to all the great suggestions from the audience for future presentations; we’ll be going through those and sending out some emails to get you nerds and nerdettes scheduled for 2010 (we have our December line-up close to completion).

It was great to see so many of you hanging out after the event to chat with the speakers and get to know some of your fellow nerdniters. We’re looking forward to seeing more of that at future events.

Have a great Thanksgiving, and we’ll see you in December!