Snowtide Informatics Welcomes Ben Fry (of Processing fame) to Northampton

Next Tuesday, the 5th of May @ 6:30PM, Snowtide Informatics and Atalasoft will be hosting Ben Fry, creator of the Processing programming language and environment and author of Visualizing Data from O’Reilly, at Snowtide’s offices in Northampton, MA. (This hasn’t been a secret or anything (for good reason!), but I thought I’d put out an announcement post.) Dr. Fry will be presenting “Computational Information Design” – a mix of his work in visualization and coding plus a quick introduction to the Processing language and environment.  Processing has had a huge impact on the field of data visualization, and Dr. Fry’s presentation will no doubt be enlightening for anyone who engages in data visualization at any level. There will be refreshments.  There’s a Google Maps link on this page if you need directions; please note that the presentation will be held in the second-floor conference room, Suite 234. Small afterthought: the three avid readers of my blog may recall that a similar event was held a year ago, when we hosted Rich Hickey, creator of the Clojure language.  I think we (meaning Snowtide, Atalasoft, the Western Mass. Developer’s Group, et al.) have a pretty unique combination in this area of outrageously talented people with a collectively broad set of experience and specialties, and a relatively intimate environment where ideas or presentations can be fully fleshed out with lively feedback from everyone involved.  I think there’s some potential to build this foundation up into something very worthwhile; perhaps a regular flow of software wizards to give talks, show off their newest ideas, and recruit evangelists (zealots? ;-)).  Something to think about anyway…