NerdNite[20]: A night at the (space) museum and beautiful data
Come on down to your friendly local Nerd Nite and throw back a couple of LUCID’s finest cocktails while enjoying the nerdisms of our fabulous speakers and your new nerdy friends. Be there and be square!
Nerd Nite Seattle
Monday, July 15th | 7:30 Talks (Doors open at 6:30)
$5 Cover
LUCID Lounge
Talk #1: There really is beauty in data! – Dr. James Davenport
From secret government databases and predicting election outcomes, to visualizing the locations of coffee shops, data is all around us. Data can be used to solve major world problems, answer drunken bar bets, or can be admired as very nerdy art. We’ll look at how data analytics is growing as both an art and science in every day life, and I’ll share some of my own examples of beauty in data.
James Davenport is a PhD candidate in Astronomy at the University of Washington, a data science intern at Microsoft Research, and author of the nerdy blog ifweassume.com.
Talk #2: Space in the space museum – Geoff Nunn
The retirement of the Space Shuttles in 2011 brought an odd partnership into public view. Vehicles often associated with futuristic advancement were now relics of history.
What happens when pieces of space technology become museum artifacts? What does it take to explain outer space in the museum space? Can you teach rocket science at an 8th grade reading level? Can you get people excited about the future without slipping into fortune telling? Can you get through to the folks who think “space was cancelled”?
Geoff Nunn is the Exhibit Developer for The Museum of Flight in Seattle, and a graduate of the University of Washington’s museology (museum studies) program. A lifelong space geek and child of the Shuttle program, Geoff has spent the past several years attempting to tackle these very questions. Geoff was part of the team that is creating exhibits for the Museum’s Charles Simonyi Space Gallery. The gallery is now home to NASA’s Full Fuselage Trainer, a Russian Soyuz space capsule and several other high-tech pieces of now ancient history.
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