The New TechMaine Website top

The work is well underway on the new TechMaine website (yes, finally!).

Over the upcoming months we'll be launching a new more interactive Website! So; what can you expect?

• New alerts, notices, and information to keep Maine’s technology community informed
• Additional online User Group functionality to help keep you up-to-date with new technologies
• New member-exclusive areas of the Website to help you grow your business
• Enhanced codeME (with a new name) to bring more revenue to TechMaine members
• Dynamic Career Center to highlight career opportunities in Maine's technology sectors
• Interactive Industry Directory with edit capabilities for members
• Expanded opportunities to promote your business and announce company updates
• Resources for entrepreneurs
• Social Networking focused on Maine's technology professionals

Coming Attractions top

Keep your eyes open for more details about these upcoming events in September and the 4th Quarter:

Thursday, September 11
Adobe Air and Flex - with John Moore
There's a lot of excitement in the RIA community about the powerful combination of AIR and Flex! Adobe Integrated Runtime (AIR) is a cross-platform desktop runtime that allows developers to use standard web technologies, like Flash / Flex, HTML, and JavaScript, to build and deploy desktop applications. AIR applications, which easily leverage services, have been developed for services such as Twitter, eBay, YouTube, and Flickr.

Monday & Tuesday, September 29 & 30
2008 Maine EPSCoR State Conference
Network with a wide range of program officers from the national Science Foundation and learn more about the mission, new initiatives, and funding opportunities in NSF's many Directorates and Offices. Participate in special grant-writing workshops. Learn more about EPSCoR/IDeA programs and funding opportunities

Thursday, September 4
September Metro NETpm
iCST is our benevolent host for September's NETpm. Please come join the fun and festivities, and help iCST celebrate their second decade of business!

Tuesday & Wednesday, December 9 & 10
TechMaine Annual Conference
TechMaine’s 16th Annual Conference will be held on December 9 - 10! Save The Date!

Post This! top

Share the listing of events with your peers and co-workers. You can now download and print a one page Calendar with the highlights of this month's technology events.

Be sure to post the calendar at your office in a location that encourages others to notice the schedule and duplicate it to share with your peers.

Drupal User Group top
Tuesday, August 5, 2008
Time: 6:00 - 8:00 pm
Location: TechMaine Technology Center, 506 Main Street, Westbrook

A Tour of Websites Built in Drupal (and how they did it) - with Todd Woofenden

Drupal, the open-source website content management system, is building up a huge user base. All over the world people are using Drupal to build sites of all types, from small affinity group sites to very large sites with super-heavy traffic. In this session, the first TechMaine Drupal Users Group meeting, we will take an informal tour of some different kinds of sites that were built in Drupal, and take a look at how certain features and functions were built. Come see what Drupal can do!

About the Speaker: Todd is the TechMaine User Group Coordinator, and is involved in the current project to build a new Drupal site for TechMaine. The new site, being built in Drupal 6.x, will offer TechMaine members and Maine's technology sectors a much more powerful and useful set of tools and interactive features. When not at TechMaine, Todd does freelance Drupal site development at Signal Light Host.

Door Prize: Registered attendees will be entered in a drawing for a copy of the book, Blown to Bits: Your Life, Liberty, and Happiness after the Digital Explosion, by Hal Abelson, Ken Ledeen and Harry Lewis, courtesy of Pearson Education. You must register and attend to be in the drawing.

DRUPALug meets monthly on the first Tuesday of the month. Please Register Here to attend the next meeting: include your email address to be notified of any change in schedule.

Metro NETpm top
Thursday, August 7, 2008
Time: 5:00 - 7:00 pm
Location: Axon Design & Marketing, 377 Fore Street, 4th Floor Portland

Keep your summer fun rolling with the creative crew at Axon!

Join TechMaine and Axon on Thursday, August 7, 2008 for good food, good drink, and great people at the Axon offices in the heart of the Old Port from 5:00 - 7:00 pm.

We will close out the workday in style with NETpm. Meet your friends and network in a relaxed, unstructured atmosphere. Admission is free. Join us for hors d'oeuvres and an open bar of soft drinks, beer, and wine. Please register online here for this event.

Metro NETpm is presented on the first Thursday of every month by TechMaine, and Axon has graciously offered to host this popular gathering of TechMaine friends and associates.

Axon is a team of experienced designers and web programmers, providing a wide range of marketing, design and web solutions to its clients. Axon is currently in the process of designing and programming websites incorporating web 2.0 features for the Maine Heritage Policy Center, the Association of Consulting Expertise, and the Biotechnology Association of Maine. Visit Axon during NETpm at 377 Fore Street, 4th Floor, Portland or on the web at axondm.com.

Ruby User Group top
Monday, August 11, 2008
Time: 6:00 - 8:00 pm
Location: TechMaine Technology Center, 506 Main Street, Westbrook

This is the regular monthly meeting of the TechMaine RUBY users group.

Door Prize: Registered attendees will be entered in a drawing for a copy of the new O'Reilly book, Ferret, by David Balmain. You must register and attend to be in the drawing.

RUG meets bi-monthly, on the second Monday of the month. Please Register Here to attend the next meeting: include your email address to be notified of any change in schedule.

Network/Systems Administrators User Group top
Tuesday, August 12, 2008
Time: 6:00 - 8:00 pm
Location: TechMaine Technology Center, 506 Main Street, Westbrook

Surprise! Security Vulnerabilities You Thought You Didn't Have to Worry About - with Mark Stone, Reliable Networks

Just because you "follow the rules" doesn't mean you are secure. Okemo and dozens others had successful PCI audits yet their credit card systems were still hacked.

What should you be worrying about?

Mark Stone attended the 3-day Last Hope conference in New York City in July. This bi-annual conference hosted by 2600 drew thousands of hackers, law enforcement types, lawyers, and increasing numbers of over-30-year olds interested in displaying and learning all about current security exposures. Unlike the last conference, no one was arrested just before they were to give their presentation, but that doesn't mean the sessions were any less juicy. "Hacking" has grown up and is now much, much more professional.

In this unique NetSUG session, Mark will recap the highlights relevant for Network and System Administrators who don't want to find themselves explaining to management why their systems got hacked.

Topics to be covered include:

• Why you are still vulnerable using ssh, tls or anything else that relies on OpenSSL-even if you don't run a Debian-based system like Ubuntu subjected to the embarrassing OpenSSL bug.
• Why VMware and Xen virtual machine security is not fixable, even on big HP iron.
• Breaching Layer 2 VLANs on the latest Cisco gear.
• Using Firefox for penetration testing.
• Social engineering tricks that really work.
• Why the card readers used by the leading data centers in Maine and elsewhere are next to useless (and how to avoid being blown up while carrying your new RFID-equipped US Passport).
• How road warriors get hacked (too many easy ways, unfortunately, too cover in one session).
• Report from the University of Pennsylvania on (the incredible lack of) voting machine security, and why IT professionals should volunteer to work at polling places.
• What really happens to your checked luggage and how to avoid problems traveling the airways with your laptop.

NETSUG meets monthly, on the 2nd Tuesday of the month. Please Register Here to attend the next meeting: include your email address to be notified of any change in schedule.

InfoSecurity User Group top
Wednesday, August 13, 2008
Time: 6:00 - 8:00 pm
Location: TechMaine Technology Center, 506 Main Street, Westbrook

Tom Witwicki, Director of Information Security at Hannaford Brothers in Scarborough, Maine will discuss utilization of the ISO 17799 and 27000 standards to address security and compliance issues.

Details soon -- but you can register to attend now!

Door Prize: Registered attendees will be entered in a drawing for a copy of the new O'Reilly book, Network Warrior, by Gary A. Donahue. You must register to attend and be present to win.

InfoSEC meets monthly, on the 2nd Wednesday of the month. Please Register Here to attend the next meeting: include your email address to be notified of any change in schedule.

JAVA User Group top
TBA
Time: 6:00 - 8:00 pm
Location: TechMaine Technology Center, 506 Main Street, Westbrook

Details and Date - To Be Announced - Watch for a meeting date change for this August only

Door Prize: Registered attendees will be entered in a door prize drawing for a copy of the new O'Reilly book. You must register and attend to be in the drawing.

MaineJUG is sponsored by Starlit Software.

MaineJUG meets monthly on the last Wednesday of the month. Please Register Here to attend the next meeting: include your email address to be notified of any change in schedule.

.NET User Group top
Thursday, August 14, 2008
Time: 6:00 - 8:00 pm
Location: UNUM Home Office #3, Portland

Topic: 2008 community launch & tech-ed debrief

Details soon

Digital Communications User Group top
Tuesday, August 19, 2008
Time: 6:00 - 8:00 pm
Location: TechMaine Technology Center, 506 Main Street, Westbrook

Unlicensed Wireless Broadband and Network Operations - with Chris Jensen

An overview of unlicensed wireless technologies, the pros and cons of each, and avoiding some deployment pitfalls. Also, a demonstration of some home grown tools to help you manage your network.

Chris Jensen, an independent technology consultant, will explain wireless broadband technologies, and provide insights on how to manage this technology effectively. As a special bonus, Chris will provide a brief demo for his wireless radio network operations software he developed for a Maine based Wireless Internet Service Provider.

About the Presenter: In 2005, Chris started Chris Jensen Consulting serving customers in the greater New England/New York area. Offering a wide range of services, from systems engineering to custom programming and network monitoring, Chris specializes in creative uses of open source software, but also has expertise in the Windows environment.

Before beginning Chris Jensen Consulting, Chris was the Director of Technology for UniTel, an independent telephone company and Internet service provider in Unity, ME, where he played a pivotal role in the implementation of the company's DSL service and ongoing strategy. wireless radio network operations software he developed for a Maine based Wireless Internet Service Provider.

Today, Chris is supporting wireless networks in Maine and Massachusetts, including such critical services as Homeland Security, and Boston PDs video camera network.

Door Prize: Registered attendees will be entered in a door prize drawing for a copy of the book:Security Data Visualization: Graphical Techniques for Network Analysis, by Greg Conti, courtesy of O'Reilly Books. You must register and attend to be in the drawing.

DCUG meets monthly, on the 3rd Tuesday of the month. Please Register Here to attend the next meeting: include your email address to be notified of any change in schedule.

BioInformatics Special Interest Group top
Thursday, August 21, 2008
Time: 6:00 - 8:00 pm
Location: TechMaine Technology Center, 506 Main Street, Westbrook

Computational Intelligence and the Genetics Analysis of Common Human Diseases - with Jason Moore.

An important goal of human genetics is to identify which genes and which specific DNA sequence variations (polymorphisms) play an important role in determining susceptibility to common diseases such as cancer, essential hypertension, and schizophrenia. Human genetics has been very successful in identifying rare DNA sequence variations (mutations) that predict with virtual certainty whether an individual will develop a rare disease such as cystic fibrosis or sickle cell anemia. However, this same level of success has not been observed for common diseases that represent the majority of the public health and economic burden.

This general lack of success is due to the enormous complexity of common diseases, such as cardiovascular disease, that are determined by many genes and many environmental factors that interact in a nonlinear manner. Gene-gene interactions (epistasis) and gene-environment interactions (plastic reaction norms) are important components of the genetic architecture of common diseases and are receiving increased attention as geneticists and epidemiologists move from studying diseases with simple etiologies to diseases with very complex etiologies.

I will introduce the computational challenges we are facing in human genetics and then introduce some novel algorithms that we have developed to address these challenges.

About the Speaker: Jason H. Moore received his B.S. in Biological Sciences at Florida State University where he focused on undergraduate research in molecular evolution. He then worked as a research assistant with Dr. David Beer in the Thoracic Oncology Laboratory at the University of Michigan where he studied molecular alterations in the progression from Barrettis esophagus to esophageal adenocarcinoma. This work led him to graduate school at the University of Michigan where he completed an M.A. in Applied Statistics and an M.S. and Ph.D.in Human Genetics. For his dissertation, he worked with Dr. Charles F. Sing on the genetic analysis of cardiovascular disease in human populations using statistical and computational methods.

After receiving his Ph.D. in 1999, Dr. Moore accepted a tenure-track faculty position in the Center for Human Genetics Research, the Vanderbilt-Ingram Cancer Center, and Department of Molecular Physiology and Biophysics at Vanderbilt University Medical School. Dr. Moore was promoted to Associate Professor with tenure in 2003 and was awarded an endowed Ingram Professorship in Cancer Research. While at Vanderbilt, Dr. Moore served as scientific director of the Bioinformatics Core for the Center for Human Genetics Research and founder and director of the Bioinformatics and Supercomputing Shared Resource for the Vanderbilt-Ingram Cancer Center. He was also the co-founder and co-director of the Advanced Computing Center for Research and Education (ACCRE).

In 2004, Dr. Moore moved to Dartmouth Medical School as the Frank Lane Research Scholar in Computational Genetics, Associate Professor of Genetics and Associate Professor of Community and Family Medicine. In 2008 he was promoted to Professor of Genetics and Community and Family Medicine with tenure. He serves as Director of Bioinformatics for Dartmouth Medical School and holds adjunt faculty appointments at the University of New Hampshire, the University of Vermont and the Translational Genomics Research Institute in Phoenix.

Note: This is the first meeting of the new BioSIG group. Come help build an exiting new special interest group!

A presentation of BIOsig: The TechMaine Bioinformatics Special Interest Group. No charge; open to the public. Contact The Techmaine Users Group Coordinator for more information

Please Register Here to attend the next meeting: include your email address to be notified of any change in schedule.