[compsoc-announce] Week 7: TGM and Murray Stokely of Google

[Will Thompson]

Hi all,

You might be interested to know that David and Katherine have uploaded
the slides[0] from their talk on Wednesday.  They're in OpenDocument[1]
format, so you might want to get a copy of OpenOffice.org[2] if your
normal presentation software can't handle that format.  You might also
be interested in reading a number of more detailed introductions and
guides[3] to some of the tools they mentioned.

[0] http://www.palepurple.co.uk/files/php-oxford-compsoc-talk-November-2006.odt
[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/OpenDocument
[2] http://download.openoffice.org/
[3] http://codepoets.co.uk/docs

This week, you might be interested in:

* A talk by Ian Livingstone of Eidos at the Said Business School (which
  is not actually anything to do with Compsoc :-)) tonight,
* The Compsoc Termly General Meeting (with sausages) on Thursday, and
* Murray Stokely (of Google's) talk on Friday.

I'll deal with them in reverse chronological order!

Google's Distributed Computation Infrastructure
===============================================

Date: Friday 24rd November
Time: 20:00
Place: Denis Sciama Lecture Theatre, Denys Wilkinson Building

    Murray Stokely of Google will introduce four of the key components
    used to build massively parallel applications on Google's
    infrastructure: GFS, MapReduce, Sawzall, and Bigtable. The talk will
    also describe the recent Summer of Code[4] program which several
    Oxford students participated in.

[4] http://code.google.com/soc/

If you are unsure where the Denys Wilkinson Building is, then
http://tinyurl.com/yeqtzg should help!  Also, Murray mentioned that he's
bringing some Google swag "to give out to anyone that wants one at the
talk".


Termly General Meeting
======================

Date: Thursday 23rd November
Time: Sometime after 19.00 --- to be confirmed!
Place: The Big Bang, 124 Walton Street[5]

Come along, hear the committee report on how the term has been for
Compsoc, raise and discuss any issues facing the society, then eat
sausages!  The idea is to arrive at Big Bang, order food, and conduct
the meeting while waiting for it to arrive.

I'm going to book a table later today, so if you haven't already said
you want to come, push that Reply button!

You can read the minutes from past meetings at
http://www.ox.compsoc.net/info/minutes/ if you like!

[5] http://oxford.openguides.org/wiki/?Big_Bang


Ian Livingstone OBE, Exec Chairman Eidos and Director at SCi
============================================================

Oxford Enterpreneurs sent us the following:

    Entrepreneur Seminar - Ian Livingstone OBE, Exec Chairman Eidos and
    Director at SCi

    Wednesday the 22nd of Nov 2006 @ 7:15pm to 8:45pm

    Renown computer games entrepreneur, founder of Lara Croft's Tomb
    Raider, Ian Livingstone's 30-year entrepreneurial career in games
    includes the founding of The Games Workshop and White Dwarf. He is
    now the Executive Chairman of Eidos and a Director at SCi
    Entertainment plc. SCi has a market capitalization of £330m and an
    iconic games portfolio including Conflict, The Great Escape and Tomb
    Raider. Ian will be sharing his thoughts on trends and opportunities
    in the games industry.

    All welcome - please arrive at 7:15 for registration. The talk will
    begin at 7:30.

    Venue: Said Business School
    Event type: OE Speaker Event
    Provided by: Oxford Entrepreneurs
    Email: events at oxfordentrepreneurs.co.uk
    Please Login at www.bouncewithit.com to book a place.

I don't know you actually need to book, or indeed anything other than
what you just read!


Thanks for reading all the way down here! :-)

wjt
--
Will Thompson, Oxford University Computer Society President
<http://www.ox.compsoc.net/>