Computer Vision Techniques for Train Alert, PLUS Working Parent Stories!

TRAIN ALERT

TALK: In 2015 Ft. Collins City Manager Darin Atteberry stated he wished he could look at his phone to learn of approaching trains, like we do to check the weather or airline flights. Since Jim can literally look out a window from his home and see if a train is going by, he envisioned a solution. With guidance from a couple of former colleagues, Jim created the train detection portion of Train Alert using an old laptop, a $50 IP camera, OpenCV (an open source computer vision library), and Python. Today's IP cameras can easily detect motion, but a key challenge for Train Alert was determining direction of motion. In this talk Jim will review various computer vision techniques he applied to identify passing trains, as well as the challenges encountered discerning a passing train from non-train moving objects such as blowing grass and trees, birds, cars and other objects.

SPEAKER: Jim Haselmaier is co-creator of Train Alert, a service that alerts people of an approaching train prior to the ensuing disruption of traffic and noise. He also owns Accelerated Insight Consulting, a company focused on helping organizations with strategic planning and product management issues in the software and open source arenas . Jim worked for over 30 years in various hardware and software businesses. Most recently he was involved in open source cloud computing technologies.

BRING: An inquisitive mind and a desire to learn how computer vision and OpenCV can be easily applied to solve real-world problems.

WORKING PARENT STORIES

TALK: When Kathy graduated from college with a computer science degree, her career goal was simple; show that it was possible for a woman to work full time while raising children. In hindsight the goal sounds so simple, and it even seemed like a modest goal at the time. The thing is, it wasn’t easy. Ever. Along the way there were challenges, frustrations, and stories that only became funny in hindsight. But she (and her husband) pulled it off. One day at a time. When gathering with friends now, it’s the stories of the craziest and most hectic days they recall and laugh about. The daughter who cried for at least five days in a row when they picked her up from daycare. The inability to helicopter parent which resulted in her husband exclaiming, “What do you mean you have to memorize the Periodic Table of Elements by tomorrow morning?!” And the annual Halloween costume conversation which started with, “You can be any character hanging in this aisle [at Walmart].” Kathy will share some of the stories she’s been collecting from working parents; stories of encouragement, inspiration and humor. She’ll also share a few tips for working parents and some surprising insights gained from the collection of stories.

SPEAKER: Kathy Haselmaier is the editor or WorkingParentStories.com. For over 30 years, Kathy worked full time in high tech marketing, sales and operations roles while she and her husband raised two kids and a dog.