Presentations from Wordnik CTO Tony Tam & uSamp's Andrew Hall

A look inside Wordnik's architecture

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Wordnik (http://wordnik.com) CTO Tony Tam (http://www.linkedin.com/in/tonytam) will discuss details of how Wordnik runs it's software stack on EC2 with focus on their MongoDB data tier. He will cover multi-zone deployments and how to handle the performance limitations of a virtualized environment.

https://twimg0-a.akamaihd.net/profile_images/1561922963/Screen_shot_2011-09-26_at_9.23.45_PM.pngTony Tam (http://twitter.com/fehguy) is the Chief Technical Officer and technical co-founder of Wordnik, where he leads development efforts of the site's innovative word navigation system. He is a member of the MongoDB Masters group and has led the Swagger API Framework open-source initiative. Prior to joining Wordnik, he was a founder and SVP of Engineering at Think Passenger, a provider of customer collaboration software.

http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-AZEqzQmBVHA/Tgja6DIb5gI/AAAAAAAABas/ZGORPgHJMfM/s1600/128.pngBefore that, he was lead engineer at Composite Software where he helped develop the company's first- and second-generation query processing engines and led the research and implementation of their patented cost-based federated query optimizer. He also led software development in the bioinformatics group at Galileo Labs, a drug-discovery company based in the Silicon Valley. Tony received his undergraduate degree in Mechanical Engineering from UC Santa Barbara and his MBA from Santa Clara University. He can be reached at tony@wordnik.com.

Company Links:

Wordnik (http://www.wordnik.com/) (company homepage) Tony Tam (@fehguy) on twitter (http://twitter.com/fehguy) @wordnik on twitter (http://twitter.com/wordnik) Tony Tam (@fehguy) on github (https://github.com/fehguy) Tony on LinkedIn (http://www.linkedin.com/in/tonytam)

MongoDB & uSamp's SurveyBuilder : A document-oriented approach to survey authoring and reporting

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Andrew Hall (http://www.linkedin.com/profile/view?id=17938166) will detail how uSampTM built their survey authoring platform – SurveyBuilderTM - using MongoDB. He'll explain how MongoDB was a natural fit for their rich authoring interface, as well as how uSamp took a unique approach to reporting using MongoDB’s MapReduce. In addition, we will look at their plans for incorporating MongoDB's new aggregation framework into SurveyBuilder and a Case Study of how they used MongoDB's geospatial functionality to provide a comprehensive Point of Interest study.

http://photos2.meetupstatic.com/photos/event/3/c/5/2/event_111615442.jpegAndrew Hall (http://www.linkedin.com/profile/view?id=17938166) is a Principal Engineer at uSamp and an industry veteran of 25 years. He is the technical lead and primary architect of uSamp's SurveyBuilder. In the 80s, Andrew started his career in high school developing in Pascal, and hasn't looked back since. He has worked as the Director of Engineering for Securant Technologies (purchased by RSA – now part of EMC), a founding engineer of CircleUp, and an old-school mainframe developer for IBM where he worked for eight years. When he isn't wrestling with his two little boys, Andrew loves to mountain bike and relive his glory days playing soccer.

Company Links:

uSamp (http://www.usamp.com/) (company homepage) Andrew on LinkedIn (http://www.linkedin.com/profile/view?id=17938166)

SPONSORS

QConnects (http://www.qconnects.com)

http://photos1.meetupstatic.com/photos/sponsor/3/9/1/e/iab120x90_674622.jpegThe food and drinks are generously sponsored by "Q" - an IT & Digital talent firm. "Q" specializes in networking and building relationships with IT and Digital Talent. They strive to get to know you so we can help with your career growth. They partner with various clients in the Los Angeles area and offer Contract, Contract-to-Hire and Direct Placement opportunities. Find out more at their web site: http://qconnects.com/

VENUE:

Factual (http://www.factual.com)

http://photos4.meetupstatic.com/photos/sponsor/4/c/9/c/iab120x90_619612.jpeg founded in 2007 by Gil Elbaz, co-founder of Applied Semantics (which launched ASI's AdSense product). Applied Semantics was acquired by Google in 2003. Gil has had a lifelong passion for organizing and structuring information, and building smart tools which can make better sense of data. To that end, he set out to develop an open data platform and community in an effort to maximize data accuracy, transparency, and availability. Fellow data lovers -- Tim Chklovski, chief scientist & founding engineer, Eva Ho, an ex-Googler, along with Bill Michels, former GM of Yahoo BOSS, have joined him in this ambitious project.

Parking

Factual is in the Gateway West building, next to the Westfield Century City mall on the east side. It's the only building with big red "Westfield" signs on top.

We recommend you park at the mall. You get 3 hours free and our building is a short easy walk: Exit from the mall parking garage up to ground level, head east, pass the Lens Crafters, and you'll be able to enter the west side of 1801. Then just hit the elevators to go up to floor 14, and Factual is in Suite 1450.

To hear about upcoming meetups, follow us on Twitter!

@fehguy (http://twitter.com/fehguy) (speaker) @Qconnects (http://twitter.com/Qconnects) (sponsor) @LAMongoDB (http://twitter.com/lamongodb) @ali10gen (http://twitter.com/ali10gen) @joedevon (http://twitter.com/joedevon) @francescaPasha (http://twitter.com/francescaPasha)