Open Source Club activities, 2014-

##Demos

• We created a basic website using node.js and the MEAN stack.
• We explored Alaskan geographic, lake, and street name data using the open source QGIS software. This led to a discussion of some interesting practical applications for a tool like QGIS and some nice sources for GIS data.
• We walked through a Solr schema.xml file – actually being used in production – to learn how solr stores data. We talked about stemming and other information retrieval concepts

##Activities

• We had a table at College Night to engage with prospective students.
• For the more coding-focused among us, we attempted two Project Euler coding problems. We spent most of each Project Euler meeting talking through a problem’s interesting features and possible algorithms. In the last few minutes, we (successfully) took a stab at a Python or Java solution.

##Discussions and presentations

• We had a lively discussion of John Deere’s proprietary tractor software.
• We have been intrigued by the Interplanetary Internet and have devoted a lot of discussion to that.
• A member is very interested in the societal ramifications of open culture and brought our attention to the Open Source Ecology project.
• Our group has also spent a lot of time talking about Open Educational Resources and their use on LBCC’s campus.

##Projects

• We started to build an Awesomeizer, based on the one at Cornell University. The project never got past the planning stages, but it was very fun to think about!