#!SUITSSydney University IT Society

O-Week is 2011 is about to make port and for all new students, from all of us at SUITS (The Sydney University IT Society), Welcome Aboard!

To all new students who may not be familiar with what we do, we are a student organisation, based in the School of IT (SIT), who basically run all sorts of awesome events throughout the year. Just to give you a little taste of all we have going, we run:

• The only weekly BBQ on campus, with gourmet sausages, tomatoes and vegetarian selections.
• Video Games Nights, with a wide selection of console games
• Board Games Nights
• Hack Sessions – Presentations by students and various people around SIT about any IT topic they are passionate about
• Company Site Tours – Give you an idea of what is on the other side of uni

In addition, we will be at some point giving tours around the School of IT, so if you are planning to do any IT units, come give down and take a look.

We will have stands set up in the main O-Week area, and down on the Engineering Lawns for Engineering Day. If you have any questions about who we are, what we do, or any IT related questions, we are here to help.

So, if you are at O-Week look us up. Membership to SUITS is ABSOLUTELY FREE! You can join by clicking the “Join #!SUITS” link on the right of this page. However, just a quick reminder that to access many of the benefits that SUITS offers, such as cheaper BBQ prices, free food at console and games nights etc. you MUST be an access card holder.

To all our existing members, Welcome Back! We hope you had a good holiday, and you are rested and ready for what is set to be an awesome year! A quick reminder that membership lists are refreshed each year, so if you want to continue to be involved, you have to re-register for the new year.

If you want any more information about us, don’t hesitate to email us at suits AT it.usyd.edu.au. There is always someone on the other end happy to help!

Have a Great Year,
SUITS Exec

Welcome back to Uni this week. Hope everyone had a restful vacation. Moving straight back into things, its a packed week for SUITS with out weekly BBQ, Atlassian Site Visits, and another Hack Session.

With the new exec coming in, we would love to hear from you on what we can do for the new year. If you have any suggestions, email us at: suits@it.usyd.edu.au

For this weeks Hack Session: Professor Judy Kay presents some of the leading research being conducted at USYD in the fields of surface computing and a demo of the much talked about Tabletop being developed in SIT.

When: Tuesday 1-2PM
Where: SIT Lab 117

Have a great week,

SUITS Exec

SUITS Hack session this semester features a great variety of talks from students and Professors! Each talk will be taped and uploaded to our dedicated mini-site coming soon.

Hack sessions occur every Tuesday, 1-2pm in SIT Lab 117.

7th of Sept: Alan Turing & The Philosophy Of AI presented by Tim O’Keefe

The holy grail of the field of Artificial Intelligence (AI) is a general learning algorithm that can rival or surpass human intelligence. Though such a discovery is still some years off, it is still natural to ask the question: “Can machines think?”

This talk will primarily cover the contributions to this question by Alan Turing, as well as later work by John Searle. We’ll also delve into the implications of recent research into combining organic brains with synthetic bodies.

14th Sept: Ruby On Rails presented Will Cannings

Separate hype from fact, and learn how to create a web app using arguably the most well structured and easiest web framework around. Will cover Ruby basics, and the just released Rails 3.

21st Sep: Javascript From Zero to Hero presented by Ben Taylor

See how you can improve your skills at one of the fastest scripting languages around. Covering basics, OO, Functional Programming and some nifty tricks you didn’t realise existed.

5th Oct: SIT Tabletop Demo and Research presented by Professor Judy Kay

Professor Judy Kay presents some of the leading research being conducted at USYD in the fields of surface computing and a demo of the much talked about Tabletop being developed in SIT.

12th Oct: Machine Learning presented by Will Cannings

Interested in how Google can target AdWords to the content of a page, or how your email client can filter spam? Learn about Machine Learning from a high level perspective, and how to implement a few simple algorithms.

19th Oct: Up in the clouds: Cloud computing internals presented by Alex Sharp

Explaining cloud computing, what it is, what it does and how it works.

26th Oct: TBA

We have had a great time this week, and thank you to everyone whom attended. This Macquarie sign is from the top of their new “activity-based” building at Shelley St. For those who missed out, it’s not like any other office buildings you’ve ever seen before. Keep an eye out for when SUITS runs another one of these extraordinary visits again perhaps next year!

I want to take this opportunity to thank Will from Google, Robyn from Atlassian and Larissa from our sponsor Optiver whom have worked with me throughout the time leading up. A special thanks goes to Anna from Macquarie because she has made our visit possible even at such short notice! They have put in so much effect to make this all possible, and it’s easy for this effort to go unnoticed.

I promised to make the photos available, and here it is after the break. I’ve only included low-res photos here, but feel free to click through to get to the full quality photos. The links and resources are also after the break.

Feedback. I’d love to know what you thought about this event. Send me an email with any thoughts or comments, in particular:

1. What did you get out of the day?
2. Which parts did you like best (and/or didn’t like), and why?
3. How can we make this event even better for next time?

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This Thursday, we have two very big events on. Our weekly BBQ will be happening outside the School of IT as usual from 12:30 until 1:30.

Come back at night at 6pm we’ll be having drinks at Manning Bar and a lot of fun. At around 6:30pm the Sydney Uni Band Comp will start up so stick around to enjoy it.