[SGVLUG] Meeting Recap (03/10): "A Cloud-based Architecture for Processing 3D Mars Terrain"

[Lan Dang]

tl;dr Great talk. Good questions.  Cool photos.  We might have a recording.  Thanks 
to many people for making it happen.   Announcement: 

* NASA Space Apps Challenge Pasadena Kick-off event on Mar 24th 

   http://www.meetup.com/NASA-Space-Apps-Challenge-Pasadena/events/229056635/
* Repair Cafe on Mar 26th
   http://www.meetup.com/SGVTech/events/229332496/

 * SGVHAK at Lamanda Branch Park Library (Pasadena) on Mar 26th. 
  http://www.meetup.com/SGVTech/events/229233344/



We had about 53 people attending, though I only counted about 43-45 people in the room.  I think some of the others were OpenX employees popping in and out, and some of our people were still manning the registration desk.

As usual, much thanks to OpenX for sponsoring the venue and food and to Bobby and Akash for arranging things, and to all the OpenXers they roped into helping out.

We have a new sponsor, thanks to Carlos L.  No Starch Press sent us a box of goodies to raffle.  Believe me, there were more than books in that box.


Much thanks to Michael S. for setting up the video recording and Jess for helping on audio.  (We were using borrowed SCALE A/V equipment for this.  Thanks MPS!)  Thanks to James and co for resetting the room chairs, John for taking photos, and Carlos for handling the registration desk.  


The topic was "A Cloud-based Architecture for Processing 3D Mars Terrain"   Ed was awesome and brought in a bunch of cool photographs from when he had worked for a repro lab for JPL and produced the photos that went into the publicit packets.    I coincidentally happened to have a stack of Mars lithographs, which I had been given to hand out as swag at a STEAM event at an elementary school.


This talk was the same talk that was given at SCALE, but at the same time, it was different.  In this version of the talk, Parker went through the thought process behind how they started processing in the cloud and gave more details about the technologies used.  While we didn't have the same level of engagement and discussion as the previous month, there were a lot of interested questions during and after the talk.  


Thanks to Ed, we had a surprise addition to our raffle.  We raffled off 3 sets of 3 photos to the lucky winners. Then we raffled off 5 No Starch Press books.   We still have more stuff to raffle off next time.  The raffle box never gets appreciably lighter.

Lan
PS I'll work on the video recording as soon as I can get access to the video.  If you want to see the one from SCALE, you can find it here:  

https://youtu.be/iMy7vlTazPE