Board of Directors

Treasurer

Işil Arican
Yalansavar

Directors

Bill Patterson

Herb Masters
Bay Area Science, SciSchmooze Newsletter, ExplOratorium

Steven Newton
College of Marin

26 January: East Bay Skeptics, Berkeley
6 February: Café Inquiry, Menlo Park
7 February: Skeptics in the Pub, Sunnyvale
13 February: SkepTalk, Berkeley
18 February: North Bay Skeptics, Santa Rosa
26 February: Skeptics in the Pub, Millbrae

East Bay Skeptics Dinner: Berkeley

WHAT: Meet for dinner and discussion. Sometimes there is a topic and sometimes there is just open discussion of whatever is on people’s minds. Ordering dinner starts at 6pm, discussion starts after eating is finished.

WHEN: 6PM Sunday 26 January

WHERE: Barney’s Gourmet Hamburgers, 1600 Shattuck Avenue, Berkeley [Map]

HOW: Hosted by the East Bay Skeptics.

Café Inquiry: Menlo Park

WHAT: A great gathering of nerds!

WHEN: 6PM Thursday 6 February

WHERE: Café Barrone, 1010 El Camino Real, Menlo Park. A 2-minute walk from Menlo Park Caltrain. [Map]

HOW: Hosted by Center for Inquiry, SF and Bay Area Skeptics.

Skeptics in the Pub: Sunnyvale

WHAT: Upholding the tradition of skeptics groups: good free-flowing discussions with food and ale.

WHEN: 7PM Friday 7 February

WHERE: Firehouse Grill, 111 S. Murphy Avenue, Sunnyvale [Map]

HOW: Hosted by the Silicon Valley Skeptics.

SkepTalk: Berkeley

Mike Olson

WHAT: Big Data: What it is, how it’s used, where it’s headed
The world-wide explosion in data is driven by three important trends: The increasing digitization of the world, in which people and the environment have been outfitted with sensors that generate digital data; enough inexpensive storage technology to keep vast amounts of information that was previously discarded; and large-scale computing systems that can process all of it.

The advent of “big data” has driven enormous commercial and social benefits. Industries are more efficient, we produce more energy more cleanly and we diagnose and treat diseases better, all because of big data. At the same time, big data creates new and sometimes surprising problems. Our anonymity, and thus our privacy, is eroding. It is easier to target and to manipulate individuals and groups. And large amounts of data are an irresistible target for criminals and adversaries, leading to data breaches that cause real social and economic damage.

In this talk, I’ll provide some history on the advent and trends in big data. I’ll describe some of the exciting, and the troubling, examples of its transformational power. And I’ll highlight ways in which it is likely to evolve in the near future — and what we, as a society, ought to do about it.

WHO: Mike Olson
Mike Olson was a co-founder and CEO of Cloudera, the first enterprise-focused big data company, in 2008. He served in that role for five years, and became the company’s Chief Strategy Officer in 2013. He spent eleven years working closely with customers and the open source software community to deliver powerful new insights from big data, built on a new platform for large-scale data analysis. He retired in the summer of 2019. He holds Bachelor’s and Masters degrees in Computer Science from the University of California at Berkeley, and spent his career prior to Cloudera working on open source database management platforms including Postgres and Berkeley DB. He lives in Berkeley, California.

WHEN: 7:30PM Thursday 13 February

WHERE: La Peña Lounge, 3105 Shattuck Avenue, Berkeley [Map]

HOW: This event is presented FREE by the Bay Area Skeptics.

WHY: Because we’re curious creatures.

North Bay Skeptics: Santa Rosa

What: Join the North Bay Skeptics celebrating the scientific method while discussing current topics and consuming non-homeopathic liquids.

When: 7PM Tuesday 18 February

Where: Ranch 7 Creative, Six West Ninth St., Santa Rosa

Skeptics in the Pub: Millbrae

Join lads & lassies from hill & dale
discussing pseudoscience & science
over good eats & ale.

WHEN: 7PM Wednesday 26 February (4th Wednesday) (No gathering in December)

WHERE: Fiddlers Green, 333 El Camino Real, Millbrae. A 10 minute stroll from the Millbrae BART & Caltrain station. [Map]

HOW: Hosted by the Bay Area Skeptics and Center for Inquiry, SF.

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