ML in JS:  Join the Revolution – TensorFlow.js Talk

North Atlanta JavaScript is back for the June 2019 meetup!
We have a celebrity guest speaker from New Orleans, Gant Laborde to take us on a journey of building Machine Learning apps in JavaScript and we’ll also have local expert Ray Gesualdo discuss GraphQL!

Talk 1: Gant Laborde
Title: Machine Learning in JavaScript – Join the Revolution
Description: An adventure into approachable AI and amazing tech with the most popular programming language, JavaScript. Go from zero to hero in understanding the AI craze, and how easy it is to include in your work.

Bio:
Gant Laborde is a New Orleans native, born and raised. He grew up with hurricanes (not the drink), rich New Orleans culture, and as a free tour guide for all his out-of-state friends. Over the years he’s seen his city experience corruption, flooding, heartbreak, and most importantly, revived-determination. “New Orleans doesn’t know how to quit” Gant says, “that’s why I love it.” Gant firmly believes conflict abets passion, a fire always moves fastest uphill.
As Chief Technology Strategist for the San Francisco company Infinite Red, Gant works remotely from his home and uses his self-managed autonomy to explore a variety of leadership arts. Besides managing the all-remote team from around the world, Gant has become a published author, adjunct professor, volunteer mentor, and a speaker at conferences worldwide.

Talk 2: Ray Gesualdo
Title: GraphQL in a Serverless World
Description: “GraphQL” and “Serverless” generate a lot of industry buzz separately. Combining slick serverless paradigms with the statically-typed goodness of GraphQL may just break the internet…but that’s what we’re going to do. Together, we’ll briefly cover what “serverless” means and how GraphQL works. Then, we’ll construct a simple GraphQL API from scratch using open-source tools and deploy the API to multiple serverless environments. Finally, we’ll discuss the benefits and tradeoffs of deploying a GraphQL API in a serverless fashion.

Bio:
Ray Gesualdo is a full-stack JavaScript developer, speaker and mentor from Atlanta, GA. He started his career in the e-learning development industry before moving into software engineering with multiple Atlanta-based startups. Currently, he works with an amazing team of UI engineers at SalesLoft. Ray loves working with client- and server-side JavaScript; experimenting with serverless architectures and functional programming; and teaching and equipping others in technology.