Gateway JUG

June 2009 Announcements

• General
  • The July 7th Gateway JUG meeting has been canceled.
    
  • However, the Beginning Grails class will start on July 8th as planned. Since the JUG meeting is canceled, the Programming Android class will meet on July 7th, but not until 7:00pm.
  • Our next meeting will be August 4th at 6pm. The topic will be on application server clustering. Complete details will be published soon.
  • Wanted! More Java Speakers ... If you have a favorite API, just learned a new tool or technique, or just want to share a design or development experience that will be informative and useful to other members, please send an e-mail to president AT gatewayjug.org to get on our presentation schedule.
• Training News
  • Summer School: We launched our Programming Android class on June 16th. We've already written the canonical "Hello World" application. The Beginning Grails class is a go and will start Wednesday, July 8th. If interested, please register ASAP. Seating is limited, so registrations are first-come, first-serve.

June 2nd Meeting: Implementing a Java Neural Network with the Encog Framework

The Encog Artificial Intelligence Framework (http://www.encog.org) is a Java and DotNet framework for constructing neural networks, bots, genetic algorithms, and other artificial intelligence solutions. Encog is an open source project licensed under the Lesser GNU Public License (LGPL).

This presentation will focus on using Encog to implement a neural network. Neural networks are used to analyze numeric data. They are particularly adept at recognizing patterns. This allows neural networks to be applied to a wide array of problems, such as data mining, financial forecasting, optical character recognition and game strategy.

This presentation will begin by showing exactly what a neural network is, and how it can be used. The Java code used to implement a neural network to recognize simple mathematical functions will be used as a starting point. From this starting point, the simple neural network will be expanded to recognize characters and implement a simple OCR application.

Speaker: Jeff Heaton

Sponsor: NetEffects

Meeting Slides: via HeatonResearch.com

Jeff Heaton

Jeff Heaton (http://www.jeffheaton.com) is a software developer for Reinsurance Group of America. He is an author, consultant, artificial intelligence (AI) researcher and former college instructor. Heaton has penned more than a dozen books on topics including AI, virtual worlds, spiders and bots. Heaton leads the Encog project, an open source initiative to provide an advanced neural network and bot framework for Java and C#. A Sun Certified Java Programmer and a Senior Member of the IEEE, he holds a Masters Degree in Information Management from Washington University in St. Louis. Heaton lives in St. Louis, Missouri.

NetEffects, Inc.

Since 1995 NetEffects has been providing faster, smarter, better information technology contract staffing solutions and consulting services around the world for a variety of industries including retail, financial services, pharmaceutical, telecommunications and government services. With hundreds of consultants in the field, we’re the preferred IT staffing provider for some of the largest corporations in the world…retaining 98% of our clients.

 

As a company, we have chosen NOT to participate in the recession.  In March we were named the 6th largest Information Technology Consulting Firms in the St. Louis area by the St. Louis Business Journal!