Women Developers and Programmers! Want to learn how to code? Have a great idea? Don't be shy. Develop it. It can be intimidating for women to learn and ask questions when they are in an extreme minority. While open and welcoming, today's budding developer community is up to 91% male. There isn't a comfortable place where women can learn at their own pace and not be afraid to ask "stupid questions." We decided it was time to provide a place where all questions are OK and everyone can learn in a s …

The purpose of this group is to bring governments, developers, and communities together in a common mission to use public data to create digital tools that serve civic needs and promote economic development. Go to http://illinoisopentech.org/ for the latest updates on the Illinois Open Technology (ILOpenTech). The first set of meetups will be held in our four pilot communities: Belleville, Champaign, Rockford and South Suburbs centered around the ILOpenTech Challenge, a multi-month initiative th …

We are the technical folks at 1871. We're here to share ideas, code, questions, disaster porn and strong drinks. All 1871 members who touch code or infrastructure are welcome to join. Our startups live and die by our ability to build solutions quickly across a large surface area of problems. When you find yourself outside familiar territory, you want a trusted group of colleagues to turn to. When things blow up, you want someone to tell you how they blew up worse and survived. Let's build that.

Official OpenHack group in Chicago. http://openhack.github.com/chicago/ We get together and code. . . on anything . . . for any reason. Rules of the Group: You must hack No hate coding, we prefer to call it design/refactoring recommendations No recruiters, period! You must use your actual name so we can get you in the building

Why are there so few women leading and influencing the UX & design industry? Why can we count on one hand the number of female UX/design leaders in Chicago? Our goal is to provide a safe place for women to learn, mentor, and support each other in UX/design and related fields. Through this community, we can build women up and empower them to make an impact in both our industry and the world. Do I have to be a lady? Some dude: "I can always tell a lady when I see one." Mae West: "Yeah? What do you …

Soirée décontractée et sympa, pas de cotisation. On ne fait que boire et parler. L'evenement est Gratuit. Chaque mercredi de 19h00 - 21h00. Pour toute information : Appellez : 312-848-8272 Sheri's cell Meet local French language and culture lovers for conversation and fun! Come to a French Language Meetup and make new amis as you practice speaking, build your vocabulary and finally figure out those verb conjugations! All ages and levels welcome. HISTORIQUE DU GROUPE La troisième semaine de ja …

The official Embassy Facebook page for Appsterdam Chicago. The best place in the world to be an app maker. Our goal is to bring app makers together, and our mission is to support their interests worldwide. We established Amsterdam as the capital of Appsterdam - the world capital of apps - to establish a centre of gravity for our industry, to provide a place where all app makers can gather, and to create a framework for people to give back and support the community. Stichting Appsterdam is a non- …

This is a group of professionals (and hackers), managers, engineers (both dev and ops) and entrepreneurs coming together to learn about and share information on DevOps practices.

Alfresco User Group focused on sharing experiences and best practices leveraging the Alfresco platform for content management. Users are invited to to become a member to share experiences, use cases, code, case studies and help foster the Alfresco Community!

Mission Statement: Charity4LIFE’s mission is to provide resources to rehabilitate street kids worldwide. We encourage humanitarian efforts and provide social advocacy through weekend warrior activism. Who is “The Street Kid”? On the Street: Children on the street earn their living or beg for money on the street and return home at night. They maintain contact with their families. Oftentimes they are inadequately protected, supervised or directed by responsible adults. Of the Street: Children …

This group is for organizing and conducting the Chicago Ruby On Rails Women's Outreach workshops. The goal is to increase gender diversity in the Ruby community by helping women learn Ruby and Ruby on Rails. The workshops are geared to help, primarily, women learn Ruby On Rails. It is a free workshop and any level of experience is accepted. Anything from "I have never coded before in my life" to "I have been doing this for years and just want to see what is up with this Ruby on Rails thing" will …

Welcome to the Chicago Woman Developers Meet-up Chicago Women Developers (CWDevs) is run by a group of women from a variety of background and technical expertise. We have one thing in common: we are passionate about coding and we are passionate about women in tech. We host a variety of classes and events for women at all technical skill levels, see you soon.

All vegan, all Chicago. Howdy and welcome to Vegan Chicago! We are the oldest and largest vegan-focused meetup group! Founded in 2002 and run by long-time vegan and animal rights activists we have extensive experience and knowledge with a passion to share. We are a vegan support group that provides connections and resources for being vegan in Chicago! We welcome anybody regardless of how "vegan" you are as far as it is subjectively possible and practical for you. We have a Code of Conduct policy …

Network After Work - Networking Events for Professionals is a national business and social networking event company that launched in June 2009. We currently host events in 19 cities across the country. Events are created for professionals who want to expand their network and create new business opportunities, events range in size from 150-600 professionals and take place in each city's top nightlife destinations. Events draw a diverse mix of professionals from all industries and career levels a …

Do you have a degree in computer science or mathematics, but feel like you've just scratched the surface of the emerging field of Machine Learning (aka Applied Statistics, or Artificial Intelligence)? We regularly study the math, the theory, and the code. Come learn with us and teach us what you know. This meetup intends to bring together statisticians and computer scientists for a monthly informal meeting to discuss what we understand so far, what to learn next, and the state-of-the-art to t …

This is a group for anyone interested in using, currently using, or thinking about using Axure RP interactive wireframe software. We'll teach, learn, and share tips and tricks about working with Axure. You don't have to have any prior experience with Axure to join, just have an interest in learning and meeting-up! Axure RP enables you to mock up interactive prototypes without typing a line of code. My favorite part is that you can also pass variables, use conditional logic and do computations. I …

The worlds of hackers and journalists are coming together as reporting goes digital and Internet companies become media empires. Journalists call themselves "hacks," someone who can churn out words in any situation. Hackers use the digital equivalent of duct tape to whip out code. Hacker-journalists try and bridge the two worlds. This group is to bring all these people together -- those who are working to help people make sense of their world. It's for hackers exploring technologies to filter an …

These meetups are community based and focused. We anticipate collaborating as a group and determining what tracks (Beginner, Intermediate, Advanced, for example) that best match our needs. Example Beginner track is for someone with little to no experience with OpenStack. You can be just interested in expanding your devOps horizons or someone that just wants to learn more about this cloud thing. Example: Intermediate track is for a experienced devOps, some python experience, and an understanding …

Don't believe all the hype you hear from the talking heads on the T.V. It's not all doom and gloom, there are areas all over the country that are still appreciating. Besides, an educated investor knows how to make money if the market is going up, down, or sideways. It all comes down to being educated. When former Fed. Chairman Alan Greenspan was asked what he thought the difference was between the wealthy and the middle class, his answer was very simple, "The right education!" and he wasn't talk …

On the last Friday of the month, we get together for an all-night hacking session. Stay as long or as short as you'd like. This group is for anyone who wants to catch up on that nagging side project at a late night, caffeinated coding session with like-minded individuals. All skill levels and languages are welcome!  This is a mobile centric group, but it's not a problem if you have another project you want to work on too.  Designers and entrepreneurs welcome too, come get some work done!

Let's connect on occasion to discuss Open Source CRM. This meetup is run by Zurmo, so that will be the Open Source Community we'll focus on the most. But anyone who is interested in what Zurmo stands for is welcome to attend. From a user perspective, we'll not just talk about Customer Relationship Management, but also motivating people through gamification, salesforce automation best practices and Social CRM. From a tech perspective, we'll address Test Driven Development, PHP coding best practic …

This is the social hotbed of 826CHI volunteer greatness. Meet, whisper, write in code, give digital high-fives, throw out questions, propose gatherings, and most of all pal up in support of 826CHI's mission to inspire kids in Chicago to write. Onwards, agents!