Unsessions

This wiki page is for suggestions for Clojure/west 2017 "Unsessions". Unsessions give you the opportunity to propose your own topics and find others with similar interests. We'll have several rooms available at the conference hotel on the night of Thursday, March 30.

• When: Thursday, March 30, 7:30-10:30 pm (1 hour slots)
• Where: Portland Hilton & Executive Towers
• Equipment: Projectors and screens will be available in all but the last room

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Template

### Title

• Hosted by: ...
• Description: ...
• Interest: Add your ID here if interested

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Proposals

### Wombats: The New BattleBots

• Hosted by: Emily Seibert
• Description: I created a game along with two other developers that has a hefty Clojure stack: Datomic, AWS Lambda, Canvas and Re-frame. Join for a demo and an overview of our architecture!
• Interest: @puredanger

### Little Compilers in Clojure

• Hosted by: Brian Beckman
• Description: Let's talk about good idioms and techniques for little compilers. I have an example for Yakindu-to-C.
• Interest: Add your ID here if interested

### [Let’s Grow the Clojure Community](http://2017.clojurewest.org/grow-the-clojure-community/) * **Hosted by:** [Kim Crayton](https://twitter.com/KimCrayton1) * **Description:** "Let’s come together and discuss how we can attract more people to programming in general and Clojure specifically. Learn strategies that you can use to build the Clojure community in your own backyard and beyond." An opportunity to continue the conversation that was started at that day's panel discussion. * **Interest:** @puredanger ### [Lumo](https://github.com/anmonteiro/lumo): a full-blown ClojureScript environment on Node.js

• Hosted by: António Monteiro
• Description: ClojureScript ships with optional compiler self-hosting since late 2015. Bootstrapping the compiler represents the next giant leap in Clojure’s reach, allowing it to run in previously inaccessible environments.

I have recently released Lumo, a new, cross-platform, standalone ClojureScript environment that boots instantly and has out-of-the-box access to the entire Node.js ecosystem. It is useful for scripting in ClojureScript, and can also compile ClojureScript projects (with Closure Compiler optimizations).

I'd like to go over some basic Lumo features, how it integrates in the current ecosystem and how it could benefit a Clojure(Script) developer's workflow, as well as delve a little deeper into what powers Lumo and makes it so fast to boot: techniques such as heap snapshotting, bundling the single binary, and its usage of the self-hosted compiler. If we have time, I'll also share my plans for its future.

• Interest: @tony.kay @timothypratley @jreighley @thos37 @hby

### Machine Learning in Clojure with Cortex

• Hosted by: Team ThinkTopic
• Description: Cortex is a new open source library that brings GPU accelerated deep neural networks to Clojure. In this unsession we will do a short demo of training and using a neural network, and then we can talk about machine learning with the group, get example projects running on your own machines, and discuss the project roadmap over beers.
• Interest: @hby @puredanger

### Missing Pieces

• Hosted by: Michael Gaare

• Description: Clojure has a pretty great ecosystem, but it's far from complete! Let's have a discussion about what's missing and maybe kick around some ideas about how we could fill in those gaps. Some things that come to mind:

• Tools and architecture to organize large systems

• Big data tools

• ETL tools

• Machine learning (although looks like Cortex, from the above unsession, might be helping!)

• Error handling beyond exceptions

• Interest: @scriptor @hby @puredanger

### Clojure spec

• Hosted by: Alex Miller
• Description: Open discussion and Q&A about spec - how are you using it and what are your comments and questions. Note: this is not a talk.
• Interest: