Date: 6/28/2008, Saturday
Time: 1:00 PM to 2:00 PM
Brief introduction:
Field Programmable Gate Array (FPGA) is an acronym for a specific type of integrated circuit device. For the recent two decades FPGA have been ubiquitously deployed in the electronic systems. To name a few, they are found as useful and as very cost effective components in miniature handheld devices, toys, industries controlling systems, large-scale electronics and computer systems, etc. The demands in use of FPGA grow very quickly and perpetually. These lead to 1). The FPGA manufactures continue to design their parts to be low cost, more powerful, and highly flexible to promote the FPGA market and revenue. 2). The application development environments evolve and become more affordable and user-friendly to help developers in speed up the time-to-market process of FPGA design, and help developers to explore the maximum and optimum capability of the device.
Within the scope of this presentation, I will briefly touch on the topics about some FPGA families and features themselves, their use in the systems, and applications development environment along with my class projects. I expect that this short discussion will excel the FPGA application design study be more enjoyable and effective along with some experiments as a practical approach.
Biography
"My name is Tom Hua. I was born and raised in Viet Nam. I came to the States in 1979.
Thrilled and fascinated when watching a technician wiring up some household light fixtures when I was 11, I knew what I really want to do for my future then. Eager to try things out myself in the following years, I bought many electronics textbooks, electronics tools, and hardware, and started with experiment after experiment. To gain real experience, I went out to market myself and helped friends to fix some TVs and stereos. Then I found my very first electronics job as a tester for a medical instrument manufacture in Pennsylvania in 1979. Realizing my lack of essential fundamental knowledge in electronics, I went back to Iowa and completed an AS degree in electronics technologies even before finishing high school. In 1983, I moved to the Bay Area and started my further pursuit of interests. At the SF Main Library I typed up my first resume. Barely squeezing in many keywords and previous work experience, I managed to fill up only a one-page resume. But that turned out to be enough because it worked! In only fifteen days after settling down, I accepted an assembler position for ClearCom Systems (it still exists) who makes closed-circuit communications equipment. Six months later my first dream finally came true; I was promoted to be a technician.
Up to 1991, I tutored myself more into the digital world. But I wanted more and decided to head to an engineering path. I went to study at several different campuses. Had I not come to study at NPU, I have no doubt that it would have been much harder and longer for me to reach my goal. Of course I stumbled and fail sometimes, but I never gave up easily in my continued search for a right kind of job I would enjoy doing. And I am very delighted to have many professors who taught me how to be a successful interviewee, and stood by me as my job references, leading to jobs after jobs with success!
In the meantime, I completed my AS degree in Business Administration and Management at Ohlone College, Fremont in 2001. It first seemed to be irrelevant to my technical background. But it surely helped me to perform planning, organizing, documenting, and marketing my technical works as well as improving my social skills.
Then the Internet/telecommunications bubble broke violently in the early 2000s. It hit hard on me for four months when I stayed idle without work. Mr. Henry Chang provided such a good reference for me that I landed a job as a technician at Thermo Electron Corp. Although it was a big drop for me from such a high software plateau, that was still a wise choice in that tough job market, he said.
For these years I continue to take classes, keep pace with new technology and job requirements and to prepare for tougher challenges ahead. Simply, it all comes down to hands-on practices, review of my failures, making corrections, and improving my communication skill set - for over fifteen job interviews in the last two years. In the last April through May, I received more than one job offers. Mr. Henry Chang once again helped me reach my goal. I now work for Spectra-Physics as a reputable software developer.
But I want more. I like to share my experience with the NPU students and professors. NPU again provides me such opportunities of success of which I can cherish as well as share with you through my presentations in embedded systems software developments and in the art of job search and interviews... "
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( 3 / 20 )Speaker: Ms. Sheetal Kammaje
Date: 6/21/2008, Saturday
Time: 1:00 PM to 2:00 PM
Brief introduction:
SRG America is a leading multinational organization that has successfully served the Information Technology market place for over 12 years. SRG America is an IT training and placement company. SRG is looking for Software Consultants and Fresh Graduates to augment our clients in the Bay area and all over USA. SRG America recruits Internship and OPT students. SRG America offers 3 weeks of intensive technical training, and 1 week of workplace etiquette training. After the training, SRG America places the candidate on projects all over the U.S with their clients. Sheetal will be presenting on June 21st at NPU from 1-2pm. She will be open to questions and answers after the presentation.
Biography
Sheetal Kammaje has a degree from San Jose State University in Business Administration. She is currently working with SRG America as a Recruiting Manager. Sheetal has 4+ years experience working with different IT consulting companies.
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( 3 / 22 )Speaker: Dr. Henry Chang
Date: 6/14/2008, Saturday
Time: 1:00 PM to 2:00 PM
Brief introduction:
To create a successful online shopping store is not a simple task. First you need to set up a website, which involves hardware installation (computer, hard disk, networking, etc), software development and installation (shopping cart, etc), and web page design to make your website attractive to your customers. After that, you get into a cycle of the following tasks:
1. Data processing
2. Collecting product data from the suppliers.
3. Updating the product data in your database, including adding new products, removing obsolete products.
4. Computing a competitive price that maximizes your profit.
Promotion
1. Uploading product data (i.e., web feeds) to leading Comparison Shopping Engines (CSEs) such as Yahoo! Shopping, Google Product Search, and Amazon.com.
2. Adding information to your web pages for search engine optimization (SEO). The easier your products are searched by search engines, the more visitors will visit your website.
3. Sending emails to your customers.
Checking the results of your promotion
You need to know which online marketing initiatives are cost effective and to see how visitors actually interact with your site. For example, the sequence of the visited web pages, how many of the visitors actually purchase products.
To do these tasks once in a while with a small quantity of products is probably not a big deal. However, it is a daunting task to handle hundreds or even thousands of products several times a week. A big company can probably hire a team of engineers to handle most of the tasks mentioned above, and contract certain tasks (e.g., SEO, email marketing) to outside companies. For a medium or small company, it will be very expensive to maintain a development team or contract different tasks to different companies.
This seminar discusses the techniques of providing a one-stop service for eCommerce companies. For example, one can automatically collect product data from the website of a retailer's suppliers, compute the price for each product based on a set of criteria, update the reatialer's website, embed SEO and web analysis information in each product data, and send the product data to leading Comparison Shopping Engines (CSE) such as Yahoo! Shopping, Google Product Search, and Amazon.com.
Biography
Henry Chang has more than 30 years industry experience involved business activities in US, China, and Taiwan. He has worked in large companies, including 18 years in HP, and small startup companies (WebKomputing, Lead Digi, and Artistic Vision). His interests are in network security, eCommerce, wireless networks, image processing, and embedded systems. He has been teaching at Northwestern Polytechnic University since 1991. He received his Doctor of Computer Engineering from Northwestern Polytechnic University in 2008, M.S. in Computer Science from University of Texas at Austin in 1983, and B.S. in Electrical Engineering from Tatung Institute of Technology, Taipei, Taiwan, in 1974.
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( 3 / 25 )
Speaker: David Bruckmann & Normand Richard
Date: 4/26/2008, Saturday
Time: 1:00 PM to 2:00 PM
-Brief introduction:
Transcontinental Printing is headquartered in Montreal, Canada and has over 60 business units and sales offices in North America. Fremont, CA will be home to the company’s newest site.
Transcontinental expect to hire engineers and technicians by mid-2009 for its Fremont plan. When fully operational, the Fremont plant will be staffed with approximately 108 Production Technicians. Every technician will be expected to operate within the Starpoint system described below:
Starpoint System
The plant will be designed around five Starpoint areas: Business, People, Site (the physical organization), Planning, and Operations. Each Starpoint will have a Navigator whose role is to lead a Starpoint and support operations as needed. Within each Starpoint, there will be four Diamondpoints which are devoted a specific aspects of the Starpoint (e.g., Maintenance). Each Diamondponint will have a Production Technician who is designated to lead the Diamondpoint. Production Technicians (Diamondpoint members and leaders) will rotate roles across Diamondpoints every one to two years.
Production Technicians will be expected to fulfill two roles. The first role is their operational responsibility (i.e., operate and maintain a piece of equipment and/or services within their area). The second is their management role which involves: a) leading an individual project designed to improve a function of the plant; b) participating in a team project; and c) participating in project meetings.
-Biography:
David Bruckmann
David Bruckmann plays a role in designing system architectures and the integration of client data for production and reporting purposes. Specifically, as Systems Leader, he performs mainly the following duties: (1) Plan integration of data flows from production and administrative systems; (2) Work with client(s) to integrate production data inputs and outputs; (3) Manage vendors to ensure delivery of contracted systems/worklows; (4) Develop and implement best practices/corporate standards for future projects; and (5) Be responsible for knowledge transfer of key IT aspects onto the permanent production team.
He possesses a bachelor of arts, as well as master's degree in Information Science.
Normand Richard
Normand Richard plays a role in establishing organizational development and human resources policies and procedures. Specifically, as Director Organizational Development, he performs mainly the following duties: (1) Oversee organizational development activities; (2) Create and implement a specialized system for the training of production and set-up teams; (3) Implement and ensure proper functioning of the recruitment and hiring system; (4) Establish management, compensation and benefits systems in compliance with corporate policies as well as municipal, state and federal laws; (5) Manage human resources activities, including management systems, staffing, health and safety, compensation and benefits; (6) Be responsible for knowledge transfer of key human resources aspects onto the permanent production team.
He possesses a master’s degree in Project Management, as well as certificates in Psychology, Administration and Human Resources
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( 3 / 54 )Speaker: Yu-Yang Chiang, M.D. & Shomin Chiou, CPA
Date: 4/19/2008, Saturday
Time: 1:00 PM to 2:00 PM
-Brief introduction:
Tai Ji Men is an ancient form of martial art. Dr. Hong, Tao-Tze, President of Tai Ji Men Qigong Academy founded Tai Ji Men in 1966. Over the past years, Dr. Hong led FOWPAL
(Federation of World Peace and Love) and Tai Ji Men members traveling around the world. Their footprints have reached as far as the Arctic Circle to promote the activities of love and peace. It expects to share and inspire world leaders to strive together to better the world. TJM does believe that the technology and spiritual harmony need to be co-developed in a balanced way. O¬nly when people surrounding us start to cultivate themselves, can the society and the country be better.
In the past six years, TJM San Jose Academy has either hosted or participated in various public events, such as the “Wisdom of Life Seminar” at UC Berkeley and University of San Francisco, Bay Area Chinese New Year Parade, and Moon Festival of the Silicon Valley. We shared our joy and experience in practicing Tai Ji Men Qi Gong with people all around us during those events. Please join us in this seminar to spread the positive energy of love and peace to the world. It’s upon you and me to change the world for the better!
-Biography:
Yu-Yang Chiang, M.D.-
Taipei City Hospital/Director of Acupuncture Department
Shomin Chiou, CPA
Shomin has more than 10 years of experience in public accounting and venture capital industry. She received her Master degree at Purdue University in Consumer Economics and B.A. degree at National Taiwan University in Economics.
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