Trees, More Trees, and a Fractal - Michelle Brush
The data structures and algorithms we find most comfortable are very great at dealing with one-dimensional data.  For some multidimensional problems we can even map the data to a one-dimensional ordering – allowing us to return to our comfort zone once again.  However, what if the problem is inherently multidimensional?  What tools do we need in our toolbox then?  This talk highlights the difficulty of working with multidimensional data using algorithms that were designed for a one-dimensional world and introduces a few simple approaches to solving multidimensional problems.
About the Speaker
Michelle Brush is a math geek turned computer geek with 13 years of software development experience.  She has developed services, APIs, and algorithms related to security, data mining, compression, shortest path-finding algorithms, and spatial searching.  Recently, she has transitioned to role more focused on developing early career software engineers through mentorship and training.  She is also the cofounder of the Kansas City chapter of Girl Develop It.
Rules as a Control Structure - Mr. Michelle Brush (aka Ryan Brush)
Functional programming can rein in the state of complex systems, but other sources of complexity remain. For instance, frequently changing business logic against arbitrary data can lead to deeply nested and tightly coupled functions. Rule engines have long aimed to solve this problem by allowing business logic to be expressed independently, but these are often not expressive enough to handle more sophisticated needs. This talk proposes solving this problem by exposing rules as a first-class control structure that can be seamlessly integrated with our code. We'll also demo Clara, an implementation of this strategy in Clojure.
About the Speaker
Ryan is a Distinguished Engineer with Cerner. He has built infrastructure for healthcare systems over the past decade, with a recent emphasis on making sense of huge and complex data sets and applying that to real problems in healthcare.  Ryan has spoken at Strata + Hadoop World, ApacheCon, and StampedeCon. He also dabbles in writing, with contributions to the book 97 Things Every Programmer Should Know and on Cerner's engineering blog as well as his personal blog.
New Attendees
Welcome!  This is an easy meetup to get involved with.  There are no functional programming experience expectations or prerequisites of any kind, though some talks are more advanced than others.  These events are generally well suited to help infuse functional programming ideas into an existing programming skill set.
Location Details
The address is 4210 Shawnee Mission Parkway, Suite 400A.
C2FO offices are on the top floor of the same building in which Fairway, KS City Hall is located.  This building is right behind Stroud's restaurant and LLKC attendees should be able to gain entry from any door.  If anyone has trouble getting in just call Pete's cell at 206-778-1545.
Additional Notes
Cerner is sponsoring pizza, so come hungry!