Close Encounters of the Data Kind: Exploring UFO Sightings - Chris DeMars

Описание: 𝐇𝐚𝐥𝐟𝐒𝐭𝐚𝐜𝐤 𝐏𝐡𝐨𝐞𝐧𝐢𝐱 2026

Born and raised in Detroit, Chris is a Senior Developer Advocate at TuxCare, where he works on securing end-of-life software like legacy Angular, Python, and .NET systems.

In this session, he blends his love for spooky phenomena with modern web development to explore real-world UFO and UAP sighting data.

👽 Talk Overview

Close Encounters of the Data Kind: Exploring UFO Sightings with MongoDB and Next.js

This talk starts with a brief (and entertaining) history of famous UFO encounters — including:
● The Roswell Incident
● The Betty and Barney Hill abduction
● The Dexter UFO sightings
● The iconic Phoenix Lights

From there, Chris dives into the tech stack used to build a searchable UFO sightings dashboard, showing how to go from raw data to a deployed web application.

🛠 Tech Stack Covered
● Next.js – React framework with server components and optimizations
● MongoDB – Flexible, scalable document database
● MongoDB Atlas – Cloud-hosted MongoDB
● MongoDB Compass – Visual data exploration and querying
● Netlify – Build and deploy modern web apps
● Material UI – Styling and UI components

Chris walks through:
● Setting up a Next.js project
● Connecting MongoDB data using Atlas and Compass
● Structuring data for UFO encounters and sightings
● Filtering and searching encounters by location and type
● Deploying the app with Netlify
● Building a simple, functional UI without custom CSS

🧠 Why This Talk Is Different
This isn’t just another CRUD demo. It’s a playful but practical example of:
● Turning real-world datasets into usable products
● Building dashboards with modern React tooling
● Learning full-stack concepts through storytelling
● Making tech talks fun, memorable, and approachable

Whether you’re here for the aliens, the code, or both — this talk delivers.
🛸 Believe in Bigfoot. Ship to production.