Open Data Science Conference in Boston

This past weekend I went to the Open Data Science Conference in Boston. This was a really run conference with about 1,200 attendees. The concept behind it was to bring together the Open source tools to one conference so that these groups can collaborate and develop a better data science community rather than just ,say, an R or Python community.

In this effort I would have to say that the conference was successful. The was a significant number of both Python and R users there and the talks seemed evenly split between R and Python users. I will even admit that I went to a few Python talks because the topics were interesting.

As at most conferences the most valuable time may be away from the talk and structure of the conference itself. That was true for this conference. There were so many people that I have worked with over the years there that there were not enough break in the sessions to spend time with them all to catch up on what they are doing now. I will say that everyone I talked to is still working in the field and happy with the kinds of projects they are working on. A good sign of the health of the field.

I had a good time in Boston and look forward to returning to the conference next year. Meanwhile I believe they are going to post videos of the session online in the next week or so.