Recent & Upcoming Events | Vienna Data Science Group

Data Science Cafe - Biotech focus Vol 1

Fri, 11 Dec 2026 16:30:00 +0100

The Data Science Café began in 2017 as a simple community space: a place where mathematicians, software engineers, and business professionals could meet once a month, learn together, and exchange perspectives.

Over time, it became a vibrant community. In 2022, the format returned with mentors sharing their expertise—many of whom had first joined as participants in the original sessions. That journey captured something important: communities grow when people are generous with what they know and curious about what others can teach them.

Now, the Data Science Café returns with a Biotech Focus. Vienna has an exceptional opportunity at the intersection of data science and biotech. The city brings together scientific talent, technical expertise, strong universities, innovative companies, and organisations working across the ecosystem. Yet some of the most valuable connections are still waiting to be made.

This event series is designed to create a welcoming space for those connections. Whether you work in biotech, data science, research, software, business—or are simply curious about the field—you are welcome. Different backgrounds are not a barrier; they are the point. New ideas often emerge when disciplines meet and people learn from one another.

The Data Science Café – Biotech Focus will take place every three months, bringing together mentors, professionals, researchers, students, and curious minds to explore what this intersection can make possible.

Thank you to 42 Vienna for hosting us, and to Women in AI for recommending outstanding mentors.

Seven mentors are already confirmed, with more conversations underway. The official mentor announcement will follow on 1 November.

Save the date, and join us as we learn, connect, create, and innovate together.

From Demo to Production: Deploying AI Responsibly in a Complex World

Thu, 29 Oct 2026 18:00:00 +0100

Dear Data Enthusiasts,

Join us at TU the Sky on the 29th of October to explore how knowledge graphs, robust orchestration, and rigorous fairness testing are shaping trustworthy AI. A big thanks goes to our co-organizers from the AI Factory Austria and Neo4j for sponsoring the event.

Legit Check for AI - Grounding AI with Knowledge Graphs for Transparency and Trust at the Core Moritz Wegener AI systems are only as trustworthy as the data they reason over. But when that data is highly interconnected — products, brands, trends, relationships — flat retrieval architectures like RAG fall short: they can’t traverse context, can’t explain their paths, and can’t make their reasoning visible. This talk shows how Knowledge Graphs change that equation. Using a real-world dataset scraped from sources like Sneaker News, WWD, and StockX, we demonstrate how to build a Knowledge Graph from unstructured documents and use it to ground Large Language Models, making their outputs not just more accurate, but genuinely explainable. We’ll walk through:

Building the graph — extracting structured knowledge from unstructured web sources and modeling it as a connected graph
Grounding LLMs — how Knowledge Graph context replaces hallucination-prone retrieval and gives the model structured facts to reason over
Visualizing trust — how graph-based visualizations let users see why the AI answered the way it did, not just what it answered

In the sneaker world, a legit check separates what’s real from what just looks right. AI deserves the same standard. Along the way, we’ll make the case for why Knowledge Graphs outperform RAG and multi-tool agent architectures in domains where data relationships matter and show what trustworthy AI looks like when it can finally show its work. Moritz Wegener works on agentic AI, knowledge graphs, and moving AI systems from demo to real-world deployment — including graph-based fraud detection in banking and enterprise-scale decision systems. He’ll share what it takes to get agentic AI use cases from prototype to production.

Running Dagster on Slurm: Practical Orchestration for HPC and AI Workloads georg Heiler Many data and AI teams rely on Slurm-managed HPC clusters, but modern orchestration tools often assume cloud-native infrastructure. This creates a gap: researchers and ML engineers want Dagster-style assets, observability, and reproducibility, while their actual compute runs on shared Slurm clusters. This talk introduces dagster-slurm, an open-source integration for running Dagster assets on Slurm. We will show how it lets teams develop assets locally, submit production workloads to HPC, manage environments, and surface Slurm job metadata back into Dagster. Using multimodal AI pipelines as a motivating example, we will discuss why orchestration matters when workloads mix CPU preprocessing, GPU inference, embeddings, and downstream analytics. Metaxy appears as one example of a metadata-driven pipeline that benefits from this setup, but the focus is broader: how to make Dagster a practical control plane for Slurm-based compute. Attendees will learn how dagster-slurm maps Dagster assets to Slurm jobs, how local and cluster execution can stay aligned, and how this approach improves visibility, reproducibility, and resource usage for HPC-backed data workflows. Georg Heiler is a co-founder @Jubust and a Senior data expert at Magenta as well as a ML-ops engineer at ASCII. He is solving challenges with data. His interests include geospatial graphs and time series. Georg transitions the data platform of Magenta to the cloud and is handling large scale multi-modal ML-ops challenges at ASCII.

Testing AI for Fairness in Practice Rania Wazir Drawing on real-world cases, from biased healthcare algorithms to discriminatory tax audits and predictive policing, this talk unpacks what “bias” actually means in AI systems and why fixing it is harder than it looks. Rania Wazir, Co-founder & CTO of leiwand.ai, walks through the practical mechanics of bias testing: identifying at-risk groups, choosing the right fairness metrics, and confronting the uncomfortable trade-offs between accuracy and fairness. Rania Wazir is co-founder and CTO of leiwand.ai, a Vienna-based startup helping companies and organizations develop and deploy trustworthy AI. A mathematician by training, with a B.Sc. from Stanford and a Ph.D. from Brown University, Rania has spent years as a data scientist specializing in trustworthy AI, NLP, and bias detection in algorithmic systems. She led a consortium investigating algorithmic bias for the EU Fundamental Rights Agency and serves as tech lead on an Austrian Research Agency-funded project building a “fair by design” AI development process. leiwand.ai’s work includes supporting the EU Commission’s rollout of the AI Act across Europe. Rania is also active in international AI standards bodies (ISO/IEC, CEN/CENELEC), bringing a rare combination of technical depth and regulatory fluency to questions of AI accountability and the EU AI Act.

🎤🎤 Open Mic We are going to open up the stage after the talks for community announcements. If you’d like to announce something, open this slide deck, make sure you are signed in with a google account, and click “View Only” -> “Request Edit Access”. Explain in the text box what you want to announce, and we’ll give you edit access to the slide deck. 🎤🎤 We’ll have some food and drinks after the event. Please note that during the event, photos might be made and later posted on VDSG’s social media page. Please notify us if you do not agree. Attention attendees with food allergies. Please be aware that the food and drinks provided may contain or come into contact with common allergens, such as dairy, eggs, wheat, soybeans, tree nuts, peanuts, fish, shellfish, or wheat.

Best, The Organizer Team

Save the Date: VDSG @ Cloudflight

Thu, 24 Sep 2026 18:00:00 +0200

Dear Data Enthusiasts,

Save the date! More details to follow.

🎤🎤 Open Mic We are going to open up the stage after the talks for community announcements. If you’d like to announce something, open this slide deck, make sure you are signed in with a google account, and click “View Only” -> “Request Edit Access”. Explain in the text box what you want to announce, and we’ll give you edit access to the slide deck. 🎤🎤 Also, please note that during the event, photos might be made and later posted on VDSG’s or Cloudflight’s social media page. Please notify us if you do not agree. Attention attendees with food allergies. Please be aware that the food and drinks provided may contain or come into contact with common allergens, such as dairy, eggs, wheat, soybeans, tree nuts, peanuts, fish, shellfish, or wheat.

VDSG Summer 26 Meetup

Tue, 25 Aug 2026 17:30:00 +0200

Dear DS and AI enthusiats,

While our regular events are on a summer break, we still have time for an informal summer gathering—no talks, no slides, just good conversations and cold drinks!

📍 Where: Strandbar Hermann 📅 When: Tuesday, 25.08 🕕 Time: From 17:30 (after work vibes)

Join us for a relaxed summer edition of our Data Meetup in the heart of Vienna—a space for meaningful conversations, fresh perspectives, and the exchange of ideas that help move our profession forward.

With 2026 already bringing rapid developments across the data field, this is the perfect moment to pause, reflect, and learn from one another.

Come enjoy a few beers or cocktails, meet fellow data professionals, and spend a laid-back summer evening connecting, sharing experiences, and exploring where our profession is heading next.

See you there! – Mari Plaza and The VDSG Team 🍻

The Psychology of Data Transformations & Optimizing Multimodal AI Pipelines

Fri, 29 May 2026 18:00:00 +0200

Dear Data Enthusiasts,

Join us again on 29th of May at A1 to learn about the psychological implications on employees when transforming the data landscape of an organization. In addition, we will finally have a talk about the open source framework Metaxy and how it can help to cut costs of multimodal AI pipelines.

A big thanks goes to our co-organizers from the A1 Telekom and our sponsor Cloudera!

A Psychological Autopsy of a Data Transformation Dávid Farkas Five years ago, a small European university decided to build and implement a data strategy from scratch. Greenfield in the truest sense: data governance was an unheard term and in practice it meant local Excel files duplicated across inboxes; “the database” usually referred to whichever spreadsheet someone had emailed most recently. Over four years, we designed and rolled out new systems, established governance structures, hired a team, and delivered real wins. We also watched a significant portion of the work get undone in months once leadership changed. This talk is a psychological autopsy of that transformation — what was planned, what worked, what quietly collapsed, and why. Universities are an unusually honest laboratory for studying data initiatives: decentralized power, competing stakeholder logics, weak formal hierarchies, and ambiguous success metrics make every human dysfunction that exists in corporate environments more visible. Drawing on behavioural science and nearly five years leading this initiative, I’ll walk through the recurring failure patterns I see across data and AI projects more broadly — algorithm aversion, NIH syndrome, the gap between executive sponsorship and operational ownership, and the under-recognised role of organisational identity in determining which systems survive a leadership change. The argument is not that technology doesn’t matter — it’s that the human substrate determines whether any of it sticks. Borrowing Kranzberg: technology is never neutral, and neither are the people implementing it. Dávid Farkas is a research psychologist (PhD) and data scientist based in Budapest. He co-founded Principle Zero, which helps companies, NGOs, and researchers take on complex challenges in data strategy, digital and AI transformation, research, product development, and science communication. We bring behavioural science to problems most consultancies treat as purely technical, focusing on the human and organisational factors that determine whether ambitious projects survive contact with reality. Previously he led data science and digitalisation at MOME Budapest, with earlier industry experience applying machine learning.

Optimizing Multimodal AI Pipelines with Metaxy Georg Heiler, Hernan Picatto The AI era has caused a fundamental shift in computing, moving us toward complex multimodal pipelines. However, these new systems are often incredibly wasteful. Right now, small changes to an input can trigger massive recomputations across very expensive processing steps. In this talk, we will explore Metaxy, an open source Python framework built to solve this exact problem. Metaxy provides sample level metadata versioning and acts as the universal glue for incremental data pipelines. We will discuss how its field level provenance allows your pipeline to only recompute what actually changed. If you update an audio file, for example, Metaxy knows to skip downstream face recognition steps that only rely on video. Whether you are a startup stretching your compute budget, an enterprise scaling ML infrastructure, or a researcher in academia, you will learn how to use Metaxy to iterate faster, cut cloud costs, and build highly efficient AI workflows. Georg Heiler is a co-founder @Jubust and a Senior data expert at Magenta as well as a ML-ops engineer at ASCII. He is solving challenges with data. His interests include geospatial graphs and time series. Georg transitions the data platform of Magenta to the cloud and is handling large scale multi-modal ML-ops challenges at ASCII. Hernan Picatto is a Computer Science PhD candidate at the Vienna University of Technology researching firm-level supply chains and corporate networks using NLP and Common Crawl data. Formerly an engineer at JPMorgan Chase and ZhiZhouKeji, he holds an MA from UCSD. His broad interests span big data, visualization, and time series causality.

We’ll have some food and drinks after the event. Please note that during the event, photos might be made and later posted on VDSG’s social media page. Please notify us if you do not agree. Attention attendees with food allergies. Please be aware that the food and drinks provided may contain or come into contact with common allergens, such as dairy, eggs, wheat, soybeans, tree nuts, peanuts, fish, shellfish, or wheat.

Best, The Organizer Team

VDSG meets WiAI Austria: Building AI-Ready Data in Insurance & Healthcare

Wed, 29 Apr 2026 18:00:00 +0200

Dear Data Enthusiasts,

Come to the joint event with Women in AI Austria at UNIQA on the 29th of April to explore how fragmented, heterogeneous data can be transformed into governed, AI-ready foundations that drive real impact. This evening we will hear how these challenges play out in two very different domains: managing workforce data at scale in insurance, and unifying multi-modal clinical data to support better patient outcomes in healthcare.

From Fragmented to Foundational: People Analytics at UNIQA How do you turn fragmented People Data into a trusted, AI‑ready data foundation? This session shows how UNIQA uses Databricks as a core data platform for people analytics, integrating multiple sources into a governed People Datawarehouse. We will explore how to enable a single source of truth for workforce data to support responsible analytics, scalable dashboards, and AI‑ready datasets.

Stefanie Blaschke, Head of group people analytics at UNIQA Stefanie is Head of Group People Analytics at UNIQA Insurance Group, specializing in turning complex workforce data into clear, actionable insights.

Scaling Clinical Intelligence with STETHOSCOPE As healthcare faces a post-pandemic capacity crisis exacerbated by aging demographics, the industry’s fragmented data—spanning clinical tables, medical imaging, and ECG recordings—remains its greatest untapped asset. We introduce STETHOSCOPE, an AI-driven framework built on Databricks that unifies these multi-modal streams to alleviate administrative burnout and drastically reduce the risk of misdiagnosis. This session demonstrates why the Databricks Data Intelligence Platform is the definitive backbone for high-stakes healthcare LLMOps, enabling the transition from chaotic data to actionable clinical insights. Through real-world case studies and field experience, we show how agentic architectures transform patient care and operational efficiency.

Monika Hujter and Zsofia Prager, Data Scientists at Hiflylabs Monika and Zsofia are Data Scientists at Hiflylabs, and work at the intersection of machine learning and real-world impact, with a current focus on healthcare AI.

+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++ Important logistics:

We have 100 seats available — admission is based on an RSVP list, so make sure you RSVP early. Please provide your full name and company name when registering, as these are required to obtain your visitor card at UNIQA. Please arrive at 18:00 sharp for security reasons.

When registering, please indicate your: name and last name, company name and your community affiliation (WiAI Austria, VDSG, or other) via the Meetup link below: Registration form We need it to give you a card to access the building.

Also, please note that during the event, photos might be made and later posted on VDSG’s or Women in AI Austria social media page. Please notify us if you do not agree.

Attention attendees with food allergies. Please be aware that the food and drinks provided may contain or come into contact with common allergens, such as dairy, eggs, wheat, soybeans, tree nuts, peanuts, fish, shellfish, or wheat.

Best, The Organizer Team VDSG and WiAI Austria

Powering the Grid: Data Science in Energy Storage and Trading

Mon, 09 Mar 2026 18:00:00 +0100

Dear Data Enthusiasts,

Join us this time at TU the Sky on the 9th of March to explore how data science and machine learning are powering the energy transition — from battery storage investment to energy volume forecasting and electricity trading for distributed energy resources. A big thanks goes to our co-organizers from the AI Factory Austria, who supports researchers and companies in accessing advanced computing know-how and infrastructure for applications in life sciences among other scientific domains.

This time, we will have 3 speakears and a round table of discussion.

Comparative Case Study: Saudi Arabia, Brazil, Malaysia, Germany and United Kingdom – BESS Pilot Market Assessment The presentation compares five grid-scale BESS pilot markets—Saudi Arabia, Brazil, Malaysia, Germany, and the UK—using a standardized project-finance and credit-risk framework to make IRRs and NPVs comparable. It models 15-year assets with consistent capex/opex, leverage rules (higher for contracted revenue, lower for merchant), and country risk, inflation, FX, and degradation impacts. Saudi Arabia offers the highest certainty and strong returns via sovereign contracted payments. Brazil is contracted but weakened by inflation/FX and immature market design. Malaysia is large but has blended, hard-to-hedge activation risk. Germany and the UK offer higher upside through merchant revenue stacking but face volatility and regulatory uncertainty.

Sebastian Meyer, entrepreneur Sebastian Meyer is an energy transition professional with expertise in battery storage, power markets, and project finance. He started his career in banking combining equity capital markets work in Central and Eastern Europe and project finance in London. Energy transition work started with an equity sell-down engagement for one of Europe’s earliest offshore wind projects. Sebastian worked on commercializing clean and renewable technology as a founder and partner in Azure International Beijing from 2003 - 2016, ultimately heading Strategy & Power Markets for EDF Renewables in the context of China’s ongoing power sector liberalisation 2017 - 2020. After returning to Europe, Sebastian played a coordinating role in CCE’s first BESS project in Germany now operational since December, and he supports an Austrian BESS developer at this time. He recently completed the BatteryMBA executive programme (Cohort 14), deepening his understanding of the battery value chain, storage technologies, lifecycle economics and emerging business models, and co-authored a BESS pilot market assessment presented to industry peers. Based in Vienna, Austria, Sebastian positions himself at the nexus of energy finance, flexibility markets, and power system integration, with a focus on renewables and grid-scale storage.

Energy Volume Forecasting This presentation explores how data science supports energy trading decisions in the context of dynamic electricity tariffs. It begins with an introduction to aWATTar’s dynamic tariffs, which allow customers to consume “Energy in Sync with Nature,” benefit from market fluctuations, and participate in the green energy transition. The session then outlines the trading workflow behind tariff-based energy procurement, highlighting where uncertainty and risk emerge. Building on this context, it motivates the need for accurate total energy forecasting as a critical input for trading decisions. The second half of the talk dives deeper into the forecasting problem, covering data flow, feature engineering, modeling strategy, and deep learning architecture used to predict aggregated energy demand and production for trading purposes. It concludes by sharing lessons learned from deploying forecasting models in production and their impact on more efficient, data-driven energy trading.

Ekin Kaan, Machine learning engineering at aWATTar Ekan is a Machine Learning Engineer at aWATTar, where he focuses on clustering, forecasting, and data-driven energy solutions. With a background in mathematics and theoretical physics, he enjoys uncovering patterns in data and turning them into actionable insights that create business impact. At aWATTar, he develops forecasting solutions that support smarter energy trading and contribute to a sustainable energy transition.

Unlocking Flex Trading for Consumers As Europe’s energy grid shifts toward renewables, price volatility on wholesale electricity markets is rising fast. Every connected household device — EVs, heat pumps, batteries, solar inverters — represents untapped flexibility that can be traded on these markets. The problem: until now, only large industrial assets and sophisticated utilities have been able to participate. So far, consumers have been locked out. In this talk, you will hear how to enable utilities to aggregate residential device flexibility and trade it on day-ahead and intraday electricity markets — turning thousands of small household assets into a coordinated virtual battery.

Chris Bernkopf, Podero Chris Bernkopf has a degree in physics and data science. My journey as a founder started by selling t-shirts at 18. I burned my fingers in ed-tech and worked in e-mobility before building a procurement tool (YC W21). Since 2022, I’ve been building Podero, an electricity trading software for electric devices (DERs) for the world’s leading utilities. www.podero.com

Roundatble moderator: Patrick Fodor, marbl. Patrick is a physicist from Vienna, committed to energy trading, and developing intelligent energy trading systems for a decade. In his free time, Patrick creates and teaches courses on topics such as Smart Contract Security, Solidity, Golang, and Quantum Computing. Professionally, former Algo Development Teamlead in Trayport and E*Star. Currently, Patrick is Co-Founder and CTO of YQAPP and marbl.energy. At marbl.energy, they are optimizing renewable energy assets such as Wind and Photovoltaic systems in combination with energy storage systems.

Best, The Organizer Team

VDSG x CEU - 2nd Vienna Data Analytics Jamboree

Fri, 05 Dec 2025 14:30:00 +0100

IMPORTANT:

After you RSVP here, you must register to attend the event at CEU’s Registration Page, too, using the following link: Registration Page
We’ll host a Job Market Open Mic at 5:00 p.m. If you’d like to announce job openings or share your job-seeking status, please upload a slide to Google Slides using the link provided at the end of this announcement.
The event starts at 2:30, but you are welcome to join at any time after.

The Jamboree brings together Analysts, Engineers, Data Scientists and Managers working in Business to talk about their coolest analytics projects. A relaxed and engaging event, the Jamboree features talks, discussions and Q&A fostering a fun atmosphere with plenty of opportunities for learning, conversations, and networking. The audience includes both students and working professionals.

The Jamboree will feature talks on designing and executing data analytics projects in business and roundtable discussions on what new skills are important for data science teams in the AI era. In addition to Austria, speakers from the USA, Germany, and Hungary will make it a truly international event, fitting CEU’s profile as a University with a global reach. Speakers include Kevin Xu, a senior software engineer from Github, Inc. (USA), Alex Fischer, data scientist at Trivago (DE) and Iveta Lohovska, chief AI technologist at HP (AT). The roundtable discussion will feature Karl Kugler, head of AI Factory Austria (AT).

The Jamboree will also include a data job market open mic, where companies will briefly advertise open positions and internships. A wine and cheese reception at the end will make it more fun. The keynote and the roundtable will be streamed online.

Schedule 14.00-14.30 Registration 14.30-15.30 First Section Chair: Francesca Conselvan (e-think, AT + CEU) 14.30 Opening remarks by Carsten Schneider, Interim President and Rector, CEU 14.35 Alex Fischer (Trivago, DE) 15.05 Zsófia Katona (valantic, AT) 15.20 Marton Nagy (CEU Gabors Data and AI Lab)

15.35-16.00 Break: networking

16.00-17.15 Second Section Chair: Wolfgang Weidinger (Generali, CEU) 16.00 Lukas Kölbl, (Managing Director of AI and Data, Accenture, AT) 16.30 Iveta Lohovska (Chief Technologist for AI, Data and Supercomputing, HP Enterprise, AT) 17.00 Zoltán Tóth (VDSG, AT + CEU) Vienna Data Science Group 17.05 Job Market (chair: Zoltán Tóth, VDSG)

16.15-17.45 Break: networking

17.45-19.15: Third Section Chair: Gábor Békés (CEU) 17.45**: Gábor Békés (CEU)**: Data and AI Lab, Gergely Daróczi (SpareCores): Data science, education and open source 18.00 Kevin Xu (Github, USA) 18.35 Roundtable: What skills to have in the AI-era in data science teams? With Karl Kugler (Head, AI Factory Austria), Kevin Xu, an Annalisa Cadonna (Advisory AI engineer, IBM, AT), Moderated by Gábor Békés

19.15-20.15 wine and cheese reception

The event is sponsored by CEU’s 1-year Masters in Business Analytics program (accredited in the U.S. as well as Austria). CEU is an English-language research-focused University in Vienna offering graduate and undergraduate education in social sciences.

🎤🎤 Open Mic We will open the stage for job openings and job-seeking announcements. If you’d like to make an announcement, open this slide deck, ensure you are signed in with a Google account, and click “View Only” -> “Request Edit Access”. Please explain in the text box what you would like to announce, and we’ll provide you with edit access to the slide deck. 🎤🎤 ---

Please note that during the event, photos might be taken and later posted on VDSG’s and CEU’s social media pages.

AI in Action: AI Knowledge Graphs & AI Energy Trading

Thu, 27 Nov 2025 18:00:00 +0100

Dear Data Enthusiasts, Join us this time at Medical University of Vienna on the 27th of November to dive deeper in the world of Graphs and AI Agents and AI to advance Energy innovation.

Plug-and-Play AI Memory with Neo4j Knowledge Graphs & AI Agents AI agents are becoming core to modern applications, from copilots that assist knowledge workers to autonomous systems that manage complex workflows. Yet one major challenge remains: memory. Without it, agents lose context, forget past interactions, and often hallucinate - undermining trust and reliability. In this session, you’ll learn how to use a plug-and-play Neo4j knowledge graph as a powerful memory layer for your AI agents. Knowledge graphs capture not just facts, but relationships, allowing your agent to build a living model of conversations, decisions, and data over time. Combined with modern AI services, this approach helps ground responses, reduce hallucinations, and create a feedback loop where agents become more adaptive, contextual, and trustworthy. Through a live demo, we’ll show how to connect graph-powered memory into your AI workflows with minimal setup, so you can build copilots and agentic applications that don’t just respond in the moment, but remember, learn, and evolve with your users.

Zaid Zaim, Developer Advocate at Neo4j As a Developer Advocate at Neo4j, I help developers harness the power of graph technology and AI. A Microsoft MVP and global speaker at events like TED, Microsoft Build, and WeAreDevelopers, I focus on making complex tech accessible through content, community, and hands-on support. My mission is to connect, empower, and inspire developers to build impactful solutions.

Cross-Market Optimization for Batteries and Flexible Assets This presentation will provide a technical introduction to cross-market trading signal generation: continuous data ingestion, forecasting, and optimization to coordinate batteries and flexible assets across reserve, intraday, and day-ahead markets.

Gabriele Libardi, Co-Founder at Marbl. - Machine learning engineer Gabriele Libardi is a data-driven AI professional based in Vienna, currently at Marbl. With a strong foundation in knowledge graphs and applied machine learning, he focuses on leveraging semantic data architectures to drive scalable AI solutions. Gabriele thrives on bridging complex technical concepts and real-world business value, enabling smarter systems across industries.

Note that admission is based on an RSVP list and this is a small and cozy event limited to 40 places! Please make sure that you RSVP and that you have a human-like name set up on Meetup.com :)

We’ll have some food and drinks after the event.

Please note that during the event, photos might be made and later posted on VDSG’s social media page. Please notify us if you do not agree. Attention attendees with food allergies. Please be aware that the food and drinks provided may contain or come into contact with common allergens, such as dairy, eggs, wheat, soybeans, tree nuts, peanuts, fish, shellfish, or wheat. Best, The Organizer Team

News from the AI Factory Austria and Responsible Innovation with Synthetic Data

Thu, 23 Oct 2025 18:00:00 +0200

Hello Data & AI Enthusiasts,

We’re back with another exciting evening at one of our favorite venues, TUtheSky! This time, the AI Factory Austria will provide us with insights into the state of AI in Austria, its connection to EU strategy, and showcase real impact through a concrete project, implemented together with SWISDATA. We’re also thrilled to welcome a representative from MOSTLY AI, who will dive into the topic of responsible innovation with synthetic data by showing their latest open source framework.

We are grateful that this event will be sponsored by Cloudera, one of the leaders in the Data and AI industry, enabling businesses to deploy their data/streaming pipelines and AI models anywhere, be it (multi)cloud or on-premises. And a big thanks goes to our co-organizers from the AI Factory Austria, who supports researchers and companies in accessing advanced computing know-how and infrastructure for applications in life sciences among other scientific domains.

AI Factory Austria AI:AT - Building the Future of AI Together Ann-Sophie Brenk, Mara Weinblatt This keynote provides a concise overview of the current state of Artificial Intelligence in Austria: key figures, emerging trends, and the gaps and opportunities within the national AI ecosystem. It will also highlight Austria’s AI strategy, how it connects to the EU strategy, and why this matters for startups, researchers, and companies. At the center is the AI Factory Austria, its services, programs, community initiatives, and vision for the coming years. A concrete project example will demonstrate real impact and showcase AI:AT Factory’s role within the European context. Specifically, CloudShadingAI will be presented by Dr. Marian Lux, CEO of SWISDATA and AI researcher with more than 25 years of experience. This initiative, co‑funded by Austria’s FFG research agency, LuxActive KG and MetGIS GmbH combined ultra‑high‑resolution terrain data, sunlight simulation, Earth observation data from ESA with novel AI methods to deliver unprecedented short‑term forecasts of direct solar radiation.

Ann-Sophie designs business-focused workshops to support companies in navigating their AI journey within the AI Factory. She brings a background in business consulting with a strong focus on digital transformation. Mara drives community building and co-working at AI Factory AI:AT, fostering collaboration between startups, academia, and industry players in Austria’s AI ecosystem and beyond.

Data Without Barriers: Synthetic Data as a Catalyst for Responsible Innovation Paul Tiwald The ability to access and use high-quality data is becoming a key enabler and bottleneck for innovation across AI and digital systems. Yet privacy, regulation, and data scarcity continue to limit what organizations and researchers can do. Synthetic data generation is a key element in enabling private, responsible, and scalable data-driven innovation. I will walk through how generative AI models can be used to synthesize rich, realistic tabular datasets, and how these can be safely shared and used across use cases, from model and software development/testing to simulation, fairness research, and beyond. The session will include a live walkthrough of our open-source tools, showcasing how easy and accessible synthetic data generation can be today.

Paul Tiwald is Principal AI Researcher at MOSTLY AI, a Vienna-based pioneer in privacy-preserving synthetic data. After leading the company’s AI research team for several years, Paul now focuses on advancing open-source innovation, driving hands-on research, and sharing the potential of synthetic data with broader audiences. With a PhD in theoretical physics and deep expertise in generative modeling, he’s passionate about building ethical, accessible, and high-quality data solutions for the real world.

Note that admission is based on an RSVP list. Please make sure that you RSVP and that you have a human-like name set up on http://meetup.com/ :)

Important: As we will have limited seats available, please be aware that VDSG members will be prioritized!

🎤🎤 Open Mic We are going to open up the stage after the talks for community announcements. If you’d like to announce something, open this slide deck, make sure you are signed in with a google account, and click “View Only” -> “Request Edit Access”. Explain in the text box what you want to announce, and we’ll give you edit access to the slide deck. 🎤🎤 Also, please note that during the event, photos might be made and later posted on VDSG’s social media page. Please notify us if you do not agree. Attention attendees with food allergies. Please be aware that the food and drinks provided may contain or come into contact with common allergens, such as dairy, eggs, wheat, soybeans, tree nuts, peanuts, fish, shellfish, or wheat. Best, The Organizer Team

3D Scene Rendering with ML and Automating Agentic Workflows

Thu, 25 Sep 2025 18:00:00 +0200

Dear Data Enthusiasts!

We are thrilled to be back after the summer break and as usual we have amazing speakers for you. Join us at Cloudflight for insightful talks, engaging discussions and to catch up with your favorite data community.

Gaussian Splatting: Accelerating 3D Scene Rendering with Machine Learning Fabian Hagmann - Software Engineer at Cloudflight

Discover how machine learning can revolutionize the field of 3D scene reconstruction and rendering through Gaussian splatting! In this talk, we’ll explore how ML techniques are used to create high-quality, low-resource renderings from 3D data. We’ll take a look into technical opportunities and current developments. Perfect for ML enthusiasts eager to apply their skills in a new field and dip into visual computing.

Automating Support Workflows with agentic AI Anna Schrenk - Consultant @ Data Technology Marcel Dielacher – Consultant @ Data Technology

We are working on a First Level Support Assistant designed to reduce the workload of human agents by resolving routine queries autonomously. This assistant follows an agentic AI approach to automate and enhance support workflows. In the talk we will explore the technical implementation of the assistant and demonstrate how the assistant dynamically interacts with various tools and data sources to execute tasks.

Note that admission is based on an RSVP list. Please make sure that you RSVP and that you have a human-like name set up on Meetup.com

🎤🎤 Open Mic We are going to open up the stage after the talks for community announcements. If you’d like to announce something, open this slide deck, make sure you are signed in with a google account, and click “View Only” -> “Request Edit Access”. Explain in the text box what you want to announce, and we’ll give you edit access to the slide deck. 🎤🎤 Also, please note that during the event, photos might be made and later posted on VDSG’s social media page. Please notify us if you do not agree. Attention attendees with food allergies. Please be aware that the food and drinks provided may contain or come into contact with common allergens, such as dairy, eggs, wheat, soybeans, tree nuts, peanuts, fish, shellfish, or wheat. Best, The Organizer Team

Summer beer

Wed, 27 Aug 2025 18:00:00 +0200

Dear DS and AI Enthusiasts,

While our regular events are on a summer break until September, we’re not going completely silent. Join us for an informal summer gathering—no talks, no slides, just good conversations and cold drinks!

📍 Where: Strandbar Hermann 📅 When: Wednesday, 27.08 🕕 Time: From 18:00 (after work vibes)

Whether you’re into data science, AI, or just want to enjoy a beer by the water with friendly people, come hang out. Bring friends, colleagues, or just yourself!

See you there! – The VDSG Team 🍻

Knowledge Based Systems and MCP

Mon, 23 Jun 2025 18:00:00 +0200

Dear data science enthusiasts, we are happy to announce our next Meetup: Knowledge-Based Systems and MCPs – The Good! This session looks at where Knowledge-Based Systems and Model Context Protocol deployments are useful in practice, where they are easy to overstate, and what implementation tradeoffs teams should understand before adopting them.

Knowledge Based Systems Manuel Pasieka, AI Solution Architect @ Pasieka AI Solutions

Knowledge-based systems are reasoning systems that can combine structured and unstructured data. This talk explores variants from RAG-based question answering to AI agent platforms used for business process automation.

Pasieka Manuel is the CEO of Pasieka AI Solutions, that helps companies to succeed with their AI Projects, providing strategic and technical consultancy. He has a background in machine learning and distributed systems, applying both in academia and industry. In addition, Manuel hosts the Austrian Artificial Intelligence Podcast, that explores the Austrian AI Landscape through expert interviews.

MCPs - The Good Parts Zoltan Toth, Data Architecture and AI Integration expert

Model Context Protocol is widely discussed in current AI tooling. This talk gives a short introduction and shows a hands-on MCP deployment, including common pitfalls and the cases where the protocol can help.

Zoltan C. Toth is a Data Architecture and AI Integration expert with over 20 years in the field who combines hands-on engineering experience with instructional work. As a consultant for Fortune 500 companies and Professor of Practice at Central European University, he helps organizations navigate the challenges of implementing modern data and AI solutions.

Admission is based on the RSVP list. Please RSVP and use a recognizable name on Meetup.com.

Machine Learning and AI in Life Sciences

Wed, 21 May 2025 17:30:00 +0200

Hello Data & AI Enthusiasts,

Machine Learning and AI are rapidly transforming life sciences—from drug discovery to personalized medicine, healthcare delivery and medical imaging. Because of the breath of the topic we decided to invite three speakers who will give amazing talks and participate in a round table afterwards. As always there will be plenty of time for open discussions on how these technologies are shaping the future of medicine and supporting smarter data-driven decision making in healthcare. A big thanks to our co-organizers INiTS | Vienna’s High-Tech Incubator and EuroCC Austria (National Competence Centre for Supercomputing, Big Data and Artificial Intelligence) who supports researchers and companies in accessing advanced computing know-how and infrastructure for applications in life sciences among other scientific domains.

Machine Learning in Medical Imaging: Science and Clinical Impact Georg Langs, Professor of Machine Learning in Medical Imaging at Medical University of Vienna

The talk will show examples of how machine learning can deliver decision support in medicine. It will show models that can detect markers of disease, predict disease progression or treatment response, and identify possible future treatment targets. By now ML has entered clinical practice, and I will show examples of this path from research to clinical application.

Georg Langs is Full Professor of Machine Learning in Medical Imaging at the Department of Biomedical Imaging and Image-guided Therapy at the Medical University of Vienna since 2021, having been member of the faculty since 2011. He is head of the Section “Computational Imaging Research Lab (CIR)”, an interdisciplinary research unit with more than 20 researchers from Machine Learning, Radiology, Mathematics, and Computer Science. G. Langs was a Research Scientist at the Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Lab at MIT (2009 - 2011) where he remains a Research Affiliate (Boston, US), and was a post-doctoral researcher at the Applied Mathematics Laboratory at the Ecole Centrale de Paris (Paris, France). He finished his PhD in Computer Science at the Graz University of Technology in 2007, and his Master of Science in Mathematics at the Vienna University of Technology (2003). Since 2016 he is co-founder and Chief Scientist of contextflow GmbH, a spin-off of the department that is developing deep learning software to support radiologists, with an international staff of currently more than 35. G. Langs research is at the interface of machine learning and biomedical imaging. He has co-authored more than 220 peer reviewed papers cited more than 18.000 times (h-factor=51), and holds 2 granted patents in the area of medical imaging and predictive modelling. Code (co-)developed by CIR has been download more than 10.000 times. He is member of the Scientific Advisory Board of the European Institute of Biomedical Imaging Research, an Associate Faculty at the Complexity Science Hub Vienna, advisor to the IAEA and WHO led Zoonic Disease Integrated Action (ZODIAC), and Co-Coordinator for “Infrastructure and Technology” in the Austrian Platform for Personalized Medicine and has served as Area Chair at the 2021 IEEE Computer Vision and Pattern Recognition Conference.

AI in clinical practice and research: rapid tissue characterization during brain tumor surgery Georg Widhalm, Associate Professor, Neurosurgery at Medical University of Vienna

The talk will introduce a novel laser-based technique that is capable to create rapid digital images of tissue features directly in the operating room. By additional use of newly developed AI approaches, specific tumor characteristics can be automatically detected with high accuracy within few minutes during brain tumor surgery. In this talk, this new technique will be explained and novel AI approaches for clinical use and recently developed within research studies will be presented.

Georg Widhalm is Associate Professor at the Department of Neurosurgery at the Medical University of Vienna. He is Head of the Section for Neurosurgical Oncology and Director of the interdisciplinary neurooncological tumor board at the Comprehensive Cancer Center (CCC) at the Medical University of Vienna. Since 2014, he is also the Chair of the Section for Neurosurgical Oncology (ANCO) of the Austrian Neurosurgical Oncology Society (ÖGNC). In 2012, he received the Venia Docendi for Neurosurgery at the Medical University of Vienna. In 2013, he finished his PhD in Clinical Neuroscience. Between 2016 and 2017 he completed a research stay at the Department of Neurosurgery at the University of California, San Francisco. He is leader of multiple research groups at the Medical University Vienna and his research focus is neurosurgical oncology, fluorescence-guided procedures and AI based techniques in neurosurgery. He has co-authored more than 200 peer reviewed papers cited approximately 10.000 times (h-factor=52). Moreover, he is Board member of the Austrian Science Fund (FWF) and serves as advisor for Neuroscience. Furthermore, he is member of the Section for Neurosurgery at the European Organization for Research and Treatment of Cancer (EORTC) and Scientific Committee of the European Association of Neuro-Oncology (EANO).

Tomorrow Trustworthy AI in Healthcare is made today Yudan Lin, Data Science Associate Director at Takeda

Have you ever wonder how to build GenAI solutions in a super regulated environment? While big tech companies further enter the space of healthcare with advanced AI and digital technologies, it is without doubt that this is also a major opportunity, depending on how traditional players respond. Discover how Takeda is transforming healthcare with advanced AI techniques like predictive modeling and non-invasive monitoring. Learn about the groundbreaking MIT-Takeda AI Program and the development of in-house GenAI tools. This session offers a glimpse into the future of healthcare, driven by AI innovations and Takeda’s commitment to excellence.

Yudan Lin is the Data Science Associate Director at Takeda, where she leads the company’s focus on realizing the promise of Digital Transformation and AI pipeline. She plays a key role in fostering partnerships and building connections within the AI network, as well as with educational institutions and digital communities. With more than 12 years of experience in Data Science and AI across multiple industries, Yudan possesses expertise in agile program management, innovation management, design thinking, and entrepreneurship. She is also the founder of the Unexpected Data podcast, where she embodies a leadership philosophy centered on motivating individuals through distinct and captivating episodes. Her ambition is to serve as an authentic leader, valuing open and honest feedback, empowering teams, making crisp decisions, and being a role model of the values she advocates. Through her venture Gini-X, Yudan helps organizations transform privacy regulations into new avenues for data-driven innovations and human-centric disruptors, promoting the concept of Human Business for Human Profit.

! Note that admission is based on an RSVP list. Please make sure that you RSVP and that you have a human-like name set up on [Meetup.com](http://meetup.com/) :)

Important: As we will have limited seats available, please be aware that VDSG members will be prioritized!

Bayesian modelling and LLM endpoint magic

Mon, 28 Apr 2025 18:00:00 +0200

Hi Data Enthusiasts,

We are super excited that, this time, the focus lies on projects from within our community. Join us @ CEU and to find out what Bayesian modelling has to do with structural voting bias at the Eurovision Song Context and how a LLM side project can transform into a startup idea! Expect more technical presentations when our two speakers guide you through their journeys of their personal projects.

Bayesian modelling of structural bias in Eurovision Song Contest voting Max Beauchez, full stack developer at Schrankerl

This talk will demonstrate Bayesian statistical modeling using PyMC through a re-implementation of a 2014 paper analyzing structural bias in Eurovision Song Contest voting. The presentation will cover a brief primer to Bayesian modelling, model formulation, implementation in PyMC, and interpretation of results. Practical code examples will illustrate how to build and evaluate Bayesian models for complex data. The session is designed for data practitioners interested in probabilistic programming applications.

Max is a full stack developer at Schrankerl with previous experience as a data scientist at Level.works and Kendaxa. His technical expertise includes Python, Java, TypeScript/JavaScript, statistical modeling, and machine learning, with a focus on developing predictive algorithms and data pipelines. Max holds a Master’s in Bio-Engineering Sciences from Ghent University and has conducted research internships across Europe, the US, and India. He is fluent in multiple languages including Dutch, English, French, Spanish, and working on his German after moving to Vienna last year.

From Side Project to Stack: Multi-Agent LLMs in a Rapidly Evolving Ecosystem Gernot Greimler, CEO & Founder of Data Prospectors

In this talk, I share lessons from building a multi-agent system with LLMs – starting as a hobby project and evolving into a near-production-ready stack. It’s a hands-on journey through today’s fast-moving LLM ecosystem: from low-code tools to agent frameworks, API orchestration, and the real-world trade-offs between speed, flexibility, and complexity.

Gernot is a Vienna-based IT professional with over 20 years of experience in the data and software space. While a coder at heart, he has spent the past 10 years in managerial roles, leading data-driven projects across the banking, telecom, and startup sectors. His work spans data architecture, project delivery, and technology strategy, with a strong focus on bridging the gap between technical implementation and business value. He is the founder of Data Prospectors, an independent consultancy for scalable, data-centric IT solutions.

! Note that admission is based on an RSVP list. Please make sure that you RSVP and that you have a human-like name set up on Meetup.com :)

Also, please note that during the event, photos might be made and later posted on VDSG’s or CEU’s social media page. Please notify us if you do not agree.

AI-Powered Innovation: Breaking Barriers in Communication & Travel

Thu, 27 Mar 2025 18:00:00 +0100

Dear Data Enthusiasts,

Join us on the 27th of March at the Infocenter U2-5 of Wiener Linien at Museum Quartier, to explore how AI improves human interaction and engagement—whether through personalized travel content or real-time translation — by making experiences more efficient and accessible. 🚀

Breaking Communication Barriers in a Multilingual Workplace: Bi-Directional Live Translation of Mobile Phone Calls Fabian Greger, Full Stack LLM Dev. Sr. Analyst, Accenture DACH

Imagine making a phone call to someone who speaks a different language and understanding each other effortlessly. This project brings that vision to life by enabling real-time, bi-directional translation of mobile phone calls. Designed to help people communicate smoothly across language barriers. By harnessing the power of modern AI, this solution transforms challenging multilingual interactions into natural, inclusive, and efficient conversations—making communication truly borderless.

Fabian Greger is an aspiring expert in the field of ML&Data Science, with an enthusiasm for everything AI-related, but also a critical eye for matters of AI-safety, -security and -compliance. He has a broad range of experience with algorithms and systems including ML&GenAI, Agile, DevOps & MLOps, AI-Solution Architecture, Data Analysis & -Visualization, Industry Automation …acquired in project cooperations with companies in the scientific, public & banking sector. Currently, Fabian aims to extend his technical knowledge and experience while also looking to new horizons like Enterprise Architecture & Strategy in the context of Artificial Intelligence. His passions outside of work revolve around socializing, teaching and taking on nightshifts as a paramedic for the Austrian Red Cross.

AI-Powered Content Generation in Travel: Innovation in Action Jie Zheng, Technology Team Lead, Innovation Lab, TUI

AI-driven content generation is transforming travel, enhancing engagement, personalization, and efficiency. Successful implementation goes beyond advanced models—it requires strategic alignment, ethical consideration, and scalable implementation for long-term success. In this talk, Jie Zheng will share how AI is transforming customer experiences in travel and key challenges that arise in ensuring quality, brand alignment, and seamless integration. This talk explores AIOps for scaling AI-generated content, covering key differences from traditional strategies and critical components like design, data preparation, model selection, monitoring, and optimization.

Jie Zheng is a technology leader bridging travel, hospitality, and AI. She leads TUI’s Innovation Lab, turning AI-driven solutions into real-world impact. With expertise in operations and AI, she fosters collaboration, driving AI applications that expand possibilities and create impact. Passionate about innovation, she invites like-minded professionals to connect, exchange insights, and collaborate.

! Note that admission is based on an RSVP list. Please make sure that you RSVP and that you have a human-like name set up on Meetup.com :)

🎤🎤 Open Mic We are going to open up the stage after the talks for community announcements. If you’d like to announce something, open this slide deck, make sure you are signed in with a google account, and click “View Only” -> “Request Edit Access”. Explain in the text box what you want to announce, and we’ll give you edit access to the slide deck. 🎤🎤 Also, please note that during the event, photos might be made and later posted on VDSG’s or EuroCC’s social media page. Please notify us if you do not agree. Attention attendees with food allergies. Please be aware that the food and drinks provided may contain or come into contact with common allergens, such as dairy, eggs, wheat, soybeans, tree nuts, peanuts, fish, shellfish, or wheat.

Best, The Organizer Team

Hackathon: Whatt’s up? Hacking for Energy Efficiency

Sat, 22 Feb 2025 09:00:00 +0100

Description In the frame of the EU project MODERATE, we invite you to form a team, sharpen your data science skills, and participate in the 2nd MODERATE Hackathon focused on building energy efficiency. Link to the Hackathon website.

This hackathon is jointly organized by the VSC Research Center, TU Wien, dataLAB, EuroCC Austria, the Vienna Data Science Group, the EU project MODERATE, and e-think energy research, and will address an important way to improve building suistanability and reduce GHG emissions.

Background In Europe, the building sector is responsible for 40% of energy consumption and 36% of greenhouse gas emissions. Improving energy efficiency in buildings is crucial to achieving sustainability goals. However, a significant obstacle remains access to quality data for training machine learning models. GDPR compliance and privacy concerns limit the availability of real-world energy datasets, posing challenges for researchers and innovators.

Synthetic data offers a groundbreaking solution by enabling the creation of realistic, privacy-preserving datasets. These simulated datasets can mimic energy consumption patterns in residential and commercial buildings, providing the foundation for developing innovative models and solutions to optimize energy usage.

Dataset and challenge Participants will work with a time series dataset representing building energy consumption. Generating reliable synthetic data enables secure, GDPR-compliant usage while preserving privacy.

Who can participate The event is open to individuals or teams of up to 4 people.

Hackathon format The Hackathon is in presence at the main building of the Technical University of Vienna. Food and drinks are provided by the organizers, and participants have the possibility to sleep over at the University.

Server All participants will get a temporary user account on VSC to have access to the server.

Registration To register click on this link. Note that enrollment is mandatory to participate in the Hackathon, as each participant will receive an account to access the supercomputer server.

Award prizes Amazon vouchers will be awarded to the top three teams.

Acknowledgments This hackathon is partially funded by the MODERATE and EuroCC 2 project

The Vienna Scientific Cluster and the path to AI Sovereignty

Wed, 29 Jan 2025 18:00:00 +0100

Dear Data Enthusiasts,

Join us on 29th of January @ the Vienna Scientific Cluster (VSC), TU Wien for the 2025 kick-off. As the dependency on global big players in IT, AI and computing infrastructure is increasing, we want to give you some perspectives on local alternatives. Together with EuroCC we will explore the capabilities of the VSC and how you can effortless utilize it’s resources. However, apart from the pure infrastructure, there are a lot more aspects that need to be addressed by companies and institutions in the EU on the path to AI Sovereignty. Hear all the details from our two speakers!

But wait, there is more! This meetup takes place at the data center hosting the VSC supercomputers and you will have the chance to participate in a guided tour after the talks (also including the new system MUSICA that hasn’t been opened to the public yet)!

AI Sovereignty - A potential way forward for Europe Jakob Reiter, entrepreneur, developer, digital humanist and the founder of Mimirio In an era where artificial intelligence is reshaping industries and economies worldwide, Europe stands at a crossroads. The concept of AI sovereignty offers a promising path forward, emphasizing the importance of technological independence, data control, and ethical innovation. As global tech giants continue to dominate the landscape, Europe’s unique values and regulatory frameworks present both a challenge and an opportunity to carve out a distinct role in the AI ecosystem. This talk explores the practicalities and possibilities of achieving AI sovereignty, outlining the technical foundations and collaborative efforts necessary to empower Europe to lead with integrity and innovation in the digital age. Jakob Reiter is an entrepreneur, developer, and digital humanist based in Vienna. As the founder of Mimirio, he focuses on simplifying knowledge and amplifying actions through private AI technologies tailored for European medium to enterprise businesses. With over 15 years of experience, Jakob blends his technical expertise with a passion for business, law, and ethical system design, striving to enhance carbon-based with silicon-based intelligence.

When Data Gets Too Big: Supercomputing Solutions Markus Stöhr, HPC expert at Vienna Scientific Cluster and project manager of National HPC Competence Centre EuroCC Austria As data grows exponentially, traditional tools often hit their limits in handling the scale, complexity, and speed required for data-intensive tasks. Whether it’s analyzing massive datasets or training advanced AI models, sooner or later, a laptop or local infrastructure just isn’t enough — that’s where supercomputers come in. This talk will introduce the Vienna Scientific Cluster (VSC), Austria’s flagship supercomputing infrastructure, and explore how high-performance computing (HPC) can address performance-related challenges for researchers, developers, and data professionals. Markus, with 20 years of experience in HPC, has helped countless researchers leverage national HPC systems. Now, as the leader of Austria’s national HPC competence center, he also supports startups and SMEs in utilizing publicly available supercomputers in Austria and all over Europe.

! Note that admission is based on an RSVP list. Please make sure that you RSVP and that you have a human-like name set up on Meetup.com :)

🎤🎤 Open Mic We are going to open up the stage after the talks for community announcements. If you’d like to announce something, open this slide deck, make sure you are signed in with a google account, and click “View Only” -> “Request Edit Access”. Explain in the text box what you want to announce, and we’ll give you edit access to the slide deck. 🎤🎤 Also, please note that during the event, photos might be made and later posted on VDSG’s or EuroCC’s social media page. Please notify us if you do not agree. Attention attendees with food allergies. Please be aware that the food and drinks provided may contain or come into contact with common allergens, such as dairy, eggs, wheat, soybeans, tree nuts, peanuts, fish, shellfish, or wheat.

Best, The Organizer Team

Data Analytics in Business Jamboree with Meta, Red Bull, Chess.com & more

Fri, 10 Jan 2025 15:00:00 +0100

On top of RSVP here, please note that registration is required on the dedicated event page

Vienna Data Science Group and the Department of Economics of Central European University are excited to organise the first Data Analytics in Business Jamboree in Vienna on Friday, 2025 January 10, 3pm to 8pm.

The Jamboree brings together Analysts, Engineers, Data Scientists and Managers working in Business from Big Tech to startups to talk about their coolest analytics projects. The event is sponsored by CEU’s 1-year US and Austria-accredited Masters in Business Analytics program.

During the afternoon, there will be three talks on experiences of executing data analytics projects in business, three quick intros of projects by alumni, and roundtable discussions on AI in Analytics. The keynote address will be about managing data science teams, by Eduardo de la Rubia, Data Science Lead at Meta and Lecturer at CEU. The Jamboree will include a data job market open mic, where companies can briefly advertise positions, internships. A wine and cheese reception at the end will make it more fun.

Schedule 14.45-15.00 Registration: coffee

15.00-16.05 Analytics in Business part I Chair: Francesca Conselvan (e-think, CEU)

15.00 Gábor Békés (Associate Professor, CEU) Welcome address 15.05 Ryan McCabe (Director of Analytics, Chess.com, ex-Spotify) What makes a Spotify playlist successful? 16.30 Dries Trippas (Head of Data Science –Growth, Red Bull) - “Are you playing the right game?” 16.55 Lisa Lang ( senior data scientist, neoom, ex-CEU) - “Building GRIID the intelligent energy management system”

16.05-16.30 Break: networking, coffee, fruits and cookies

16.30-17.30 Analytics in Business - Part II Chair: Zoltán Tóth (CEU, VDSG)

16.30 Julia Zukrigl (Consultant, Data Story Lab): “Perception and misconceptions of data projects by stakeholders” 16.55 Gergely Daróczi (Founder/CEO, SpareCores, CEU): “From idea to product: creating SpareCores” 17.05 Naida Dzigal (IT Data strategist, Raiffeisen International, ex-CEU) 17.15 Job Market Open Mic

17.25-17.45 Break: soft drinks

17.45-19.00 Data science and AI on organizations (STREAMED) Chair: Gábor Békés (CEU)

17.45 Eduardo de la Rubia (Senior Director of Data Science, Meta and CEU) “Managing data science teams“ 18.20 Roundtable: GenAI’s impact in Analytics Gábor Békés (CEU, moderator) * Wolfgang Weidinger (Head of Data Science & AI Lab, Generali Austria and Chairman, VDSG) * Wolfgang Brunauer (Co-Founder/CEO, Data Science Services) * Shirley Werchota (SVP Data, Ai & GenAI, Orange Business) 19.00-20.30 Reception, “wine and cheese”

🎤🎤 Open Mic We are going to open up the stage at 17:15 for a Job Market Open Mic. If you have work positions you want to advertise, you can come on stage to deliver a one-minute pitch. If you wish to do so, open this slide deck, make sure you are signed in with a Google account, and click “View Only” -> “Request Edit Access”. Explain what you want to announce in the text box, and we’ll give you edit access to the slide deck. 🎤🎤

------------------------------------------------------- Attention attendees with food allergies. Please be aware that the food and drinks provided may contain or come into contact with common allergens, such as dairy, eggs, wheat, soybeans, tree nuts, peanuts, fish, shellfish, or wheat.

Please note that during the event, photos might be made and later posted on VDSG or CEUs behalf.

Best, Your Vienna Data Science Group Team

GenAI and unlocking opportunities

Thu, 05 Dec 2024 18:00:00 +0100

Dear Data Enthusiasts,

Join us once again at Crayon on the 5th of December to dive deeper into the current world of GenAI.

Beyond Stable Diffusion: Breaking New Ground in AI Image Generation 2024 In just two years, AI image generation has evolved from a niche research topic to a technology that’s reshaping creative industries worldwide, enabling anyone to manifest their imagination with a simple text prompt. While early models struggled with basic compositions and human anatomy, today’s systems can create photorealistic imagery, complex scenes, and even maintain consistent characters across multiple generations. Beyond the widely known Stable Diffusion and DALL-E models, a new wave of architectural innovations is pushing the boundaries of what’s possible - from lightning-fast one-shot generation to remarkably compact models that run on consumer hardware. These advancements aren’t just incremental improvements; they represent fundamental shifts in how we approach image synthesis, using breakthrough concepts like flow matching, diffusion transformers, and linear attention mechanisms. In this talk, we’ll explore these developments that are setting the stage for the next generation of AI image creation, making it faster, more efficient, and more accessible than ever before.

Mouhannad Ali, PhD, Senior ML Engineer Mouhannad is an AI and machine learning expert with over 15 years of experience in academia and industry. His work spans transportation, healthcare, and financial services, focusing on AI/ML applications and product development. With a strong track record of innovation, he has led impactful projects in both research and industry, solving complex real-world challenges with advanced data science techniques.

Julius Duin, ML Engineer Intern Julius started their journey in psychology and computer science before diving into neuroscience, bringing a unique perspective to technology and human behavior. After co-founding a fitness tech startup focused on motion tracking in gyms, he discovered another passion at the intersection of computer vision and machine learning. Today, he’s an ML engineer who’s particularly fascinated by computer vision and robotics, drawing interesting parallels between artificial systems and their neuroscience background.

Shaping the future: unlocking opportunities with the generation of synthetic data While machine learning (ML) and artificial intelligence (AI) offer transformative potential, a significant barrier remains: access to quality data. GDPR compliance adds complexity, limiting the availability of real-world datasets essential for training robust algorithms. Synthetic data presents a powerful solution to safely share data and comply with GDPR. In this talk, we’ll explore how we set up a Conditional Generative Adversarial Networks (cGANs) to generate synthetic load profiles. By simulating realistic energy consumption patterns without compromising privacy, we’ve been able to create high-quality, compliant data that fuels AI models. These synthetic load profiles are crucial for optimizing energy usage, helping to drive significant improvements in energy efficiency across buildings.

Philipp Mascherbauer, PhD student at Technical University of Vienna Philipp is a research associate and PhD candidate at the Energy Economics Group (EEG), which he joined in August 2020 after earning his master’s degree in Mechanical Engineering from TU Wien. His work centers on modeling energy demand in European residential buildings, with a particular focus on the impact of the rising share of prosumers in the sector.

Francesca Conselvan, Researcher at e-think energy research Francesca is what we can actually call a data science enthusiast. She has a cross-disciplinary background, which spans from research evaluation and publishing to artificial intelligence. In the past 8 years, she has been working as a data analyst and holds several collaborations in data science. At e-think she is responsible for data analysis, prediction models and generation of synthetic data.

! Note that admission is based on an RSVP list and this is a small and cozy event limited to 25 places! Please make sure that you RSVP and that you have a human-like name set up on Meetup.com :)

Following the presentations, enjoy snacks, drinks, and great conversation.

Please note that during the event, photos might be made and later posted on VDSG’s. Please notify us if you do not agree.

Best, Your Vienna Data Science Group Team

Multi LLM Strategies and LLM based Low-Code Development

Tue, 22 Oct 2024 18:00:00 +0200

Hi Data Enthusiasts,

Join us once again @ CEU to dive deeper into the current possibilities of LLMs, this time covering the strategic values of multi-LLM systems as well as a hands-on showcase on LLM enhanced software development. Hear all the details from our two amazing speakers:

The Power of Many: Leveraging Multi-LLM Strategies for Better AI Products Roland Boubela, co-Founder Hinetra FlexCo, Advisor and Angel Investor Knowing that various LLMs have different strengths and weaknesses, when building AI systems using only a single one of them may lead to limitations ranging from blind spots, model bias to suboptimal cost-benefit tradeoff. This talk delves into the integration of multiple Large Language Models (LLMs) to improve the performance and quality of AI products. We will discuss scenarios when such a setup is advisable, as well as the benefits that can be gained from multi-LLM systems, as well as provide practical insights and implementation examples of multi-agent systems. The talk is geared towards both AI enthusiasts and experienced data scientists, prior experience with building AI agent based systems is not required (but of course doesn’t hurt).

Roland is an entrepreneur and angel investor focusing on AI ventures. In 2017, he co-founded the synthetic data company MOSTLY AI, where he held the role of CTO until 2021. Since then, he has been active as advisor and angel investor. His current company, Hinetra, is focused on consultancy for local and international clients.

Developer’s Guide to Low-Code: Building eCommerce Apps with Ease Vitalii Konnov, .NET Full-Stack Developer @ First Line Software | eCommerce & FinTech Specialist | AI Enthusiast This talk will dive into the fascinating world of custom GPT models. Our speaker will craft different models, each designed for different facets of development, and use them to build a simple eCommerce application. Prepare to be amazed as he demonstrates how a fully functional web application can come to life with minimal coding effort. Additionally, he will also explain the problems solved during development and the current shortcomings of AI assistants. Don’t miss this opportunity to delve into this AI-driven software development showcase!

Vitalii Konnov is a .Net developer with extensive experience in commercial projects, specializing in leveraging AI to optimize and accelerate workflows.

! Note that admission is based on an RSVP list. Please make sure that you RSVP and that you have a human-like name set up on Meetup.com :)

🎤🎤 Open Mic We are going to open up the stage after the talks for community announcements. If you’d like to announce something, open this slide deck, make sure you are signed in with a google account, and click “View Only” -> “Request Edit Access”. Explain in the text box what you want to announce, and we’ll give you edit access to the slide deck. 🎤🎤 Also, please note that during the event, photos might be made and later posted on VDSG’s or CEU’s social media page. Please notify us if you do not agree. Attention attendees with food allergies. Please be aware that the food and drinks provided may contain or come into contact with common allergens, such as dairy, eggs, wheat, soybeans, tree nuts, peanuts, fish, shellfish, or wheat.

Best, The Organizer Team

Knowledge Graphs in GenAI and Visualization techniques @ TU Wien

Wed, 18 Sep 2024 18:00:00 +0200

Dear Data Enthusiasts,

We are excited to have another focus event, this time about Graph Databases. Learn about the relevance of knowledge graphs for Gen AI and how proper graph visualization is critical to understand your data.

Don’t miss your chance and join us on 18.09., 18:00 @ **TU Wien Böcklsaal **to dive deeper into this topic with two amazing speakers! We thank INiTS | Vienna’s High-Tech Incubator for the collaboration and Neo4j for providing food and drinks!

A Field Guide to Knowledge Graphs used in GenAI Andreas Kolleger, Lead for GenAI Innovation at Neo4j Join us for an exhilarating journey into the world of Knowledge Graphs within Generative AI! Graphs are the hidden backbone of GenAI applications, surfacing everywhere from the AI models themselves to intricate vector indexes and, of course, as fundamental tools for knowledge representation. We will uncover graphs’ pervasive presence, delve into their diverse forms, and reveal how they weave together to form a vast, interconnected “graph of graphs.” Whether you’re a seasoned professional or just beginning your adventure in GenAI, this session promises to deepen your understanding and spark new insights into the critical role of knowledge graphs.

Andreas is a technological humanist. Starting at NASA, he designed systems from scratch to support science missions. Then in Zambia, he built medical informatics systems that complement technology with social good. Now with Neo4j, he is democratizing graph databases which elevate understanding by emphasizing relationships.

Graph Visualization and Diagramming: The why and the how Sebastian Müller, CTO of yWorks This presentation will provide an insightful introduction to graph visualization and diagramming, featuring diverse real-world use cases from Sebastian’s extensive career. Attendees will learn about a suite of free tools specifically designed for data scientists and database engineers, e.g. working with Neo4J Graph Databases. Additionally, Sebastian will offer a glimpse into the cutting-edge possibilities available to software developers interested in creating custom visualization applications. Discover how the power of visual graph representation can enhance your data science projects and your daily work.

Sebastian brings over two decades of expertise in graph visualization and diagramming to this presentation. With a diploma in Computer Science from the University of Tübingen, Sebastian has collaborated with global clients across various industries, helping them visualize complex connected data.

*** We are aware that we are again conflicting with the Data Engineering Meetup. While we are trying to avoid it as much as possible, unfortunately sometimes we don’t have a choice.

🎤🎤 Open Mic We are going to open up the stage after the talks for community announcements. If you’d like to announce something, open this slide deck, make sure you are signed in with a google account, and click “View Only” -> “Request Edit Access”. Explain in the text box what you want to announce, and we’ll give you edit access to the slide deck. 🎤🎤 Also, please note that during the event, photos might be made and later posted on VDSG’s social media page. Please notify us if you do not agree. Attention attendees with food allergies. Please be aware that the food and drinks provided may contain or come into contact with common allergens, such as dairy, eggs, wheat, soybeans, tree nuts, peanuts, fish, shellfish, or wheat.

VDSG Summer Drinks 2024

Tue, 27 Aug 2024 18:30:00 +0200

Hello, fellow data enthusiasts,

Our summer break is almost over, but before we start our regular Meetups in September, let’s have another informal get-together.

Come and join us for a chat at Strandbar Herrmann. The format will be the same as last time: Arrive, Order, Chat.

Once you arrive, look for familiar faces or simply for a group of happy data scientists. In case you cannot find us, please come to our Slack Channel #2024-08-27-summer-drinks

You can join Slack via: https://join.slack.com/t/vdsg/shared_invite/zt-27vr0bbu9-n4qnwWKDcguDQDihVYjmGw

Looking forward seeing you there,

The VDSG Meetup Organizers

AI Governance and Test-driven LLM Productionalization @ Iteratec

Mon, 17 Jun 2024 18:00:00 +0200

Dear Data Enthusiasts,

We will continue talking about LLMs and AI Governance in the next Meetup. Join us @ Iteratec on 17.06. to learn more about the specific challenges and approaches when trying to fight model bias, data drift and LLM hallucination. In addition, we will talk about lessons learned when testing LLM based conversational AI systems.

ML Governance, Trustworthy AI and Implications for LLMs Thomas Jirku, IBM - Sr. Technical Sales Data Science & AI We all have seen what happens when LLMs hallucinate, algorithms wrongly predict the obvious - what are the challenges and what can we do in practice to increase trust in AI systems to mitigate associated risks putting AI in production, and set the right level of expectations on both sides, providers and consumers.

Thomas is a certified Data Scientist & Technical Sales / Solution Architect in the Technical Sales team of Data Science & AI at IBM. He has been advising customers in Austria on the secure implementation of AI projects since 2015. Importantly, IBMs approach for AI governance and trustworthiness goes beyond the technical tooling but challenges Data teams to think about the whole end-to-end integration and maintenance of ML models.

No baseline? No benchmarks? No biggie! Lessons learned testing LLM-based conversational AI systems Katherine Munro, Swisscom - Data Scientist, Computational Linguist (Remote) What happens when you take a working chatbot that’s already serving thousands of customers a day in four different languages, and try to deliver an even better experience using Large Language Models? Good question. It’s well known that evaluating and comparing LLMs is tricky. Benchmark datasets can be hard to come by for your specific task, and metrics such as BLEU and ROUGE are imperfect. But that’s all rather academic; How are industry data teams tackling these issues when incorporating LLMs into production projects? In my work as a Conversational AI Engineer at Switzerland’s largest telecommunications provider, I’m doing exactly that. So join me and learn:

The challenges of evaluating an evolving PoC against a working product: how to compare their fundamentally different ways of working, and to identify metrics that fairly assess both.
How we’re using different types of testing at different stages of the PoC-to-production process: including inter-team code swaps, scaled up simulations and experiments with real customers.
Practical pros and cons of different test types, and when to be precious versus pragmatic about data science testing fundamentals
Wins, losses and WTF moments: Open questions, lessons learned, and our evolving set of testing best practices.

Whether you’re a data leader, product manager, or deep in the trenches building LLM-powered solutions yourself, come along and take away some ideas, warnings, and inspiration from our test-driven approach to building production-ready conversational AI.

Katherine is a Data Scientist and Computational Linguist, conducting R&D and strategy consulting in AI, Natural Language Processing (NLP) and data science. She is a speaker, writer, teacher, and passionate workaholic. Entering the tech world with R&D roles at Mercedes-Benz and the Fraunhofer Institute, specialising in user interfaces and Natural Language Understanding, Katherine transitioned to data science in the e-commerce and insurance domains, before landing her current role building conversational AI systems. In her free time, Katherine is a tech blogger, a LinkedIn Learning trainer, and a volunteer for diverse initiatives helping women and girls enter tech careers.

🎤🎤 Open Mic We are going to open up the stage after the talks for community announcements. If you’d like to announce something, open this slide deck, make sure you are signed in with a google account, and click “View Only” -> “Request Edit Access”. Explain in the text box what you want to announce, and we’ll give you edit access to the slide deck. 🎤🎤 Also, please note that during the event, photos might be made and later posted on VDSG’s or Magenta’s social media page. Please notify us if you do not agree. Attention attendees with food allergies. Please be aware that the food and drinks provided may contain or come into contact with common allergens, such as dairy, eggs, wheat, soybeans, tree nuts, peanuts, fish, shellfish, or wheat.

LLM Deep dive: Part 2 + Apache Spark @ Cloudflight

Tue, 21 May 2024 18:00:00 +0200

Dear Data Enthusiasts,

The recent breakthroughs of LLMs and generative AI have hugely influenced the way we think about machine learning and it’s potential applications. We are dedicating this Part 2 of the LLM focus series to a topic which is not getting enough attention when developing ML use cases. Aside from the pure technical challenges, there is an increasing need for ML models to be well governed, trustworthy, unbiased and explainable. To address these (and many more) issues, the EU has recently adopted the AI Act in order to establish a legal framework.

Join us @ Cloudflight on 21.05. to learn about the recent developments and what their implications are on the possibilities of and requirements on ML and LLM models. It is our pleasure to present you two extremely experienced speakers in this field.

The impact of the AI Act on ML and LLMs Alexandra Ciarnau is Co-Head of DORDA’s Digital Industries Group specialized in IT/IP and Data Protection. She advises clients in innovative digitalisation projects in the field of artificial intelligence, blockchain, VR/XR, platforms, data driven business models, outsourcing and green tech. Her strength is that she covers all relevant legal fields, often acts as a single point of contact for client and strongly considers business aspects. Alexandra is further board member of Women in AI Austria and contributes to the policy team. Thereby, she considers ethical and socio-economic such as inclusiveness and bias in the tech field and provides recommendations on how to overcome these hurdles.

Cost Efficient Data Pipelines in Apache Spark Georg Heiler, Magenta Telekom / TU Wien Spark-based data PaaS solutions are convenient. But they come with their own set of challenges such as a high vendor lock-in and obscured costs. We show how to use a dedicated orchestrator (dagster-pipes). It can not only make Databricks an implementation detail but also save cost. Also, it improves developer productivity. It allows you to take back control.

🎤🎤 Open Mic We are going to open up the stage after the talks for community announcements. If you’d like to announce something, open this slide deck, make sure you are signed in with a google account, and click “View Only” -> “Request Edit Access”. Explain in the text box what you want to announce, and we’ll give you edit access to the slide deck. 🎤🎤 Also, please note that during the event, photos might be made and later posted on VDSG’s or Magenta’s social media page. Please notify us if you do not agree. Attention attendees with food allergies. Please be aware that the food and drinks provided may contain or come into contact with common allergens, such as dairy, eggs, wheat, soybeans, tree nuts, peanuts, fish, shellfish, or wheat.

Joint Event with R-Ladies - GOLEM 3 Hours Workshop at the TU

Fri, 19 Apr 2024 16:00:00 +0200

Halli, Hallo hier. This time is your Mari Plaza, the co-founder of the Data Science Cafe in 2017.

I will host with R-Ladies and represent the Vienna Data Science Group VDSG a 3-Hours Golem Workshop at the TU on 19th April 2024. As a group, we are preparing a LOT of cool stuff for you that would be happening even BEFORE this event. I am announcing this first just because it is a joint event with the great Meet-Up of the R-Ladies.

On 5th February I did an introduction with no questions allowed about Golem which is a DEVELOPMENT FRAMEWORK in R to program ShinyApps as R Packages preparing yourself for Production. In this beautiful Framework, we could go deeper into real Software Engineering Concepts that I have learned from my terrific colleagues at the VDSG and it is why we decided to do this event together R-Ladies and VDSG.

I will be your only host from VDSG that day, and you are more than welcome to come as soon you are interested in R (you don’t need to be a lady but expect several of us there :) )

Bring your computer IT IS A MUST, and your willingness to learn and also share what you have learned.

Looking forward to seeing you there and stay tuned VDSG is quite active.

AGENDA: 4:00 - 5:00 PM - Presentation about the concepts and preparation before coding. 5:00 - 7:00 PM - Following step-by-step the coding of a simple Golem - Shiny App.

Expect a lot of material in advance through the chat of this event.

LLM Deep Dive: Part 1

Thu, 18 Apr 2024 18:30:00 +0000

Direct link to join the event: https://www.meetup.com/vienna-data-science-group-meetup/events/299725197/

In this event, we’ll delve into the fascinating world of Large Language Models (LLMs) and how they’re shaping the future of AI. Here’s what you can expect:

🔍 State-of-the-Art Designs: Don’t just engineer prompts, engineer workflows! Klaudius Kalcher will take you through typical designs such as Retrieval Augmented Generation (RAG) and self-correction loops. Get insights into how these models are already being utilized today.

⚒ Live Demo: Let’s build our own ChatGPT in 30 minutes! Zoltan Toth will demonstrate how you can build an AI chatbot from scratch in no time! Learn how to leverage local LLMs, Huggingface, and ChainLit to create powerful conversational agents. Whether you’re a seasoned data scientist or just starting, this event offers valuable insights and practical knowledge that you won’t want to miss! Don’t miss this opportunity to expand your skills and network with fellow data science enthusiasts.

LLM Deep dive: Part 1 @ Magenta Telekom

Thu, 18 Apr 2024 18:00:00 +0200

Dear Data Enthusiasts,

The recent break throughs of LLMs and generative AI have hugely influenced the way we think about machine learning and it’s potential applications. To address the potentials and challenges that come with such paradigm shift, we have decided to organize a focus series about in the upcoming months. In the upcoming Part 1 @ Magenta Telekom, you will learn how LLMs are already used today and how you can make the most of it!

We are super excited to present you with two incredible speakers who can provide an expert perspective on the matter, going beyond the hype and buzzwords.

Zoom for online attendance: https://ceu-edu.zoom.us/j/96857211595?pwd=WkVPWkJuQ29BVUhBeVgzNWdMZFFJZz09

Don’t just engineer prompts, engineer workflows! Klaudius Kalcher, Entrepreneur and Angel Investor

Despite the increasing prevalence of LLMs in our daily lives and most users’ increasing awareness of their capabilities and weaknesses, many workflows are still built on a simple single-query approach. In the meantime, the tooling to build systems that cater more to the strengths of the underlying models has improved immensely, ranging from libraries to no-code platforms, making it easy to build systems using even the most sophisticated methods. In this talk, we will provide a high level overview of some typical state of the art designs like Retrieval Augmented Generation (RAG) and self-correction loops, and explore practical application using a real-world example.

Klaudius Kalcher is an entrepreneur and angel investor focusing on AI ventures. He received a PhD in Medical Physics in 2014, working on machine learning analysis tools. In 2017, he co-founded the synthetic data company MOSTLY AI, where he held the role of Chief Data Scientist until 2022. Since then, he has been active as advisor and angel investor.

Let’s build our own ChatGPT in 30 minutes! Zoltan Toth, Freelance MLOps Consultant

What if you wanted to build your custom and private LLM Chatbot locally? In this live demo, you will see how you can build an AI chatbot from scratch in no time using local LLMs, Huggingface, and ChainLit. We’ll grab an LLM Model like Meta’s Llama2, convert it into a chat agent, and build a simple UI around it..live on stage. The coding environment and the code will be made available after the talk.

Zoltan is a freelance Data Architect and MLOps Solutions Architect. He has worked on topics ranging from Data Engineering through MLOps to Scalable Machine Learning Systems, delivering projects for several Fortune 500 clients globally. He also teaches big data computing at CEU and is a board member of VDSG.

🎤🎤 Open Mic We are going to open up the stage after the talks for community announcements. If you’d like to announce something, open this slide deck, make sure you are signed in with a google account, and click “View Only” -> “Request Edit Access”. Explain in the text box what you want to announce, and we’ll give you edit access to the slide deck. 🎤🎤 Also, please note that during the event, photos might be made and later posted on VDSG’s or Magenta’s social media page. Please notify us if you do not agree. Attention attendees with food allergies. Please be aware that the food and drinks provided may contain or come into contact with common allergens, such as dairy, eggs, wheat, soybeans, tree nuts, peanuts, fish, shellfish, or wheat.

Data Stammtisch @ Wieden Bräu - 18.03. 18:30

Mon, 18 Mar 2024 18:30:00 +0100

Dear Community,

Let’s get together for a Stammtisch (an informal gathering and discussion) on Monday the 18th of March. This is going to be a free-form event. Join us to get to know each other and have a drink together!

We have a reservation for a larger table at Wieden Bräu (https://wieden-braeu.at/) at 6:30 pm.

Please keep your RSVP updated so we know how many people to expect. See you soon!

Best, The Meetup Organizers

Story Telling for Data Science and Shiny R Dashboards in Production

Mon, 05 Feb 2024 18:00:00 +0100

Hi Data Enthusiasts,

We are back! After a longer Christmas break we are happy to announce our next Meetup on 5th of February!

This time we will focus on the last mile of your Data Science efforts, i.e. how to best present and communicate your findings! Don’t miss these two amazing talks:

They are not listening to your data science project? Make them understand with data storytelling - Dr. Julia Zukrigl
Is ShinyApp in R Production ready - Maria Ines Plaza Schwarck

In addition, Krisztina Szarvas will give you some cool infos about Economics and Business Programs at CEU.

They are not listening to your data science project? Make them understand with data storytelling Neuroscience shows: Our brains are not designed to process data and complexity. That’s why our decision-makers often find it difficult to get excited about our data science projects and implement them. Brain-friendly data communication creates images in the mind (not on dashboards) and makes data easy to digest. Julia shows how you can use data storytelling to convince the audience of your data science project and its results. She gives you simple and scientifically proven communication hacks, which you can implement immediately. Julia Zukrigl is a behavioural scientist, who became a data scientist, where she failed in many data projects because of the communication with decision-makers. Then she remembered her past in behavioral science and applied her knowledge of human decision-making and information behaviour to the world of data, linked it to effective communication techniques and packed it into a method case. Today, she shares this data storytelling method case as a host and trainer in the DATA story LAB.

Is ShinyApp in R Production ready? Maria Ines Plaza Schwarck (Mari Plaza), is a production engineer and MBA which an interesting mix of skills and interests. Her passion for data, process improvement and constant curiosity led her to gain experience on Data Science and Strategy. Her unusual career path provide her with practical knowledge to be an integrator between Domain Knowledge, quantitative methods, technology and how do you communicate the insights.

CEU has informed us that admission must be based on an RSVP list. Please make sure that you RSVP and that you have a human-name-like name set up on Meetup.com :)

🎤🎤 Open Mic We are going to open up the stage after the talks for community announcements. If you’d like to announce something, open this slide deck, make sure you are signed in with a google account, and click “View Only” -> “Request Edit Access”. Explain in the text box what you want to announce, and we’ll give you edit access to the slide deck. 🎤🎤 Also, please note that during the event, photos might be made and later posted on VDSG’s or CEU’s social media page. Please notify us if you do not agree. Attention attendees with food allergies. Please be aware that the food and drinks provided may contain or come into contact with common allergens, such as dairy, eggs, wheat, soybeans, tree nuts, peanuts, fish, shellfish, or wheat.

Zoom Link https://ceu-edu.zoom.us/j/93188576959?pwd=TXI4Nyt4RE15UWZ0eHhrR0pERG95QT09

Presentations: https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/1EYcEJV36ao0QDC9XXHiG56ectEXaYGDR?usp=sharing

Meeting ID: 931 8857 6959 Passcode: 992713

Best, The Organizer Team

Data Science Cafe

Mon, 04 Dec 2023 17:30:00 +0100

Dear Data Science Enthusiast,

the Data Science Cafe is back! After a long break, we are back with 5 exciting mentors.

📍Event Details:

Date: December 4th
Location: WeXelerate, Praterstrasse 1, 1020
Time: 17:30
Link: 20231204_datascience_cafe

🚀 The mentors: Arlind Avdullahi (Machine Learning Engineer, ML Reply): NoCode ML tools Wolfgang Weidlinger (AI, Data Science and Analytics Coordinator, GENERALI): ML End-to-End Zoltan Toth (AI Architect, NordQuant): dbt, Spark, MLOps Florian Thürk (Solutions Architect, Cloudera): Automation Ansible/Terraform Petra Novak (Assistant Professor at the Department of Network and Data Science, CEU): (Machine) Learning with Disagreement

🔎 Event format: Welcoming and introduction of the mentors by the Vienna Data Science Group. Following the introductions, attendees will have the opportunity to delve into discussions that align with their specific interests. We’ll be organizing breakout groups, each facilitated by a mentor who will guide and moderate the group discussions.

⭐️ Why Attend?

Networking: Connect with like-minded professionals in the data science community.
Learning: Gain insights from experienced mentors covering diverse data science topics.
Collaboration: Collaborate with peers in small group settings to explore specific areas of interest.

📝 How to Participate:

RSVP to secure your spot!
Bring your enthusiasm and curiosity.
Prepare to engage in insightful discussions.

A big thank you to WeXelerate for hosting the event!

#DataScienceCafe #NetworkingEvent #ViennaDSG #DataScience #WeXelerate

GenAI's effect on your future + How to Make Models Fair

Mon, 23 Oct 2023 18:00:00 +0200

Hi,

Hi, on 23 October, we’ll get together to tackle two current and important topics:

Shirley Werchota (GenAI Evangelist, BlueSoft) will talk about how GenAI will impact how we use technology and whether and how it will change how we do business in general.
Paul Tiwald (Head of AI Research, MOSTLY AI) will discuss how to craft models that make fair predictions.

GenAI a Technology Revolution? https://www.linkedin.com/in/shirleywerchota/ Shirley Werchota - GenAI Evangelist, BlueSoft

Will GenAI impact the way we use technology, increase and improve our capabilities or will it change the way we do business in general? Sharing my experience, I invite you to share your perspective.

BIO I am passionate about digital humanism, which is the idea that technology should serve and empower people, not the other way around. I’ve been a Big Data Engineer, Data Scientist, Cloud DevOps, Product Owner, C-Level Advisor for Data and Cloud, Business Developer and now a GenAI Evangelist.

Strong Statistical Parity through Fair Synthetic Data. Paul Tiwald - Head of AI Research, MOSTLY AI

I will give a short introduction to tabular synthetic data and then dive deeper on one scenario where it can make the life of Data Scientists easier: crafting models that make fair predictions.

See you there or on Zoom at: Join Zoom Meeting https://ceu-edu.zoom.us/j/95940370973?pwd=bTE0RXJYWTk4TUpLb0xSdDFZMlFXdz09 Meeting ID: 959 4037 0973 Passcode: 552844

Also, the slides from our last meetup are available on Google Drive: https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/1ZS8z27g5GtO-tZeassOloYl7hUNzul9K?usp=sharing

CEU has just informed us that admission must be based on an RSVP list. Please make sure that you RSVP and that you have a human-name-like name set up on Meetup.com :) 🎤🎤 Open Mic We are going to open up the stage after the talks for community announcements. If you’d like to announce something, open this slide deck, make sure you are signed in with a google account, and click “View Only” -> “Request Edit Access”. Explain in the text box what you want to announce, and we’ll give you edit access to the slide deck. 🎤🎤 Also, please note that during the event, photos might be made and later posted on VDSG’s or CEU’s social media page. Please notify us if you do not agree. Attention attendees with food allergies. Please be aware that the food and drinks provided may contain or come into contact with common allergens, such as dairy, eggs, wheat, soybeans, tree nuts, peanuts, fish, shellfish, or wheat.

Best, The Organizer Team

VDSG Knowledgefeed - Natural Language Understanding and Feature Engineering

Wed, 27 Sep 2023 18:00:00 +0000

We invite you to learn why deep neural networks are not always the best solution in natural language processing, and how to improve machine learning workflows and feature engineering using the transform design pattern.

Gábor Recski: Transparent Natural Language Understanding Transformer-based deep learning models have become the most widely used tool in natural language processing (NLP). When the goal is to extract structured information from text, nearly all solutions involve the training of such neural networks using human-annotated data and then using the resulting models directly for text processing. But the black box nature of these solutions greatly limit their applicability in domains that require transparency, predictability, or configurability. Rule-based solutions can offer all of these, but for complex domains they are difficult and costly to build and maintain. Our group at TU Wien has developed an approach to information extraction that uses human-in-the-loop (HITL) learning for the semi-automatic creation of rule-based solutions. Our tool allows domain experts to build white box solutions in highly technical domains such as legal or medical NLP. The method is based on graph-based representations of natural language syntax and semantics, which we will introduce together with 1-2 recent use cases. Gábor Recski is a computational linguist and a postdoctoral researcher at TU Wien. His research focuses on symbolic models of natural language semantics and their applications to information extraction tasks. He has published over 60 peer-reviewed papers with more than 400 citations.

Heinz Eckert: Elegant Feature Engineering with the Transform Design Pattern Inspired by insights from the book “Machine Learning Design Patterns” by Lakshmanan et al., this session will highlight how the Transform Design Pattern can improve your machine learning workflows. We will discuss how clearly separating raw input values from transformed features can yield significant advantages in model maintenance, code organization, and faster deployment. Using a hands-on example from the telco-industry, we will see how building custom transformation elements into your model pipeline can help you streamline your projects and improve overall efficiency. Heinz Eckert has worked as a data scientist in the telecommunications sector for over four years and currently leads Magenta’s data science team. Combining a background in psychology and computer science, he is passionate about delivering sustainable data applications and continuous improvement.

VDSG Summer Drinks II

Thu, 31 Aug 2023 18:30:00 +0200

Hello, fellow data enthusiasts,

Our summer break is almost over, but before we start our regular Meetups in September, let’s have another informal get-together.

Come and join us for a chat at Strandbar Herrmann. The format will be the same as last time: Arrive, Order, Chat.

Once you arrive, look for familiar faces or simply for a group of happy data scientists, and you’ll find us. If you can’t, join this Signal group for the event and ping us there:

https://signal.group/#CjQKIPs9jyd3XRPVHuX0TqZ5yi55wDqmeP_DqDk__7oEGPpaEhAOS_uSrTu3p76sDZwI9nWm

Looking forward seeing you there,

The VDSG Meetup Organizers

VDSG Summer Drinks

Tue, 27 Jun 2023 18:00:00 +0200

Hello, fellow data lovers,

Let’s start the summer with a few drinks after work!

Come and join us for a chat at Strandbar Herrmann. The format will be the same as last year: Arrive, Order, Chat.

Once you arrive, look for familiar faces or simply for a group of happy data scientists, and you’ll find us. If you can’t, join this Signal group for the event and ping us there: https://signal.group/#CjQKINvcSeTQeVsYVFoq1rf4l1SfyT8kednMQEfLe76-Fep-EhCU0Qkyvmm9x7_QzxU4F_b6

Can’t wait to see you there, The VDSG Meetup Organizers

Predictive Analytics Conference 2023

Tue, 06 Jun 2023 18:00:00 +0000

Direct link to join the event: https://www.predictive-analytics.at/main.asp?kat1=2116&kat2=2771

About the Conference: The Data Science, Analytics & Artificial Intelligence Conference is aimed at experts, users, interested parties and decision-makers. People from all areas who use analytical methods, deal with data-intensive issues and strategic questions around the topics of data management and data culture. This year the conference will again take place in a hybrid format. This means you have the option of attending the conference on-site at Tech Gate Vienna or participating online.

Program: The fixed presentations for the 19th Predictive Analytics Conference are now available online and at https://www.predictive-analytics.at/programm. The programme is continuously expanded and updated. If you want to be up to date, please register for the newsletter.

During the breaks and at the evening event, there will be an opportunity to exchange ideas with leading data analysts from business and academic research. Colleagues, experts and visionary users will be available for an open dialogue in a stimulating atmosphere.

Please note that the conference is in German!

Members of the Vienna Data Science Group, Österreichische Statistische Gesellschaft (ÖSG) and students are eligible for a discount.

Please be aware that membership entails paying the VDSG’s annual fee and possessing a valid VDSG email address! If you do not have it and you want to be a member, please send an email to contact@vdsg.at

Quantum Computing in Data Science

Tue, 06 Jun 2023 18:00:00 +0000

Direct link to join the event: https://www.meetup.com/vienna-data-science-group-meetup/events/293542873/

Quantum computing is revolutionizing the way we approach complex problems in fields ranging from finance and healthcare to transportation and energy. At this event, you’ll gain a deeper understanding of the principles behind quantum computing and how it can be applied to real-world challenges.

First talk: Quantum Computing in Data Science Quantum computing has become a topic that is publicly debated, sometimes with skepticism and sometimes with hype. In this talk, Clemens gives an introduction into the “hot topic” Quantum Computing. He will elaborate on the fundamental working principle of quantum computers and lay out why this technology will be impactful to a broad range of industries. Moreover, he will discuss which computational problems are addressed with quantum computers and which are not. Special focus will be given to applications of Quantum Computing in Data Science.

Speaker bio: Clemens Sauerzopf is CTO of Data Technology. After a PhD in physics, he has been working in consulting for several years. His specialities include data analytics, data engineering and data management.

Second talk: Gesture Classification on a Smartphone Web-App using a Quantum Computer David Alber and Olaf Hahn will demonstrate that Quantum enhanced Support Vector Machines (QSVMs) can be utilized to classify gestures made by a conventional smartphone. They will showcase how developers can utilize the Qiskit Python framework and provision IBM Cloud and IBM Quantum resources to seamlessly integrate such models in a traditional application environment. Machine learning and quantum are promising technologies with the potential to address yet intractable problems. The hybrid nature of QSVMs makes it possible deploy such models already today. We will show you how.

Speaker bio: David Alber is a Data Scientist and Quantum Ambassador with IBM - Vienna. Olaf Hahn is Data and AI Evangelist with IBM - Linz.

Data Science Cafe - April 2023 - Focus on Employability

Fri, 14 Apr 2023 16:00:00 +0200

This time we are going to focus on employability. We have 6 mentors that would bring their perspectives regarding this topic:

· Mentor sections:

Regina Carvalho Typical Data Science Roles - a quick overview of responsibilities, tasks and skills.
Lin Reimann-Broinger Resumé/ CV check
Matjaž Kovše How to find a nice job in Data Science.
Florian Thürk Perspectives from a hiring manager
Wolfgang Weidinger Building AI Systems end to end. (Focus on team perspective)
Maria Ines Plaza How coaching could help you in the process of finding the right job for you.

Everyone is welcome to come and share their own ideas, or simply explore and decide if there is a project you want to be involved in. You can participate regardless of your experience in Data Science - all you need is some curiosity, your computer, and the willingness to talk to other Data Science enthusiasts around you.

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FINAL DETAILS Please let us know your email address in the mandatory field when RSVPing, so we can include you in the Slack Channel.

What we provide:

A nice location, refreshments and snacks, WIFI, and a friendly environment so you can connect with your colleagues.

What to bring:

A laptop, headsets, writing utensils, collaborative mindset, willingness to apply Data Science and your ideas

VDSG Knowledgefeed – ChatGPT and legal challenges in autonomous driving

Thu, 30 Mar 2023 18:30:00 +0200

Dear Data enthusiasts,

we are happy to announce our March MeetUp at Bosch on the 30th of March. We will have a talks about the current hot topic of ChatGPT as well as the ever increasing importance of legal challenges in autonomous driving.

Schedule:

Welcoming by the VDSG team
Welcoming by Hans-Jürgen Eidler (Bosch)
Talks:
First talk by Isabella Hinterleitner (TechMeetsLegal GmbH)
Second talk by Dirk Bangel (Bosch Group)
OpenMic - announcements by the community
In addition, there will be a demo of Bosch’s EcoSystemDemonstrator Open Platform for autonomous driving
After the talks, as always, comes the favorite part of many: socializing and networking

How the approach behind ChatGPT supports to solve the complexity questions behind infrastructure-based solutions – Dirk Bangel (Bosch Group) Dirk Bangel is in the technical strategy team at the Mobility Company of Bosch. He has a degree in Computer Science at the University of Technology Köln (Cologne) and he has been working for the past 5 years at Bosch in several locations and positions. Dirk published two books, Data Science in a Nutshell and Myth in AI.

Data processing in autonomous driving and legal challenges - Isabella Hinterleitner (TechMeetsLegal GmbH) The motivation for TechMeetsLegal GmbH comes from scientist and founder Dr. DI. Isabella Hinterleitner who is interested in innovations, respectively in how to support companies in their way of making high-tech innovations accessible on the market without having legal constraints. The main focus of this talk will be an intro to autonomous driving form a machine learning point of view and associated challenges in the field of the GDPR and product liability challenges.

----- A special thanks to Bosch Österreich for hosting and sponsoring this event. -----

Doors Open at 18:00 Participation will be online physically this time. ----- Attention attendees with food allergies. Please be aware that the food and drinks provided may contain or come into contact with common allergens, such as dairy, eggs, wheat, soybeans, tree nuts, peanuts, fish, shellfish, or wheat.

Data Science Cafe - February 2023

Fri, 24 Feb 2023 16:00:00 +0100

In this new edition, we have some twists that you probably would like:

· Mentor sections:

Omidreza Amrollahinasab: Stable Diffusion
Annalisa Cadonna: From Academy to Industry.
Wolfgang Weidinger - Building AI Systems end to end.
Frederik Bednar - Governance and pipelines in the modern data stack
Jillian Augustine - Best coding practices in Python.
Maria Ines Plaza - Data4Autism - Data Science hands-on experience. This month focus on production-ready shiny Apps.

· Data4Autism: Here you can explore 4 challenges of solutions that can be implemented using Data Science to help children and people that live with Autism condition. If you are quite knowledgeable about Data Science and now want to challenge yourself, join this section and go from the idea to the product with the guidance of another Data Scientist and the mom of an autistic child.

The challenges are: - Speech to Pictogram - Music composition app to promote verbality - From goal to Data and back again - Backbone to developmental interventions. - Emotional Duolingo.

Not interested in any of these options, no problem. There is always space like our traditional event to join other colleagues and choose your own topic.

------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

FINAL DETAILS Please let us know your email address in the mandatory field when RSVPing, so we can include you in the Slack Channel.

What we provide:

A nice location, refreshments and snacks, WIFI, and a friendly environment so you can connect with your colleagues.

What to bring:

A laptop, headsets, writing utensils, collaborative mindset, willingness to apply Data Science and your ideas

VDSG Knowledgefeed - reduce injuries in football (EY) and MLOps (Contextflow)

Mon, 20 Feb 2023 18:30:00 +0100

Hi all,

Happy New Year and welcome to this exciting 2023. In February, our Meetups are back, and we cannot wait to see you at CEU on Monday, February 20!

Welcoming by the VDSG team and OpenMic - announcements by the community
First speak by Hernán Villamizar and Vinzenz Halhammer (Ernst and Young)
Second speak by Johannes Hofmanninger (Contextflow)
After the talks, as always, comes the favourite part of many: grabbing a snack and getting to know each other!

🎤🎤 Open Mic We are going to open up the stage after the talks for community announcements. If you’d like to announce something, open this slide deck, make sure you are signed in with a google account, and click “View Only” -> “Request Edit Access”. Explain in the text box what you want to announce, and we’ll give you edit access to the slide deck. 🎤🎤

Using Data Science to reduce injuries in football teams - Hernán Villamizar and Vinzenz Halhammer (Ernst and Young) This talk explores the world of Sports Analytics and dives into one particular use case for injury prevention. Football at the highest level is one of the most demanding due to the tight weekly calendar of matches and training sessions. Under these circumstances, it is very important to balance the training load of all the players, as injuries not only impact the team’s performance but are also quite expensive. We developed a model that takes a variety of factors from training load to medical data into account to support the trainer team in their decisions. Hernán and Vinzent will discuss the main challenges and how valuable such models can be for professional sports in general.

Hernán Villamizar leads the Artificial Intelligence and Advanced Analytics Team at EY Austria. He has a degree in Economics from the University of Vienna and has several years of experience in the conception, development, implementation and management of Data Science based solutions. He consults companies of all sizes and industries, with a focus on the operationalization of fully-fledged solutions for the automatization and optimization of business processes.

Vinzenz Halhammer is Data Scientist at EY Austria. He has a degree in mathematical physics from the University of Vienna. ---

MLOps, from Data to Product - Johannes Hofmanninger (Contextflow) This talk will provide a concise overview of the machine learning life-cycle and MLOps in practice. The talk will cover topics such as data management, model development, validation, deployment, post-market surveillance and how they play a role in ensuring the success and reliability of machine learning systems.

Johannes Hofmanninger studied Medical Informatics at the TU Vienna where he discovered his passion for medical image processing and machine learning. After his studies at TU, he moved on to the Medical University of Vienna to complete a PhD at the Computational Imaging Research Lab. In 2020, he joined Contextflow, a Vienna-based company creating AI-powered tools for radiologists where he currently holds the position of ML development lead

----- A special thanks to Central European University for hosting and sponsoring this event. -----

Doors Open at 18:00
For online participation join the Zoom Meeting at https://ceu-edu.zoom.us/j/99614430984?pwd=WG05ak4vL3BwckZIc2pEdUttNDRRZz09

----- Attention attendees with food allergies. Please be aware that the food and drinks provided may contain or come into contact with common allergens, such as dairy, eggs, wheat, soybeans, tree nuts, peanuts, fish, shellfish, or wheat.

Open Mic - Data Science Cafe - January 2023

Thu, 12 Jan 2023 17:00:00 +0100

We are starting 2023 with an Open Mic - Data Science Cafe.

That means this time there are no mentors, just 100% community driven. At the very beginning, we are going to have 20 - 25 minutes of Open Mic where you can talk with the audience about your ideas and projects that you would like to discuss with your colleagues. No presentation, no monitor, just a mic and 2 minutes for your DS-Pitch. Then we split through the hotel and we talk and/or code as much as we want.

We are not going to offer catering, but you can pay for whatever you consume in the selected location: The Social Hub (THS) Our meeting point is the red bar that is behind at the left after you enter the lobby. It is very close to the Auditorium.

In case you don’t have ideas but still want to join, I will be there with the details of the different challenges for Data4Autism.

------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

FINAL DETAILS Please let us know your email address in the mandatory field when RSVPing, so we can include you in the Slack Channel.

What we provide:

A nice location, the possibility to buy refreshments and snacks, WIFI, and a friendly environment so you can connect with your colleagues.

What to bring:

A laptop, headsets, writing utensils, collaborative mindset, willingness to apply Data Science and your ideas

Data Science Cafe - New edition

Fri, 09 Dec 2022 16:00:00 +0000

Direct link to join the event: https://www.meetup.com/vienna-data-science-group-meetup/events/289044290/

Data4Autism

Here you can explore four challenges of solutions that can be implemented using Data Science to help children and people that live with Autism condition. If you are quite knowledgeable about Data Science and now you want to challenge yourself, join this section and go from the idea to the product with the guidance of another Data Scientist and the mom of an autistic child.

The challenges are:

Speech to Pictogram
Music composition app to promote verbality
From goal to Data and back again - Backbone to developmental interventions.
Emotional Duolingo.

Organizer and mentor: Maria Ines Plaza: https://www.linkedin.com/in/maria-ines-plaza-schwarck/

Mentor sections:

We have 4 mentors at the moment in different areas and the list would be expanded soon. You can join them if you want to deep dive into their topics and expertise.

Anita Graser: - GIS
Kerstin Voglauer - Data Integration
Lukas Madl - Trustworthy AI - Innovation and Ethics
Georg Heiler - Governance and pipelines in the modern data stack
Christopher Kittel - DevOps for NLP & ML
Maria Ines Plaza - Data4Autism - Data Science hands-on experience. This month focus on production-ready shiny Apps.
Waiting for the confirmation of a mentor in UX.

· Data4Autism: Here you can explore 4 challenges of solutions that can be implemented using Data Science to help children and people that live with Autism condition. If you are quite knowledgeable about Data Science and now you want to challenge yourself, join this section and go from the idea to the product with the guidance of another Data Scientist and the mom of an autistic child.

The challenges are:

Speech to Pictogram
Music composition app to promote verbality
From goal to Data and back again - Backbone to developmental interventions.
Learning Emotions through Gamification.

Not interested in any of these options, no problem. There is always space like our traditional event to join other colleagues and choose your own topic.

Finding Waldo with Deep Learning and Data Science for SDGs

Mon, 21 Nov 2022 18:30:00 +0000

Direct link to join the event: https://www.meetup.com/vienna-data-science-group-meetup/events/288864744/

Finding Waldo with permutational equivariance

Thomas Niedermayer, Data Science Student

Thomas will introduce the computer vision problem of the most recent Lumos datathon, showcase the winning submission, and explain the concept of permutational equivariance to improve the learning of neural networks for input data in the form of sets.

Leo and Thomas are TU Data Science students with a CS and math background, respectively. They are part of a student organization specializing in Data Science called Lumos

Data science for the Sustainable Development Goals: Opportunities & Challenges

Elisa Omodei, Assistant Professor, Department of Network and Data Science, CEU - LinkedIn

In a rapidly changing world, facing an increasing number of socioeconomic, health and environmental crises, data science can help us quantify vulnerabilities and monitor progress toward achieving the UN Sustainable Development Goals. In this talk, I will provide a non-exhaustive overview of the main areas of applications where data-driven computational methods have shown their potential for social impact, and I will then deep-dive more specifically into my work on predicting food insecurity from conflict, weather, and economic data.

Elisa Omodei am an Assistant Professor at the Department of Network and Data Science of the Central European University, in Vienna, Austria. Previously, she worked at the United Nations, first at UNICEF’s Office of Innovation in New York and then at the UN World Food Programme in Rome.

Finding Valdo with Deep Learning & Reaching UN's Sustainability Goals with DS

Fri, 11 Nov 2022 18:30:00 +0000

Direct link to join the event: https://www.meetup.com/vienna-data-science-group-meetup/events/288864744/ Finding Waldo with permutational equivariance Thomas Niedermayer, Data Science Student

We will introduce the computer vision problem of the most recent Lumos datathon, showcase the winning submission, and explain the concept of permutational equivariance to improve the learning of neural networks for input data in the form of sets.

Leo and Thomas are TU Data Science students with a CS and math background, respectively. They are part of a student organization specializing in Data Science called Lumos.

Data science for the Sustainable Development Goals: Opportunities & Challenges Elisa Omodei, Assistant Professor, Department of Network and Data Science, CEU

After the talks, as always, comes the favorite part of many: grabbing a snack and getting to know each other!

Data Science Cafe - New edition

Fri, 04 Nov 2022 16:00:00 +0000

Direct link to join the event: https://www.meetup.com/vienna-data-science-group-meetup/events/288916216/

Data4Autism

The challenges are:

Speech to Pictogram
Music composition app to promote verbality
From goal to Data and back again - Backbone to developmental interventions.
Emotional Duolingo.

Mentor sections:

We have 4 mentors at the moment in different areas and the list would be expanded soon. You can join them if you want to deep dive into their topics and expertise. o Adrian Schiegl: https://www.linkedin.com/in/adrian-schiegl/ o Maria Ines Plaza: https://www.linkedin.com/in/maria-ines-plaza-schwarck/ Lean Inception from idea to data product in a very simple methodology. o Mario Mai-Huber:https://www.linkedin.com/in/mario-meir-huber/ Data Strategy o Rania Wazir: https://www.linkedin.com/in/raniawazir/ Trustworthy AI

The challenges are:

Speech to Pictogram
Music composition app to promote verbality
From goal to Data and back again - Backbone to developmental interventions.
Learning Emotions through Gamification.

Not interested in any of these options, no problem. There is always space like our traditional event to join other colleagues and choose your own topic.

Data Science Cafe - New edition

Thu, 20 Oct 2022 18:30:00 +0000

Direct link to join the event: https://www.meetup.com/vienna-data-science-group-meetup/events/288895389/

Animated data stories by Peter Vidos

Peter Vidos will present how to use animated data stories in Jupyter to present & share your findings with ipyvizzu-story - Emotional Duolingo. Sharing and explaining the results of your analysis can be a lot easier and more fun when you can create an animated story of the charts containing your insights. ipyvizzu-story (https://github.com/vizzuhq/ipyvizzu-story) - a new open-source tool - enables just that with a simple Python interface within Jupyter & other computational notebooks and similar platforms.

Peter Vidos, CEO & Co-Founder of Vizzu (https://vizzuhq.com) https://www.linkedin.com/in/petervidos/

Realtime Alarming using Telemetry Records by Oliver Leodolter

In order to improve the Service Quality, we need to identify problems in our Network as soon as possible. For that, we gather and analyze Telemetry Records of Client Devices in Real-Time. To keep our solution understandable, scalable and efficient, we decided not to use techniques from Timeseries Analysis and instead developed a solution based on detecting outlier groups.

Oliver Leodolter, Data Scientist at A1. https://www.linkedin.com/in/olileo1/

Drinks and chats to follow

Data Science Cafe - New edition

Thu, 06 Oct 2022 17:00:00 +0000

Direct link to join the event: https://www.meetup.com/vienna-data-science-group-meetup/events/287856737/

Data4Autism

The challenges are:

Speech to Pictogram
Music composition app to promote verbality
From goal to Data and back again - Backbone to developmental interventions.
Emotional Duolingo.

Mentor sections:

We are going to have 7 mentors in different areas. You can join them if you want to deep dive into their topics and expertise.

o Manuel Pasieka: https://www.linkedin.com/in/manuelpasieka/ MLOps o Maria Ines Plaza: https://www.linkedin.com/in/maria-ines-plaza-schwarck/ Lean Inception from idea to data product in a very simple methodology. o Margot Mückstein: https://www.linkedin.com/in/margot-m%C3%BCckstein/ Your career in Data Science, how to sell your skills in your organization and how to negotiate salaries on o Liad Magen: https://www.linkedin.com/in/liadmagen/ Natural Language Processing o Mohamed Auf: https://www.linkedin.com/in/mohauf/ Data Engineering o Yudan Lin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/yudanlin/ Data Science in society taboos.

Not interested in any of these options, no problem. There is always space like our traditional event to join other colleagues and choose your own topic.

Everyone is welcome to come and share their own ideas, or simply explore

Time Series Forecasting with Deep learning + How to get a job as a DS

Mon, 19 Sep 2022 18:30:00 +0000

Direct link to join the event: https://www.meetup.com/vienna-data-science-group-meetup/events/288226199/

Welcoming: Board of the Vienna Data Science Group

Wolfgang Weidinger, chief of the VDSG, welcomes the new and not-new members

Speaker 1: Maria Ines Plaza Schwarck, Data Strategist and Scientist

Mari is an experienced professional with over 20+ years in the business process management and innovation field. A former Microsoft employee, she has gained experience in small, medium and big companies.

n this talk, Maria will provide the practical experience of advanced analytics in retail through the example of Pabis Forecast. Pabis Forecast uses Deep Learning applied to time series to forecast into the level of granularity SKU-Store. T he whole solution is hosted in AWS and it is optimized on the usage of resources making it scalable and competitive.

https://www.linkedin.com/in/maria-ines-plaza-schwarck/

Speaker 2: Jan Baran, Managing Consultant

Jan has more than 15 years of working with data under his belt. He has worked for the biggest American and European corporates. He worked as a data scientist even before it was called data science and observed how Data Science was rising in popularity and slowly becoming a commodity that everyone could use from the cloud. Right now he is working as a data architect and manager for one of the biggest European consulting companies focusing on data business.

In this talk, Jan How will present to increase the chances to get a job in Data Science; how to structure the CV and avoid the biggest mistakes during the interview. He will also overview how companies train AI to hire people. Please bring questions, ask and dare to ask. Juan is happy to answer and help.

After event: foods and drink are kindly provided by Magenta

VDSG Summer Drinks

Mon, 29 Aug 2022 18:00:00 +0200

Hey fellow data lovers,

Let’s close the summer with a few drinks after work! Come and join us for a chat at Strandbar Herrmann. The format will be the same as with the Summer Eis: Arrive, Order, Chat.

Once you arrive look for the familiar faces or simply for a group of happy data scientists and you’ll find us.

Wulf is going to stay at the bar until 18:15. He is tall enough to serve as a meeting point. In case you don’t know Wulf, he is the tall one on this picture: https://media-exp1.licdn.com/dms/image/C4D22AQFd5G9BSwlfDg/feedshare-shrink_1280/0/1660489435243?e=1664409600&v=beta&t=zTN9oYFXuYPwB4KtPSE_i2s7VzZ9tXrpsYAiWFOatXI

If you are late, look for a large group of people and Wulf ;)

See you there, The VDSG Meetup Organizers

VDSG Summer Eis

Wed, 06 Jul 2022 18:30:00 +0200

Hey fellow data lovers,

Let’s get the summer going with a few scoops of ice cream after work! Let’s come and join us for a chat in Gelateria Castelletto @Schwedenplatz.

See you there, The VDSG Meetup Organizers

Google AI x VDSG @ UNIQA SanusX

Thu, 02 Jun 2022 18:30:00 +0000

Direct link to join the event: https://www.meetup.com/de-DE/Vienna-Data-Science-Group-Meetup/events/285656811/

Welcoming: Dr. Erik Leyers, board director

Dr. Erik Leyers will give a short welcome to UNIQA

Speaker 1: Google AI - Tiago Henriques

Tiago Henriques works at Google as Artificial Intelligence and Machine Learning Practice Lead across EMEA in the Customer Engineering team. He and his team focus daily on supporting customers to adopt different AI/ML solutions on top of Google Cloud Platform across many industries and various use cases. Before GCP, he had several specialist roles at different hyperscalers such as Microsoft Azure and Amazon Web Services where he continuously focused on technical leadership on AI/ML and Big Data space. Tiago is also frequent public speaker and teacher at University of Barcelona.

In this session Tiago will bring a glimpse overview on the latest developments on the Conversational AI space with Google Cloud Platform. Then we will dive into the most recent ML Platform technical capabilities with VertexAI for Data Scientists and Business Analysts to develop and industrialize different ML scenarios from NLP to Computer Vision.

https://www.linkedin.com/in/tiagoh/

Speaker 2: CyberSec4ML : Cyber Security Aspects in Model Training, Deployment and Usage - Manuel Pasieka

Manuel Pasieka is a freelance ML engineer with 15 years of experience in several companies. He also hosts the Austrian AI podcast.

“Software eats the world and AI eats software” is a common phrase these days, making explicit the impact AI has on modern computer systems and by extension, the real world. As the applications of AI go beyond business internal use cases and escape human supervision, out into the world in the form of autonomous agents, the security of those systems becomes essential for business and a safety concern for the public. In this talk you are going to learn about attack strategies and methods against Machine Learning models during model training deployment and usage, to be able to understand and predict the risks your own systems are facing.

https://www.manuelpasieka.com

Data Stammtisch @ DAS CAMPUS - Thu 7pm

Thu, 05 May 2022 19:00:00 +0200

Dear Community,

Let’s get together for a Stammtisch (an informal gathering and discussion) next Thursday. This is going to be a free-form event. Join us to get to know each other and have a drink together!

We have a reservation for a larger table at DAS CAMPUS (https://www.dascampus.at/) at 7 pm.

Please keep your RSVP updated so we know how many people to expect. See you soon!

Best, The Meetup Organizers

Quantifying the worth of DS projects & discussing the Modern Data Stack

Wed, 27 Apr 2022 18:00:00 +0000

Hi all,

We are very excited to come together in person after two years!

Come join us and check out CEU’s Vienna Campus with two exceptional speakers from the Data Science and Data Engineering world!

We are going to have two talks followed by an open-ended discussion. Hosting and catering will be provided by CEU Vienna.

This will be a hybrid event. We will provide the Zoom link later.

1. From AUC to EUR - what is the worth of a data science project?

Gábor Békés, assistant professor at CEU, research affiliate at CEPR London

We will look at a case study of corporate default prediction and discuss how to quantify the analytical added value.

In this project, we worked as data scientists for a consultancy that was set to decide which firms to have a contract with. This means building a predictive algorithm for classifying firms into two categories: risky and reliable partners. After the pilot project, we had to quantify how a better model created value for the company. This actual case study used financial and management data on 20K companies and made it my textbook.

Gábor Békés is an assistant professor at CEU Department of Economics and Business, a research affiliate at CEPR London. His research is about firm performance, organizational behavior, and globalization. Gábor is co-author of Data Analysis for Business, Economics and Policy, a textbook recently published by Cambridge University Press and adopted over 100 courses worldwide. He is a former program director of CEU’s MS in Business Analytics.

2. Orchestrating data in the mesh of the fragmented modern data stack

Georg Heiler, senior data scientist & complexity researcher

The fragmented modern data stack has emerged as the unbundling of Airflow. Various tools operate in silos. Dagster as a next-generation data orchestrator allows you to clearly see the data dependencies of the individual pipelines on your data factory floor. Following along with my blog post series about Dagster I will cover:

Getting started with dagster and building simple data pipelines
How software-defined assets allow to turn data pipelines around and result in higher quality by allowing to integrate data quality tests straight into the pipelines as well as by separating business logic from infrastructure allowing for better testability.

Georg’s interests are in working with large-scale spatio-temporal graph data. He considers an end-to-end view of the data pipelines and holistic data architecture. As an experienced data scientist in the industry, he has delivered use cases concerning fraud detection, mobility analytics and predictive maintenance in cable networks. As part of his doctoral studies, he researched inferring supply networks and analyzed the impact on society of government interventions due to the COVID-19 pandemic using mobility data.

Please check the current CEU’s COVID regulations before the meetup.

We hope to see you soon!

Cheers, The VDSG Meetup organizers

https://www.meetup.com/de-DE/Vienna-Data-Science-Group-Meetup/events/284933530/

Recording:

part 1: (TODO)
part 2:

Memorable February - VDSG meets AI Frankfurt

Thu, 17 Feb 2022 18:00:00 +0100

Dear VDSG community,

We have joined forces with our friends at the AI Meetup Frankfurt to deliver a co-hosted event for you. This event is going to be hosted online; we can’t wait to go back to in-person events though, it would be so great to see you! Hopefully we can get something in-person organized soon.

We are going to have two amazing speakers: our first speaker is Sascha Wolter, and he is a well-known community contributor, lecturer, and speaker in the field of human-computer interaction (HMI). He has given talks at many events/conferences, video training in the past. Check out his website for more details: http://www.wolter.biz/.

Then, we have another great speaker: Dr. Andreas Braun, another popular AI Evangelist and an advisor to the European Union (Commission and Parliament), BaFin and Monetary Authority of Singapore (MAS). He consults data technologies, advanced analytics, AI/ML and data protection/privacy (incl. GDPR). Connect with him to know more: https://de.linkedin.com/in/dr-andreas-braun. So you see, both of them are having many years of experience in their own domain and we will hear lots of cool work around AI, and real-world applications in different projects from them.

And, we will also present a short Sci-Fi movie featuring AI to stimulate your thinking. More details on each speakers talks are coming soon. So stay tuned!

NOTE: the zoom details will be updated here a day before the event. P.S: Sign in to Zoom; No sign-up required https://zoom.us/j/99733231443?pwd=QldkQitqTWxneDhPZG1rU1pTeThrdz09

Meeting-ID: 997 3323 1443 Kenncode: 234194

See you soon.

Here is the agenda of our meetup:

18:00 – 18:15; Reception

18:15 – 18:20; A welcome note from organizers

18:20 – 18:50; Speaker I: Sascha Wolter, Chief Advisor at DB Systel GmbH Title: “Bad Bots – Digital Twin thinking for AI and voice”

18:50 - 19:10; Cool AI movie to think about

19:10 – 19:40; Speaker II: Dr. Andreas Braun, Managing Director - Data & AI Lead at Accenture Title: “What catches attention for AI/ML – 2022 and beyond”

19:40 – 19:50; Announcements (open positions, demos, etc.)

19:50 – Socializing

Location: Zoom platform https://zoom.us/j/99733231443?pwd=QldkQitqTWxneDhPZG1rU1pTeThrdz09

Meeting-ID: 997 3323 1443 Kenncode: 234194

This event is sponsored by the AI Lab of Frankfurt School of Finance & Management by providing Zoom platform and D&B Interactive providing for office space. We thank both our hosts for helping us so.

Data-Centric AI Practices

Fri, 10 Dec 2021 17:00:00 +0000

about the speaker

PhD. at Princeton University advised by Sebastian Seung. Interested in artificial intelligence including machine learning, computer vision, a little bit neuroscience. The idea of creating Hub came to Davit while he was pursuing a Ph.D. at Princeton Neuroscience Lab, where his research involved reconstructing the topology of mouse brains. As part of his research, he dealt with large-scale unstructured data which could cost millions of dollars a year to store. That inspired Davit to create Hub, and eventually Activeloop, the database for AI company. More about Davit on his page.

about the talk

In computer vision projects, managing data is often an afterthought. That is why at least 31% of projects fail. Davit Buniatyan, CEO of Activeloop, will talk about how to build a solid data foundation to train more accurate and cost-effective computer vision models. In this session, you will learn about Hub, an open-source dataset format for AI. Hub works with computer vision datasets of any size and enables easy creation, storage, version control, and streaming to ML frameworks while training. Moreover, you will learn how to apply the data-centric framework to resolve common data bottlenecks when using tools like Amazon SageMaker. The speaker will also demonstrate how to visualize and explore datasets – from MNIST to ImageNet. As a result of the session, you will be able to easily build computer vision data pipelines and fully utilize the compute resources.

X-Europe DS: Data-Centric AI Practices

Fri, 10 Dec 2021 18:00:00 +0100

REGISTRATION INFO

–»> Registration link: https://datacentric-ai-practices.carrd.co/ «<– Please also RSVP here on the Meetup Page.

Our Speaker

Davit Buniatyan LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/davidbuniatyan/ Twitter: https://twitter.com/dbuniatyan GitHub: https://github.com/davidbuniat Google Scholar: https://scholar.google.com/citations?user=2630BAkAAAAJ&hl=en

Davit Buniatyan is Founding CEO at Activeloop.ai (Y Combinator member that recently raised $5M seed investment)

ABOUT THE X-EUROPE DATA SCIENCE WEBINARS

X-Europe Webinar Series is a joint online event of Vienna Data Science Group, Frankfurt Data Science, Budapest Data Science Meetup, BCN Analytics, Budapest.AI, Barcelona Data Science and Machine Learning Meetup, Budapest Deep Learning Reading Seminar, Data Science Croatia, Warsaw R Users Group, PyData Slovakia, and Data Scientists Ireland.

Digitizing Construction with AI

Wed, 10 Nov 2021 17:00:00 +0000

Hi Everyone,

X-Europe Webinars is back with an exciting talk about AI in Construction Projects!

Please RSVP here for the event AND Register on the webinar’s page: https://bit.ly/x-europe-webinar

Join our Webinar: Digitizing Construction with AI on Wednesday,10th November at 6 pm CET to learn how to apply machine learning and artificial intelligence to the 21st-century construction site.

About the Talk:

From this talk, you will learn how Scaled Robotics specialists provide highly accurate and precise quality control and progress information on complex construction projects using 3D computer vision, 3D machine learning, and nonlinear optimization. Deep understanding of techniques in 3D to solve complex real-world problems significantly how reality diverges from research.

About the Speaker:

Bharath Sankaran, roboticist by training with expertise in computer vision, machine learning and manipulation, CTO and co-founder of Scaled Robotics.

See you there!

X-Europe: Digitizing Construction with AI

Wed, 10 Nov 2021 17:00:00 +0100

Hi Everyone,

X-Europe Webinars is back with an exciting talk about AI in Construction Projects!

Please RSVP here for the event AND Register on the webinar’s page: https://bit.ly/x-europe-webinar

Join our Webinar: Digitizing Construction with AI on Wednesday,10th November at 6 pm CET to learn how to apply machine learning and artificial intelligence to the 21st-century construction site.

About the Talk:

About the Speaker:

Bharath Sankaran, roboticist by training with expertise in computer vision, machine learning and manipulation, CTO and co-founder of Scaled Robotics.

See you there!

Causal Inference at Lyft

Wed, 23 Jun 2021 18:00:00 +0200

ABOUT THE SPEAKER

Data scientist, social scientist, statistician, and software developer. Sean mostly specializes in methods for solving causal inference and business decision problems, and particularly interested in building tools for practitioners working on real-world problems. He is a generalist, who likes to hang out with people from many fields and borrow as many ideas as possible. He has collaborated with computer scientists, economists, political scientists, statisticians, machine learning researchers, and business school scholars. It’s fun for Sean to jump around a bit, continue learning new things and make connections between fields. Background: Ph.D. student at NYU’s Stern School of Business, ex-research scientist and manager on Facebook’s Core Data Science Team and currently head of the Rideshare Labs team at Lyft. https://seanjtaylor.com/

ABOUT THE TALK

Improving two-sided marketplaces like Lyft’s ridesharing business is accomplished when we implement better matching algorithms that create more efficient allocations. However, marketplaces generate complex causal graphs which make counterfactuals difficult to reason about and estimate. I describe the causal effects of matching we must estimate to allocate drivers to requests, and the potential confounding problems that bias estimates from more standard machine learning approaches. We will then discuss how causal inference ideas can be applied in related settings like search, ranking, and recommender systems.

ABOUT THE X-EUROPE DATA SCIENCE WEBINARS

X-Europe Webinar Series is a joint online event of Vienna Data Science Group, Data Science Croatia, Frankfurt Data Science, Budapest Data Science Meetup, BCN Analytics, Budapest.AI, Barcelona Data Science and Machine Learning Meetup, Budapest Deep Learning Reading Seminar, Warsaw R Users Group, PyData Slovakia, and Data Scientists Ireland.

Upcoming Blockchain Summit

Wed, 26 May 2021 13:00:00 +0000

This year the Blockchain Summit of the two major blockchain research projects in Austria is 26.5.2021 13:00-16:30 Due to the ongoing pandemic situation this year it will be an online event via MSTeams. For more information, program and registration, see: https://www.fhstp.ac.at/de/newsroom/events/blockchain-summit

We are looking forward to see you there! 🙂

Modeling difficulty of English exercises - probabilistic programming approach

Wed, 12 May 2021 17:00:00 +0200

Selecting test exercises with an appropriate difficulty level is one of the most important aspects of a high-quality assessment, but how do we know how difficult a given exercise is?

One of the possible approaches is to use Item Response Theory - a set of psychometric models which can be used to estimate learners’ proficiency and parameters of each exercise. This approach works well in most cases, however, is data intensive. So, the question arises what to do when we don’t have enough data, when for example, we are introducing some new exercises.

Fortunately, probabilistic programming comes to our aid. Using Greta, we can build a custom IRT model, that allows us to quantify how different features of exercises impact their difficulty. In this talk, we will introduce the audience to the basics of IRT and probabilistic programming through a real-world application - estimating the difficulty of English tasks. For this purpose, we will use the previously mentioned Greta package, which lets us write statistical models in native R and sample from them automatically and efficiently.

REGISTRATION INFO

–»> Registration link: https://xeurope-exercises.carrd.co/ «<– Please also RSVP here on the Meetup Page.

Our Speaker

Damian Wiatrzyk LinkedIn https://www.linkedin.com/in/damian-wiatrzyk-91803072/

Damian Wiatrzyk graduated from the Poznań University of Technology with a Bachelor’s degree in Computer Science. Currently, he is studying for a Master’s degree in Data Science at Adam Mickiewicz University and working as an Associate Data Scientist at Pearson IOKI.

ABOUT THE X-EUROPE DATA SCIENCE WEBINARS

X-Europe Webinar Series is a joint online event of Vienna Data Science Group, Frankfurt Data Science, Budapest Data Science Meetup, BCN Analytics, Budapest.AI, Barcelona Data Science and Machine Learning Meetup, Budapest Deep Learning Reading Seminar, Warsaw R Users Group, PyData Slovakia, and Data Scientists Ireland.

Data Excellence Strategy of the city of Vienna - VDSG at CEU

Thu, 29 Apr 2021 16:30:00 +0200

Thursday, April 29, 2021, 4:30 pm – 5:00 pm Speaker Brigitte Lutz | City of Vienna

===================

JOIN HERE AT 16:30: https://ceu-edu.zoom.us/j/93728128671?pwd=b3VsQ1FnSXdxY1dzdVFHL3hwTmpSUT09

===================

Data Excellence Strategy of the City of Vienna

Using the example of the City of Vienna, a data excellence strategy, [open] data governance, urban data management and the excellent handling of data are explained.

OUR SPEAKER: Brigitte Lutz

Brigitte Lutz works at the CEO-Offices -Executive group for Organisation, Safety and Security / process management and ICT strategy of the City of Vienna. She has been an ICT expert for various fields, project manager, senior process manager (SPcM) and e-government expert. She is Data Governance coordinator, responsible for the IT project portfolio management, coordination of the Open Government competence center of the City of Vienna and for national and international cooperations.

Brigitte Lutz is founding member and speaker of the “Cooperation Open Government Data (OGD) Österreich”, where federal government, states, cities and towns want to prepare a fertile soil for cooperation with the communities, science, culture and economy for the future of Open Government Data in Austria.

X-Europe Webinar #17 - Apache Arrow & Flight on Data Lakes

Wed, 24 Mar 2021 17:00:00 +0100

Data and analytics for all: Separation of Data tier and Zero Copy powered by Apache Arrow & Flight and Dremio

In an effort to be data-driven, many organizations are looking to democratize data. However, they often struggle with increasingly larger data volumes, reverting back to bottlenecking data access to manage large numbers of data engineering requests and rising data warehousing costs. To address this, a next-gen cloud data lake architecture has emerged that brings together the best attributes of the data warehouse and the data lake. This new open data architecture is built to maximize data access with minimal data movement and no data copies.

How the “no data copy” approach dramatically streamlines data workflows while reducing security and governance overhead Why agile development concepts, when applied to the data tier, can dramatically increase data engineering agility How to separate compute and data by preserving data in open file and table formats How a next-generation cloud data lake architecture brings together the best attributes of data warehouse and data lakes to truly democratize data

REGISTRATION INFO

–»> Registration link: https://apache-arrow-datalake.carrd.co/ «<– Please also RSVP here on the Meetup Page.

Our Speaker

Viktor Kessler LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/viktor-kessler/ Twitter: https://twitter.com/ViktorKessler

Viktor Kessler is a Senior Solutions Architect at Dremio and an ex-MongoDB Senior Solutions Architect.

ABOUT THE X-EUROPE DATA SCIENCE WEBINARS

X-Europe Webinar Series is a joint online event of Vienna Data Science Group, Frankfurt Data Science, Budapest Data Science Meetup, BCN Analytics, Budapest.AI, Barcelona Data Science and Machine Learning Meetup, Budapest Deep Learning Reading Seminar, Warsaw R Users Group, PyData Slovakia, and Data Scientists Ireland.

X-Europe Webinar #16 - Machine learning in drug discovery

Wed, 10 Mar 2021 18:00:00 +0100

Drug discovery R&D is still a huge challenge for the pharmaceutical industry. It is expensive, has a high percentage of failure in programmes and this translates into a high societal cost. In this talk, we will give an overview of the world of how the BenevolentAI platform is trying to improve and speed up the process of drug discovery by using machine learning in different areas, focusing more in the area of chemistry.

REGISTRATION INFO

–»> Registration link: https://ml-in-drug.carrd.co/ «<– Please also RSVP here on the Meetup Page.

WATCH OUT! WE ARE STARTING AT 6 pm this time!

Our Speaker

Ana Solaguren-Beascoa Negre

https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Ana-Solaguren-Beascoa

Ana studied physics at University of Barcelona and did her PhD in theoretical particle physics at the TUM - max plank institut fuer physik. She has been living in London for over 4.5 years and working as a data scientist for 3.5 years. She spent 2.5 years working in a fintech and about a year ago she moved to benevolent AI.

ABOUT THE X-EUROPE DATA SCIENCE WEBINARS

X-Europe Webinar Series is a joint online event of Vienna Data Science Group, Frankfurt Data Science, Budapest Data Science Meetup, BCN Analytics, Budapest.AI, Barcelona Data Science and Machine Learning Meetup, Budapest Deep Learning Reading Seminar, Warsaw R Users Group, PyData Slovakia, and Data Scientists Ireland.

X-Europe Webinar #15 - Data Science for (gender) equality

Wed, 24 Feb 2021 17:00:00 +0100

Data Science for (gender) equality

In this talk I will discuss the role of artificial intelligence in precision Despite improvements, women in STEM are still facing more challenges than their male colleagues: they earn less, more likely to leave their tech job being, and their work receives less acknowledgment. These disparities persist, despite evidence that integrated female members increase the overall intelligence of teams and gender heterogeneous teams are more creative and productive. Recent years’ scandals in the tech industry brought attention to women’s marginalization in STEM. In my talk, I will showcase large-scale data-driven studies from my research to illustrate that increasing the number of women itself will not solve the problem. On examples from open source software engineering, video game development, and organizational collaborations I will describe why we should not focus only on diversity and how data science can help to fight against unconscious bias.

REGISTRATION INFO

–»> Registration link: https://x-europe-ds-for-equality.carrd.co/ «<– Please also RSVP here on the Meetup Page.

Our Speaker

Orsolya Vasarhelyi, PhD Postdoctoral Researcher, University of Warwick

https://www.linkedin.com/in/orsolya-vasarhelyi-43132925/

Orsolya Vasarhelyi, Ph.D. is a data scientist, educator, and public speaker. Her research focuses on how network and data science can lead to a better understanding of unconscious bias in STEM. Currently, she is interested in developing data-driven methods to quantify inclusion and understand the impact of artificial agents on human collaborations. She is an ambassador of the Women in Data Science Conference[1] at Stanford University and a member of the Data Science for Social Good Alumni[2].

[1]https://www.widsconference.org/ [2]https://dssg.uchicago.edu/

ABOUT THE X-EUROPE DATA SCIENCE WEBINARS

X-Europe Webinar Series is a joint online event of Vienna Data Science Group, Frankfurt Data Science, Budapest Data Science Meetup, BCN Analytics, Budapest.AI, Barcelona Data Science and Machine Learning Meetup, Budapest Deep Learning Reading Seminar, Warsaw R Users Group, PyData Slovakia, and Data Scientists Ireland.

Impact of AI on freedom of expression in political competition

Wed, 27 Jan 2021 19:00:00 +0000

Webinar on 27.01.2021 Organized in cooperation with wahlbeobachtung.org, within the framework of the Spotlight on Artificial Intelligence & Freedom of Expression (SAIFE) Project of the Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe - Representative on Freedom of the Media (OSCE RFoM).

PROGRAMME:

Introduction:

Deniz Yazici, Office of the OSCE Representative on Freedom of the Media

Panellists:

Christiane Wendehorst, University of Vienna Professor of Law & Member of the Global Partnership on AI
Gianluca Misuraca, Member of the Task Force on Democracy in the Digital Age & Special Advisor of Re-Imagine Europa
Matthias Spielkamp, Co-Founder and Executive Director of Algorithm Watch
Fanny Hidvegi, Europe Policy Manager at Access Now
Rasťo Kužel, Executive Director of Memo98
Rania Wazir, VDSG/data4good; Armin Rabitsch, Election-Watch.EU/wahlbeobachtung.org

Moderator:

Julia Krüger, netzpolitik.org

X-Europe Webinar #14 What can AI bring to the table in medicine?

Wed, 27 Jan 2021 17:00:00 +0100

Automation or exploration: what can AI bring to the table in medicine?

In this talk I will discuss the role of artificial intelligence in precision medicine. We will discuss how it has impact on areas ranging from routine healthcare, to the development of novel treatment strategies and diagnostic paradigms. I will focus on a key aspects that brought surprises during the last few years, when the expectation of the impact of AI was quite different from the direction reality took. Examples will include medical imaging, prediction of individual treatment response, and the exploratory identification of novel disease phenotypes in large-scale data.

REGISTRATION INFO

–»> Registration link: https://automation-or-exploration.carrd.co/ «<– Please also RSVP here on the Meetup Page.

Our Speaker

Georg Langs, Chief Scientist, contextflow GmbH - www.contextflow.com; Associate Professor, Director Computational Imaging Research Lab, Department of Biomedical Imaging and Image-guided Therapy, Medical University of Vienna - www.cir.meduniwien.ac.at

Georg Langs is chief scientist at contextflow GmbH, and heads the Computational Imaging Research Lab at the Medical University of Vienna. He was a Research Scientist at the Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Lab at MIT, where he still holds an affiliate position. His work focusses on the development of new machine learning techniques in the context of medical imaging and precision medicine. Results include prediction models for disease course and treatment response in both the delivery of care, and the development of novel strategies.

https://www.linkedin.com/in/georg-langs/

ABOUT THE X-EUROPE DATA SCIENCE WEBINARS

X-Europe #13 - Make It or Break It, How Product Analytics Helps Build Products

Wed, 13 Jan 2021 17:15:00 +0100

Make It or Break It - How Product Analytics Helps Building Software Products

Ever since Data Science was deemed as the sexiest job of the 21st century by HBR in the early 2010s, everyone is obsessed with building the coolest, shiniest, most complex machine learning algorithms available. And rightfully so — it is super exciting and can be mind-bending at times. However, in the past 3.5 years, I have realized that it’s all nice and stuff but unless you have the basics covered, your awesome recommending engine won’t do much for your product. So I have worked with my stakeholders to understand our consumers and how we can build a product that suits their needs - and maybe even makes their life a little bit better. I will talk about how to measure the success of a software product through real-life examples, and how to deal with stakeholders used to listening to their gut - or fixated on building a complex model for a simple task.

Registration

Registration link: https://x-europe-with-anna-szell.carrd.co/ Please also RSVP here on the Meetup Page.

WATCH OUT! We are starting 15 minutes later than normal, at 17:15 CET.

Speaker

Anna Szell, Product Data Scientist at Shapr3D https://www.linkedin.com/in/annaszell/

I’ve started my data journey in early 2016 while working at PwC, and have been obsessed with building products that consumers love ever since. Among other things, I was part of the team building a loyalty app for Pampers in its early days, spent 1 year at Skyscanner leading app product analytics, and most recently I am working at Shapr3D, where we are disrupting the CAD industry.

ABOUT THE X-EUROPE DATA SCIENCE WEBINARS

X-Europe Webinar #12 - Preserving Wildlife with Computer Vision

Wed, 09 Dec 2020 17:00:00 +0100

Register

https://wildlife-cv.carrd.co/

Speaker

Jędrzej Świeżewski’s current main focus is exploring computer vision. Both the applications of it in commercial and AI for Good domains, and probing the boundaries of the applicability of the tools involved to new domains. He has worked as a data science consultant for a few years. His background is in theoretical physics, where he got a PhD in quantum and classical general relativity. In his free time Jędrzej enjoys skiing and ice skating.

LinkedIn https://www.linkedin.com/in/swiezew/

Description

In this talk, I will discuss how at Appsilon we have managed to assist wildlife conservationists in their efforts in central Africa. I will describe the challenges and share some treats of working with a real-world wildlife dataset. I will cover modelling results, and explain how our work was (and is being) used by the conservationists. I will argue that the skills of a data scientist can be of great assistance for domain experts and hence the data science community can contribute a great deal through AI for Good initiatives.

ABOUT THE X-EUROPE DATA SCIENCE WEBINARS

This is a joint online event of Vienna Data Science Group, Frankfurt Data Science, Budapest Data Science Meetup, BCN Analytics, Budapest.AI, Barcelona Data Science and Machine Learning Meetup, Budapest Deep Learning Reading Seminar and Warsaw R Users Group.

Get Started with ML in Azure Quantum Computing with Q# - X-Europe Webinars #11

Wed, 25 Nov 2020 17:00:00 +0100

############### Register

https://quantum-ml.carrd.co/

############### Speaker

Pamela Krzypkowska. Part of Microsoft technical team. Previously, worked mainly as a developer in the areas of internet of things, natural language processing, and in the areas of analytics and automation. A graduate of Computer Science at the Warsaw University of Technology and a student of Philosophy at the University of Warsaw. Her more-or-less professional interests include: artificial intelligence, cognitive science and philosophy of mind.

LinkedIn https://www.linkedin.com/in/pamela-krzypkowska/

############### Description

The purpose of the session is to showcase Microsoft Quantum Development Kit and to demonstrate how Quantum Computing tools can be used for building Machine Learning algorithms with Azure Quantum. During the talk, I will show you how to use QDK (Quantum Development Kit) to create a model for the classification of a standard dataset in Q#. At last I will present the differences in the standard approach to ML and describe the profit from the use of quantum data processing tools.

################## ABOUT THE X-EUROPE DATA SCIENCE WEBINARS

Pie & AI: Vienna - Maximizing Inferencing Efficiency with Model Quantization

Thu, 19 Nov 2020 17:00:00 +0100

Welcome to our fifth online Pie & AI event!

Pie & AI is a series of deeplearning.ai meetups independently hosted by community groups. This event is hosted by the Vienna Data Science Group.

Make sure you also register for the Webinar through this link:

https://event.webinarjam.com/channel/5thViennaPieAndAI Access to the meetup stream will be provided via email upon WebinarJam registration.

DESCRIPTION

Maximizing Inferencing Efficiency with Model Quantization

Google’s first-generation of TPUs, Tesla’s Full-Self-Driving hardware, and NVIDIA’s latest GPU architectures have one thing in common: they rely on few-bit integer operations to maximize the efficiency of inferencing a trained neural network. This talk will explore how network quantization translates a standard floating-point network into one that runs with integer-only computations. We will discuss what this means for the accuracy and other properties of the network. Finally, we will examine what we can already do during training to avoid a loss in accuracy when running a network with integer operations.

SPEAKER

Mathias Lechner is a third-year PhD student at IST Austria working with Prof. Thomas Henzinger. His research lies at the intersection of deep learning, trustworthy AI, and verification. The results of his research work have been published at pioneer AI venues, including NeurIPS, ICLR, ICML, and Nature Machine Intelligence. Before joining IST Austria, he has interned at MIT CSAIL, Daniela Rus’ Lab. He received his MSc. and BSc. in Computer Engineering from the Vienna University of Technology (TU Wien), Austria, where his MSc. thesis received the Distinguished Young Alumnus-Award, at TU Wien’s Faculty of Informatics.

https://mlech26l.github.io/pages/about/ https://www.linkedin.com/in/mathias-lechner-4008b0154/

AGENDA

17:00 - Introduction and Greeting Video 17:15 - Main Talk 17:45 - Q&A

X-Europe Webinar #10 Tools for Explainable Artificial Intelligence

Wed, 04 Nov 2020 17:00:00 +0100

MEETUP DESCRIPTION Unverified black-box model is a path to failure. Opaqueness leads to distrust. Distrust leads to ignoration. Ignoration leads to rejection.

############### Register

https://tools-xai.carrd.co/

############### Speaker

Hubert Baniecki is a Data Science student at Faculty of Mathematics and Information Science, Warsaw University of Technology. Working as a Research Software Engineer at MI2 DataLab (research group lead by Przemyslaw Biecek). Developing tools for Explainable AI and contributing to the open-source community (R & Python packages). Researching ML in the context of interpretability, adversarial attacks and interactive model exploration.

LinkedIn https://www.linkedin.com/in/hbaniecki/

############### Description

DrWhy.AI [1] is the collection of tools for Explainable AI (XAI). It’s based on shared principles and simple grammar for exploration, explanation and examination of predictive models [2]. The main concept implies using model-agnostic post hoc explanations to visualize black-box model complex behaviour.

In the talk, I will provide a background for why XAI has become an integral part of the model development process. Later I plan to briefly showcase several tools implementing interfaces that enhance the model explanation process in Python and R. I will mainly focus on DALEX [3] (a tool with >650 stars on GitHub). Listeners will have a chance to get familiar with the basics of model explanation and bias detection on a practical use case.

[1] https://github.com/ModelOriented/DrWhy [2] https://pbiecek.github.io/ema/ [3] https://github.com/ModelOriented/DALEX

################## ABOUT THE X-EUROPE DATA SCIENCE WEBINARS

Pie & AI: Vienna - Why You Should Start Using AI-generated Fake Data

Thu, 22 Oct 2020 17:00:00 +0200

Welcome to our fourth online Pie & AI event!

Pie & AI is a series of deeplearning.ai meetups independently hosted by community groups. This event is hosted by the Vienna Data Science Group.

There are a few steps to complete registration, please carefully follow the next steps:

(1) In Addition to RSVPing here, make sure you also register for the Webinar through this link:

https://event.webinarjam.com/channel/4th-PieAI-Vienna Access to the meetup stream will be provided via email upon WebinarJam registration.

(2) Please complete your registration on the deeplearning.ai signup form here: https://forms.gle/gowTrXDxE2PUtjkZ6

After the event, we will provide a limited course promo code for attendees who sign up through the form and complete a post-event survey sent by deeplearning.ai after the event. The code is for 50% off first-month subscription to any of deeplearning.ai’s courses on Coursera.

DESCRIPTION

Why You Should Start Using AI-generated Fake Data

Up to 75% of data stored in enterprises is estimated to sit unused. Nonetheless, synthetic data generation is one of the fastest growing fields in AI. Why would anyone want to create more data if they aren’t using what they already have? In this talk, we will explore how synthetic data generation can help leverage more of today’s available data. Privacy concerns are one of the most common factors limiting data usage and one for which synthetic data provide a unique solution. In addition, synthetic data can also help counteract imbalanced and biased data. Using practical examples, we will showcase what can already be achieved with today’s available methods. Finally, we will explore tools available to explore the field and gain insights on the potential and challenges involved.

SPEAKER

Klaudius Kalcher is Co-Founder and Chief Data Scientist at MOSTLY AI, a software technology company that provides synthetic data solutions to enterprises in multiple industries. His focus is on measuring and improving the utility and privacy of synthetic data, as well as exploring how synthetic data can improve the experience of working with data.

https://www.linkedin.com/in/klaudiuskalcher/ https://mostly.ai/

AGENDA

17:00 - Introduction and Greeting video by Andrew Ng 17:15 - Main Talk 17:45 - Q&A

Call for Papers Data Science Summit 2020

Fri, 16 Oct 2020 13:00:00 +0000

Please feel invited to submit your speech within the Call for Papers of Data Science Summit, which will take place on 16th of October 2020 in Warsaw.

ABOUT THE EVENT:

4th edition, the largest event in this thematic area in CEE Region
Just as previously – we expect to host at least a few parallel presentation paths
Thematic areas covered: everything related to data processing, analytics and visualization (from ML and Big Data, through statistics, up to BI – details at the below website)
In case of limitations related to the pandemic situation – the event will be hosted fully online or in a hybrid way (e.g. the conference online and pre/afterparty locally)

Details and CfP form: https://DSSconf.pl/en/cfp Deadline for submission: 13.07.2020, 23:59

Organizers: Data Science Warsaw, Fundacja Academic Partners Official event website: www.DSSconf.pl/en FB event: https://www.facebook.com/events/2951397434932274/

Gradient Boosting Machines - From Zero to Hero - X-Europe Webinars

Wed, 14 Oct 2020 17:00:00 +0200

Gradient Boosting Machines (GBM): from Zero to Hero (with R and Python code)

This talk will get you started with gradient boosting machines (GBM), a very popular machine learning technique providing state-of-the-art accuracy on numerous business prediction problems. After a quick intro to machine learning and the GBM algorithm, I will show how easy it is to train and then use GBMs in real-life business applications using some the most popular open source implementations (xgboost, lightgbm and h2o). We’ll do all this in both R and Python with only a few lines of code and this talk will be accessible for a wide audience (with limited prior knowledge of machine learning). Finally, in the last part of the talk I will provide plenty of references that can get you to the next level. GBMs are a powerful technique to have in your machine learning toolbox, because despite all the latest hype about deep learning (neural nets) and “AI”, in fact GBMs usually outperform neural networks on structured/tabular data most often encountered in business applications.

OUR SPEAKER

Szilard Pafka, PhD Chief Scientist, Epoch (USA)

Szilard studied Physics in the 90s and obtained a PhD by using statistical methods to analyze the risk of financial portfolios. He worked in finance, then more than a decade ago moved to become the Chief Scientist of a tech company in Santa Monica, California doing everything data (analysis, modeling, data visualization, machine learning, data infrastructure etc). He is the founder/organizer of several meetups in the Los Angeles area (R, data science etc) and the data science community website datascience.la. He is the author of a well-known machine learning benchmark on github (1000+ stars), a frequent speaker at conferences (keynote/invited at KDD, R-finance, Crunch, eRum and contributed at useR!, PAW, EARL, H2O World, Data Science Pop-up, Dataworks Summit etc.), and he has developed and taught graduate data science and machine learning courses as a visiting professor at two universities (UCLA in California and CEU in Europe). LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/szilard Twitter: https://twitter.com/DataScienceLA Github: https://github.com/szilard

ABOUT THE X-EUROPE DATA SCIENCE WEBINARS This is a joint online event of Vienna Data Science Group, Frankfurt Data Science, Budapest Data Science Meetup, BCN Analytics, Budapest.AI, Barcelona Data Science and Machine Learning Meetup, Budapest Deep Learning Reading Seminar and Warsaw R Users Group.

Pie & AI Vienna – Why You Should Start Using AI-generated Fake Data

Mon, 12 Oct 2020 19:00:00 +0000

Welcome to our fourth online Pie & AI event!

Pie & AI is a series of deeplearning.ai meetups independently hosted by community groups. This event is hosted by the Vienna Data Science Group.

There are a few steps to complete registration, please carefully follow the next steps:

Note

(1) In Addition to RSVPing here, make sure you also register for the Webinar through this link: https://event.webinarjam.com/channel/4th-PieAI-Vienna Access to the meetup stream will be provided via email upon WebinarJam registration.

(2) Please complete your registration on the deeplearning.ai signup form here: https://forms.gle/gowTrXDxE2PUtjkZ6

DESCRIPTION

Why You Should Start Using AI-generated Fake Data

SPEAKER

https://www.linkedin.com/in/klaudiuskalcher/https://mostly.ai/

AGENDA

17:00 – Introduction and Greeting video by Andrew Ng

17:15 – Main Talk

17:45 – Q&A

The Strong ML Hypothesis - X-Europe Webinars

Wed, 30 Sep 2020 18:00:00 +0200

WATCH OUT! THIS EVENT FEATURES A SPEAKER FROM US WEST COAST. WE ARE STARTING AT 6pm!

Registration: https://ml-hypothesis.carrd.co/

The strong machine learning hypothesis can be roughly stated as: “test set generalization is all that matters” with the corollary that “scaling is all we need”. These ideas are propelling much of the recent work and excitement in machine learning. I will list four reasons why the hypothesis is not likely to be true and two why scaling is not promising even if the hypothesis were true.

SPEAKER: https://www.linkedin.com/in/piccolbo/ Antonio Piccolboni is a Data Scientist with 30+ years of experience, including a decade in bioinformatics. He started working on neural networks as a student during the second “AI winter” and has been a keen observer and at times a user of the technology ever since. His main claim to fame is the most widely adopted R package for Hadoop, rmr2, which has been downloaded more than 1M times. He recently switched his focus to the climate crisis.

X-Europe - Can Telematics Data Identify Risky Drivers?

Wed, 16 Sep 2020 17:00:00 +0200

Hi everyone. We hope you had a great summer, welcome to the new season!

RSVP HERE AND THEN REGISTER TO THE WEBINAR AT THIS LINK: http://bit.ly/x-europe-ds-7

TALK

Many insurance companies collect telematics data about drivers’ exposure to traffic (distance driven and type of road) and their driving behavior (excess speed, aggressiveness, operating hours). Actuaries, who are experts in risk analysis for insurers, use this information to improve the insurance rate-making process. Personalized driving risk indicators can also promote driving safety. The starting point is data collected from inertial measurement units installed in vehicles, combined with the corresponding records of accidents. We will address the most relevant current challenges in driving risk measurement. Illustrations with several real data sets provided by insurance companies will answer questions: How should pay-per-mile insurance schemes be designed? How can near-miss telematics be used to identify risky drivers? What is the power of risk analytics, percentile charts, and reference curves to monitor drivers? We will emphasize the enormous potential of this field to design better insurance products and improve safety. We will perhaps be able to guess why Tesla is urgently looking for actuaries in the last few weeks.

OUR SPEAKER

Montserrat Guillen has a Ph.D. in Economics, MSc in Mathematical Statistics, and MA in Data Analysis. Professor at the University of Barcelona & Director of Riskcenter – Research Group on Risk in Insurance and Finance. Montserrat is a specialist in Actuarial Science and Insurance. Top-ten cited author (ResearchGate). Optimistic likes understanding data and mitigating risks. Loves having friends from around the world.

X-Europe Webinars

Pie & AI: Vienna - Process Mining in Production, Data Analysis in Machining

Thu, 10 Sep 2020 17:00:00 +0200

Welcome to our third online Pie & AI event!

Pie & AI is a series of deeplearning.ai meetups independently hosted by community groups. This event is hosted by the Vienna Data Science Group.

There are a few steps to complete registration, please carefully follow the next steps:

(1) In Addition to RSVPing here, make sure you also register for the Webinar through this link:

https://event.webinarjam.com/channel/VDSG-PieAI-Vienna Access to the meetup stream will be provided via email upon WebinarJam registration.

(2) Please complete your registration on the deeplearning.ai signup form here: https://docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1FAIpQLSe247FUJO8rYEW47YcjdxmMMAda7S3T-xun1xQ8zBFhpSEZzQ/viewform?_hsenc=p2ANqtz-9Edlm12sqJggSvw4zWEWn6pccs5l753aJ_U3v-X8p8jYg4fkKmyan3m1w7ojM9VvjdPOLr

DESCRIPTION

Process Mining in Production, Data Analysis in Machining

Digitization is finding its way into production. The goal is to create a defined transparency state in the first step. This requires a defined process understanding which enables sustainable processes optimization through the gained transparency. Using the example of machining, the aim of this study is to show how the use of association analysis can be used to optimize the tools being used for machining.

SPEAKERS

Dr. Lukas Prasol Since 08/2018 – Global Program Lead, Hilti AG 03/2017 – 06/2018 – Head of Department, Fraunhofer IPK 10/2020 – 06/2018 – Chief Engineer / Group Leader / Research Associate, TU Berlin 01/2007 – 06/2009 – Test Engineer, BAM Berlin https://www.linkedin.com/in/dr-lukas-prasol-488a37191/

Julia Sasse since 07/2020 Project Manager, Hilti AG https://www.linkedin.com/in/julia-sasse-9090221b6/

AGENDA

17:00 - Introduction and Greeting video by Andrew Ng 17:15 - Main Talk 17:45 - Q&A

DSS Elevate Virtual Salon

Thu, 30 Jul 2020 18:30:00 +0200

The DSS Elevate Virtual Salon is taking place on July 30th with a series of interesting talks for female specialists, by female specialists. They offered the first 10 tickets for free for our community. Please find the details below, and contact contact@vdsg.at if interested in free tickets:

Date: Thursday, July 30th, 18:30 - 22:30 (CET) Location: online Website: https://www.datascience.salon/dss-elevate-virtual-conference-july-30/

DESCRIPTION

DSS Elevate Virtual Salon is a unique female-focused virtual salon bringing together specialists to educate each other, illuminate best practices, and innovate new solutions. Female thought leaders share their wisdom and experience in their chosen field.

Join 500+ attendees to learn from practitioners, technical experts and executives how to solve real-world problems by harnessing the power of data, artificial intelligence, machine learning, and cutting-edge technologies.

Sample of topics covered:

Machine learning best practices
Data strategy and governance
Data ethics and bias
Recommendation engines
Designing ML pipelines efficiently
Career paths
Hiring and Recruitment
Seeking mentorship with purpose
The importance of female-first spaces
Navigating male-dominated teams
Overcoming imposter syndrome
Data science teams: managing, building, collaboration
Integrating open source tools into your workflows
Data and AI for emerging platforms
Data governance

For more information follow the link https://www.datascience.salon/dss-elevate-virtual-conference-july-30/

Women in Tech Conference 2020

Wed, 29 Jul 2020 19:00:00 +0000

Good news! VDSG is an official supporter of Women in Tech Conference. Women Techmakers Vienna goes online on the Friday 7th Aug 16:00-19:30, Saturday 8th Aug 09:30-13:00. The registration for #WTMVIE2020 is finally OPEN! Hurry up and get your ticket now at https://bit.ly/2EjFhFh!

Pie & AI: Vienna - Deep Learning in Algorithmic Trading

Fri, 24 Jul 2020 17:00:00 +0200

Hi,

Welcome to our second online Pie & AI Event!

Pie & AI is a series of deeplearning.ai meetups independently hosted by community groups. This event is hosted by the Vienna Data Science Group.

There are a few steps to complete registration, please carefully follow the next steps: (1) In Addition to RSVPing here, make sure you also register for the Webinar through this link:

https://event.webinarjam.com/channel/VDSG-PiaAI-Vienna Access to the meetup stream will be provided via email upon WebinarJam registration.

(2) Please complete your registration on the deeplearning.ai signup form here: https://docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1FAIpQLSfO_6MQv0B95fJjGwgKGKQCvUtoeY4JEk7LofZE8qGqdBxyKQ/viewform .

DESCRIPTION

Deep Learning in Algorithmic Trading - Lessons Learned in the Real World

This talk provides a critical view on employing machine learning / deep learning methods in algorithmic trading. We highlight the particular challenges that we meet in this domain along with approaches to tackle some of these challenges in practice. Even though experience has shown that algorithmic trading using advanced machine learning can be successful, the crucial issue remains that predictive patterns utilizing market inefficiencies quickly become void as soon as competing market participants use them too. The conclusion is that the crucial advantage is - and has always been - to know more and to be faster than competitors.

OUR SPEAKER

Dr. Ulrich Bodenhofer

MSc (applied math, Johannes Kepler University, Linz, Austria, 1996) PhD (applied math, Johannes Kepler University, Linz, Austria, 1998) Since June 2018: Chief Artificial Intelligence Officer at QUOMATIC.AI (Linz, Austria)

https://www.linkedin.com/in/ulrichbodenhofer/ http://ulrich.bodenhofer.com/ https://www.quomatic.ai/

AGENDA

17:00 - Introduction and Greeting video by Andrew Ng 17:15 - Main Talk 17:45 - Q&A

Pie & AI: Vienna – Deep Learning in Algorithmic Trading

Fri, 17 Jul 2020 17:00:00 +0000

Download Slides

Hi,

Welcome to our second online Pie & AI Event!

Pie & AI is a series of deeplearning.ai meetups independently hosted by community groups. This event is hosted by the Vienna Data Science Group.

There are a few steps to complete registration, please carefully follow the next steps:

Note

(1) In Addition to RSVPing here, make sure you also register for the Webinar through this link: https://event.webinarjam.com/channel/VDSG-PiaAI-Vienna Access to the meetup stream will be provided via email upon WebinarJam registration.

(2) Please complete your registration on the deeplearning.ai signup form here: https://docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1FAIpQLSfO_6MQv0B95fJjGwgKGKQCvUtoeY4JEk7LofZE8qGqdBxyKQ/viewform .

DESCRIPTION

Deep Learning in Algorithmic Trading – Lessons Learned in the Real World

This talk provides a critical view on employing machine learning / deep learning methods in algorithmic trading. We highlight the particular challenges that we meet in this domain along with approaches to tackle some of these challenges in practice. Even though experience has shown that algorithmic trading using advanced machine learning can be successful, the crucial issue remains that predictive patterns utilizing market inefficiencies quickly become void as soon as competing market participants use them too. The conclusion is that the crucial advantage is – and has always been – to know more and to be faster than competitors.

OUR SPEAKER

Dr. Ulrich Bodenhofer

https://www.linkedin.com/in/ulrichbodenhofer/ http://ulrich.bodenhofer.com/ https://www.quomatic.ai/

AGENDA

17:00 – Introduction and Greeting video by Andrew Ng

17:15 – Main Talk

17:45 – Q&A

Joint Webinar: Deep Self-Supervised Learning for All

Wed, 15 Jul 2020 18:00:00 +0200

ADD TO YOUR CALENDAR HERE: https://bit.ly/38I2uvL

ABOUT TALK Deep neural networks have achieved outstanding results in various applications such as vision, language, audio, speech, or reinforcement learning. These powerful function approximators typically require large amounts of data to be trained, which poses a challenge in the usual case where little labeled data is available. During the last year, multiple solutions have been proposed to leverage this problem, based on the concept of self-supervised learning, which can be understood as a specific case of unsupervised learning. This talk will cover its basic principles and provide examples in the field of multimedia.

ABOUT SPEAKER Be ready for a long and interesting list of experiences, titles, and recognitions that our guest Xavier has.

Xavier Giro-i-Nieto is an associate professor at the Universitat Politecnica de Catalunya (UPC) in Barcelona as a member of the Intelligent Data Science and Artificial Intelligence Research Center (IDEAI-UPC) and Image Processing Group (GPI), and also a visiting researcher at Barcelona Supercomputing Center (BSC). He graduated in Telecommunications Engineering at ETSETB (UPC) in 2000, after completing his master thesis on image compression at the Vrije Universiteit in Brussels (VUB) with Prof. Peter Schelkens. After working one year in Sony Brussels, he started a Ph.D. on computer vision, supervised by Prof. Ferran Marqués. In parallel, he designed and taught courses at the ESEIAAT (video content delivery) and ETSETB (deep learning) schools at UPC, as well as the Master in Computer Vision of Barcelona (video analysis). He visited multiple times the Digital Video and MultiMedia laboratory directed by Prof. Shih-Fu Chang at Columbia University in New York between 2008-2014, with whom he keeps collaborating. He also works closely with the Insight Center of Data Analytics at Dublin City University and his industrial partners at Vilynx, Mediapro, and Crisalix. He serves as associate editor at IEEE Transactions in Multimedia and reviews for top tier conferences in machine learning (NeurIPS, ICML), computer vision (CVPR, ECCV, ICCV), and multimedia (ACMMM, ICMR). www.linkedin.com/in/xaviergiro

ABOUT X-EUROPE DATA SCIENCE WEBINARS This is a joint online event of Vienna Data Science Group, Frankfurt Data Science, Budapest Data Science Meetup, BCN Analytics, Budapest.AI, Barcelona Data Science and Machine Learning Meetup, Budapest Deep Learning Reading Seminar and Warsaw R Users Group.

Joint Webinar: Deep Self-Supervised Learning for All

Fri, 10 Jul 2020 13:00:00 +0000

ADD TO YOUR CALENDAR HERE: https://bit.ly/38I2uvL

ABOUT SPEAKER Be ready for a long and interesting list of experiences, titles, and recognitions that our guest Xavier has.

Modelling the spread of SARS-CoV-2 in Austria

Fri, 03 Jul 2020 19:00:00 +0000

Download Slides

Hear straight from the Chief Developer of the COVID-19 Modeling Team about how the spread of the virus has been simulated in Austria!

Join us on the next series of the X-Europe joint meetup webinars. Make sure that on top of RSVPing, you directly register to the webinar through the link below.

Since the worldwide outbreak of the COVID-19 pandemic, experts all around the globe are working heavily to establish reliable forecasts for the spread of the disease. Hereby they allow decision-makers to roughly plan ahead and inform the population with estimates of what might still lie ahead. Yet, the huge jungle of different models, data and results is confusing and difficult to overlook: what models are reliable, which results can be trusted and what are the secrets behind these models?

OUR SPEAKER
Dr. Martin Bicher is chief developer of the COVID-19 modeling team around Dr. Niki Popper in dwh simulation-services GmbH, which currently supports decision-makers all around Austria with simulated forecasts, scenarios and policy evaluations. Moreover, he is a postdoctoral researcher at the Institute of Information Systems Engineering at TU Wien where he finished his PhD in Technical Mathematics.

https://informatics.tuwien.ac.at/people/martin-bicher

WEBINAR REGISTRATION LINK: https://bit.ly/37rPYQK

Multi-State Churn Analysis With a Subscription Product

Wed, 01 Jul 2020 17:00:00 +0200

SPEAKER

Marcin Kosiński has a master degree in Mathematical Statistics and Data Analysis specialty. Challenges seeker and devoted R language enthusiast. In the past, keen on the field of large-scale online learning and various approaches to personalized news article recommendation. Community events host: organizer of Why R? conferences http://whyr.pl/. Interested in R packages development and survival analysis models. Currently explores and improves methods for quantitative marketing analyses and global surveys at Gradient Metrics.

https://www.linkedin.com/in/marcin-kosi%C5%84ski-81435aab/ http://r-addict.com/About.html

TOPIC

Subscriptions are no longer just for newspapers. The consumer product landscape, particularly among e-commerce firms, includes a bevy of subscription-based business models. Internet and mobile phone subscriptions are now commonplace and joining the ranks are dietary supplements, meals, clothing, cosmetics and personal grooming products. Standard metrics to diagnose a healthy consumer-brand relationship typically include customer purchase frequency and ultimately, retention of the customer demonstrated by regular purchases. If a brand notices that a customer isn’t purchasing, it may consider targeting the customer with discount offers or deploying a tailored messaging campaign in the hope that the customer will return and not “churn”. The churn diagnosis, however, becomes more complicated for subscription-based products, many of which offer multiple delivery frequencies and the ability to pause a subscription. Brands with subscription-based products need to have some reliable measure of churn propensity so they can further isolate the factors that lead to churn and preemptively identify at-risk customers. During the presentation I’ll show how to analyze churn propensity for products with multiple states, such as different subscription cadences or a paused subscription. If the time allows I’ll also present useful plots that provide deep insights during such modeling, that we have developed at Gradient Metrics - a quantitative marketing agency.

WEBINAR REGISTRATION LINK: https://bit.ly/2BEo3Rr

DSS Elevate Virtual Salon

Thu, 18 Jun 2020 18:30:00 +0200

The DSS Elevate Virtual Salon is taking place on June 18th with a series of interesting talks for female specialists, by female specialists. They offered the first 10 tickets for free for our community. Please find the details below, and contact Rania if interested in free tickets:

Date: Thursday, June 18th, 18:30 - 22:30 (CET) Location: online Website: https://www.datascience.salon/dss-elevate-virtual-conference-june-18/

DESCRIPTION

Data Science Salon Elevate Virtual is a unique female-focused virtual salon bringing together specialists to educate each other, illuminate best practices, and innovate new solutions. Female thought leaders share their wisdom and experience in their chosen field.

Featured talks:

Beyond “Fizz-Buzz”: Coding Challenges for Hiring Data Scientists | Teresa Borcuch, Sr. Data Scientist at iRobot
Deep Learning for Everyone | Gabriela de Queiroz, Sr. Machine Learning Manager at IBM
Don’t’ Fake it, Own it: Facing early Career Imposter Syndrome | Kay Sin, Technical Program Manager at LinkedIn
Hacking P-Hacking: Avoiding Spurious Analyses with Automation | Sarah Koehler, Data Scientist at Scribd
Real Time, Contextual and Personalized Recommendations | Dhivya Rajprasad, Lead Data Scientist at Levi Strauss & Co.
How to Thrive Regardless of Background and Limited Resources | Jing Sang, Analytics Manager at Dropbox
How Data Science can Empower your Business | Deborah Berebichez, Chief Data Scientist at Metis

For more information follow the link https://www.datascience.salon/dss-elevate-virtual-conference-june-18/

DSS Elevate Virtual Salon

Thu, 18 Jun 2020 13:00:00 +0000

The DSS Elevate Virtual Salon is taking place on June 18th with a series of interesting talks for female specialists, by female specialists. They offered the first 10 tickets for free for our community. Please find the details below, and contact Rania if interested in free tickets:

Date: Thursday, June 18th, 18:30 – 22:30 (CET) Location: online Website: https://www.datascience.salon/dss-elevate-virtual-conference-june-18/

DESCRIPTION

Featured talks:

– Beyond “Fizz-Buzz”: Coding Challenges for Hiring Data Scientists | Teresa Borcuch, Sr. Data Scientist at iRobot – Deep Learning for Everyone | Gabriela de Queiroz, Sr. Machine Learning Manager at IBM – Don’t’ Fake it, Own it: Facing early Career Imposter Syndrome | Kay Sin, Technical Program Manager at LinkedIn – Hacking P-Hacking: Avoiding Spurious Analyses with Automation | Sarah Koehler, Data Scientist at Scribd – Real Time, Contextual and Personalized Recommendations | Dhivya Rajprasad, Lead Data Scientist at Levi Strauss & Co. – How to Thrive Regardless of Background and Limited Resources | Jing Sang, Analytics Manager at Dropbox – How Data Science can Empower your Business | Deborah Berebichez, Chief Data Scientist at Metis

For more information follow the link https://www.datascience.salon/dss-elevate-virtual-conference-june-18/

Modelling the spread of SARS-CoV-2 in Austria

Wed, 17 Jun 2020 17:00:00 +0200

Hear straight from the Chief Developer of the COVID-19 Modeling Team about how the spread of the virus has been simulated in Austria!

Join us on the next series of the X-Europe joint meetup webinars. Make sure that on top of RSVPing, you directly register to the webinar through the link below.

OUR SPEAKER Dr. Martin Bicher is chief developer of the COVID-19 modeling team around Dr. Niki Popper in dwh simulation-services GmbH, which currently supports decision-makers all around Austria with simulated forecasts, scenarios and policy evaluations. Moreover, he is a postdoctoral researcher at the Institute of Information Systems Engineering at TU Wien where he finished his PhD in Technical Mathematics.

https://informatics.tuwien.ac.at/people/martin-bicher

WEBINAR REGISTRATION LINK: https://bit.ly/37rPYQK

Pie & AI: Vienna - Continuous-time recurrent neural networks

Fri, 12 Jun 2020 17:00:00 +0200

Hi,

Welcome to our first online Pie & AI Event!

Pie & AI is a series of deeplearning.ai meetups independently hosted by community groups. This event is hosted by the Vienna Data Science Group.

There are a few steps to complete registration, please carefully follow the next steps:

(1) In Addition to RSVPing here, make sure you also register for the Webinar through this link: https://event.webinarjam.com/register/80/lxq5yb6z Access to the meetup stream will be provided via email upon WebinarJam registration.

(2) Please complete your registration on the deeplearning.ai signup form here: https://docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1FAIpQLSfO_6MQv0B95fJjGwgKGKQCvUtoeY4JEk7LofZE8qGqdBxyKQ/viewform .

DESCRIPTION

State-of-the-art time-series prediction with continuous-time recurrent neural networks.

Neural networks with continuous-time hidden state representations have become unprecedentedly popular within the machine learning community. This is due to their strong approximation capability in modeling time-series, their adaptive computation modality, their memory and parameter efficiency. In this talk Ramin will discuss how this family of neural networks work and why they realize attractive degrees of generalizability across different application domains.

OUR SPEAKER

Ramin Hasani, PhD, Machine Learning Scientist at TU Wien, expert in robotics, including previously being a scholar MIT CSAL, presents technical aspects of continuous-time neural networks.

https://www.linkedin.com/in/raminhasani/ https://repositum.tuwien.ac.at/obvutwhs/download/pdf/4937341

AGENDA

17:00 - Introduction and Greeting video by Andrew Ng 17:15 - Main Talk 17:45 - Q&A

Pie & AI: Vienna – Continuous-time recurrent neural networks

Mon, 08 Jun 2020 19:00:00 +0000

Hi,

Welcome to our first online Pie & AI Event!

Pie & AI is a series of deeplearning.ai meetups independently hosted by community groups. This event is hosted by the Vienna Data Science Group.

There are a few steps to complete registration, please carefully follow the next steps:

Note

(2) Please complete your registration on the deeplearning.ai signup form here: https://docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1FAIpQLSfO_6MQv0B95fJjGwgKGKQCvUtoeY4JEk7LofZE8qGqdBxyKQ/viewform .

DESCRIPTION

State-of-the-art time-series prediction with continuous-time recurrent neural networks.

OUR SPEAKER

Ramin Hasani, PhD, Machine Learning Scientist at TU Wien, expert in robotics, including previously being a scholar MIT CSAL, presents technical aspects of continuous-time neural networks.

https://www.linkedin.com/in/raminhasani/ https://repositum.tuwien.ac.at/obvutwhs/download/pdf/4937341

AGENDA

17:00 – Introduction and Greeting video by Andrew Ng

17:15 – Main Talk

17:45 – Q&A

Joint Webinar: Choosing the Right AI Tech Stack

Wed, 03 Jun 2020 17:00:00 +0200

ADD TO YOUR CALENDAR (.ics): https://bit.ly/2yBx6Sh

FORMAT 7 data science communities with 1000s of members, across 4 European countries are hosting this 45 minutes Joint Webinar.

SPEAKER Darina Mamonova is a Subject Matter Expert in data science and emerging technologies with years of experience working in consulting houses and industry flagship companies such as Accenture, Merck, Razorfish, Apple. She is specializing in the public sector, telecommunications, R&D in life sciences, and insurance. www.linkedin.com/in/darinamamonova

TOPIC This webinar is a demonstration of the decision-making process when there is a need to determine which technology stack fits best in specific circumstances. The focus lies on the selection process of cloud providers and open source frameworks demonstrated on a real use case.

WHAT YOU WILL LEARN What are important factors that needed to be taken into consideration when selecting tech stack Evidence a real use case from industry Learn about high-level classification of cloud providers

COMMUNITIES Vienna Data Science Group, Budapest AI, Barcelona Data Science & Machine Learning Meetup, Barcelona Analytics, Budapest Deep Learning Reading Seminar, Budapest Data Science Meetup.

Joint Webinar: Choosing the Right AI Tech Stack

Fri, 29 May 2020 19:00:00 +0000

ADD TO YOUR CALENDAR (.ics): https://bit.ly/2yBx6Sh

FORMAT 7 data science communities with 1000s of members, across 4 European countries are hosting this 45 minutes Joint Webinar.

SUPPORTERS Thank you to TDWI｜www.tdwi.eu/verein and SAS｜www.sas.com/de_de for supporting this.

COMMUNITIES Vienna Data Science Group, Budapest AI, Barcelona Data Science & Machine Learning Meetup, Barcelona Analytics, Budapest Deep Learning Reading Seminar, Budapest Data Science Meetup.

Joint Webinar: Introduction to Causal Inference For Business Applications

Fri, 29 May 2020 19:00:00 +0000

ADD TO YOUR CALENDAR: https://bit.ly/3cWlTKi

FORMAT 7 data science communities with 1000s of members, across 4 European countries are hosting this 45 minutes Joint Webinar. Our motivation here to bring more like-minded people online and have a chance to invite speakers independently of geography.

SPEAKER Aleix Ruiz de Villa Robert lives in Barcelona and has a PhD in Mathematics. He has been working in a bunch of companies as a Head of Data Science: La Vanguardia (popular Spanish newspaper), SCRM Lidl International Hub (a digital group for analysis, and implementation of omnichannel BI systems) and Onna (B2B startup that helps to collect and preserve data). He is also the founder of the Barcelona Data Science and Machine Learning Meetup, board member of the Societat Catalana de Matemàtiques, and currently works as a freelance consultant. www.linkedin.com/in/aleixrvr www.lavanguardia.com www.linkedin.com/company/scrmlidlinternationalhub www.onna.com www.meetup.com/en-AU/barcelona-data-science-machine-learning www.scm.iec.cat/en

TALK Companies need to measure the impact of their decisions. Nowadays, digital companies can evaluate many options by running A/B tests on their websites or apps. Unfortunately, A/B tests have limitations: sometimes, they are too expensive or not ethical or even impossible! Moreover, companies already have historical data, and they want to consider it too. When data has been obtained through observations, instead of A/B tests, its analysis can easily fall into many traps and get the wrong conclusions. Causal inference is both a methodology and a toolkit that guides you through the analysis to avoid them. Aleix will demonstrate on a set of simple use cases how causal inference can be applied to marketing, COVID-19, measuring worker’s effectiveness and pricing. If you are already interested check this article and this video. www.towardsdatascience.com/what-to-expect-from-a-causal-inference-business-project-an-executives-guide-i-7c5a35c03147 www.youtube.com/watch?v=rQKPrry6g0g

SUPPORTERS Thank you to TDWI｜www.tdwi.eu/verein and SAS｜www.sas.com/de_de for supporting this.

COMMUNITIES Vienna Data Science Group, Budapest AI, Barcelona Data Science & Machine Learning Meetup, Barcelona Analytics, Budapest Deep Learning Reading Seminar, Budapest Data Science Meetup.

ADD TO YOUR CALENDAR: https://bit.ly/3cWlTKi

Multi-State Churn Analysis With a Subscription Product

Mon, 25 May 2020 19:00:00 +0000

Download Slides

SPEAKER

Marcin Kosiński has a master degree in Mathematical Statistics and Data Analysis specialty. Challenges seeker and devoted R language enthusiast. In the past, keen on the field of large-scale online learning and various approaches to personalized news article recommendation.Community events host: organizer of Why R? conferences whyr.pl. Interested in R packages development and survival analysis models. Currently explores and improves methods for quantitative marketing analyses and global surveys at Gradient Metrics.

https://www.linkedin.com/in/marcin-kosi%C5%84ski-81435aab/
http://r-addict.com/About.html

TOPIC

Subscriptions are no longer just for newspapers. The consumer product landscape, particularly among e-commerce firms, includes a bevy of subscription-based business models. Internet and mobile phone subscriptions are now commonplace and joining the ranks are dietary supplements, meals, clothing, cosmetics and personal grooming products.
Standard metrics to diagnose a healthy consumer-brand relationship typically include customer purchase frequency and ultimately, retention of the customer demonstrated by regular purchases. If a brand notices that a customer isn’t purchasing, it may consider targeting the customer with discount offers or deploying a tailored messaging campaign in the hope that the customer will return and not “churn”.The churn diagnosis, however, becomes more complicated for subscription-based products, many of which offer multiple delivery frequencies and the ability to pause a subscription. Brands with subscription-based products need to have some reliable measure of churn propensity so they can further isolate the factors that lead to churn and preemptively identify at-risk customers.During the presentation I’ll show how to analyze churn propensity for products with multiple states, such as different subscription cadences or a paused subscription. If the time allows I’ll also present useful plots that provide deep insights during such modeling, that we have developed at Gradient Metrics – a quantitative marketing agency.

WEBINAR REGISTRATION LINK: https://bit.ly/2BEo3Rr

Managing the Machine Learning Lifecycle - Best Practices for MLOps with MLFlow

Wed, 20 May 2020 17:00:00 +0200

Hi,

Please join us on the next series of the X-Europe joint meetup webinars!

Also, if you want to speak or join the Slack workspace created for attendees, please join, and at the end of the webinar, fill in your email so we can get in touch!

Details This is a joint online event of Vienna Data Science Group, Frankfurt Data Science, Budapest Data Science Meetup, BCN Analytics, Budapest.AI, Barcelona Data Science and Machine Learning Meetup and Budapest Deep Learning Reading Seminar

SPEAKER Zoltan C.Toth, CTO at Datapao. His team is consulting and training companies on how to build analytics infrastructure. He is also a Databricks Partner, the company behind the Apache Spark, and MLflow. Earlier he worked with RapidMiner on Spark and managed a petabyte-scale data infrastructure at Prezi.

TOPIC This talk is an introduction to MLflow, an open-source platform for managing the end-to-end machine learning(ML) lifecycle. In this webinar, you will see a hands-on presentation on how to track and serve ML lifecycle with the help of MLflow. Plus, attendees will get all notebooks and datasets that will be used during the webinar.

YOU WILL LEARN ABOUT:

MLflow technology
working with experiments
tracking and analyzing ML model metrics
using MLflow central model store to manage a model’s lifecycle

PLEASE REGISTER AT: https://bit.ly/2WzP94h

Managing the Machine Learning Lifecycle – Best Practices for MLOps with MLFlow

Mon, 18 May 2020 18:00:00 +0000

Hi,

Please join us on the next series of the X-Europe joint meetup webinars!

Also, if you want to speak or join the Slack workspace created for attendees, please join, and at the end of the webinar, fill in your email so we can get in touch!

YOU WILL LEARN ABOUT: – MLflow technology – working with experiments – tracking and analyzing ML model metrics – using MLflow central model store to manage a model’s lifecycle

PLEASE REGISTER AT: https://bit.ly/2WzP94h

Joint Webinar: Introduction to Causal Inference For Business Applications

Tue, 05 May 2020 17:00:00 +0200

ADD TO YOUR CALENDAR: https://bit.ly/3cWlTKi

COMMUNITIES Vienna Data Science Group, Budapest AI, Barcelona Data Science & Machine Learning Meetup, Barcelona Analytics, Budapest Deep Learning Reading Seminar, Budapest Data Science Meetup.

ADD TO YOUR CALENDAR: https://bit.ly/3cWlTKi

Kaggle’s COVID-19 Open Research Dataset Challenge

Fri, 20 Mar 2020 19:00:00 +0000

ONLINE KICK-OFF
Challenge, data and tasks walkthrough, Q&A by Levente Szabados
20/03 19:00-19:45 CET

This session is a place for data scientists to come together and get additional expert-insights about the recently published Kaggle competition. If you wanna make your small contribution to today’s complex situation that we all have faced or looking for a team or maybe want to learn data science or simply curious – then this is the place.

ABOUT THE CHALLENGE AND DATA
Kaggle has launched a competition in response to COVID-19 with an interesting 2GB-dataset. This dataset is a joint effort of several organisations such as Allen Institute for AI, Georgetown University, Microsoft, Google, White House and others. 29,000 scholarly articles about coronaviruses. All details here on Kaggle’s page.

TASKS
To wrap it up, tasks have to do with data mining (especially NLP), to get deeper insights about these viruses, their transmission, incubation, genetics, origin, vaccines, medical care and other perspectives.

WHAT IS IN THE SESSION
Levente – data science expert, will give an overview of data, tasks, possible approaches, ideas and tips.

MISSION
This is for you if you:

want to take part in Kaggle challenge, make your personal contribution and as a ‘thank you’ even win some cash
look for a team
are a data science community organisator and want to exchange with other communities
want to have an overview of challenge to decide if you take part
want to practice your (new) skills in real use case, especially if you want to become a data scientist/engineer
want to join a number of brilliant communities around the world in one shot

START NOW

Join now Slack here, you can find there other interested exerts on #cover-19-challenge channel.
Take a look at challenge here.

ABOUT THE SPEAKER
Levente Szabados is a deep tech leader, consultant and manager with special interest in artificial intelligence, cognitive sciences, data science and deep learning. And a fan of different AI challenges.
#Kaggle #COVID19 #CORD19

Webinar: Online Kick-off, Expert Walkthrough + Q&A of COVID-19 Kaggle Challenge

Fri, 20 Mar 2020 19:00:00 +0100

Details

ONLINE KICK-OFF Challenge, data and tasks walkthrough, Q&A by Levente Szabados

ABOUT THE CHALLENGE AND DATA Kaggle has launched a competition in response to COVID-19 with an interesting 2GB-dataset. This dataset is a joint effort of several organisations such as Allen Institute for AI, Georgetown University, Microsoft, Google, White House and others. 29,000 scholarly articles about coronaviruses. All details here on Kaggle’s page: www.kaggle.com/allen-institute-for-ai/CORD-19-research-challenge

TASKS To wrap it up, tasks have to do with data mining (especially NLP), to get deeper insights about these viruses, their transmission, incubation, genetics, origin, vaccines, medical care and other perspectives.

WHAT IS IN THE SESSION Levente - data science expert, will give an overview of data, tasks, possible approaches, ideas and tips.

MISSION This is for you if you:

want to take part in Kaggle challenge, make your personal contribution and as a ’thank you’ even win some cash
look for a team
are a data science community organisator and want to exchange with other communities
want to have an overview of challenge to decide if you take part
want to practice your (new) skills in real use case, especially if you want to become a data scientist/engineer
want to join a number of brilliant communities around the world in one shot

START NOW If you are already on the VDSG slack server just join #covid-19-challenge channel. If not join Slack via www.bit.ly/2Sx3rRf Take a look at challenge here: www.kaggle.com/allen-institute-for-ai/CORD-19-research-challenge

ABOUT THE SPEAKER Levente Szabados is a deep tech leader, consultant and manager with special interest in artificial intelligence, cognitive sciences, data science and deep learning. And a fan of different AI challenges. www.linkedin.com/in/levente-szabados-76334728

VDSG Data Science Cafe Vol. XIV

Wed, 04 Mar 2020 13:00:00 +0000

Dear community, let’s meet in Sclable for our next Cafe in March!

Our next DS Cafe we visit Sclable, where we can get together and relax in a comfortable environment, and with great refreshments, courtesy of our hosts! This is your chance to talk about some of the work-in-progress projects, to start your own idea and make it happen with the guidance and support of your Data Science network, to explore and decide if there is a project you want to collaborate on, or simply to get together and talk shop with other data scientists. Everyone is welcome regardless of experience in Data Science – all you need is some curiosity, your computer, and the willingness to talk to other Data Science enthusiasts around you. If you have a project you would like to share with the DS community, please get in touch with us – we will give you 3 minutes at the beginning of the Cafe to introduce yourself and your idea. Looking forward to seeing you all there!

Sexy Cloud Infrastructure for Data Scientists & Some Aspects of Blockchain

Wed, 26 Feb 2020 18:00:00 +0100

Hi!

This Knowledgefeed (vol. 32) is kindly supported by Raiffeisen Bank International AG with venue, pizzas and beer.

The first talk addresses the question: can automated infrastructure self-provisioning in the cloud make data scientists excited? The speaker will share her approach, experiences and give you some practical tips for making it happen.

The second talk reflects on the terms blockchain, distributed data ledgers, etc. and motivates current research work in this area.

Doors open at 18:00. Hope to see you there!

SPEAKERS

Shirley Werchota: “Sexy Cloud Infrastructure for Data Scientists”

In Raiffeisen Bank International, Advanced Analytics (AA) Workspace is the the core building block of our analytical infrastructure and enables involved stakeholders to foster innovation, collaboration and transparency through provided tools in AWS. Join us to find out more about the architecture, team setup and practical experiences.

Shirley Werchota is AA Workspace Product Owner, Raiffeisen Bank International Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/shirleywerchota/

Martin Pirker: “Data…. on the Blockchain?”

The term “Blockchain” is commonly associated in mainstream media with various experiments of cryptocurrencies and resulting headlines of money laundering, spontaneous millionaires and curious coin offerings. However, with computing devices used by almost everyone (e.g. smartphones) and them being always online and connected, the idea of storing data in a distributed way, on various kinds of nodes, and utilizing a consensus and cooperation model instead of a central authority, is worthy of a reflection.

Martin Pirker is a researcher at the University of Applied Sciences St. Pölten, Institute of IT Security Research. He is member of the newly started Josef-Ressel Center for Blockchain and Security Management, a 5y research project to investigate blockchain technologies and bring them closer to practical applications.

https://research.fhstp.ac.at/projekte/josef-ressel-zentrum-fuer-blockchain-technologien-sicherheitsmanagement

https://www.fhstp.ac.at/en/about-us/staff-a-z/pirker-martin

AGENDA

18:00-18:30 get together 18:30-18:40 intro speech VDSG+RBI 18:40-19:25 Shirley Werchota’s talk 19:30-20:00 Martin Pirker’s talk 20:00-21:00 socializing

Liability of ML Systems & Data Literacy

Tue, 14 Jan 2020 19:00:00 +0000

Liability for machine learning systems by Daniel Deutsch from Vienna Data Science Group

VIDEO: https://youtu.be/DsfkJ3h3TzY

On data literacy by Marek Danis from Vienna Data Science Group

Dear community,

We are pleased to announce our first Knowledgefeed in 2020. This time we have two topics, both from more of the “soft” side of Data Science.

We are going to explore whether our legislation is ready for AI, then we will discuss the necessity of data literacy. Doors open at 6:00PM.

AGENDA

18:00-18:30 get together

18:30-18:40 intro speech VDSG

18:40-Talks

TOPICS

“Liability for machine learning systems” – Daniel Deutsch (Judicial Law Clerk)

As more and more machines are supplied with machine learning algorithms, the question arises who is liable in cases of damage? Who is liable in case of accidents involving an autonomous driving car? Is there a difference when an autonomous lawnmower causes damage to the neighbour’s property? Public interest in those questions is high, whereas legal opinions are rare and court decisions are missing. Daniel will show why it can be difficult to fit machine learning-based applications in the existing legal liability system, and what the future might look like.

“On Data Literacy” Marek Danis (Data Scientist and Corporate Trainer)

This presentation will describe a new literacy: “data literacy”, the analogy with computer literacy, and reasons why this skillet will soon be as essential to all professionals as computer literacy is today. It will address the advent of decision making as the key managerial activity and the resulting democratization of AI and analytics. The presentation will address issues of mindset, as well as skillset, and the ways to acquire a basic level of data literacy to derive value from AI and ML assisted processes in one’s daily tasks.

Find out more about our SPEAKERS:

Daniel studied Business Law at WU Wien and currently Artificial Intelligence at JKU Linz. He has worked in the legal and tech industry before and tries to bring both worlds together. Ultimately he considers himself an entrepreneur as he wants to build products and services that last. https://www.linkedin.com/in/createdd/
Marek is an experienced data scientist and trainer with a strong business outcome focus. Previously, Marek worked for more than 10 years for Schlumberger Oilfield Services around the world in several technical, engineering and training positions and later with the Digital Transformation Team. Marek completed his Data Science education at the Texas A&M University Mays Business School in Houston. After doing consulting work in the domain of Data Science in QHSE (Quality, Health, Safety and Environment) and industrial applications, he has joined AlphaZetta as an analytics expert and AZ Academy trainer. https://www.linkedin.com/in/marekdanis

For RSVP visit the link https://www.meetup.com/Vienna-Data-Science-Group-Meetup/events/267808770/

Knowledgefeed vol. 29: Efficient ML for mobile devices & Segmentation in Surveys

Thu, 12 Dec 2019 19:00:00 +0000

Dear Community,

We hope you had a great summer! We are very happy to announce that the VDSG is back from summer break, too, and our next meetup is happening in two weeks in A1!

This time we are having two talks: Segmentation in surveys and efficient machine learning for mobile devices.

Jelena Milosevic: “Efficient machine learning for mobile devices” (30-35 mins)

Increased amount of data allows for better training and more accurate machine learning systems. Big part of generated data today is coming from embedded and mobile devices, whose number is constantly on the rise. In order to fully profit from the collected information, artificial intelligence should come to these devices. However, this is currently difficult to achieve, mostly due to the computational demands of machine learning systems being too high for constrained computational resources of mobile devices. One of the reasons for this is that, when designing machine learning methods, most people only focus on accuracy, without taking into account constrained computational resources of developed solutions.

Many applications rely on efficient machine learning. Some examples are: vision and image processing, autonomous driving, and malware detection. In order to facilitate novel applications in these domains, it is of utmost importance to provide machine learning solutions that are not just accurate, but also suitable for constrained environments. In my talk I will discuss how we can design and develop such solutions suitable to be used in real-time, on-device, and at the same time customizable with respect to application requirements (accuracy, inference time, and power consumption).

Jelena Milosevic is passionate about machine learning and cybersecurity. She is currently a postdoctoral researcher at the Institute of Telecommunications, TU Wien, where she designs and develops machine-learning-based methods for detection of cyber attacks. She obtained her PhD in 2017 from Faculty of Informatics, University of Lugano, Switzerland, where her main focus was on the malware detection systems suitable for runtime usage on resource constrained systems and based on machine learning methods of low complexity. Previously, Jelena was an intern at IBM Cyber Security Center of Excellence in Beer Sheva, Israel, where she worked on the time-series analysis for anomaly detection and in Movidius an Intel Company in Dublin, Ireland, where she worked on the design and development of deep learning methods suitable for embedded environments. https://www.linkedin.com/in/milosevicjelena/

Marcin Kosiński: “Segmentation in Surveys using NMF” (30-35mins)

Working with high dimensional data? Often facing the need to group observations? This presentation is for you.

Segmentation should be balanced and distinctive, the discovered over- and under-indexed features within segments should create a meaningful story, and, ideally, the amount of differentiative factors that drives segmentation should be small.

The last requirement often becomes a bottleneck in a survey where respondents are asked an enormous amount of questions. One solution is the nonnegative matrix factorization that, in one attempt, segments respondents and their features! The concept of the NMF decomposition and applications in R will be presented with the explanation of diagnostic plots.

Marcin has a master degree in Mathematical Statistics and Data Analysis specialty. Challenges seeker and devoted R language enthusiast. In the past, keen on the field of large-scale online learning and various approaches to personalized news article recommendation. Community events host: organizer of Why R? conferences whyr.pl. Interested in R packages development and survival analysis models. Currently explores and improves methods for quantitative marketing analyses and global surveys at Gradient Metrics. https://www.linkedin.com/in/marcin-kosi%C5%84ski-81435aab/

Stay tuned and RSVP on our Meetup: https://www.meetup.com/Vienna-Data-Science-Group-Meetup/events/264362828/

Slides are available here.

You can find slides for this talk here.

Knowledgefeed vol. 30: How to get into Kaggle?

Thu, 12 Dec 2019 19:00:00 +0000

How to get into Kaggle? by Philipp Singer and Dmitry Gordeev from Vienna Data Science Group

Our next meetup is dedicated to Kaggle community. Two seasoned Kagglers share their experiences and tricks with you about how to start with Kaggle and how to be successful in Kaggle Competitions.

Doors open at 18:00. Hope to see you there!

Kaggle is one of the largest online communities for data scientists specifically known for their competitions where participants aim to solve data science challenges. Kaggle has a long history of varying types of competitions from different areas such as medicine, finance, scientific research, or sports focusing on different types of data and prediction problems such as tabular data, time series, NLP, or computer vision. In this meetup, Philipp and Dmitry who are one of the top contenders on Kaggle and usually compete together under the name “The Zoo”, will give an introduction and an overview of their journey. In detail, they will cover the following topics:

– What is Kaggle? – What types of competitions do exist on Kaggle? – Overview of competitions “The Zoo” participated – Short overview of utilized methods and main principles – Where and how can you start to compete?

SPEAKERS

Philipp Singer currently works as a data scientist in UNIQA Insurance Group. Previously, he was working as a post-doctoral researcher at the Data Science Lab of GESIS. Philipp obtained a PhD in computer science with honors at the Technical University of Graz where he also finished his Master studies in Software Development and Business Management. During his career he has obtained several awards including multiple winning and top placements on Kaggle as well as several scientific honors such as a best paper award at the renowned World Wide Web Conference. Kaggle profile: https://www.kaggle.com/philippsinger

Dmitry Gordeev currently works as a data scientist in UNIQA Insurance Group. He holds a master degree in data mining and has in-depth experience of machine learning applications in financial institutes, focused on risk management and credit scoring. He has a track record of multiple winning and top placements in kaggle competitions, currently possessing a title of kaggle competitions grandmaster. Kaggle profile: https://www.kaggle.com/dott1718

AGENDA

18:00-18:30 get together 18:30-18:40 intro speech VDSG 18:40-19:40 talks 19:40-NA socializing

For Location and RSVP follow the link: https://www.meetup.com/Vienna-Data-Science-Group-Meetup/events/266382385/

Pandas for Movement Data Analysis & NLP for Automated Document Reading

Mon, 02 Dec 2019 13:00:00 +0000

The analysis of movement is an important research topic in, for example, geography, ecology, visual analytics, GIScience as well as in application domains such as urban, maritime, and aviation research. Movement data analysis requires tools for the manipulation and visualization of movement or trajectory data. This talk presents the new Python library MovingPandas.org

Anita Graser: Analyzing Movment Data with MovingPandas from Vienna Data Science Group

Despite the fast pace of digitalization happening in the modern world, core processes in the banking area are still based on printed documents to a large extent. Document processing, therefore, consumes a significant amount of manpower and processing time, as well as an increasing operating risk level of the bank by being prone to human errors. In this session, you will learn how automated document processing can create a great opportunity to modernize and simplify the way modern banks work, reduce associated operation risk level, as well as reduce time and costs spent within a given process area.

NLP in a Bank: Automated Document Reading: Yevgen Kolesnyk / Patrik Zatko / Daniel Bekesi from Vienna Data Science Group

On our next meetup, you will get introduced of MovingPandas, a new locally brewed Python library, and you will hear a use-case from RBI’s Data Science team on how banks do automated document reading with the help of NLP tools. Doors open at 18:00. Hope to see you there!

SPEAKERS

Anita Graser: Python for Movement Data Analysis The analysis of movement is an important research topic in, for example, geography, ecology, visual analytics, GIScience as well as in application domains such as urban, maritime, and aviation research. Movement data analysis requires tools for the manipulation and visualization of movement or trajectory data. This talk presents the new Python library MovingPandas.org Anita is a Scientist at AIT Austrian Institute of Technology (center for mobility systems) Check out Anita’s detailed bio here: https://anitagraser.com/about/ Linkedin: https://at.linkedin.com/in/anita-graser-9510253

Daniel Bekesi: NLP in a bank – Automated Document Reading Despite the fast pace of digitalization happening in the modern world, core processes in the banking area are still based on printed documents to a large extent. Document processing, therefore, consumes a significant amount of manpower and processing time, as well as an increasing operating risk level of the bank by being prone to human errors. In this session, you will learn how automated document processing can create a great opportunity to modernize and simplify the way modern banks work, reduce associated operation risk level, as well as reduce time and costs spent within a given process area. Daniel is a Senior Data Scientist at Raiffeisen Bank International. He has trained and tested in various domains of data analytics & science. In that vein, he is well equipped to consult and be a mentor to business professionals seeking high reward from data. LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/dániel-békési-phd-787ab897

AGENDA

18:00-18:30 get together 18:30-18:45 intro speech VDSG+RBI 18:45-19:15 Anita Graser: Python for Movement Data Analysis 19:15-19:45 Daniel Bekesi: NLP in a bank – Automated Document Reading 20:00-21:00 socializing 21:00-NA more socializing in a pub

Hosting and Catering are provided by Raiffeisen Bank International.

Here is the meetup link.

Data Science Demo Day in Frankfurt: livestreamed

Thu, 21 Nov 2019 13:00:00 +0000

Dear community, we are happy to announce that two of our members are going to have a talk at “Data Science Demo Day” in Frankfurt, held by Frankfurt Data Science and Vienna Data Science Group. This event will be livestreamed, so everyone interested save the date!

Finest selection of data science industry solutions from Germany and Austria showcased by their creators. —-

We have double premiere, which is also double fun and huge huge value for community (we hope)!

I. For the first time in Frankfurt: X-country data science community event and we do it together with Vienna Data Science Group | www.viennadatasciencegroup.at And we will have guests from Vienna!

II. DEMO DAY – new format, that everyone was waiting for. 100% PowerPoint free! No slides, only working demos showcased by their creators in 10 minutes. They will also have own stands, everyone can approach them directly afterwards.

You want to present? Make your submission here www.bit.ly/2NIB5kG We’re also planning Demo Days for 2020.

Here we come, our demos for tonight:

DEEP LEARNING SEARCH ENGINE FOR RADIOLOGISTS “I will demonstrate our tool, search engine for radiologists. It uses deep learning to find similar cases, support and accelerate diagnosis, and assessment of patients in radiology. The software is currently being installed in hospitals across Europe, and enables the fast access to relevant information during clinical practice.” – Georg Langs, Vienna, contextflow/Medical University of Vienna/Computational Imaging Research Lab | www.linkedin.com/in/georg-langs
SUPPORTIVE AI FOR EFFICIENT REGULATORY CHECKS “I will demonstrate how we develop the future of efficient regulatory compliance checks in unstructured data in a live showcase of the Matching Box Tool. The tool is based on recent progressions in Deep Learning and NLP.” – Larissa Putzar, Hamburg, PwC | www.xing.com/profile/Larissa_Putzar
AUTOMATED REAL ESTATE VALUATION WITH ImmAzing “I will show our AVM ImmAzing and explain how we gather and combine the data, how we build our prediction models, and what we intend to do in the near future.” – Wolfgang Brunauer, Vienna, DataScience Service | www.linkedin.com/in/wolfgang-brunauer-12487a86
NETWORK MODELS ENHANCING EXPLAINABLE AI IN FINANCIAL SERVICES “I will show network models in action. These models are powerful approach to enhance AI models. They capture complex relationships in data and explain them utilizing visualization. In a wider sense they enhance eXplainable AI workflows in numerous ways.” – Jochen Papenbrock, Frankfurt, Firamis | www.linkedin.com/in/jochenpapenbrock
AUTOENCODER BASED TOOL FOR RULE-BASED ANOMALY DETECTION IN CATEGORICAL DATA “We will show some capabilities of this tool with different datasets including visualization and explanation in the sense of explainable AI.” – Markus Doktor, Frankfurt, PwC | www.linkedin.com/in/markus-doktor-142776178 – Katrin Newger, Munich, PwC | www.linkedin.com/in/katrin-newger-72b431186
bamboolib – A GUI FOR pandas “I will demonstrate our own creation, a tool for visualizing and transforming pandas dataframe without need of coding. Demo will include description of technical challenges and product architecture.” – Florian Wetschoreck, Frankfurt, bamboolib | www.linkedin.com/in/florianwetschoreck

Data Science Demo Day is supported and powered by PwC | www.pwc.de and hosted by TechQuartier | https://techquartier.com

BIG, BIG thanks to our supporters!

Join LIVESTREAM｜www.youtube.com/c/FrankfurtDataScience To get closer join our LinkedIn Group｜www.linkedin.com/groups/8573953

With love, Frankfurt Data Science & Vienna Data Science Group Teams

For RSVP visit: https://www.meetup.com/Vienna-Data-Science-Group-Meetup/events/266487264/

VDSG Data Science Cafe Vol. XIII

Thu, 21 Nov 2019 13:00:00 +0000

Dear community – the summer hiatus stretched into – well – winter … but the DS Cafe is finally back!

For the final DS Cafe of the year, we return to ready2order, where we can get together and relax in a comfortable, familiar environment, and with great refreshments, courtesy of our hosts! This is your chance to talk about some of the work-in-progress projects, to start your own idea and make it happen with the guidance and support of your Data Science network, to explore and decide if there is a project you want to collaborate on, or simply to get together and talk shop with other data scientists. Everyone is welcome regardless of experience in Data Science – all you need is some curiosity, your computer, and the willingness to talk to other Data Science enthusiasts around you. If you have a project you would like to share with the DS community, please get in touch with us – we will give you 3 minutes at the beginning of the Cafe to introduce yourself and your idea. Looking forward to seeing you all there!

FINAL DETAILS

If you would like to be included in the SLACK channel, please let us know your email address in the appropriate field when RSVPing. What we provide:

A nice location, refreshments and snacks, WIFI, and a friendly environment so you can connect with your colleagues. What to bring:
A laptop, headsets, writing utensils, and curiosity

For RSVP visit: https://www.meetup.com/Vienna-Data-Science-Group-Meetup/events/266568318/

DS Salon Vol. 3: Social Media – Monitoring Their Impact on Civil Society

Thu, 14 Nov 2019 13:00:00 +0000

On October 21 the Data4Good program lead by VDSG held it’s third DS Salon. The agenda and additional details can be found on our meetup page of the event. The videos are now on our youtube channel.

Maximilian Schubert of ISPA (Internet Service Providers Austria) provides a brief overview of the history and background of ISPA, and their activities in promoting greater safety on the net, before diving into the challenges faced by internet platforms as they navigate between the need for transparency, data privacy, freedom of speech, and government bureaucracies.

The slides are available here: http://bit.ly/2CGNeQX

Via Skype from Rome, Martina Chichi describes Amnesty International Italy’s Barometer of Hate Project, which approaches online hate speech from a human rights perspective. Their goal is to pin down the main targets and triggers for online abuse in Italy, and determine the extent of politician accountability in the level of discourse.

The slides are available here: http://bit.ly/33Q9G5W

Armin Rabitsch from wahlbeobachtung.org discusses the importance of social media in the election campaign process, the need to monitor the online public discourse of political candidates and the advertising budget flows as part of civil society’s efforts to uphold democratic institutions, and the obstacles that currently stand in the way.

The slides are available here: http://bit.ly/2XkzDIw

data4good’s Rania Wazir presents the first results of the 3-week social media monitoring campaign, and relates the wide range of challenges that had to be faced: from the API access obstacle course to the devil in the GDPR details, and from project management woes to the sentiment analysis blues.

Find the charts here: http://bit.ly/2XfoPLr

Q&A session with DS Salon vol.3’s speakers.

Find the charts here: http://bit.ly/2XfoPLr

Pandas for Movement Data Analysis & NLP for Automated Document Reading

Tue, 29 Oct 2019 18:00:00 +0100

Hi!

SPEAKERS

Anita Graser: Python for Movement Data Analysis

Anita is a Scientist at AIT Austrian Institute of Technology (center for mobility systems) Check out Anita’s detailed bio here: https://anitagraser.com/about/ Linkedin: https://at.linkedin.com/in/anita-graser-95102530

Daniel Bekesi: NLP in a bank - Automated Document Reading

Daniel is a Senior Data Scientist at Raiffeisen Bank International. He has trained and tested in various domains of data analytics & science. In that vein, he is well equipped to consult and be a mentor to business professionals seeking high reward from data. LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/dániel-békési-phd-787ab897

AGENDA

18:00-18:30 get together 18:30-18:45 intro speech VDSG+RBI 18:45-19:15 Anita Graser: Python for Movement Data Analysis 19:15-19:45 Daniel Bekesi: NLP in a bank - Automated Document Reading 20:00-21:00 socializing 21:00-NA more socializing in a pub

Hosting and Catering are provided by Raiffeisen Bank International.

Big data-Industrial IoT Meet-Up Linz

Tue, 18 Jun 2019 17:00:00 +0200

Dear Community,

Everyone is talking about Big-Data and its increasing importance. You are interested in this topic and want to learn more about integrating such solutions into your business? You want to listen to experts and think that afternoon coffee is the best time to discuss?

Vienna Data Science Group is pleased to invite you to the first Meet-Up presented together with the Uni software plus GmbHin Linz.

Agenda:

Talks: “The Evolution of Machine Data Pipelines at ENGEL” by Christoph Schönegger (ENGEL AUSTRIA GmbH), Stefan Janecek (uni software plus GmbH)

“Building 1st Data Science Community in Slovakia” by Radovan Kavicky (Vienna Data Science Group)

Afterwards: Discussion with drinks & snacks

Registration: verena.dirnberger@unisoftwareplus.com (open until 14.06.2018)

The Meet-Up will be in English language.

Further Information “The Evolution of Machine Data Pipelines at ENGEL”:

According to Forbes [1], 90 percent of the data humanity owns today has been generated in the past two years. One of the main drivers behind this breath-taking world-wide data growth is industrial IoT (IIoT), the extension of the “internet of things” (IoT) to the industrial sector. In their talk, Christoph Schönegger (Engel Austria) and Stefan Janecek (uni software plus) will share their story of developing the “Engel Edge Device”, a secure solution for collecting, cleaning, aggregating and processing IIoT data “on the edge”, i.e., close to the source of the data.

The Edge Device System allows to centrally manage containerized applications, and deploy them to small hardware appliances running “on the edge”. These applications range from simple ETL (extract transform load) processes to algorithms that make decisions based on data and feed those decisions back into production machines.

Since security is paramount in industrial applications, the Edge Devices are protected by strong cryptography, using the on-board TPM 2.0 chip as a trust anchor. In addition to the security considerations on the Edge Device itself, the talk will also describe the secure data logistics solution to transfer data from the Edge Devices to a central Hadoop data lake.

https://www.forbes.com/sites/bernardmarr/2018/05/21/how-much-data-do-we-create-every-day-the-mind-blowing-stats-everyone-should-read/#18f7e27660ba

We are looking forward to welcome you to an informative evening!

MyData Austria Meetup #3

Mon, 17 Jun 2019 18:00:00 +0200

In this meetup we will shed light on the topic of data as a property: is it possible to own data, how can data or usage rights for that data be sold and what are the implications?

This is a co-hosted event with the MyData Austria Meetup group.

Agenda:

Clara Landler: Welcome & Introduction
Christoph Fabianek: Semantic Container for Data Mobility, Closing presentation of FFG funded project
Soheil Human, Rita Gsenger, Kemal Ozan Aybar: short talks on “End-user Empowerment: An Interdisciplinary Perspective” and “Digital Inequality: Call for Socio-technical Privacy Management Approaches”.
Michael Shea: Fishbowl discussion about Data as a Human Right

Looking forward to meeting you !

Data Science Alliance Kickoff - Deep Learning & ML

Wed, 15 May 2019 17:30:00 +0200

STREAM:

Please join the First stream at the start of the meetup:

Belgrade: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fx9BLHsWwns
Vienna: https://youtu.be/KSAzCRQE_-w
Zagreb: https://youtu.be/m-44Pc-ny6I

Questions? Post it here: http://sli.do , channel: #dsmeetup

Welcome to our first ever international Meetup, a result of VDSGs ongoing effort of internationalization. Meet the Data Science Alliance, where speakers from Belgrade, Zagreb, and Vienna will share their knowledge with the international community.

Talks will be held in 3 cities in parallel on May 15th. The concept of the event is to have one talk in-live and two talks over the online streams at every location.

The theme of the meetup will be the application of Machine Learning & Deep Learning on real-life examples. You will get a chance to listen to 3 distinguished speakers from Belgrade, Vienna, and Zagreb.

Agenda :

Opening talk - 17:30-17:45

First Talk-17:45-18:10 Speaker -Marko Knezivic Topic: Recommender systems for personalized content in video games

Marko Knežević holds PhD title at the Department of Computing and Control Engineering at the Faculty of Technical Sciences, University of Novi Sad.

In this talk, we’ll give light overview over recommendation techniques and how we allowed model to capture some general behavior patterns regarding buying and how we tackled common obstacles such as data dimensionality and class imbalance.

Linkedin : https://www.linkedin.com/in/marko-kne%C5%BEevi%C4%87/

Second Talk- 18:15- 18:40 Speaker-Allan Hanbury Topic: Exploiting Data in Medicine

Allan Hanbury is Professor for Data Intelligence at the TU Wien and faculty member of the Complexity Science Hub Vienna.

He was a scientific coordinator of the EU-funded Khresmoi Integrated Project on medical and health information search and analysis and is a co-founder of contextflow, the spin-off company commercializing the radiology image search technology developed in the Khresmoi project.

This talk will present examples of approaches to extracting value from medical data, in particular from research articles and radiology images, as well as paths toward more effective exploitation of data in medicine.

Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/allan-hanbury-9483a26/

Third Talk- 18:50- 19:15 Speaker-Tomislav Krizan Topic: AI in FinTech service: Predicting Credit Debt Bankruptcy

Tomislav plays with data for a long time on every possible and impossible way. First Big Data project was on account-tickets in a book keeping service (low tech approach). Where the most see just numbers and letters, he finds a purpose and information. For a while now he is playing on a field of DM/ML models for business purposes, with the last couple of years having a spotlight on text analytics and NLP (unstructured datasets)

This talk is going to be about how we develop models which can tell us with high accuracy rate if the debt user will go into the personal bankruptcy. Our algorithms are self-learned, so with every new iteration result are showing greater accuracy.

In the first part of the talk we shall speak about how we used Gradient Boosting Machines (GBM) & Random Forest on the past and current data of credit debts of the users (such as how much are the user in the minus on bank and credit cards, how long they were late with payments and cetera) to predict personal bankruptcy. We have followed short term loans (up to 60 months), which were granted in the US. Project was also done for several Europeans countries, but with a bit lesser accuracy - caused by harder access to the data on customer placements and the level of indebtedness.

Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/tomislavkrizan/

Looking forward to meeting you !

VDSG Data Science Café : New volume of the DS Café

Fri, 26 Apr 2019 17:30:00 +0200

Dear community – the wait is finally over, the next DS Cafe is here!

This volume of the DS Cafe is a combined effort with the data4good Hackathon organizing team, and will be hosted by A1. Everyone – whether hackathon participants or not (yet) - is invited to come, meet each other, get to know more about the data4good projects, and relax. You can participate regardless of your experience in Data Science - all you need is some curiosity, your computer, and the willingness to talk to other Data Science enthusiasts around you. In addition, if you have a project you would like to share with the DS community, please get in touch with us – we will give you 3 minutes at the beginning of the Cafe to introduce yourself and your idea. Looking forward to seeing you all there!

FINAL DETAILS If you would like to be included in the SLACK channel, please let us know your email address in the appropriate field when RSVPing. What we provide:

A nice location, refreshments and snacks, WIFI, and a friendly environment so you can connect with your colleagues. What to bring:
A laptop, headsets, writing utensils, and curiosity

Knowledgefeed vol. 27: Deep Learning for Predictive Quality & Predictive Maintenance

Tue, 23 Apr 2019 19:00:00 +0000

Get ready for our 27th Knowledgefeed featuring characteristics of Industrial AI and how state of the art deep learning methods can be applied to solve complex problems and bring more value to companies.

Talk (duration 60 – 90 mins): Predictive Maintenance, Predictive Quality & Visual Inspection

By Simon Stiebellehner -Head of AI, craftworks & Daniel Ressi -Data Scientist, craftworks

Artificial Intelligence plays a major role in Industry 4.0 and more industrial companies than ever are starting to utilize their data to gain value and insights. The industrial domain offers very promising opportunities but this potential also comes with very specific requirements and challenges. This talk gives insights into the characteristics of Industrial AI and how state of the art deep learning methods can be applied to solve complex problems and bring more value to companies. Based on real use cases, three common areas of Industrial AI and the applied modelling approaches will be presented:

Predictive Maintenance: Can faults of machines be predicted in advance?
Visual Inspection: Can computer vision automatically assess the quality of products?
Predictive Quality: Can product defects be predicted in advance and prevented in future?

Simon is a Head of AI at craftworks and lecturerin statistics and digital marketing at WU Wien and FH Wien. After having completed his Bachelorin Information Systems, he gained diverse industry experience,ranging from Microsoft to global players of the consulting industry. Subsequently, Simon obtained his Masters degree from University College London (UCL), specializing in Machine Learning and Data Science. Afterwards, he was a doctoral candidate and research associate, conducting research at the intersection of Neural Probabilistic Language Models and Recommendation Systems in a Real-Time Bidding context.

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/simonstiebellehner/ Website: https://craftworks.at

Daniel is a Data Scientist at craftwork and develops customized deep learning solutions for industrial clients. His background is in Biomedical Engineering, where he focused his research on Recurrent Neural Networks for Brain Machine Interfaces (BSc, TU Graz) and for Computational Neuroscience (MSc, Imperial College London). Craftworks develops award-winning artificial intelligence solutions for industrial enterprises. Their customers range from the automotive to the paperindustry and everything in between.

LinkedIn: https://at.linkedin.com/in/daniel-ressi Website: https://craftworks.at

As always: grab the opportunity to ask our lecturers questions, discuss your ideas and of course enjoy the company of some interesting folks!

Please do not hesitate to present your own projects, ideas or thoughts. We are more than gladly sharing the stage with you! Please refer to our blog-post / Discussion entry for further details:

https://viennadatasciencegroup.at/2016/09/06/power-to-the-people/

Looking forward to meeting you at the Knowledgefeed!

Stay tuned and RSVP on our Meetup:

https://www.meetup.com/Vienna-Data-Science-Group-Meetup/events/258669227/

Knowledgefeed vol. 28: (Big) Data (Science) for Security

Tue, 23 Apr 2019 19:00:00 +0000

Dear Community,

Get ready for our 28th Knowledgefeed featuring security research question that motivated an ambitious data collection and analysis approach.

While a common opinion is that a collection of “big data” only leads to security and privacy problems – and it often does – however the analysis of large amounts of IT systems behavioral data also enables new experimental approaches to improve IT security and protect us from the cesspool of malware that the internet is.

The TARGET research project at St.Pölten UAS started with an initial IT security research question that motivated an ambitious data collection and analysis approach, and that then spawned subsequent challenges in data collection, encoding, storage, processing, experimental algorithm implementation, up to production deployment.

This talk reflects on the challenges encountered and experiences made.

Talk (duration 45- 60 mins)

By Martin Pirker who is a Senior Researcher at the Institute of IT Security Research, St. Pölten University of Applied Sciences. His current work focus is the Josef Ressel Center for Unified Threat Intelligence on Targeted Attacks (TARGET), and all kinds of weird problems that arise when IT (security) meets privacy and big data.

As always: grab the opportunity to ask our lecturers questions, discuss your ideas and of course enjoy the company of some interesting folks!

Website: https://isf.fhstp.ac.at/en https://research.fhstp.ac.at/en/projects/josef-ressel-center-for-unified-threat-intelligence-on-targeted-attacks-target https://isf.fhstp.ac.at/en/forschende/martin-pirker

Knowledgefeed vol. 28: (Big) Data (Science) for Security

Fri, 29 Mar 2019 18:30:00 +0100

Dear Community,

Get ready for our 28th Knowledgefeed featuring security research question that motivated an ambitious data collection and analysis approach.

While a common opinion is that a collection of “big data” only leads to security and privacy problems - and it often does - however the analysis of large amounts of IT systems behavioral data also enables new experimental approaches to improve IT security and protect us from the cesspool of malware that the internet is.

This talk reflects on the challenges encountered and experiences made.

Talk (duration 45- 60 mins)

data4good Hackathon

Wed, 27 Mar 2019 19:00:00 +0000

The First data4good Hackathon!

In collaboration with WeAreDevelopers::Keep-Current and R-Ladies Vienna.

Are you looking to use your skills, knowledge or interest in data for good? Then join us in our first data4good Hackathon, for two days of pure coding & fun while doing something good on the way — Be a part of the change you want to see in the world of data!

We seek all data enthusiasts: aspiring data scientists or experienced data wizards; savvy solvers of business intelligence requests; machine learning pros, predictive analytics angels, data mining experts, computer vision idealists, UX maestros and ambitious developers with an interest in social causes…

Let’s help together GruenStattGrau, Hilfswerk Österreich, Hilfswerk International & CivesSolutions in their quest.

!!! IMPORTANT !!! ————– This time it’s not enough to just click attend. To be matched in the teams, please register yourself here: https://www.eventbrite.at/e/data4good-hackathon-wien-tickets-58713887819

Schedule

Saturday:

09:00 Breakfast and open Help Desk
10:00 Opening
10:30 Project introduction by the Data Science Leads + 15min Q&A
11:15 Team-building
11:30 Hacking !!!
13:00 Lunch break
14:00 Hacking !!!
17:30 Review: Status report

Sunday:

09:00 Breakfast
10:00 Hacking !!!
13:00 Lunch break
14:00 Hacking !!!
15:30 Preparing Demo & Slides
17:00 Final presentations
18:00 End

Stay tuned and RSVP on our Meetup: https://www.meetup.com/Vienna-Data-Science-Group-Meetup/events/260092352/

We look forward to seeing you!

VDSG Data Science Café : New Volume of the DS Café

Fri, 15 Feb 2019 17:00:00 +0100

Dear community – new year, new volume of the DS Cafe!

We hope you’ve had a “guter Rutsch” into 2019, and are ready for more learning and working together on Data Science! For February’s edition, we will visit Ready2Order’s offices again. Their vision is to digitize all small entrepreneurs and improve their business processes, by creating a marketplace in which to offer entrepreneurs the most popular apps for a 360-degree service, including warehouse management, online shop, accounting, etc. Their team will be there to talk to the community.

You will have the chance to talk about some of the work-in-progress projects, or even better, start your own idea and make it happen through the guidance and support of your Data Science network. Everyone is invited to come and share their ideas, or simply explore and decide if there is a project you want to be involved in. You can participate regardless of your experience in Data Science - all you need is some curiosity, your computer, and the willingness to talk to other Data Science enthusiasts around you. If you have a project you would like to share with the DS community, please get in touch with us – we will give you 3 minutes at the beginning of the Cafe to introduce yourself and your idea.

FINAL DETAILS Please let us know your email address in the mandatory field when RSVPing, so we can include you in the SLACK Channel.

What we provide:

A nice location, refreshments and snacks, WIFI, and a friendly environment so you can connect with your colleagues.What to bring:
A laptop, headsets, writing utensils

Knowledgefeed vol. 26: AI for Smart Cities & Privacy-Preserving Big Data Sharing

Mon, 10 Dec 2018 18:30:00 +0100

Dear Community,

get ready for our 26th Knowledgefeed featuring 2 talks of how data science & AI can advance innovative solutions to our city living and what can be done to protect personal information from illegitimate use.

Talk 1 (duration 45 - 60 mins): Practical implementation of AI solutions for smart cities

by SK Reddy, Chief Product Officer AI for Hexagon, Silicon Valley.

AI is making dramatic inroads into city living to solve problems that were earlier thought to be impossible. How to predict the sentiment of people in the mall? How to prevent a crime using regular surveillance cameras? How to predict traffic? How to use satellite images to plan for city expansion?

How to predict the quality of my city services? How to auto-analyze social media feed for trigger-based city-safety actions? These are some of the problems that could be solved using Artificial Intelligence.

Cities and organizations need to understand the importance of quality of data and the right models to pick.

The talk covers the current state of the art in statistical machine learning, explores the paths to approach strategic AI in Cities, and discusses the ‘what’ and ‘how’ of the deep learning techniques in Smart Cities.

SK is the Chief Product Officer AI in Hexagon (www.hexagon.com). He is also an AI and ML expert and a successful twice startup entrepreneur. He is a frequent speaker in conferences and an AI blogger.

LinkedIn: www.linkedin.com/in/skreddy99/ Blogs: www.linkedin.com/in/skreddy/detail/recent-activity/posts/ YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/user/skreddy99/videos

Talk 2 (duration 45 min): Privacy-Preserving Big Data Sharing

by Michael Platzer, CEO and Co-Founder of Mostly AI, Vienna.

The digitalization of our world results in an ever-increasing amount of personal data being gathered. Processing and sharing these big data assets drives scientific progress, fosters innovation and enables smarter products and services. Yet the very same data, more often than not, contain sensitive personal information that is to be protected from illegitimate use. These conflicting targets, data-driven innovation vs. data protection, pose one of the biggest challenges of today’s digitalized world. AI-generated synthetic data offers a fundamentally new solution to this long-standing issue.

Agenda:

Privacy vs. Innovation
Under-Estimated Risk of Re-Identification
AI-generated Synthetic Data
Differential Privacy
Customer Story from Finance
QA & Discussions

Michael Platzer is CEO and Co-Founder of Mostly AI (https://mostly.ai), a Vienna-based startup, that develops fundamentally new approaches towards safe & secure big data anonymization. He earned a master degree in Technical Mathematics at TU Wien, a doctoral degree in Marketing Science at WU Wien, and was recognized for his work on customer behavior prediction with the Global Research Award by the American Marketing Association.

LinkedIn: www.linkedin.com/in/mplatzer/ www: https://mostly.ai

As always: grab the opportunity to ask our lecturers questions, discuss your ideas and of course enjoy the company of some interesting folks!

Please do not hesitate to present your own projects, ideas or thoughts. We are more than gladly sharing the stage with you! Please refer to our blog-post / Discussion entry for further details:

https://viennadatasciencegroup.at/2016/09/06/power-to-the-people/

Looking forward to meeting you at the Knowledgefeed!

VDSG Data Science Café Vol. X - We visit Ready2Order.

Fri, 09 Nov 2018 16:30:00 +0100

Dear community, we have reached our 10th volume! Amazing!

Thanks for your support, your energy and your interest in learning and working together on Data Science. It has been a pleasure to see the development of the community, and how many of the regular attendees have created their own path in the profession, which was exactly the inspiration and the motto of this event. And if you haven’t yet found your own path, there is still plenty of time and support to do it. Come and get inspired!

For November’s volume, we will visit Ready2Order’s offices. Their vision is to digitize all small entrepreneurs and improve their business processes. They want to create it through a marketplace in which the most popular apps are available to offer the entrepreneur a 360-degree service, including warehouse management, online shop, accounting, etc. This is how customer analytics leads to better all-around decision making. Their team will be there to talk to the community.

We will also have a “Food and DS Corner”, since several members working with data in the food industry will be there to share experiences and ideas.

In addition, you will have the chance to talk about some of the work-in-progress projects, or even better, start your own idea and make it happen through the guidance and support of your Data Science network.

FINAL DETAILS

Please let us know your email address in the mandatory field when RSVPing, so we can include you in the SLACK Channel.

What we provide:

A nice location, refreshments and snacks, WIFI, and a friendly environment so you can connect with your colleagues.

What to bring:

A laptop, headsets, writing utensils

Joint Event: Future of Data + VDSG: Real Time Stream Processing w/ Apache Flink

Wed, 07 Nov 2018 18:00:00 +0100

Hi fellow Data Enthusiasts,

After the summer break, the Hadoop User Group is back as the Future of Data Meetup. Vienna Data Science Group enters the season with this joint event before proceeding with its own Knowledgefeed series.

The purpose of this Meetup is (and always was) to bring together the community in the open source, Apache projects and data.

This time we will have an exciting talk of Andrey Zagrebin who is working as an engineer on the Apache Flink project. He will give us an overview on Apache Flink, news and updates and will be available the whole evening for questions.

As always there’ll be a networking part with pizza and beer. This time the pizza and beer is sponsored by Data Artisans.

Thanks to the Unbelievable Machine Company, who will sponsor the venue: “Brains and Bodies CoWorking”.

Agenda: 18:00 Doors open 18:30 Introduction to Apache Flink, Andrey Zagrebin. 19:15 Apache Flink in action – stream processing of mobile networks, Milos Molnar and Peter Belko 19:45 Pizza + Beer + Networking sponsored by Data Artisans

Andrey Zagrebin works as a software developer at Data Artisans working on the Apache Flink core.

Milos Molnar is Big Data architect and COE of trivia data with more than 20 years in IT. During the last 5 years he focused on distributed systems and data processing within distributed systems like Apache Hadoop or Apache Kafka. Together with his team, Milos builds data applications for batch focused cases (data-at-rest) as well as streaming applications for processing data-in-motion.

Peter Belko is more than 10 years working in software development. He is fond of functional programming (Scala) and highly experienced with stream data processing. He is leading the development department at trivia data.

This is a joint Meetup of the Vienna Data Science Group and Future of Data / Vienna

VDSG Data Science Café Vol. IX - We visit TourRadar.

Fri, 12 Oct 2018 17:00:00 +0200

Autumn is officially here, the temperature is colder, and the set-up is perfect to enjoy our DS Cafe’s first anniversary! If you have visited us before, you already know how it works: coffee, like-minded people, and a relaxed and friendly environment to talk (maybe also program) about our favorite topic: Data Science.

For the next 2 editions, we will be visiting young companies using data to improve their operations. October’s edition will be at TourRadar, an online marketplace for travelers to compare and book multi-day tours. Their data science and business intelligence team will be available to chat and share what they are doing in their daily operations.

FINAL DETAILS

Please let us know your email address in the mandatory field when RSVPing, so we can include you in the SLACK Channel.

What we provide:

A nice location, refreshments and snacks, WIFI, and a friendly environment so you can connect with your colleagues.

What to bring:

A laptop, headsets, writing utensils, collaborative mindset, willingness to apply Data Science and your ideas

VDSG Data Science Café Vol. VIII

Fri, 14 Sep 2018 16:00:00 +0200

Dear community,

We hope you enjoyed the summer, had a chance to recharge your batteries, and are ready for the next edition of the Data Science Cafe! This time, we can share coffee and Data Science on the premises of WeAreDevelopers!, home of the Keep Current Project.

We started the DS Cafe format exactly one year ago, to provide a mechanism for participants to move forward from the various interesting presentations delivered by Data Science MeetUps all around Vienna, to active application of their own ideas. Many fascinating projects were born this first year, such as Keep-Current, Learning Data Science with Beer, Data Science Jobs, Micro-skills development platform, and Data Science and Cooking, among others.

The format of the DS Cafe has evolved under the guidance of the community, and we hope you will continue to give us your input this year. We want to thank you again for all your support during the first year of the Cafe - and let’s keep improving this open space for our Data Science community!

FINAL DETAILS Please let us know your email address in the mandatory field when RSVPing, so we can include you in the SLACK Channel. What we provide: A nice location, refreshments and snacks, WIFI, and a friendly environment so you can connect with your colleagues. What to bring: A laptop, headsets, writing utensils, collaborative mindset, willingness to apply Data Science and your ideas

DS Salon Vol 2: Impact on society with Data with Dr. Claire Melamed

Mon, 09 Jul 2018 13:00:00 +0000

On June 21 the Data4Good program lead by VDSG was formally launched with the second edition of our new format Data Science Salon. The agenda and additional details can be found on our meetup page of the event. The videos are now on our youtube channel.

Rania’s introduction of the program Data4Good, as a mechanism to move from talk to impact (slides are here available):

Dr. Claire Melamed talks about Data for Action: how to move from talk to impact in the data revolution:

Following the discussion Panel – From talk to impact: Ecosystem to support you. With Dr Melamed, Impact Hub and VDSG’s members:

VDSG Knowledgefeed vol. 24

Sat, 30 Jun 2018 19:00:00 +0000

Download Krista’s presentation here , an Christian’s presentation here .

VDSG Data Science Café Vol. VII and Tech Pills: Open Knowledge Maps

Fri, 29 Jun 2018 16:00:00 +0200

Dear community,

Summer is coming, FIFA World Cup already started, but we still love and enjoy applying Data Science together. So we want to use the pause day between the group stage and Round 16 to meet for the last time before the summer break. Maybe we could try to predict the WW Cup winner :)

This time, we are going to visit an innovative company: Casinos Austria & Österreichischen Lotterien on their Innovation Hub at Rennweg 44. They share the same Cafe’s inspiration: Connect, Cowork, Cocreate.

For this Cafe edition we have some special guests from Open Knowledge Maps. (https://openknowledgemaps.org/) If you want, you could participate in the Scavenger hunt “competition” at the beginning of the Cafe to familiarize yourself with this innovative platform to search in scientific knowledge. This will surely very useful when you want to research new topics on Data Science.

After the Scavenger hunt, we will have time to discuss the different projects and ideas including the Data Science and UX behind Open Knowledge Maps with Chris, Peter and Maxi.

This time Michael from Casinos Austria will be available to talk about their innovative projects, Zanni is bringing the innovative idea: “Micro-skills development platform”. Mari will introduce a new project connecting Data Science and Cooking. Bernhard is going deeper in the analysis of the Austrian Data Science vacancies (http://www.datainsight.at/dsjobs/) and there is a team starting a discussion around Probabilistic Programming approaches to AI. Nice bunch of options!

Everyone is welcome to come and share their own ideas with the community or simply explore for a while and decide if there is a project you want to be involved in. You can participate regardless of your experience in Data Science, just bring some enthusiasm, your computer and the willingness to talk to like-minded people around you.

PLEASE BE AWARE: If you are planning to attend confirm your attendance in MeetUp until Wednesday 27th June. If you are not on the list, you cannot enter the facilities.

FINAL DETAILS Please let us know your email address in the mandatory field when RSVPing so we can include you in the SLACK Channel.

• What we provide: A nice location, refreshments and snacks, WIFI, friendly environment so you can connect with your colleagues.

• What to bring: A laptop, headsets, writing utensils, collaborative mindset, willingness to apply Data Science and your ideas :)

VDSG – Knowledgefeed vol. 25: Managing spatio-temporal data using GeoMesa

Sun, 17 Jun 2018 19:00:00 +0000

Dear Community,

get ready for our 25th Knowledgefeed on Monday, June 25 – the last one before our summer hiatus:

Managing massive amounts of spatio-temporal data using GeoMesa

Description: With recent improvements in tracking and communications technology, we live in an age where movement data is collected on a big scale. This data harbors enormous potential for decision makers but we face the challenge of extracting relevant information from these data sets. This talk introduces GeoMesa, an open source solution for storing, analyzing, and visualizing massive spatio-temporal datasets on top of common big data tools, such as Accumulo, HBase, or Cassandra.

Duration of talk: 30 min

Anita Graser is spatial data scientist, open source GIS advocate, and author with a background in information technology and geographic information systems. She is working with the Center for Mobility Systems at the Austrian Institute of Technology in Vienna.

As always: grab the opportunity to ask our lecturers questions, discuss your ideas and of course enjoy the company of some interesting folks!

Please do not hesitate to present your own projects, ideas or thoughts. We are more than gladly sharing the stage with you! Please refer to our blog-post / Discussion entry for further details:

Stay tuned and RSVP on our Meetup:

https://www.meetup.com/Vienna-Data-Science-Group-Meetup/events/251584992/

Knowledgefeed vol. 24: using NLP to dissect stereotyping and authoritarianism

Wed, 30 May 2018 18:00:00 +0200

Dear Community,

get ready for our 24th Knowledgefeed featuring 2 talks about the application of natural language processing on topics concerning society and politics.

Talk 1 (duration 20 min): Using Natural Language Processing to Automate the Bechdel Test

by Krista Westphal, data analyst at Unicredit Bank Austria AG.

Krista recently finished her master’s thesis at the Vienna University of Technology. In her thesis she developed methods for analyzing whether a screenplay or novel passes the Bechdel test. In this talk she will present her thesis, describing the various natural language processing techniques she used.

Talk 2 (duration 30 min): Researching China’s (Online) Politics: A Data Science Toolbox

by Christian Göbel, Professor of Modern China Studies at the University of Vienna.

The Chinese Internet offers a treasure trove of diverse data that offers insights into how China’s One-Party system operates. The research project “the Microfoundations of Authoritarianism” uses online petitions, tweets about social unrest, policy-related documents and other kinds of data to study citizen-government interactions and their political impact. In this talk, we introduce some of our favourite tools for web scraping, natural language processing, supervised and unsupervised classification, GIS visualisation, network analysis, and inferential statistics. Finally, we outline some of the challenges we are currently facing.

Christian Göbel (http://christiangoebel.net) is Professor of Modern China Studies at the University of Vienna and Principal Investigator of the research project “the Microfoundations of Authoritarianism: E-Participation, Social Unrest and Public Policy in China”, which is funded by the European Research Council. A political scientist and sinologist by training, his research is concerned with the adaptability of the Chinese Party-State to social, economic and political challenges. He is especially interested in the effects of digital technology on governance in China and other countries, which he currently analyses together with an amazing team of post-doctoral, postgraduate and graduate researchers.

Twitter: @Chri5tianGoebel ResearchGate: https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Christian_Goebel2

As always: grab the opportunity to ask our lecturers questions, discuss your ideas and of course enjoy the company of some interesting folks!

Please do not hesitate to present your own projects, ideas or thoughts. We are more than gladly sharing the stage with you! Please refer to our blog-post / Discussion entry for further details:

https://viennadatasciencegroup.at/2016/09/06/power-to-the-people/

Looking forward to meeting you at the Knowledgefeed!

Joint Event: Semantic Web - VDSG: Data Science solutions using Semantics

Wed, 23 May 2018 17:30:00 +0200

Semantic Web and Data Science are complementary disciplines working on solving problems based on large amounts of data. While Semantic Web technologies are based on Symbolic AI, Data Science relies rather on statistics and applies statistical approaches to AI.

Both disciplines approach same challenges from different perspectives while related to extracting meaningful information from several sources and large amounts of data. How to put those approaches together in a way that decision-makers could use it?

In this Meetup we will present recent developments at the intersection of machine learning and semantic knowledge modelling. We will discuss practical use case scenarios to illustrate potential results that could be achieved through the collaboration between both fields.

AGENDA

17:30 Welcome and Intoduction (VSWM, VDSG, DMA)

17:45 Semantic enhanced Artificial Intelligence powered by Andreas Blumauer (Semantic Web Company)

18:00 Break

18:15 The Knowledge Graph for End-to-End Learning on Heterogeneous Knowledge powered by Xander Wilcke (Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam)

18:30 Open Knowledge Maps: how to increase visibility of research findings using NLP, Semantics, Open Data and Community powered by Peter Kraker (Open Knowledge Maps)

18:45 Large Scale Medical Image Retrieval at contextflow powered by Rene Donner (Contextflow)

19:00 Lightning Talks: *) Christian Blaschke (Semantic Web Company) The Semantic Layer for contextualising industrial process data. *) Sabrina Kirrane (WU Executive Academy) From Data Analyst to Data Scientist *) Peter Tschuchnig (INiTS) The DMA Incubator Programme *) Liad Magen Keep Current Project

ABOUT OUR SPEAKERS:

Andreas Blumauer: is CEO and co-founder of Semantic Web Company. He is also the ‘product architect’ of PoolParty Semantic Suite. He holds a degree in computer science and is a distinguished Semantic Web expert. Andreas has a senior advisory role in customer projects.
Xander Wilcke: PhD Candidate at VU Amsterdam on Machine Learning on Knowledge Graphs.
Dr. Peter Kraker is founder and chairman of Open Knowledge Maps. Peter is a leading expert on scholarly communication, open science and bibliometrics and has published more than 35 papers on these topics. For his work, Peter received several awards and fellowships, he is has a vast experience in research and has worked in a number of EU-funded projects. He is core team member of the Open Access Network Austria.
Rene Donner: With a background in electrical engineering René has worked for 8 years at the Medical University Vienna as a researcher in computer vision, focusing on anatomical structure localization and content based image retrieval. He is now CTO at contextflow, applying deep learning to large scale medical image data and developing smart tools to aid radiologists in their challenging tasks.

This is a joint Meetup of the Vienna Data Science Group, the Data Market Austria and the Vienna Semantic Web Meetup

VDSG Data Science Café Vol. VI @ ImpactHub

Fri, 18 May 2018 16:00:00 +0200

Dear community, dear newcomers and everyone who participated in any capacity in the DS Café until now: We are delighted to announce the 6th Data Science Café! As announced, we are going to visit a new location, namely the ImpactHub, which is the epicenter of social enterpreneurship in Vienna!

Since we would visit them, several of their members may join us in this volume to discuss ideas regarding how to create more impact with an appropriate usage of their data. The perfect preamble for the upcoming initiatives Data4Good.

At this point we usually recap the last event, however, after conducting 5 consecutive Café’s, we’d like to take a step back and ask you where the DS Café should be heading.

After all, we always preach that “we provide the framework - you bring it to life” and we actually mean it! Whether it’s a short- or long-term goal, a vision or just small tweak: Let us know what you’d like to see in the upcoming DS Cafés. Ideally you’ll just leave a comment so that anyone can pitch in!

So, what else is happening? You might know the keep-current project but there are more :) The beer-aficionados gathered and evaluated data, Mykola showed a self-made tool to calculate the fair price of a car and Bernhard started analyzing the Austrian Data Science vacancies. This team already have a beta version at: http://www.datainsight.at/dsjobs/ and in this volume they want to describe the architecture, the lda model and show how people can access the database.

In short: Things are getting done and if you want to join any of them: Awesome!

Everyone is welcome to come and share your own ideas with the community or simply explore for a while until you decide in which kind of project you want to be involved (you don’t have to be, though. Just looking is fine :).

WHAT TO EXPECT As always you can expect a relaxed environment with a significant number of peers to discuss Data Science and move to the implementation part. To all of you who aren’t familiar with the DSCafe yet, have a look here: DSC Presentation (http://bit.ly/2ExZEL2). You can participate regardless of your experience in Data Science, just bring some enthusiasm, your computer and the willingness to talk to like-minded people around you.

FINAL DETAILS Please let us know your email address in the mandatory field when RSVPing to facilitate the logistics.

• Please don’t waste spots! Un-RSVP once you know you can’t make it - spots are limited and there is a list of peers who’d love to claim your spot instead - thank you :)

• What we provide: A nice location, refreshments and snacks, Wifi, resources and coaching to support the 3 modes!

• What to bring: A laptop, headsets, writing utensils, collaborative mindset, willingness to apply Data Science and your ideas :)

Data Science Salon Vol. I - GDPR and its impact on Data Science.

Mon, 23 Apr 2018 18:00:00 +0200

Dear community,

We want to introduce a new event format to you: the Data Science Salon.

Data Science and its applications have the potential to tremendously impact our society in ways we have rarely seen in the past. Besides a lot of other things, it will lead to an automation of many aspects of our lives, aiming to improve them. Nonetheless, because of the enormity of these changes, these should be accompanied by an open and down to earth conversation about the impact on our society and the ethical aspects behind the algorithms used.

Data Science Salon is the place to have this conversation. We start with a hot topic: GDPR and its impact on our daily lives.

Next month, on May 25th the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) will be effective and every company operating in the EU market must be compliant with it.

Will GDPR change the way how organizations practice data science? And, if so, will these changes have a positive or negative impact on our profession in the long term?

Agenda:

10 Min: Why we care about GDPR

40 Min: Discussion around a use case from a legal and technical perspective - Moderated by: Sophie Martinetz. Powered by Teresa Bogensberger and Bernhard Ortner

15 Min: Introduction to Ethics on Data Science Algorithms. - Powered by: Christopher Kittel

About our speakers:

Attorney Dr. Teresa Bogensberger: Expert in employment law and IP law. The former partner at Eversheds Sutherland Austria and Knoetzl has many years of experience in advising Austrian and international clients in the area of employment law as well as in all matters of IP law.

Sophie Martinetz: Experienced legal entrepreneur and international corporate professional. In 2012 she founded her own company Seinfeld Professionals an innovative new law firm and Future-Law - the leading innovation and digitization platform for the legal industry in Austria.

Bernhard Ortner: Big Data enthusiast with a strong background in engineering in different areas such as finance, energy and governance. He was responsible for maintaining operational data lakes and developing proof-of-concepts for big data technologies.

Christopher Kittel: Data Scientist at Open Knowledge Maps. Christopher specializes in applying machine learning and deep learning to problems of social goods. His further research interests concern the ethics and economics of AI.

DISCLAIMER: The content shared in this event would offer a variety of perspectives on this topic, but it does in no way represent a substitution of proper guidance for the compliance of a company with this law.

VDSG Data Science Café Vol. V - We visit WeXelerate!

Fri, 20 Apr 2018 17:00:00 +0200

And we are ready for Volume 5! We want to thanks A1 and specially Stephan Wöber for all the support provided through the venue sponsorship.

In the next volumes we will host at various spots and communities where Data Science can provide a lot of value. Our first stop will be at WeXelerate in the Space 15 on the first floor.

Volume 4 was a lot of fun and a lot of interest and support for the keep-current project and also an elusive data-gathering session for the “Learning Data Science with Beer” project! It’s time to continue supporting the different initiatives that the community is working on.

Learn Data Science with Beer: after collecting data (by drinking beer) at the last VDSG Cafe it’s time to put the data to work by pitting Gösser and Ottakringer against each other. For those interested to dive deeper into the data this team will offer a hands on session. (For all the unitiated: this is no euphemism for drinking - we are actually gathering and evaluating data here :))

The keep-current project (http://keep-current.netlify.com/) has evolved even further and they are looking forward to hearing your feedback and ideas. Also Bernhard and Marco want to introduce their idea: DSJobs aims to analyze vacancies related to data science.

If you want to join any of them: Great! Also, you are welcome to come and share your own ideas with the community or simply explore for a while until you decide in which kind of project you want to be involved.

FINAL DETAILS Please let us know your email address in the mandatory field when RSVPing to facilitate the logistics.

• Please don’t waste spots! Un-RSVP once you know you can’t make it - spots are limited and there is a list of peers who’d love to claim your spot instead - thank you :)

• What we provide: A nice location, refreshments and snacks, Wifi, resources and coaching to support the 3 modes!

• What to bring: A laptop, headsets, writing utensils, collaborative mindset, willingness to apply Data Science and your ideas :)

Joint Event: Hadoop User Group Vienna - VDSG: Data Integration Using Apache NiFi

Tue, 27 Mar 2018 18:30:00 +0200

Dear community, We continue our collaboration with other groups with this joint event between VDSG and Hadoop User Group Vienna.

One of the most common problems of any modern IT and BI landscape, as well as productive data science projects, is to process and distribute data from different sources efficiently and easily without wasting too much time on the topic. Apache NiFi is an Open Source tool that fills those needs and extends its capabilities.

The meetup features Pierre Villard a member of the Apache NiFi project management committee (PMC) giving a talk, a demo and an outlook of Apache NiFi.

Agenda:

Talk by Pierre (Hortonworks)
Discussion + Q&A
Networking + Pizza + Beer

Speaker Infos:

Pierre Villard is a Senior Consultant at Hortonworks based in Toulouse, Apache NiFi PMC member and author of a blog (https://pierrevillard.com/). @pvillard31 https://github.com/pvillard31/

Links:

We invite you to take the opportunity to talk with different colleagues about potential ideas and projects for 2018. If you get inspired and find the right partner for a new project (maybe even using Apache NiFi), you could bring it to the next volume of Data Science Cafe.

Looking forward to meeting you there.

• Was sollst du mitbringen

• Wichtig zu wissen

VDSG Data Science Café Vol. IV + Practical part: "Learn data science with Beer"

Fri, 23 Mar 2018 16:00:00 +0100

Dear VDSG-followers,

We are ready for the forth volume of the Data Science Café! Join us on March 23th at A1, participate in the Cafe, and at 19:00 be one of the volunteers for the practical part “learn data science with beer”.

To all of you who aren’t familiar with the DSCafe yet, have a look here: DSC Presentation (http://bit.ly/2ExZEL2). You can participate regardless of your experience in Data Science, just bring some enthusiasm and the willingness to talk to like-minded people around you.

We enjoyed a lot the third volume and all the activity afterwards on Slack. It is extremely rewarding to see how the community organizes itself around different common interests. People are gathering in groups and learning together, applying Data Science on real-life ideas and - most importantly - really seem to enjoy it :)! These are some of the topics currently covered: Big Data GIS, NLP through the Keep Current Project, Experimenting with Google-Cloud AutoML and Network analysis on Wiener Linien among other topics.

WHAT TO EXPECT As always you can expect a friendly environment with a significant number of peers to discuss Data Science and move to the implementation part. Additionally, we have big expectations in this volume, since the Keep Current team wants to share a lot with the community and the Learn Data Science with Beer is ready for the practical part! Here are the details:

KeepCurrent - stay updated on your favorite topics by receiving personalized newsletters with links and short excerpts of related articles - all happening automatically.

The team will be available to talk about the following topics:

Ulli will explain about unsupervised discretization techniques of continuous variables Tzvetan will demonstrate how to user Docker Vladimir will talk about NoSQL and how the system is architected

LEARN DATA SCIENCE WITH BEER! A special invitation by the Learn Data Science with Beer-team! At the last Cafe, the theoretical background for the project was laid, and now it is time for the “practical” part. We need YOU to generate data by drinking beer. There will be two challenges - one unblinded and one double blinded test. You just need to … drink beer!

FINAL DETAILS As usual, if you are planning to attend, let us know by sending an email to cafe@vdsg.at - or just let us know your email address in the mandatory field while RSVPing.

• What we provide: As usual, we are going to provide a nice location, refreshments and snacks, Wifi, resources and coaching to support the 3 modes and a shared R-infrastructure which you are free to use!

• What to bring: A laptop, headsets, writing utensils, collaborative mindset, willingness to apply Data Science and potentially your ideas.

VDSG Data Science Café Vol. III

Fri, 09 Feb 2018 16:00:00 +0100

Dear VDSG-followers,

The third volume of the Data Science Café is around the corner! Join us on February 9th at A1 where the DSCafe will be hosted again.

To all of you who aren’t familiar with the DSCafe yet, have a look here: DSC Presentation (http://bit.ly/2ExZEL2) You can participate regardless of your experience in Data Science, just bring some enthusiasm and the willingness to talk to like-minded people around you.

We are happy to see a strong development towards becoming an actual community of people who gather (also outside of the DSCafe’s scope) and collectively work towards developing their skills. We believe that this is a wonderful development and want to take a second to thank all of you who are embracing this idea and thus contribute to the success of the DSCafe.

We want to point out that the focus of the DSCafe goes from hands-on-coding towards community development. We are most certainly happy to see you coding with others but as it turns out what DSCafe-attendees are primarily looking for is an environment which facilitates communication, exchange of ideas, getting to know other like-minded people, finding out how to pursue a career in Data Science, etc. We want you to use this space for enriching your network with Data Science practitioners. In this regard we’d also like to announce the following event organized by the Wikimedia Foundation, where you will dive into SPARQL and learn how to utilize the language to answer questions. Have a look here: https://www.wikimedia.at/wikidata/

As usual, if you are planning to attend, let us know by sending an email to cafe@vdsg.at - or just let us know your email address in the mandatory field while RSVPing.

Just remember our principles:

• It is all up to you. • Stay cool, stay honest.

What we provide: As usual, we are going to provide a nice location, refreshments and snacks, Wifi, resources and coaching to support the 3 modes and a shared R-infrastructure which you are free to use!

• What to bring A laptop, headsets, writing utensils, collaborative mindset, willingness to apply Data Science and potentially your ideas.

Knowledgefeed vol. 23: Deep Learning in 60 Minutes

Thu, 01 Feb 2018 19:00:00 +0100

Dear Community,

Happy New Year! After a small break during the holiday season, we are kick-starting the year 2018 with our 23rd Knowledgefeed:

Title: Deep Learning in 60 Minutes

https://www.linkedin.com/in/alexander-d%25C3%25BCr-70a548a6

Content: In 60 minutes Alexander will give a practical introduction to deep learning. He will start by talking about the origins and motivation behind deep learning, ending with the Multi-Layer Perceptron. Then he will cover embeddings and convolutions as two important ingredients to modern deep learning. The talk will be accompanied by code samples in Keras.

Alexander Dür studied Business Informatics at TU Vienna and Quantitative Finance at WU Vienna, former data engineer at MobFox, currently Phd student at the TU Vienna and Technical Director at SYFOX.at.

As always: grab the opportunity to ask our lecturers questions, discuss your ideas and of course enjoy the company of some interesting folks!

Please do not hesitate to present your own projects, ideas or thoughts. We are more than gladly sharing the stage with you! Please refer to our blog-post / Discussion entry for further details:

https://viennadatasciencegroup.at/2016/09/06/power-to-the-people/

Looking forward to meeting you at the Knowledgefeed!

Stay tuned and visit us also on our homepage (http://viennadatasciencegroup.at/vdsg-blog/) or follow us on Twitter (https://twitter.com/viennadsg) and LinkedIn (https://www.linkedin.com/company-beta/18001448/)

Joint Event: IoT - VDSG: Digital Transformation with IoT and Data Science

Wed, 10 Jan 2018 18:45:00 +0100

Dear community, we strongly believe that the collaboration with other groups create value for everybody. We want to start 2018 with this joint event between VDSG and IoT Austria exploring the common topic: “Digital Transformation”

This time, we would follow a different format having 4 blocks. Each block consists of 20 minutes talk, 10 minutes Q&A and 10 minutes networking break.

We invite you to explore this topic together and use the space to talk with different colleagues about potential ideas and projects for 2018. If you get inspired and find the right partner for a new project, you could bring it to the next volume of Data Science Cafe to be held at the end of January.

Agenda:

• Block 1: (Self-)Introduction of Viennese MeetUps, Topic Teams and Communities

• Block 2: Martin Dusek, „Cross industry and new business models focusing on Digital Transformation“

• Block 3: Mohamed Auf, „Using Data-driven IoT to enlarge the customer experience“

• Block 4: Open Discussion of Your future projects - „Find your project partner 2018“

Looking forward to meet you there.

Knowledgefeed vol. 22: Data Science @ WU, and Team Building for Data Science

Mon, 11 Dec 2017 18:45:00 +0100

Dear Community,

get ready for the 22nd Knowledgefeed, our last one in 2017, featuring 2 talks:

Title 1: Data Science @ WU

Description: WU’s executive academy has designed a cutting edge program on data science. In just a few months, you will get to know the tools, techniques, and fundamental concepts that you need to know in order to make an impact as a data scientist.

https://executiveacademy.at/en/programs/executive-education/short-programs/data-science/

Duration: about 30 min

https://at.linkedin.com/in/katarina-lucic-b9090862 http://polleres.net/

Mag.a Katarina Lucic is responsible for Learning Design & Program Management at the WU Executive Academy, the Business school of WU. She develops tailor-made education programs with companies and is the Program Manager of the short program Data Science.

Axel Polleres heads the Institute of Information Business of Vienna University of Economics and Business (WU Wien) which he joined in Sept 2013 as a full professor in the area of “Data and Knowledge Engineering”. Since January 2017 he is also a member of the Complexity Science Hub Vienna Faculty. He obtained his Ph.D. and habilitation from Vienna University of Technology and worked at University of Innsbruck, Austria, Universidad Rey Juan Carlos, Madrid, Spain, the Digital Enterprise Research Institute (DERI) at the National University of Ireland, Galway, and for Siemens AG’s Corporate Technology Research division before joining WU Wien. His research focuses on various aspects of data management, particularly on intelligent data processing, AI, Semantic Web technologies, Web services, knowledge management, (Linked) Open Data, and related applications. He has worked in several European and national research projects in these areas with key industry players around the globe. Axel has published more than 100 articles in journals, books, and conference and workshop contributions and co-organised several international conferences.. Moreover, he actively contributed to international standardisation efforts within the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) where he co-chaired the W3C SPARQL working group.

Title 2: Soft skills and Team Building in Data Science

Description: An introductory conversation about soft-skills and team building in Data Science. Expect the approach to be unusual, e.g. using technical code in a non-technical presentation.

Duration: about 30 min

Powered by: Maria Ines Plaza (Mari) MBA, production engineer and project management specialist with 15 years of professional experience in a variety of areas, started 2 years ago to develop her technical skills complementing her business acumen to pursue a career in Data Science. If you need to use a single word to summarise her experience, this would be Diversity. She has had the opportunity to be in different industries like IT, innovation and manufacturing and work at multinational companies like Microsoft, medium sized business and a start-up focused on Social Commerce in Latin America. Additionally, she has been involved in several projects with different cultures in remote work environments.

As always: grab the opportunity to ask our lecturers questions, discuss your ideas and of course enjoy the company of some interesting folks!

Please do not hesitate to present your own projects, ideas or thoughts. We are more than gladly sharing the stage with you! Please refer to our blog-post / Discussion entry for further details:

https://viennadatasciencegroup.at/2016/09/06/power-to-the-people/

Looking forward to meeting you at the Knowledgefeed!

VDSG Data Science Café Vol. II and Tech Pills: SPARK powered by DataPao

Fri, 01 Dec 2017 15:00:00 +0100

Dear VDSG-followers and DSCafe Enthusiasts!

We are officially announcing the second edition of our Data Science Café! And since we want to keep things fresh and interesting, we have an interesting add-on for you: the Apache Spark Tech Pill - more details below.

Let’s recap quickly what happened since the last DSCafe: We have had the chance to get to know several of our participants from DSCafe I and several projects have been evolving nicely. Now it’s time to gather again and continue applying Data Science in a relaxed atmosphere and a collaborative environment.

If you haven’t participated before: You are more than welcome to join! Regardless of your experience in Data Science, the only thing that you need is the willingness to apply it. We have a framework which guides this hands-on/heads-on experience, and you can have a look at it here: .

Just remember our design principles:

• It is all up to you.

• Stay cool, stay honest.

What we provide: We are going to provide a nice location, refreshments and snacks, WIFI, resources and coaching to support the 3 modes and a shared R-infrastructure which you are free to use!

What you bring: A laptop, headsets, writing utensils, collaborative mindset, willingness to apply Data Science, your ideas and knowledge.

AGENDA


14:30 - Informal gathering - meet the VDSG, talk to us, etc.

15:00 - Participants introduce themselves.

15:10 - Ongoing projects status

15:30 - Application of Data Science with your colleagues :). Eat cake, relax and apply that Science in the mode that you prefer.

At 17:30 you would have the chance to switch to the Tech Pills on SPARK or continue working on your project. It is up to you.

------------------------------------------------------

ADD-ON:

17:30 - Apache Spark Tech Pill - a guided hands-on Apache Spark session, led by Zoltan Toth (https://www.linkedin.com/in/zoltanctoth) and Mate Gulyas (https://linkedin.com/in/gulyasm) from DataPao (http://datapao.com/)

They have prepared beginner and intermediate examples in Spark that would be run in the Databricks notebooks, so you don't need to configure anything in advance. You can simply follow these examples and get advice if needed.

IMPORTANT: If you want to have more details prior to the event, feel free to write to us an email to .

Data Science requires time, and we want to give you that time. Relax, enjoy, talk, eat cake and apply Data Science. See you on the 1st of December and the following volumes of the DSCafe!

LG,

Mari & Maks

Knowledgefeed vol. 21: Budapest, Machine Learning and Apache Spark

Thu, 30 Nov 2017 18:45:00 +0100

Dear Community,

get ready for the 21st Knowledgefeed and let’s welcome two very special guests from our growing data scientist network in Mid-Europe!

Title: State of Data Analytics in Budapest

Description: Budapest became a prominent city for data analytics and big data. Companies like Cloudera (https://www.cloudera.com), Hortonworks (https://hortonworks.com) have chosen Budapest as their base to develop the next generation data analytics stack. This talk explains what factors contributed to this effect and provides some insights about the current landscape. I showcase interesting projects, companies and where we are headed with the community.

Duration: about 30 min

Powered by: Mate Gulyas (https://linkedin.com/in/gulyasm), partner and instructor at datapao.com (http://datapao.com/), a big data and cloud consultancy and training firm where they help companies kick off and mature their data analytics infrastructure by giving them Apache Spark, big data and data analytics training and consultancy. Previously he was co-founder and CTO of enbrite.ly (http://enbrite.ly/), an award-winning Budapest based startup. Mate has experience with big data architectures, data analytics pipelines, operation of infrastructures and growing organisations by focusing on culture spanning more than a decade. Mate also teaches big data analytics at Budapest University of Technology and Economics (http://www.bme.hu/?language=en). Speaker and organiser of local and international conferences and meetups.

Twitter: https://twitter.com/gulyasm

Title: An Intro to Machine Learning with Apache Spark

Description: In this hands-on presentation you will see a real-world use-case about MLlib (https://spark.apache.org/mllib/), the machine learning library for Apache Spark. You will understand how to apply machine learning methods in Spark and see them in action in a simple example. All code and presentation material will be shared with the audience after the talk.

Duration: about 30 min

Powered by: Zoltan C. Toth (https://www.linkedin.com/in/zoltanctoth), founder of http://datapao.com , where he spends most of his time helping companies kick off and mature their data analytics infrastructure, and gives Hadoop, big data and AWS courses regularly. He also works as senior instructor and consultant at Databricks (https://databricks.com), the company behind the Apache Spark project.

As always: grab the opportunity to ask our lecturers of the evening questions, discuss your ideas and of course enjoy the company of some interesting folks!

Please do not hesitate to present your own projects, ideas or thoughts. We are more than gladly sharing the stage with you! Please refer to our blog-post (http://viennadatasciencegroup.at/2016/09/06/power-to-the-people/) / Discussion entry (http://www.meetup.com/Vienna-Data-Science-Group-Meetup/messages/boards/thread/50113851) for further details.

Looking forward to meeting you at the Knowledgefeed!

Joint social event: Data Science Café + Vienna Data Drinks = ❤

Thu, 16 Nov 2017 19:00:00 +0100

Dear Community and DSCafé-enthusiasts,

After our first volume, and waiting for Vol 2.0 to be held on December 1st (formal invitation is coming soon), we want to invite you to join us at the well-established Data Drinks, organized by the Open Knowledge Austria - especially, if you are interested in the Data Science Café.

This time Open Knowledge Austria will hold a MeetUp at Österreichische Computer Gesellschaft (https://www.meetup.com/Open-Knowledge-Oesterreich/events/242160384/) at 5pm to talk about Open Mind Awards.

Afterwards they will meet in Kaffee Alt Wien at 7pm for their traditional Data Drinks! More information at: http://bit.ly/2hozSOv

Data Drinks is an informal event and if you are interested in the DSCafé, you would have the chance to meet and greet with some of the people that are already participated in the DSCafé while you enjoy some drinks.

If you can’t make it this time - don’t worry. This event takes place every 3rd Thursday of the month and we plan to join them in a regular basis.

We are looking forward to seeing you on Thursday and in Vol 2.0 on December 1st!

Mari and Maks

Knowledgefeed vol. 20: R and Spark

Thu, 09 Nov 2017 18:45:00 +0100

Dear Community,

get ready for the 20th Knowledgefeed of the VDSG!

After a little bit extended summer hiatus we continue our Knowledgefeed series offering you interesting talks on various essential topics in the data science domain.

For those of you joining us for the first time, here a short description:

During these sessions we are inviting specialists presenting their hands-on experience, current project or simply ideas regarding topics related to our field of interest (the reason for this rather wide description is based on the wide scope of data science (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Data_science) itself… ;-)). Furthermore this gives you the opportunity to ask our lecturer of the evening questions, discuss your ideas and of course enjoy a beer in company of some interesting folks!

In addition please do not hesitate to present your own projects, ideas or thoughts…we are more than gladly sharing the stage with you! Please refer to our last blog-post (http://viennadatasciencegroup.at/2016/09/06/power-to-the-people/) / Discussion entry (http://www.meetup.com/Vienna-Data-Science-Group-Meetup/messages/boards/thread/50113851) for further details.

Title: Integrating R into the big data ecosystem using sparklyR

Description: R is a powerful language for data science, but on its own it can’t cope with large amounts of big data. sparklyR (https://spark.rstudio.com) bridges this gap by connecting R to the hadoop (http://hadoop.apache.org/) ecosystem using spark via the tidy grammar of dplyR (http://dplyr.tidyverse.org/). Agenda:

• Types of BigData

• Introduction to Hadoop & Spark (RDD)

• Integration of spark with R via sparklyR

• Architecture

• Demo

• Downsides of spark native languages

• streaming and R?

Duration: about 40 min

Powered by: Georg Heiler (https://www.linkedin.com/in/georg-heiler-019b3767/), data scientist at T-Mobile Austria, founder of ‎predictR (https://www.linkedin.com/company/9333786/). He finished his studies at the Vienna University of Technology (https://www.tuwien.ac.at/en/).

Looking forward to meeting you at the Knowledgefeed!

Stay tuned and visit us also on our homepage:

http://viennadatasciencegroup.at/vdsg-blog/

or follow us on Twitter (https://twitter.com/viennadsg) and Youtube (https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC6QK4pOaKBmPRwGCFLYklLA).

VDSG Data Science Café Vol. I

Fri, 27 Oct 2017 16:00:00 +0200

Dear VDSG-followers!

After the very successful preliminary social event we are finally announcing the very first edition of the Data Science Café!

Preliminaries:

For all those of you who couldn’t attend the preliminary social event: There is a brief description of the Data Science Café further down! Here’s a quick link to the presentation from this event: DSC Presentation ( )

Also, Join us on 19th October at the Data Drinks from Open Knowledge Austria:

. This well established and regular event is the perfect environment to meet new people interested on Data, and have a nice and relax talk with our future colleagues in the DS Café. We are going to be there, and we could clarify any doubt that you may have regarding our working modes.

DS Café Details

Based on the feedback we gathered during the social event, we are in the process of creating a set of dashboards for the purpose of displaying relevant information during the event! We are on good track, and we would share them directly at the Café.

Agenda for the event:


15:30 Informal gathering - meet the VDSG, talk to us, etc.

16:00 Reception: Official Start - Organizational and technical matters

16:15 Discussion of your ideas for projects, deciding what you want to do and with whom

16:30- Application of Data Science :) in the mode that you prefer. Remember it is all up to you! (See the presentation for more information about the DS Café modes)

IMPORTANT: In order to keep the organizational effort manageable we’d like to ask you send us an email to elaborating in one sentence on the following questions (feel free to comment below if you prefer that):

Do you have a project idea (may it be crude or specific) you want to pursue with others?
Are you are joining to team up with someone or to learn Data Science? If you are joining to learn, please tell us what you are interested in so that we can prepare the necessary resources.

What we provide: We are going to provide a nice location, availability of snacks and drinks, WIFI, resources and coaching to support the 3 modes and a shared R-infrastructure which you are free to use!

What you bring: A laptop, post-its, writing utensils, collaborative mindset, willingness to apply Data Science, your ideas and a crude notion of what you’d like to get out of the DSC :)

We are looking forward to seeing you on the 27th!

All the best,

Mari & Maks

Here is the presentation of the social event: DSC Presentation ( )

What is the Data Science Café?

It is a hackspace made by and for Data Scientists.

The focus lies on applying Data Science, coding included! Get your hands dirty, group up with others and dive head-first into cool projects (for which we’ll provide ideas if need be!)

If you need guidance or assistance with regard to Data Science or are just looking for to team up with someone - this is the place to be.

What’s the goal of the Data Science Café?

We want to bring the community together in real life, attempt cool projects and learn from each other in the process.

If you are looking to meet like-minded people in a friendly setting and do Data Science or learn about it - that’s the place what we are trying to provide to you.

You don’t need experience to join us - just bring the willingness to do Data Science!

What do we provide?

We will provide you with the following:

a data and project repository
an education resource repository
Active guidance and support

Joint social event: Data Science Café + Vienna Data Drinks = ❤

Thu, 19 Oct 2017 19:00:00 +0200

Dear Community and DSCafé-enthusiasts,

We strongly believe that Data Science is about people, communication and… well, sometimes just having a good time and enjoying oneself :)

For this reason we’d like to extend the invitation of the well-established Data Drinks, organized by the Open Knowledge Austra to all of you - especially, if you are interested in the Data Science Café.

The Data Drinks are what the name stands for: Having a good time, meeting new people interested in similar things as you and probably having a drink or two…

It’s a informal event and if you are interested in the DS Café, you would have the chance to meet and greet (and maybe group up?) with some of the people you’ll get to know during the DSCafé.

If you can’t make it on such short notice - don’t worry. This event will take place every 3rd Thursday of the month

Please RSVP directly on the main event’s meetup page: http://bit.ly/2gehirM

We are looking forward to seeing you on Thursday!

Mari and Maks

Data Science Café Volume 0: Preliminary Social Event

Fri, 29 Sep 2017 17:00:00 +0200

Dear VDSG-followers,

The summer is almost over, a new semester is about to begin and we are looking forward to seeing you again very soon!

We have been quite busy the whole summer round and are very happy to open with a big announcement: We are in the process of setting up a new event format which will complement the well-known and well-received Knowledge Feed - we call it the Data Science Café!

What is the Data Science Café about?

In a nutshell, it is a hackspace made by and for Data Scientists.

In contrast to the Knowledge Feed the focus lies on applying Data Science, coding included! Get your hands dirty, group up with others - if you feel like it - and dive head-first into cool projects.

If you need help with anything, we can assure you that there will be someone who will be willing to support you :)

Who is it for? Do I know enough to attend?

We want to stress that complete novices, enthusiasts and professionals are all most welcome. If you are willing to learn, contribute and you’re not anxious to code, please join the Social event!

The Social Event

As per now, we’d like to invite you to a social event to get to know each other, talk about your expectations and collect your ideas and feedback regarding the Data Science Café. This event will not include coding - just come as you are!

The very first “actual” Data Science Café will take place end of October, TBD.

If there are any questions, feel free to ask right away.

We are really looking forward to seeing all of you again!

All the best,

Mari & Maks

Community Event: DataCamp Vienna - Spring Edition

Tue, 30 May 2017 15:00:00 +0200

Dear Community,

The IOT Vienna, Austria Big Data Forum and the Vienna Data Science Group are co-hosting a slightly unorthodox event: We’d be happy to see you RSVP for the first barcamp in Vienna - have a look here for all the information: https://www.meetup.com/de-DE/Austrian-Cloud-and-Big-Data-Forum/events/238530740/

To all those who haven’t had a chance to attended a barcamp yet, wikipedia explains it as: “[barcamps] are open, participatory workshop-events, the content of which is provided by participants.” It is basically a self-organized event with a loose agenda. We are looking forward to meeting you there!

Vienna Data Science Group - Knowledgefeed vol. 19

Mon, 22 May 2017 18:45:00 +0200

Dear Community,

get ready for the 19th Knowledgefeed of the VDSG!

Please note, that we are meeting in the offices of Parkbob (http://www.parkbob.com/) this time (Treustraße 22-24, 1200 Vienna, see map (https://goo.gl/maps/mCnjecsEyPT2)). Thanks again guys for sharing the spirit!

For those of you joining us for the first time, a short description below.

This Knowledgefeed is featuring talks by 2 very special guests from our growing data scientist network in Mid-Europe:

Title: Spark SQL and Oracle Database Integration

Description: Spark SQL (http://spark.apache.org/docs/latest/sql-programming-guide.html) and Oracle Database make up for a powerful combination and Pawel will show us how to integrate them together.

Duration: about 30 min

Powered by: Pawel Jedrzejewicz (https://www.linkedin.com/in/pjedrzejewicz/) is a Very Large DataBase (VLDB) (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Very_large_database) specialist at mBank S.A. in Warsaw. He finished his studies in the Warsaw University of Technology (https://www.pw.edu.pl/engpw). The talk is given per Skype. (This is actually a new try - let’s hope we manage to get connected this time :-)

Title: Big Data Analytics on textual data

Description: In this presentation Živko will present 3 case studies based on Big Data Analytics powered by JupiterOne (http://crossing-technologies.com/jupiterone/). Analysis on data from Facebook and Twitter will be presented for : US Election 2016, Brexit 2016 and Croatian politics. Sentiment analysis, topic extraction, named entity extraction, gender prediction, keyword detection will be presented for all 3 case studies.

Agenda:

About JupiterOne
Text analytics used in JupiterOne
Data Science challenges
Case study: US Election 2016
Case study: Brexit 2016
Case study: Croatian politics
Conclusion and Q&A

Duration: about 45 min

Powered by: Živko Krstić (https://at.linkedin.com/in/zivkokrstic) is Data Scientist @ Crossing technologies Ltd (http://crossing-technologies.com/) & Organizer of Data Science Croatia (http://crossing-technologies.com/data-science-croatia/). He obtained his master degree in Information management at the University of Split (http://eng.unist.hr/FacultiesandDepartments/tabid/390/Default.aspx) (Croatia). We are glad to enjoy his talk during his short stay in Vienna!

Looking forward to meeting you at the Knowledgefeed!

Stay tuned and visit us also on our homepage:

http://viennadatasciencegroup.at/vdsg-blog/

or follow us on Twitter and LinkedIn:

https://twitter.com/viennadsg

https://www.linkedin.com/company-beta/18001448/

Vienna Data Science Group - Knowledgefeed vol. 18

Wed, 19 Apr 2017 18:45:00 +0200

Dear Community,

get ready for the 18th Knowledgefeed of the VDSG!

Please note, that we are meeting at a different location this time. For this Knowledgefeed we will be meeting at CIR Lab at Medical University of Vienna (http://www.cir.meduniwien.ac.at/), Anna Spiegel Forschungsgebäude, Entrance: Level 3, north side of the building, 1090 Vienna (map (https://www.google.com/maps?f=q&hl=en&q=48.219658,16.349230)). Thanks again guys for sharing the spirit!

For those of you joining us for the first time, a short description below.

This Knowledgefeed is featuring following talks:

Title: Spark SQL and Oracle Database Integration

Description: Spark SQL (http://spark.apache.org/docs/latest/sql-programming-guide.html) and Oracle Database make up for a powerful combination and Pawel will show us how to integrate them together.

Duration: about 30 min

Powered by: Pawel Jedrzejewicz (https://www.linkedin.com/in/pjedrzejewicz/) is a Very Large DataBase (VLDB) (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Very_large_database) specialist at mBank S.A. in Warsaw. He finished his studies in the Warsaw University of Technology (https://www.pw.edu.pl/engpw) and we are glad to enjoy his talk during his short stay in Vienna!

Title: BaseCamp.ai

Description: BaseCamp.ai (http://www.basecamp.ai/) is part of the services offered by Knoyd (https://www.linkedin.com/company-beta/10315941/) and allows you to either participate in a “bootcamp” for becoming a Data Scientist, or helps you with finding the right Data Scientist with a fitting skill-set for your project. He will present us his Startup and provide us with some use-cases and experiences he made during on of his Data Science base camps. Furthermore these two thriving Startups will give you a refreshing idea on how Data Science can not only become your passion, but also the foundation of your own company(ies).

Duration: about 15 min

Powered by: Juraj Kapasny (https://www.linkedin.com/in/jurajkapasny/) is Co-Founder and CEO @Knoyd (https://www.linkedin.com/company-beta/10315941/) and Co-Founder @BaseCamp.ai (http://www.basecamp.ai/). He obtained his double degree in Mathematics at the Masaryk University Brno (https://www.muni.cz/en) and at the Universität Wien (https://www.univie.ac.at/).

Looking forward to meet you at the Knowledgefeed!

Stay tuned and visit us also on our homepage;

http://viennadatasciencegroup.at/vdsg-blog/

or follow us on Twitter and LinkedIn:

https://twitter.com/viennadsg

https://www.linkedin.com/company-beta/18001448/

Vienna Data Science Group - Knowledgefeed vol. 17

Thu, 09 Mar 2017 18:45:00 +0100

Dear Community,

get ready for the 17th Knowledgefeed of the VDSG!

For those of you joining us for the first time, a short description below.

For those you going thirsty over the holiday-season, feed your brain with some knowledge regarding:

Data Market Austria and Data Science Continuing Education

This talk will begin by presenting Data Market Austria (http://datamarket.at), a recently-started project building a Data-Services Ecosystem in Austria. It will cover:

• What is the vision for Data Market Austria?

• How is DMA planned to develop?

• What are some of the technologies behind DMA?

• How can one participate in DMA?

• What are the requests from practitioners for DMA?

Finally, an outline of a Data Science Continuing Education (https://cec.tuwien.ac.at/home/EN/) course being developed at the TU Wien will be presented. Input on how to make this course better meet the requirements of practitioners is requested.

Duration: about 30 min

Powered by: Allan Hanbury (https://at.linkedin.com/in/allan-hanbury-9483a26) is a senior researcher at the TU Wien (https://www.tuwien.ac.at/), leads the Data Science Research Studio at the Research Studios Austria, and is a co-founder of ContextFlow (http://contextflow.com/). He has led research and innovation projects of all sizes, from small basic research projects to large multi-country EU projects.

Looking forward to see you at the Knowledgefeed!

Stay tuned and visit us also on our homepage;

http://viennadatasciencegroup.at/vdsg-blog/

or follow us on Twitter:

https://twitter.com/viennadsg

Vienna Data Science Group - Knowledgefeed vol. 16

Thu, 26 Jan 2017 18:30:00 +0100

Happy New Year!

After a small break during the holiday season, we are kick-starting the year 2017 with our 16th. Knowledegfeed.

For those of you joining us for the first time, a short description below.

For those you going thirsty over the holiday-season, feed your brain with some knowledge regarding:

Title: Big Data Processing Engines

Description: An overview of Big Data Processing engines with a focus on Apache Spark and Apache Flink. In particular, we address the following questions

• What are big data processing paradigms and how do Spark 1.x/Spark 2.x and Apache Flink solve them?

• When to use batch and when stream processing?

• What is a Lambda-Architecture and a Kappa Architecture?

• What are the best practices for your project?

Showcases target different areas and links will be provided along the way. By the end of the talk you will have a basic understanding of what can be done with Big Data Processing Engines and know how to get started.

Duration: about 45 min

Powered by: Stefan Papp (https://at.linkedin.com/in/stefanpapp), Data Architect who is working for “The unbelievable Machine Company (https://www.unbelievable-machine.com/en/)". Stefan is also a certified Hadoop trainer and lecturer at the FH Technikum (https://www.technikum-wien.at/studium/?gclid=CJLOh4WJx9ECFcMW0wodzfACuQ). He studied Software Engineering at University of Applied Sciences in Hagenberg (https://www.fh-ooe.at/en/hagenberg-campus/).

Looking forward to see you at the Knowledgefeed!

Stay tuned and visit us also on our homepage;

http://viennadatasciencegroup.at/vdsg-blog/

or follow us on Twitter:

https://twitter.com/viennadsg

Vienna Data Science Group - Knowledgefeed vol. 15

Fri, 02 Dec 2016 19:00:00 +0100

Dear Community,

we are proudly announcing our 15th. Knowledegfeed. For those of you joining us for the first time, a short description below.

This evening we will have following talks:

Title: A quick glance at Python’s Scientific Stack

Description: An overview of the Scientific Computing ecosystem in Python is given.In particular we address the following questions:

• Why consider Python for scientific computing?

• How is the scientific stack structured?

• What kind of tools are available?

Showcases target different areas and links will be provided along the way. By the end of the talk you will have a basic understanding of what can be done with Python and know how to get started.

Duration: about 30 min

Powered by: Claus Aichinger, Data Scientist and Python enthusiast who enjoys to contribute to and participate in the community. Currently a Research Engineer at the Austrian Institute of Technology (AIT) (http://www.ait.ac.at/), working on data analysis and statistical modeling tasks in national and international research and customer projects. Studied Mathematics and Physics at the University of Vienna (https://www.univie.ac.at/). Freelancer

Title: The Pillars of Data Science fetching and transforming data

Description:In contrast to what “the sexiest job of the 21st century” would suggest, a Data Scientist’s most time consuming task is fetching and transforming data, so that it can serve as input for any subsequent modelling. Thus, having the right tools at one’s disposal will free up significant resources.

This talk aims to introduce beginner and intermediate R users to the most useful packages, resources and functionalities that might improve one’s efficiency in conquering the boring tasks. We will have a look at packages such as magrittr, dplyr and others.Also, some of R’s quirks and oddities will be highlighted, which partially arise as a consequence of the huge size of the community and the plethora of available packages.

Duration: about 30 min

Powered by:Maks Chudzicki (https://www.linkedin.com/in/maksymilian-chudzicki-912a49131?authType=NAME_SEARCH&authToken=4-Ni&locale=en_US&trk=tyah&trkInfo=clickedVertical%3Amynetwork%2CclickedEntityId%3A543051230%2CauthType%3ANAME_SEARCH%2Cidx%3A1-1-1%2CtarId%3A1480093789206%2Ctas%3AMaks), a Data Scientist working for a large steel trading company who works with R on a daily basis and is always in the lookout for ways to make his work more efficient. He has a background in natural sciences and graduated from the TU Vienna (https://www.tuwien.ac.at/) where he was working on Monte Carlo simulations.

Thanks a lot in advance and see you at the Knowledgefeed!

Stay tuned and visit us also on our homepage;

http://viennadatasciencegroup.at/vdsg-blog/

or follow us on Twitter:

https://twitter.com/viennadsg

Vienna Data Science Group - Knowledgefeed vol. 14

Fri, 21 Oct 2016 19:00:00 +0200

Dear Community,

we are proudly announcing our 14th. Knowledegfeed. For those of you joining us for the first time, a short description below.

This evening we will have following talks:

Title: Linked Data for Data Science

Description: What is Linked Data and what is a Semantic Layer? How can it be used in the context of Data Science? Introduction, basics and benefits of Semantic Web technologies. Examples and demos of implementations.

Duration: about 30 min

Powered by: Andreas KOLLER (https://www.linkedin.com/in/ankoller) studied at the higher technical collage of electronics in Innsbruck. In 2001 he was co-founder of the software company punkt. netServices. Andreas is managing partner at the Semantic Web Company (https://www.semantic-web.at/), applying his technological expertise as the company’s CIO. One focus of his activity is on the evaluation of tools for the Semantic Web. In this role, he has contributed to the technical implementation of semantic technologies in numerous projects, with the design of system architectures and concepts being a key aspect where customer added-value can be generated through the use of semantic technologies.

Title: Summary of the results for the famous “Summer Of Code”

Description: This will be a summary on the results for our beloved “Summer Of Code”. Just to remind you, OwnYourData (https://www.ownyourdata.eu/) is an innovative nonprofit association providing you with a secure online-environment and tools, to analyse your data on the spot. As a result of a fruitful collaboration with us (http://viennadatasciencegroup.at/) we commenced the “Summer Of Code (http://viennadatasciencegroup.at/wp-content/uploads/2016/07/OYD_160617.pdf)" in July this year. The aim was to support this great idea and OwnYourData with the development of their platform by working on pre-specified projects, or simply coming up with your own idea. Christoph will be presenting you with the glorious results of these projects, which are listed below:

Security & Vulnerability Assessment (https://www.ownyourdata.eu/wp-content/uploads/2016/07/OYD_SecRA_V1_0.pdf) of the OwnYourData platform realized by Mr. Max Riedl

Python Tutorial (code available on Git-Hub (https://github.com/OwnYourData/tutorial/tree/master/Python)) realized by Mr. Steven Malin

Enhancement of the Banking-App (https://www.ownyourdata.eu/2016/09/26/ein-container-voller-daten/) realized by the gentlemen Roger Gomez and Christoph Fabianek himself

Duration: about 30-45min

Powered by: Christoph FABIANEK (https://www.linkedin.com/in/fabianek) has earned his PhD at the Technical University of Vienna (https://www.tuwien.ac.at/) in Mathematics. After finishing his MBA in General Management at the Donau University Krems (http://www.donau-uni.ac.at/de/studium/?gclid=COaGzqqZyc8CFfMW0wod1zYIGg) he moved to Frequentis (http://www.frequentis.com/index.php?id=8&L=2&tx_mmcregioncontrol_pi1[region]=10) and works there currently as project manager in the field of public safety and air traffic management.

Thanks a lot in advance and see you at the Knowledgefeed!

Stay tuned and visit us also on our homepage;

http://viennadatasciencegroup.at/vdsg-blog/

or follow us on Twitter:

https://twitter.com/viennadsg

Vienna Data Science Group - Knowledgefeed vol. 13

Fri, 16 Sep 2016 19:00:00 +0200

Dear Community,

we are proudly announcing our 13th. Knowledegfeed. For those of you joining us for the first time, a short description below.

During these sessions we are inviting specialists presenting their hands-on experience, current project or simply ideas regarding topics related to our field of interest (the reason for this rather wide description is based on the wide scope of data-science (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Data_science) itself… ;-)). Furthermore this gives you the opportunity to ask our lecturer of the evening questions, discuss your ideas and of course enjoy a beer in company of some interesting folks!

This evening we will have following talks:

Title: Data Science and CRM

Description: An introduction on how data-science is currently used for CRM (Customer Relationship Management) in the context of a banking-environment.

Duration: about 15min

Powered by: Peter Koglmann (https://www.linkedin.com/in/peter-koglmann-814b10a7?authType=NAME_SEARCH&authToken=ek0I&locale=en_US&trk=tyah&trkInfo=clickedVertical%3Amynetwork%2CclickedEntityId%3A381979024%2CauthType%3ANAME_SEARCH%2Cidx%3A1-1-1%2CtarId%3A1473170786519%2Ctas%3APeter) studied Physics at the University of Vienna and is currently working as a pioneer/data-scientist on the CRM-topic for an international bank. Dear Peter is furthermore an ambitious co-founder of our community, the Vienna Data Science Group (http://viennadatasciencegroup.at/)!

Title: A workflow + setup for interactive investigation of securityevents

Description: The detection of novel, yet unknown attacks and intrusions is one of the core challenges in a global internet connected world. A recording of security events produces huge amounts of data, which then can/must be mined for the one critical event of a successful system intrusion. Martin Pirker will give us a short introduction of the setup and the workflow they employed to rapidly test and integrate new ideas on the data.

Duration: about 20-30min

Powered by: Martin Pirker has earned his PhD at the Graz University of Technology. He is currently teaching and researching at the Josef Ressel Center (http://www.jrz-target.at/) for Unified Threat Intelligence on Targeted Attacks, St. Pölten University of Applied Sciences (https://www.fhstp.ac.at/en) .

Thanks a lot in advance and see you at the Knowledgefeed!

Stay tuned and visit us also on our homepage;

http://viennadatasciencegroup.at/vdsg-blog/

or follow us on Twitter:

https://twitter.com/viennadsg

Vienna Data Science Group - Knowledgefeed vol. 12

Fri, 17 Jun 2016 19:00:00 +0200

Dear Community,

we are proudly announcing our 12th. Knowledegfeed. For those of you joining us for the first time, a short description below.

During these sessions we are inviting specialists presenting their hands-on experience, current project or simply ideas regarding topics related to our field of interest (the reason for this rather wide description is based on the wide scope of data-science (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Data_science) itself… ;-)). Furthermore this gives you the opportunity to ask our lecturer of the evening questions, discuss your ideas and of course enjoy a beer in company of some interesting folks!

This evening we will have following talk:

Title: OwnYourData

Description: How to collect and analyze your own data? OwnYourData gives data scientists a platform to share algorithms and provides users with a rich set of functionality to benefit from their own data. The talk presents the architecture of OwnYourData, describes the legal environment, and demonstrates the current state of the project.

Duration: about 30min

Powered by: Christoph Fabianek (https://www.linkedin.com/in/fabianek) studied mathematics and economy and is currently product manager at Frequentis AG. Besides he works in the fields of data analysis and studies the interaction of social systems; both areas where he founded startups (CrowdStatus.net (http://crowdstatus.net/), OwnYourData.eu (http://ownyourdata.eu/)).

Thanks a lot in advance and see you at the Knowledgefeed!

Stay tuned and visit us also on our homepage:

http://viennadatasciencegroup.at/vdsg-blog/

Vienna Data Science Group - Machine Learning Hackathon

Sat, 11 Jun 2016 12:00:00 +0200

Stay tuned for our hackathon - the second and final part of our ‘Machine Learning’ series which will take place at Metalab (https://metalab.at/wiki/Info_Folder/en).

We will start our cozy round with a short intro talk, whereas René (our Julia ace) will be presenting some algorithms and in which situations they can show their highest potential.

In the proposed projects we will look at four different topics, namely

• classification,

• regression,

• dimensionality reduction and

• clustering.

We will provide some data sets to work on, but feel free to bring your own! Language-wise, we can provide support for Matlab and Julia and a bit of Python, but of course you can use whatever you want!

After the intro talk, we suggest you pick one of the following projects (or bring your own), work on them individually or in groups or all togehter and we provide support wherever we can.

Project proposal 1: Classification of Images (e.g. numbers 0-9) Project proposal 2: Embedding / Dimensionality Reduction of Images Project proposal 3: Regression, e.g. price predictions Project proposal 4: Clustering, i.g. find groups in your data

In order to help us preparing this HACKATHON and tailoring it to your needs / wishes, we would kindly like to ask you to give us a short feedback in the comments on following points:

• Your prefered project

• The Language you would like to use

• Your skillevel regarding the above stated language: Richard Stallman / Intermediary / Starter

Thanks a lot in advance and see you at the Hackathon!

You can also visit us on our homepage on: http://viennadatasciencegroup.at/vdsg-blog/

Vienna Data Science Group - Monthly meeting

Thu, 12 May 2016 19:00:00 +0200

This month our monthly team meeting will be on the 2nd thursday! Please take notice that the meeting will NOT take place in metalab, but at CIR Lab (see above).

The main talk will be given by Georg Langs, professor at CIR Lab at Medical University of Vienna (http://www.cir.meduniwien.ac.at/) and also working at MIT (http://www.mit.edu/), about

‘Machine learning and what we can do with it’

and will be the first part of a two-part series.

The second part will be a hackathon where the main emphasis will be on the practical application of the heard things with tools like machine learning libraries (e.g. Tensorflow,…). More details will be given on time here: http://viennadatasciencegroup.at/vdsg-blog/

For former lectures held by our members look here: https://metalab.at/wiki/Vienna_Data_Science_Group or here: http://viennadatasciencegroup.at/vdsg-blog/