Passionate about R? Feel like it’s a little neglected? No more. The satRday Cape Town conference – the first in Africa and second in the world is taking place on the 18th February 2017 in South Africa’s beautiful Mother City. A fantastic learning experience for R users, satRday aims to support collaboration, networking and innovation within the R community.
For R users, there is no better conference than SatRday. If you’re still not convinced – here’re a few reasons why you should attend:
Reason 1: The workshops! Besides the amazing line-up of exceptional speakers (read on below), satRday is also offering three pre-event workshops, instructed by the three international R experts/keynote speakers, Jennifer Bryan, Hilary Parker and Julia Silge. Get an introduction to A/B testing, learn how to build interactive web apps with Shiny, and find out more about using Git and GitHub. These workshops take place on the 16th & 17th Feb 2017.
Reason 2: Keynote speaker, Hilary Parker. Hilary is a Data Scientist at Stitch Fix and co-founder of the Not So Standard Deviations podcast. She focuses on R, experimentation, and rigorous analysis development methods such as reproducibility. Formerly a Senior Data Analyst at Etsy, she received a PhD in Biostatistics from the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health. At this satRday, Hilary will be presenting on “Opinionated Analysis Development”.
Reason 3: Keynote speaker, Jennifer Bryan. An Associate Professor of Statistics at the University of British Columbia and the Academic Director of UBC’s new Master of Data Science program, Jennifer’s work is focused on creating workflows and tools for the full cycle of data analysis, from ingest to communication, with an emphasis on openness and reproducibility. She shares teaching material at STAT545.com and serves in the leadership of rOpenSci. This satRday, Jennifer will be presenting “Behind every great plot, there’s a good deal of wrangling”.
Reason 4: Keynote speaker, Julia Silge. A Data Scientist with Datassist, Julia’s work involves analysing and modelling complex data sets and communicating about technical topics with diverse audiences. She has a PhD in Astrophysics, as well as an abiding affection for Jane Austen and making beautiful charts. Julia worked in academia and ed tech before moving into data science and discovering R. At satRday, Julia will be presenting on “Text Mining with Tidy Tools”.
Reason 5: Speaker Andrew Collier. A data scientist and mathematician at Derivco, Andrew is also an experimental physicist and has worked for the Department of Environmental Affairs and Tourism and the Atomic Energy Corporation. He’s previously lent his brain to a Belgian Nuclear Research Centre, was an Antarctic Research Fellow at the University of Natal and assisted the Hermanus Magnetic Observatory with space physics. He’s lectured physics and he’s worked as a data scientist at a variety of organisations.
Reason 6: Speaker Niels Berglund. Currently a software specialist at Derivco, Niels spends his days production coding, but is also responsible for dreaming up new and innovative way to use (and abuse) existing and new technologies. He’s spent the majority of his career researching tech mainly within .NET and has written and taught numerous courses on this subject. Niels is also a wonderful mentor to junior developers and loves nothing more than sharing his seemingly unlimited stores of knowledge.
Reason 7: Speaker Ryan Nel. In 2014, this data scientist at Derivco won the Tesla Innovation Award alongside a colleague for the after-hours development of an RFID-based device register, which was created to track the location, demand and use of mobile devices throughout the mobile dev teams in Derivco. Also an HTML5 developer, Ryan contributes to the development and advancement of one of Derivco’s youngest and fastest growing products.
Reason 8: Early bird tickets are on sale now, so don’t miss out! We’re also looking for more presenters to take part (20 or 5 min talks). Submit your proposal here and we’ll get back to you ASAP. Financial support may be possible for speakers and registration fees will be refunded for accepted speakers.
To book your place at the conference, visit here: https://www.quicket.co.za/events/22932-satrday-cape-town/#/. For more information, follow us on Facebook (https://www.facebook.com/satrdaycapetown/).
SatRday is proudly sponsored by Derivco