- Edmonton Data Science Community
- Posts
- Edmonton Data Science Community 2024 - Year in Review
Edmonton Data Science Community 2024 - Year in Review
Ojaswi Dhoubhadel
December 24, 2024
Hello Edmonton Data Science Community members!
As we wrap up another amazing year, we wanted to take a moment to reflect on all the progress and connections we've made together. From insightful monthly speaker events to our new social gatherings at some of Edmonton's best breweries, 2024 has been a year full of learning, inspiration, and building a strong community of data enthusiasts.
Thank you for being a part of this journey, whether you joined us to dive into new topics in data science or simply to unwind and connect over a pint. We’re excited to share the highlights of this past year and look forward to what’s to come as we continue growing our community!
Year in Review
January - Bruce Matichuk
We started our year strong with couple of speaker events on a topic that’s been taking a lot of press - Large Language Models.
We were joined by Bruce Matichuk on January 18th for an introductory presentation at NorQuest Atrium followed by a workshop on January 24th at NAIT.
Jan 18, 2024 - Bruce Matichuk giving a presentation on LLM
Jan 18, 2024 - Event at NorQuest Atrium
Jan 24, 2024 Bruce Matichuk giving workshop on LLM at NAIT
February - Michael Mei
We were at NorQuest Atrium again in February 15th! Michael Mei gave a talk about semantic translation from Natural Language to SQL.
February 15, 2024 - Michael Mei giving a presentation on Semantic Translation From Natural Language to SQL
March - Hamid Gilani
Hamid Gilani presented a fascinating talk on “Introduction to Casual Inference” on March 21, 2024.
We were joined by the awesome team from Undergraduate AI Society on April 30. They have been working on numerous projects and shared some of their favourites: NHL Positivity Index, Discord Bot Project, Forecasting Natural Gas Production in Alberta Through Wildfire Analysis.
We highly recommend you join their Discord channel to learn more about their projects.
April 30, 2024 - Undergraduate AI Society showcasing their project
May - Kris Andreychuk & André dos Santos
May was the month of Upper Bound. We had the largest turnout of the year and were joined by Kris Andreychuk & André dos Santos at NorQuest on May 21st.
Kris gave a talk about Insight to Action and the "Secret Sauce" and André gave a talk about The Truth About AI: Separating Fact from Fiction.
We can’t wait for 2025 Upper Bound!
May 21, 2024 - Kris Andreychuk presenting on Insight to Action and the "Secret Sauce”
May 21, 2024 - André dos Santos presenting on The Truth About AI: Separating Fact from Fiction
Come summer, we decided we wanted to hang out with all of you. We met at Remedy Cafe on June 6th and Campio Brewing Co. on June 27th.
Since then, socials have been a consistent event and it’s been a great time catching up with new and familiar faces!
On July 25th, we did a roundtable chat on “Communication in work as Data Scientist” with our team members Paul Saunders as host, and Steve Kwan, Ojaswi Dhoubhadel and Chloe Zhou as panel members.
We also met on Campio Brewing on July 11th!
August - Revan MacQueen
We were joined virtually by Revan MacQueen from AMII. He gave a fascinating talk on Reinforcement Learning and it’s applications
September - Josh Puszka
On September 19th, we were joined by Josh Puszka from AltaML on “Communicating Technical Ideas to Non-Technical People” at NorQuest.
Sept 19, 2024 - Josh Puszka presenting on Communicating Technical Ideas to Non-Technical People” at Norqest
October - Thiago Valentin
On October, we partnered with Careers In Technology and Innovation for a joint event at NorQuest Atrium. Thiago Valentin gave a talk on “The Core Pillars to Success in Data and Technology“
October 17, 2024 - Thiago Valentin presenting on The Core Pillars to Success in Data and Technology
November - Rhys Chouinard
November 21st was our final speaker event of the year with Rhys Chouinard joining us at NorQuest with his talk about Making The Future Happen: Lessons Learned Applying Generative AI In Finance.
We had lots of interesting conversation afterwards and wrapped up our year for speaker events.
Nov 21, 2024 - Rhys Chournard presenting on Making The Future Happen: Lessons Learned Applying Generative AI In Finance
Our last official event was socials on an Oilers game night. We had a great time hanging out, talking about data science and life, and as a bonus, Oilers won!
Socials at Campio Brewing
What’s Next in 2025?
We will be hosting more events and doing more for our community in the year and announcing something pretty big for us as a community. For now, here are some dates that you would want to mark on your calendar.
Jan 9, 2025
Let’s get back to swing of things with a social event at Campio Brewing Co.
Jan 23, 2025
We will be back with our speaker event with Daryl Bandstra from Integral Engineering joining us at NorQuest. We will have a meetup link for this event soon.
Feb 6, 2025
Our monthly meet at Campio Brewing Co. for a social.
Feb 20, 2025
We will be joined by Jillian Kowalchuk from AMII at NorQuest. We will have a meetup link for this event soon.
We wanted to send a heartfelt thank you to all our speakers, volunteers and attendees for an amazing 2024. We will be doing more events as the year goes by, so be sure to keep in the loop. You can reach us at our Discord or our LinkedIn. We would also love to hear from you on any feedback or ideas!
We hope you have a great holiday season and wish you a happy new year!
See you in 2025!