What is Scipy 2020 Conference ?

“SciPy is a community dedicated to the advancement of scientific computing through open source Python software for mathematics, science, and engineering”.

According to Scipy.org the annual SciPy Conferences allows participants from academic, commercial, and governmental organizations to:

  1. showcase their latest Scientific Python projects;
  2. learn from skilled users and developers, and
  3. collaborate on code development.

The conferences generally consists of multiple days of tutorials followed by two-three days of presentations, and concludes with 1-2 days developer sprints on projects of interest to the attendees. This year the conference format was a little bit different than the previous ones, the structure of the event was completely restructured to adapt for the actual global situation of the Pandemic (Covid-19), even though this big changes (and my first experience with the event) I was really amazed by the engagement of the community to develop a rich program, review submissions, recruited tutorials, and managed sprints with the little amount of time.

As informed at the Welcome Message of the conference: “They figured out how to retain much of the atmosphere that we appreciate about SciPy meetings, while accommodating the constraints and possibilities of a virtual conference.”

Tutorials

Roughly speaking, the conference hosted a greater number of subjects for all levels of programming experience, There was an effort to gradually involve the participant in a level of understanding in such a way that even if you a beginner level python programmer (or even and advanced one, there is always something new to learn) you could understand all the subjects and experiences that will come in sequence.

Starting with the setup tutorial to install some of the most important tools (must have ) like Python, Conda and some of the most used packages. The tutorials also hosted some sections of introduction to Python and Programming which I thought very interesting cause in my experience with Mathematical conferences we normally just select the subject we already understand and check the respective presentations. So an introductory level for an international conference is incredible. We then had the Welcome presentations and plenary sections introducing the scheduled Tutorials.

Unfortunately I could not watch all of the presentations cause of some personal matters, but the some of the most eye catching tutorials I could see like:

  1. Machine Learning Q&A and Moderated Discussion (List of Talks) (But could not finish);
  2. Bayesian Data Science by Simulation Tutorial (as a Mathematician I could not lose this)
  3. Parallel and Distributed Computing in Python with Dask Tutorial (This was fantastic)
  4. Introduction to Conda for (Data) Scientists Tutorial;
  5. Biology and Bioinformatics (Talks and discussions);
  6. Deep Learning from Scratch with PyTorch (Still could not watch)

I have to say most of all the presentations created so much interesting materials to follow their tutorials, I have to cite two of them with incredible teaching and materials first the ‘Bayesian Data Science by Simulation Tutorial’ presented by Eric and Hugo with an excellent presentation, and ‘Parallel and Distributed Computing in Python with Dask’ with a Tutorial they prepared using excellent Jupyter Notebook to follow their comments and instructions during the presentation (also answered almost all the questions for the community).

In essence a great number of tutorials and an even bigger effort to help everyone with their projects and shared experiences.

Birds-of-a-Feather Sessions

In an effort to increase the opportunities for community building, SciPy emphasizes birds of a feather (BoFs) sessions. These sessions usually include short presentations by a panel and a moderator with the bulk of the time spent opening up the discussion to everyone in attendance. BoF topics can be of general interest, such as state-of-the-project BoFs, or based on the themes of the conference and the mini-symposia topics. This year conference we had the foloowing subjects been discussed:

  1. Python in Education for Generation Z;
  2. Packaging;
  3. Diversity and Inclusion: Incident Response;
  4. Driving Hardware for Instrumentation;
  5. SciPy 2021 Planning (still need to finish)

I could only watch the ‘Packgin’, ‘Driving Hardware for Instrumentation’ and the ‘SciPy 2021 Planning’ BoFs sessions, with a big consideration to ‘Birds of Feather: Packaging’ session as it comprehended a discussion about Anaconda, Conda-forge and information regarding the actual and future structure of Conda-forge.

We had my mentors C. J. Wright and Marius van Niekerk to present information regarding Conda-Forge and also to answer some of the question made by the community. We also had some points from the Anaconda Team and other institutions that currently host packages at Conda-forge. If you are interested you can watch the discussion here.

Conclusion

As my first international event and integration with so much different communities like Anaconda, Scipy, Numpy, Conda-Forge, etc. The reality proved to be beyond my expectation, first at the structure of the event itself as the possibility to change ‘channels/rooms’ for differentpresentations as we do in reality it also had the greatest opportunity to integrate the technology for Jupyter notebooks, Terminals and other tools to familiarize the viewer and the student (in my case) creating an incredible environment of learning, feeling like we are back to university with lots of friends and an even greater number of subjects we can choose to learn right in front of us.

I have to say that the current structure of the conference opened a big door of possibilities not only for the fast talks but also for a new way of the programmer to show their projects and researches with the global community.

My experience conclusion for the event was that It’s an excellent way to meet new projects and applications worldwide, as also a stepping stone for those who want to learn something new and interesting from the hands and minds of those who created it.I am very thankful for the Conda-forge and NumFOCUS team to give me such a chance to participate in this incrdibel evvent. I really expect to go for the next one (Scipy 2021) and meet every one in person to talk and discuss all the future coming ideas and questions.

For more information regarding the Scipy conventions [see] and to watch some of the Tutorials and discussion of the Scipy 2020 please look for the EnthoughtMedia channel on YouTube.