Datafesťák — The Second Edition
For the second time in a row, we were a partner in the second Datafesťák conference, which took place from November 23–24. The first one — which happened three years ago — was a hit! Crowds of people were willing to share their knowledge, talk about their experiences, and learn new stuff from others — and the second one was no different. We choose Hradec Králové and its university as a venue again, because we wanted to enable those from cities other than Prague or Brno to attend a cool technical event.
The plan was again to minimize any sales or marketing activity and instead bring relevant content from real life: a business track devoted to how companies are running their businesses more effectively by successfully putting their data to work; an overnight hackathon with prepared datasets and great technology like GoodData, Keboola, or AWS started; a Data Science Basics workshop for data beginners and a workshop — Datagirls by Keboola & Czechitas — designed for ladies looking to develop new skills in the data industry.
On Friday the 23, there were some great talks. Michal Bláha spoke about the “fight” against the extremely messy IT in the Czech government, where there are up to 8,000 totally disconnected IT systems with no KPI beyond obeying the law. Patrik Weigl impressed the audience with a story about a small, family-based company who started their business intelligence journey at the first Datafestak in 2015. Thanks to the resulting work they did with their data, the company was able to completely redesign its workflow for the better.
Together with Vašek Slováček from Ytica, our VP of Product Zdeněk Svoboda shared an unbelievable story of how a small data analytics company from Prague partnered with GoodData and got acquired just 14 months later by technology giant Twilio. This wasn’t the only case of a successful exit of a small Czech analytics company. At the end of the day, Vojta Roček told us about Stories, which was acquired by Workday, and how their journey was full of success stories and courageous ideas that involved leaving the beaten path behind and following dreams — and it even included a freestyle rap! ;-)
There were also many other interesting talks, including one about text analysis from Geneea and one about new ways of web scraping by Apify. We also heard a mind-blowing talk from Adam Votava about using data science in the automotive industry to recognize defective parts in front lights. Alexandra Garcia Gjuric shared a story about moving the “dinosaur” — a digital transformation in one of the largest banks in Romania where the challenge is not just to start using cloud-based technology but also to change people’s mindsets. Radovan from Bizztreat told us about how they perceive the role of a data detective, and Petr from Dáme Jídlo showed us the principles they use when working with data to optimize the time to delivery.
We also heard from Tomáš from Adler about the fight to replace old, heavy, Excel based workflows with agile methodology and BI tooling, and Michal from Plantyst described how they are optimizing the large-scale production of Head skis by using data from all of the machines that are connected to the manufacturing process. Lukáš assured us that fashion companies like Pietro Filipi are also effectively working with data. The business track was capped off by a great surprise: two opera singers who also work as data analysts :-)
After the business track, we kicked off the hackathon, which ended on Saturday afternoon. Together with Jirka Tobolka, we tried out a whole new way of announcing results by using Slack and providing the results in real time to the audience — with live moderation :-) And in speaking to some of the attendees of the Datagirls workshop, we saw that it has a great meaning to evangelize the IT world among women.
Personally, I was excited to see that the atmosphere was even more electrifying than it was in 2015. People were enthusiastic, communicative, and engaged, so we’ve decided to participate as a partner in the third Datafesťák conference in no more than two years. See you there!
