Python @ Strata 2014
Python will have a strong presence at Strata 2014 in Santa Clara
Strata is O’Reilly’s conference on “Making Data Work.” The Winter 2014 iteration of this conference is coming up in Santa Clara, CA on February 11-13. Over the past two years, the Python community has started to attend this conference. This is encouraging to see as Python is one of the more popular tools being used by data scientists; O’Reilly’s 2013 Data Science Salary Survey found that 41% of those surveyed were using Python.
I am not interested in participating in language wars. R also made a solid showing in this survey (43% of respondents). Furthermore there was a positive correlation in the usage of R and Python. The survey is a great read if you are interested in these things.
So what Python related things can you expect at Strata 2014?
IPython
Fernando Perez and I will be at Strata representing the IPython project. This is an exciting time for the project with the release of IPython 2.0 only weeks away. This will be a big release for us with a number of big changes landing in master:
- A modal user interface.
- An interactive JavaScript widget architecture.
- A URL scheme that reflects a notebook’s path and file name and allows directory navigation.
On Tuesday, Fernando and I will give a general tutorial on IPython and the Notebook:
On Thursday, I will give a talk about the JavaScript widget architecture:
The IPython Notebook: Get Close to Your Data with Python and JavaScript
This will be the first public talk where this architecture will be described in detail. We have been showing short demos of this at talks over the past few months and the response has been great. The new widget architecture allows users and developers to build rich user interfaces using JavaScript/HTML/CSS that communicate with the IPython kernel using JSON data. IPython 2.0 will ship a number of basic widgets (slider, checkbox, dropdown, etc.). More importantly, we hope that this development ignites other developers to create new libraries that combine frontend technologies (d3, backbone.js, etc.) with the power of Python and other backend languages (Julia, Scala, Haskell, etc.).
Also on Thursday, Fernando and I will hold informal “Office Hours” to talk to attendees about anything related to IPython or Python:
Office Hour with Brian Granger and Fernando Perez
If you are attending, please stop by and say hi.
Ben Lorica of O’Reilly also has a nice blog post about IPython in the context of data science:
IPython: A unified environment for interactive data analysis
Python
There will also be a number of other Python related talks by leaders in the Python community:
Olivier Grisel of INRIA will give a tutorial and talk about scikit-learn:
Introduction to Machine Learning with IPython and scikit-learn
Predictive Modeling in the Cloud with Scikit-learn and IPython
Wes McKinney of DataPad will talk about his experience in building data tools:
The Last Mile: Challenges and Opportunities in Data Tools
Peter Wang of Continuum Analytics will talk about Python and big data:
Open Source Big Data for Defense
Henrik Brink and Joshua Bloom will talk about their machine learning work with wise.io:
Overcoming the Barriers to Production-Ready Machine-Learning Workflows
Carlos Guestrin of GraphLab will talk about machine learning on large graphs:
Large-scale Machine Learning Cookbook using GraphLab
Summary
These are exciting times for the Python community, with open source projects and companies investing massive efforts in building new tools for working with data. We hope you are able to join at at Strata 2014!
If you want to attend Strata 2014, O’Reilly has generously given us a 20% off discount for the Python/IPython community. Use the code IPY20 when you register to get this discount.
