PyData Boston 2.0 Kickoff Recap and Member Survey
Thanks to everyone who came out to the PyData Boston 2.0 Kickoff event on October 8th! After nearly two years since the last PyData Boston event, we were excited to see more than 60 people join us to relaunch the group and talk about what this new iteration of the group can contribute to the Boston tech scene. (If you’re not already a member, you can sign up here: https://www.meetup.com/PyData-Boston-Cambridge/.) We also recorded the event for those who weren’t able to attend in person:
With such a large and enthusiastic community in Boston, we decided to start the evening by hearing from representatives of other related groups in the area about what they’re doing and how they think that the PyData chapter can contribute. Our guest speakers included:
- Thad Kerosky (Code for Boston)
- Marianna Foos (R-Ladies Boston)
- Adam Blackwell (Boston Data Science Meetup)
- Colin Carroll (Boston Bayesians)
- Haylee Ham (Women in Machine Learning and Data Science — Boston)
Next it was the audience’s turn to contribute their own ideas, and there were many! Some of the suggested activities for the group included practical presentations and tutorials, career events, student project presentations, lightning talks, tool demos, ed-tech hackathons, and mentoring opportunities. We also talked about many ways in which the PyData Boston group can partner with other groups in the local community (including other meetups, universities, and nonprofit organizations) to extend our reach beyond the group’s own members.
To help plan for future events, we’ve created a survey for group members (whether or not you were able to attend) to fill out, to measure interest in the various types of events suggested and help us prioritize. We’re also asking for volunteers to help organize events and lead the group in the months and years ahead. You can take the survey here: https://forms.gle/Wj89p8Z6MDhxbxGQ7 . Please respond by October 15th so we can get started on planning upcoming events and build on the momentum of this week’s kickoff!
Many thanks are in order for helping to make the event a success. Thanks to HubSpot for hosting the event and providing pizza and beverages. Thanks to all of our guest speakers for sharing their experiences and insights. Thanks to everyone who attended and gave their own thoughts about what this group should be. And thanks as well to everyone who wanted to attend but didn’t make it off the waitlist — we had to limit signups due to venue capacity and didn’t know how many attendees would actually show up, so we appreciate your understanding and hope to see you at another PyData Boston event soon!
We’re hoping to schedule the next PyData Boston event for sometime in November, and will post here and on Meetup when that gets scheduled. In the meantime, please remember to take the member survey, and we’ll look forward to seeing you all again soon.
Thanks again!
- Andrew & Ben
