Meetup #1

[betatim]

All things related to making the first meetup happen.

Topics

• Becoming an Open Source Developer, by Jaime Fernández del Río Jaime is NumPy and SciPy core developer and currently works at Google
• Deep Learning Hardware and Libraries: What you need to know to get serious about deep learning, by Tim Dettmers If you google for 'deep learning' and 'hardware', Tim's blog will be the top hit. He spent last summer at Microsoft Research and at the moment his main interest is computational natural language understanding.

  Location

Liip, Limmatstrasse 183, 8005 Zürich, Switzerland

Date

9 November 2016

[Titus-von-Koeller]

Our first two topics will be:

on deep learning hardware and libraries, what you need to know to get serious about deep learning

on becoming an open source developer

there will be more info posted soon in the meetup group. The event is previsioned to happen sometime in early November and we still need a room.

We really need to focus on finding a room now! Any help greatly appreciated

[betatim]

I updated the top post with your comments. Should we already create a new event on the meetup group with this information? Not sure what the meetup etiquette is on this.

[Titus-von-Koeller]

yes, I will announce the first meetup today.. From what I saw in other groups, it is quite common to post a meetup without a location and even a date. It seems quite common that the group participates in determining these.

[betatim]

The power of twitter: https://twitter.com/odi/status/790564177823825921 @metaodi 🚀

[betatim]

@TitusCornelius does Tim D have github? Would be good to chat with the speakers about talk length. My vote would go for 20(talking)+10(questions) each. What do you guys think?

[uweschmitt]

Maybe a colleague of mine and I can organize a room at ETH.... I'll know more tomorrow.

[metaodi]

@betatim I could offer the Arena at Liip on November 9. I made a tentative reservation of the room. Let me know if you want it. Or if you want a specific date, I can check again.

[betatim]

Awesome. 9 November sounds good to me. We probably need to run some kind of iterative algorithm between room, speakers etc to converge. Next iteration: speakers :)

[aktion-hip]

I could try to make a reservation for a nice room in the ETH main building, for Wednesday, 9. Nov. 19:30 to 22:00. It has room for 50 places. If more places are needed, I could reserve a lecture room (160 places). (PS: I’m the collegue @uweschmitt mentioned.)

[Titus-von-Koeller]

Thanks everybody for all the support!

most important thing is to have a room in the first place, but it would be cool to have it so that people would want to stick around and that we could offer beers.

@metaodi how many people could fit in that room and could people stay for a beer (that we organize)?

@aktion-hip Thanks so much for offering! This also sounds really good.. In the ETH building I guess it would not be a good atmosphere/ not allowed to stick around afterwards with beer offered by us, or? I guess we could move things to the student bar afterwards.. Is it possible to book the room tentatively?

@betatim Tim is @TimDettmers

[betatim]

@timdettmers does 9 November work for you?

[betatim]

The room in the basement of Liip (if that is the room) is pretty big. Not sure about after party in terms of policy.

[metaodi]

@TitusCornelius the room fits for ~40-50 people. And it's no problem to stick around and have a beer or two, this is usually how it works 😉 The room has a beer fridge, if you're lucky, it's still full (have to check next week).

[aktion-hip]

I agree that the Liip room is better suited for the first PyData ZRH meetup, especially if it comes to build up the community. The ETH main building would be good for presentations before a bigger audience.

[Titus-von-Koeller]

@betatim Tim Dettmers told me that 9. November would work for him..

On Tue, Oct 25, 2016 at 9:10 PM, Stefan Oderbolz notifications@github.com wrote:

@TitusCornelius https://github.com/TitusCornelius the room fits for ~40-50 people. And it's no problem to stick around and have a beer or two, this is usually how it works 😉 The room has a beer fridge, if you're lucky, it's still full (have to check next week).

— You are receiving this because you were mentioned. Reply to this email directly, view it on GitHub https://github.com/pydatazrh/meetup/issues/5#issuecomment-256145537, or mute the thread https://github.com/notifications/unsubscribe-auth/AIoSOzau1tMl-cln3O9cHdgQh8yUZbyqks5q3lQlgaJpZM4KOoAa .

[betatim]

Then I would suggest we lock in the date and place and speakers 📸.

@TitusCornelius will you update the meetup page? Can we/do we want to link to this issue from there?

[TimDettmers]

9 November is good; 20 minutes + 10 minutes for the talk sounds reasonable. I would still need to fledge out the library part of the talk. I would talk a bit about deep learning libraries, and since it is pydata, focus mainly on the Python ones. I might also talk about one or the other utility library for deep learning or in general machine learning. However, overall I would focus more heavily on hardware, since that is my area of expertise. Probably around 12-14 minutes on hardware and and 6-8 minutes on libraries with 10 minutes for questions.

What do you think?

[betatim]

Sounds perfect to me. Especially because I recently decided to treat myself to my first desktop machine in >5years in order to gain access to a good GPU 😄

My feeling is that you either already know tf/keras or not in which case you might not be soo interested in this talk -> assume on the software side people are interested in more advanced little tips and tricks and not hearing about what cross-entropy loss is or that keras is a cool tool.

[betatim]

Does a 6.30pm start work for everyone? (vote with reaction emoji)

[Titus-von-Koeller]

@betatim: Did you hear anything from Jaime. He didn't answer to my mails..

We need to know if he can make it on the proposed date..

On Thursday, October 27, 2016, Titus von Köller titus@vonkoeller.com wrote:

works for me!

@betatim: Thanks for updating the room on meetup

On Thu, Oct 27, 2016 at 11:36 AM, Tim Head <notifications@github.com javascript:_e(%7B%7D,'cvml','notifications@github.com');> wrote:

Does a 6.30pm start work for everyone?

— You are receiving this because you were mentioned. Reply to this email directly, view it on GitHub https://github.com/pydatazrh/meetup/issues/5#issuecomment-256594379, or mute the thread https://github.com/notifications/unsubscribe-auth/AIoSO2HVzkiU1r45KVqYNcCjpjR6AJHaks5q4HCJgaJpZM4KOoAa .

[betatim]

No news from him. I think we should make a move on announcing a firm time and place. If he can't make it we could try and find a replacement or move to drinks earlier/improvise. What do you think?

[Titus-von-Koeller]

works for me!

@betatim: Thanks for updating the room on meetup

On Thu, Oct 27, 2016 at 11:36 AM, Tim Head notifications@github.com wrote:

Does a 6.30pm start work for everyone?

— You are receiving this because you were mentioned. Reply to this email directly, view it on GitHub https://github.com/pydatazrh/meetup/issues/5#issuecomment-256594379, or mute the thread https://github.com/notifications/unsubscribe-auth/AIoSO2HVzkiU1r45KVqYNcCjpjR6AJHaks5q4HCJgaJpZM4KOoAa .

[betatim]

Let's do it. Worst comes to the worst I will use the free time to tell people about https://twitter.com/sentinel2bot :)

[Titus-von-Koeller]

let's just go forward with it :)

On Thursday, October 27, 2016, Tim Head notifications@github.com wrote:

Let's do it. Worst comes to the worst I will use the free time to tell people about https://twitter.com/sentinel2bot :)

— You are receiving this because you were mentioned. Reply to this email directly, view it on GitHub https://github.com/pydatazrh/meetup/issues/5#issuecomment-256682096, or mute the thread https://github.com/notifications/unsubscribe-auth/AIoSO792LMMr1xxZPofZCMEa0qIQQFavks5q4MbFgaJpZM4KOoAa .

[Titus-von-Koeller]

I updated the date

On Thu, Oct 27, 2016 at 11:23 PM, Titus von Köller titus@vonkoeller.com wrote:

let's just go forward with it :)

On Thursday, October 27, 2016, Tim Head notifications@github.com wrote:

Let's do it. Worst comes to the worst I will use the free time to tell people about https://twitter.com/sentinel2bot :)

— You are receiving this because you were mentioned. Reply to this email directly, view it on GitHub https://github.com/pydatazrh/meetup/issues/5#issuecomment-256682096, or mute the thread https://github.com/notifications/unsubscribe-auth/AIoSO792LMMr1xxZPofZCMEa0qIQQFavks5q4MbFgaJpZM4KOoAa .

[betatim]

@TitusCornelius should we plan a trip to a supermarket or similar for the day of the meetup to acquire some drinks/nibbles?

[Titus-von-Koeller]

@betatim yes, we should.. I saw at the DevOps meetup, that they had two huge baguettes cut into many thin diagonal slices. I could make something like that and we get some chips, nachos and nuts? Any other suggestions? it looks like we won't be that many for starters, so I guess a keg of beer would be overkill for now.. We could get a palette of cheapish can beers.. that should do

Jaime contacted me and says that he didn't respond because he is swamped with work at the moment, but that he will make it to give his talk at the agreed upon date and place.

Should we find some way to advertise our first meetup a bit more? could you please write a mail to the Python group about cross-posting our event? I am currently a bit busy as I am preparing for an exam this Thursday :(

[betatim]

I will be in Zurich during the afternoon of the day of the meetup. Probably free after 4pm or 4.30pm. Does that work for you for a trip to a supermarket etc?

I will mention the meetup at the PyZurich meetup tomorrow in person and post a message on their board. I'll tweet about it again. Don't have any other smart ideas right now.

Good luck with the exam! 📚

[betatim]

Thanks everyone for the help with making this happen.

We had a tidy around after everyone was out. The empty cans are in the bins below the stairs. Is there a better place for them next time?