by Przemyslaw Biecek
The first meeting of R users in Poland took place in Wroclaw in 2008. It was a one-day conference with 27 participants and 6 talks.
Today, we have three large groups of R users in major Polish cities (according to meetup.com there is 640 users in SER – Warsaw, 235 in eRka – Cracow and 64 in PAZUR – Poznań). And there are also some data science groups that are full of R users anyway (450 users in Wroclaw and 115 in Łódź).
We have tried different forms of meetings. Some of them were working; some of them were not. Below I will summarize what we have learnt from them.
Today, the most common formula for our meetings is: two short talks (around 30 minutes) with 30 min break for pizza and networking. The main advantage of this formula is that it is very easy to organize. Just find a large room, order pizza or other snacks and find speakers. You can meet even without speakers, but with them the meeting is much nicer.
In Warsaw we have meetings every month. They usually start at 6pm. Currently, for meetings, we are using a class room at Warsaw Technical University. Previously we were meeting in pubs, coffee shops, other places, but finally it turns out that we need more space, good projector, good access to public transport, and we need place that rather quite silent (in coffee shop you sometimes compete with noise from coffee maker).
Among attenders there are students, some stuff (just few people) but majority of participants are graduates that are now working in data-oriented businesses. So 6pm is a good starting time since we can meet after work. We finish around 8pm – good time for after-party.
We also have organised hackatons (two in Warsaw, three …read more
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