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Meetup - ecology in Julia

Open mkborregaard opened this issue 5 years ago • 75 comments
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@tpoisot @richardreeve @kescobo I'm currently planning the "VizCon" in Berlin, the second installment of a meeting to advance plotting (and networking) in Julia. Last time it was really successful.

I was thinking, maybe we could all really benefit from doing a 1-week meetup/hackathon to talk and code and get ecology in Julia to a place where it's well-integrated and generally useful? I wouldn't mind coming to Montreal for a week at some point after the summer, which should also be really convenient for Kevin (and Richard loves travelling :smile: ).

What do you say?

mkborregaard avatar Feb 05 '20 11:02 mkborregaard

It would be great - at least locally, I know that @gabrieldansereau & @FrancisBanville are using Julia a lot for spatial ecology things, so we can also involve some grad students. We can also include a one hour seminar for one of you guys.

tpoisot avatar Feb 05 '20 13:02 tpoisot

Yeah great, would those students be willing to contribute to building up the ecosystem? That would be pretty awesome

mkborregaard avatar Feb 05 '20 13:02 mkborregaard

I think so - @gabrieldansereau is using SimpleSDMLayers and moving into questions of endemism, using eBird data, so this is close to the goals of SpatialEcology. @francisbanville is working on network prediction in space, which also fits. I think that if we come up with a specific idea leading up to a deliverable (release + draft of the software note), this could be a very productive week.

tpoisot avatar Feb 05 '20 14:02 tpoisot

I would be very happy to contribute to the ecosystem!

I started my PhD 5 months ago with @tpoisot and I think this project is a great opportunity for me to share and improve my developing expertise in Julia and spatial network ecology.

FrancisBanville avatar Feb 05 '20 15:02 FrancisBanville

I would be happy to contribute too!

As Timothee said, I am already using some of the packages for spatial ecology. A well-integrated ecosytem could be very useful, and I'd love to help develop it.

gabrieldansereau avatar Feb 05 '20 15:02 gabrieldansereau

Awesome! I'm in. Now we just need @kescobo and @richardreeve too and find a date :-)

mkborregaard avatar Feb 05 '20 15:02 mkborregaard

September and October are best for me - end August might work in a cinch

mkborregaard avatar Feb 05 '20 15:02 mkborregaard

Oh yeah - Montreal would be awesome. Need to check in with family about dates, but I think I could make it happen. I think Sept/Oct would be easier for me as well.

kescobo avatar Feb 05 '20 17:02 kescobo

Maybe also interesting for @rafaqz and @gabrielgellner

mkborregaard avatar Feb 05 '20 17:02 mkborregaard

Thanks that sounds great, this has been something I've been meaning to get involved in for a while, seeing I'm working on a lot ecology/spatial packages.

I should be in Portugal for Juliacon, but not sure I could make another trip to Europe this year (I'm in Melbourne)

rafaqz avatar Feb 05 '20 23:02 rafaqz

I suppose from the perspective of an Aussie, Montreal could be considered Europe :-P

kescobo avatar Feb 06 '20 16:02 kescobo

Oh I just read the first line about Berlin above, Motreal is worse lol

rafaqz avatar Feb 06 '20 23:02 rafaqz

Sorry about missing this earlier - I'm certainly interested, and @claireh93 might be too. I'm not a mad keen traveller (thanks @mkborregaard!), so Berlin sounds a lot more tempting than Montreal, but I'm persuadable! October starts to get difficult for me, but September should be fine...

richardreeve avatar Feb 07 '20 12:02 richardreeve

Could people potentially move on to somewhere else after JuliaCon if they were coming to that?

richardreeve avatar Feb 07 '20 12:02 richardreeve

Yes this sounds good, I'm interested too! I would probably be able to make it for some/most of this, especially if it's somewhere in Europe.

claireh93 avatar Feb 07 '20 12:02 claireh93

Great! I'm not coming to JuliaCon. I've got a little bit of a hidden agenda on Montreal, because I'd like to spend a week collaborating with another good colleague who's at McGill and thought I could back-to-back them. I'm doing my best to not fly more than absolutely necessary

mkborregaard avatar Feb 07 '20 13:02 mkborregaard

Ah, okay. We'll have to look into sources of funding for drifting across the Atlantic. The current work we're doing is climate change related, and we had to promise not to spend any of the money on bad things like flying! We're even carbon offsetting our simulations... once we work out how to :)

richardreeve avatar Feb 07 '20 13:02 richardreeve

PS I should say, the reason I mentioned JuliaCon was not because we'd have the meeting there, but because a lot of people might be on the same continent, so if people were free the week before or after, we might be able to meet in Europe somewhere... obviously that doesn't help with the McGill plan though.

richardreeve avatar Feb 07 '20 13:02 richardreeve

@mkborregaard there's also @eric-pedersen at Concordia, who from what I understand has some interest in using Julia for ecology as well. So we may have a critical mass of people locally to have a very produtive week.

tpoisot avatar Feb 07 '20 14:02 tpoisot

Well, I can't do Europe, which is one of the reasons Montreal appeals to me (if I can drive, my wife and son can come too and that makes it feasible).

kescobo avatar Feb 07 '20 15:02 kescobo

JuliaCon is smack in the middle of my family holiday. To a Dane it's an absolutely terrible idea to put a work-related conference in the middle of July...

mkborregaard avatar Feb 07 '20 15:02 mkborregaard

@tpoisot great!

mkborregaard avatar Feb 07 '20 15:02 mkborregaard

Okay, we'll look into other funding sources... airbnb is suddenly looking v attractive!

richardreeve avatar Feb 07 '20 15:02 richardreeve

I would definitely be interested in a meetup in Montreal; I'm only a Julia novice currently (my expertise is in R), but I'm investing time in getting up to speed, since tools like DifferentialEquations.jl and now SpatialEcology.jl are really at the cutting edge for modelling tools. One of my long-term goals for the lab is to develop a simulation suite for metapopulation and metacommunity dynamics, and Julia seems like the ideal platform for that.

I'd only be able to make Montreal though. . . I'm also trying to reduce long-distance travel, and I teach in the fall, which makes travel for that long very difficult.

eric-pedersen avatar Feb 07 '20 17:02 eric-pedersen

Okay, I can find money to come over, but the sooner we set dates (and the better they are aligned with cheap days to fly!) the better as far as I and @claireh93 the better...

richardreeve avatar Feb 07 '20 19:02 richardreeve

Montreal is probably out for me. I might see some of you at JuliaCon - I should be talking about DynamicGrids.jl and Dispersal.jl there, which are also looking like cutting edge ecological modelling tools now, and may be of interest to some of you.

rafaqz avatar Feb 08 '20 00:02 rafaqz

What days would be good for you guys then?

mkborregaard avatar Feb 12 '20 11:02 mkborregaard

Generally for me/my family would be Sunday-Wednesday, and absolutely ideal would be 10/11-10/14. Only exception to that in Sept/Oct is 9/28.

kescobo avatar Feb 12 '20 15:02 kescobo

I also have a colleague here at Wellesley (Jakie Matthes) that's julia-curious, and I might be able to get her to come along. In any case, it would be awesome to come back with some concrete suggestions for her to get started.

kescobo avatar Feb 12 '20 15:02 kescobo

Great - I can do almost any time during those two months at the moment, except for... 10th-18th October, sorry.

mkborregaard avatar Feb 12 '20 15:02 mkborregaard