Format

The conference will be held over three days. The first day will include exclusive talks and discussions from our accomplished lineup of speakers. The second and third days will consist of interactive workshops, collaborative hackathons and group discussion about the future of FsLab. It is hoped that the conference will be a catalyst for new initiatives which will take their first steps during these workshops and discussions.

Thursday, 28 September 2023 – Talks and discussion

8:30

Welcome and Coffee

9:00

Designing composable functional libraries, not just for data visualisation

Tomas Petricek

What do you do when you want to build a pretty data visualization, but none of the existing libraries does quite the thing that you want? Why, of course! You create your own data visualization library from scratch! It takes about a week until you realize that getting all the details right in data visualization is a nightmare and this was never a good idea. However, it also turns out that functional approach is a great fit for data visualization and you can build amazing visualizations with just a few lines of elegant composable code. In this talk, Tomas will describe the design of a data visualization library in The Gamma. However, Tomas will try to talk not only about categorical and continuous data, projections and misleading charts. Tomas will then extract more general principles of functional library design that you can use when tackling problems in a wide range of other domains.

10:00

Foundations of Portfolio Choice

Nicholas Hirschey

This talk will use freely available data and open source F# libraries to form mean-variance efficient portfolios of stocks and bonds. Join Nicholas as he explores methods for estimating expected returns, variances, and covariances as well as best practices for incorporating time-varying parameter estimates into portfolio decisions.

10:30

Coffee Break

11:00

The Real Problems of Data Science

Evelina Gabasova

If you work in data science, you might encounter situations that typical data science curriculum doesn’t cover. The client wants to do amazing data science and AI, but not only is it not clear what do the data contain, but the data are difficult to access, they are too sensitive, nobody is able to give you access and it is not clear what to do. In this talk, we will cover several topics coming out of real-world experiences of what to do when you don’t have any data… and nobody even knows what problem should the data solve!

11:40

Using Network Science to improve supply chain resilience

Harry McCarney

Pallets are the backbone of the global supply chain and the largest circular economy in the world. These often overlooked wooden platforms carry everything from food to iPhones from where they are made to where they are sold. Using network science and simulation, H&C has made this critical part of the world's supply chain more resilient and sustainable. During the talk Harry will present some of the technologies and F# libraries he and his team used to do this.

12:10

Lunch break and buffet

13:10

F# for the Analyst and the High-Performance Engineer

Matthew Crews

Matthew will help you learn why F# is an excellent language for both high level analysis and low-level performance. F#'s unique set of features makes it easy to explore new ideas and algorithms while also being able to write code with C level of performance.

13:50

Working with sparse time series data in computational biology

Benedikt Venn

A living cell contains a plethora of proteins that help to maintain the cell‘s function, interact with the environment, and ensure that the cells can cope with changing conditions. Nowadays, all proteins of a cell can be monitored simultaneously. Special analysis methods are required to convert these data into a biologically interpretable form. Benedikt is going to show which methods FSharp.Stats offers to reduce the complexity of a time series experiment.

14:30

An Ode to Linear Programming

Mathias Brandewinder

Linear Programming is one of the most under-appreciated optimization techniques available, and gets little press. It is super powerful, but most people have at best only vaguely heard about it. Mathias's talk will introduce LP and MILP, and how to use it with F#.

15:00

Coffee Break

15:30

Unleashing the Analytical Power of F#: Empowering Biotechnological Data Science Education and Research

Timo Mühlhaus

Timo will explore the impact of F# on data science education and biotechnological research, particularly in the realm of mass spectrometry. In this context, F# serves as a powerful tool for empowering educators and students, enabling interactive and intuitive tasks that accelerate learning and comprehension. Join Timo as he delves deeper into the fascinating realm of biological analysis, where F# unlocks unprecedented insights and drives breakthrough discoveries.

16:10

Writing libraries for the FsLab ecosystem

Kevin Schneider

Join Kevin as he analyses Plotly.NET's history, searching for insights on what we can learn from Plotly.NET to create and maintain successful open-source libraries for the FsLab (and .NET) ecosystem.

17:00

AI and Code: Two Projects from GitHub Next

Don Syme

As well as overseeing the F# language design, Don’s main work is with GitHub Next, researching topics in AI for Code using LLMs. LLMs are extraordinarily powerful “word calculators” and Don will outline the functions they’ve been using them for, but also cast a critical eye on their capabilities. Don will outline how his thinking from the world of F# and how logic influences the way he approaches LLM programming, and touch on the ways F# programmers can get involved in this space.

18:00

Drinks and Networking

Friday, 29 September 2023 – Interactive Workshops & Discussions

8:30

Welcome and Coffee

9:00

Room 1 - 4 Levels of Linear Programming

Mathias Brandewinder

In this hands-on workshop with Mathias, you will work through 4 example problems using linear programming. The problems will go from easy to hard, and highlight different situations where linear programming techniques can help. So... bring your laptop, and let's start optimizing!

9:00

Room 2 - Deep dive data exploration and visualisation

Benedikt Venn and Kevin Schneider

Join Benedikt and Kevin on a journey across F# data science libraries (including FSharp.Stats, FSharp.FGL, Cytoscape.NET, Plotly.NET) as they showcase various exploratory data analyses to gain insights into correlation networks, probability distributions, and clustering.

12:00

Lunch break and buffet

13:00

Open space discussion groups

Join your fellow attendees and speakers to discuss a broad range of topics, voted for by you on Day 1 of the conference

15:30

Coffee Break

16:00

FsLab - The mission and the community

FsLab Steering Commitee

Presentation and discussion

Saturday, 30 September 2023 - Hackathon

We will work together to solve the most urgent needs within the FsLab ecosystem. These needs will be identified before and during the conference by participants.

The hackathon will be split into three sections (Contribute. Apply. Incubate.) and will give everyone, including those new to open source development, a chance to contribute to the F# data science ecosystem.

Join members of the data science community from across the globe as we unite in Berlin.

Only a few tickets remaining - secure yours today!