Thanks, everyone, for signing up for next week's "informal symposium" on machine learning in the sciences at UO! (Thurs. Sept. 20, 12.30-4.00pm; EMU Ballroom; coffee starting at noon.) There are 65 people signed up, which exceeds our prediction by a wide margin! (Perhaps the machines would have guessed better...) We're quite happy about this, and we think it will be a stimulating event!
Here's more information, especially about the logistics of the afternoon. The important part: if you're giving a talk, please be sure to read the "Talks" section. If you're not giving a talk you can just show up, but you might find the information below useful to know in advance, especially the note about tables in Paragraph 1. (There's also something you can vote on...)
EMU Ballroom, and table instructions. We'll be in the EMU ballroom, which is gigantic. (As mentioned earlier, options were limited.) We'll have tables, and we'll probably group them into one part of the space. We'll have discussions at the tables (see below). To help make these stimulating and informative, please do not sit at a table with anyone else from your research group. Try also to avoid clustering by department!
Refreshments. We'll have coffee, tea, water, and cookies, which should be set up at 12:00. The "program" starts at 12:30, but come any time after noon to mingle, etc. Feel free to bring your lunch.
During the discussion breaks, we'll propose questions for each table to talk about, such as:
Vote. These topics are on the "Topics" page at the Google Registration Sheet. You can vote for as many as you like, and we'll look at the responses on Tuesday.
Time. Sixteen people have signed up to give talks, which is great! Because our main goal is to introduce everyone to each other and to each other's tools and approaches, possibly seeding future interactions, we're going to have talks from all of these people but capped at 6 minutes per talk, plus 2 minutes for questions / transitions. Yes, this is not a lot of time, but think of it as an "advertisement" conveying the general idea of what your lab does, not the details. Note that there's at most one talk per research group, so this will expose everyone to many groups across many departments!
Presentation file. You can use your own laptop, but I encourage speakers to upload slides to this Google Drive folder so that I can run them from my laptop, to save time.
Title. Please write a title or topic on the sheet, which people might like to jog their memories later about who does what.
Presentation order. We will sort-of-randomly order talks, so there aren't adjacent talks from the same department. If you have a time constraint (e.g. the Biology retreat early in the afternoon), please email me ASAP. When we do the ordering, I'll indicate this in a column in the registration sheet.
A nudge. A few people indicated that they were "willing" to give a talk, rather than definitively writing "yes." If you're one of these, we encourage you to speak! If you don't want to, you can delete your entry.
Time, again. We will be strict about enforcing time!
Thanks!
-- Raghu Parthasarathy, Teddy Hay, Gabriel Barello Sept. 13, 2018