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What is XConf: XConf is a tech conference created by technologists, for technologists who care deeply about the craft of software and its ability to make the world a better place. This one-day, two-track event will host a diverse range of technology leaders discussing the latest tech topics and points of view.

At XConf you will:

• Discover emerging technologies and practices, use cases, and real stories
• Listen to talks by a diverse line-up with a 50/50 gender split
• Learn how to implement new technologies where you work and have greater impact
• Hear from people who broke through seemingly insurmountable resistance to change
• Talk with other interesting and ambitious technologists
• Let go of previously-held assumptions and gain new perspectives

This one-day, two-track event gives you indirect access to a diverse range of Thoughtworks senior technologists working on our clients’ most complex challenges. Seating is limited to 100 guests, so register today!

Exclusive keynote my Trisha Gee Talk: ARE YOUR TESTS SLOWING YOU DOWN? Testing is a Good Thing, right? Especially automated testing. But "Good things come to those who wait" is not something that's going to appeal to the busy developer. You want results, and you want them now. You're in The Zone working on a problem, and the last thing you want is to break your flow wrestling with your testing framework or waiting for the tests to finish running.

More code means more tests. More coverage means more tests. More tests mean more time. Time that you want to spend being productive, creative, innovative. How can you balance the need for quality with the need for speed?

In this talk, Trisha will identify issues that slow down developers when writing, running and debugging tests, and look at tools that can help developers with each of these problems. There will be live coding, analysis of social media poll results, an overview of solutions in this space, "best practice" recommendations, and machine learning will be mentioned at some point.

Sneak peek into our agenda:

• Evaluating LLM systems: What does it mean in practice? - Aili Asikainen and Oege Dijk
• Container Security - Implementing zero trust & principle of least privilege in containers inside K8s - Amit Dube
• Building Data Mesh on Databricks and Azure for a large manufacturing company - Dominika Makuch and Rieke Heinze

Check out the full agenda on eventbrite.com

Thoughts from past events: “Your event has really become a highlight in my conference calendar, thanks for that! See you next time!” - Mark, XConf attendee.

“It’s a really interesting conference...loads of different talks about what is modern in technology and what are the things to do. Hearing about those from great speakers is really good!" - Tim, XConf attendee.

°°Get your tickets now°°

Venue: Riverbank House, 2 Swan Ln, London EC4R 3AD - IMPORTANT: LOCATION UPDATED! Please note:

1. 🚨🚨🚨A valid photo ID is required by building security. 🚨🚨🚨
2. This event follows the NumFOCUS Code of Conduct, please familiarise yourself with it before the event.

If your RSVP status says "You're going" you will be able to get in. No need to show your RSVP confirmation when signing in.

If you can no longer make it, please unRSVP as soon as you know.

Code of Conduct: This event follows the NumFOCUS Code of Conduct. Please get in touch with the organisers with any questions or concerns regarding the Code of Conduct.

As always, there'll be free food & drinks, generously provided by our host, Man Group.

Main Talks

Toolbox of a not-so Data Scientist - Tambe Tabitha Achere

This talk is about building data science solutions in scenarios where demos cannot be done on a notebook and dashboards do not suffice as a final deliverable. By the end of this session, the audience will have an idea of how data scientists can build the logic behind full-stack applications without the need to learn a backend framework.

I will do a deep dive into one of my projects and there will be lots of code samples accompanied by explanations that led to design decisions. The project I'll be diving into is one in which the data could not be pulled in so if you've ever had to build for data you couldn't see, this session is for you too. I'll highlight the tools, packages and processes that enabled it to be built.

Boosting Similarity Search With Real-time Stream Processing - Fawaz Ghali

The goal of similarity search and vector databases is to find similar results to the search query for unstructured data, such as text, images, and videos. The unstructured data first is vectorized, and stored in a vector format. There are publicly available tools to create vectors from unstructured data; similarly, there are vector databases to store and perform similarity searches. This is important because of the rising popularity of Large Language Models (LLMs) and their combination with vector databases. Here, we present a hybrid approach by taking the strengths of vector databases and boosting them with traditional search and filtering techniques based on real-time stream processing. Vector databases are good for building high-performance vector search applications. On the other hand, stream processing can be used for real-time fast data storage for structured data (filters, tags, and contextual data). In this work, we're adding context and memory to vector databases to ingest, enrich, predict, and act on your data in a simplified but efficient approach. In this talk, we’ll focus on how Real-time compute APIs help leverage the processing capabilities of a distributed cluster, so you aren’t leaving large potential performance gains on the table. The combination of Real-time storage and computing provides a unique synergy that enables applications to address real-time use cases at any scale.

⚡ Lightning Talks

Open-Source Science (OSSci) - Tim Bonnemann

Open-Source Science (OSSci) is a new NumFOCUS initiative – launched in July 2022 in partnership with IBM – that aims to accelerate scientific research by improving the ways open source software in science gets done (built, used, funded, sustained, recognized, etc.). OSSci connects scientists, OSS developers and other stakeholders to share best practices, identify common pain points, and explore solutions together. The five OSSci interest groups to date cover domain-specific topics (chemistry/materials, life sciences/healthcare, climate/sustainability) as well as cross-domain topics (reproducibility, map of science), with more to be rolled out in 2024. This lightning talk will provide a brief overview of OSSci’s activities to date, our plans for 2024, and how you can get involved.

(Maybe) faster Pandas with CuDF on the GPU (perhaps) - Ian Ozsvald

NVIDIA's CuDF promises 100-1000x GPU speed ups with 100% compatibility, with a bit of effort it can be made to work. This talk shows what could work and which bits (including setup!) can be painful

Logistics Doors open at 6.30 pm (get there early as you have to sign-in via building security), talks start at 7 pm, drinks from 9 pm in the bar. We will have reduced capacity for this event but there will be plenty of people to discuss data science questions with!

Please unRSVP in good time if you realise you can't make it. We're limited by building security on the number of attendees, so please free up your place for your fellow community members!

Follow @pydatalondon (https://twitter.com/pydatalondon) for updates and early announcements.

New York State approved the use of automated speed cameras within a specific range of schools. Tim Schmeier did an analysis of publically available data related to these cameras as part of a project at the NYC Data Science Academy. Tim's work leverages several open data sets to ask the questions: are the speed cameras succeeding in their intended purpose of increasing public safety near schools? What he found using open data may surprise you. You can read Tim's write up titled Speed Cameras: Revenue or Public Safety? on the NYC Data Science Academy blog. His original write up, reproducible analysis, and figures are a great compliment to this episode. For his benevolent recommendation, Tim suggests listeners visit Maddie's Fund - a data driven charity devoted to helping achieve and sustain a no-kill pet nation. And for his self-serving recommendation, Tim Schmeier will very shortly be on the job market. If you, your employeer, or someone you know is looking for data science talent, you can reach time at his gmail account which is timothy.schmeier at gmail dot com.