Calling all data scientists! The first ever global data science hackathon

Are you a smart data scientist? Participate in this hackful event. 24 hours of non-stop, fun data science competition. The first ever global, simultaneous data science hackathon!

PLEASE READ CAREFULLY THE END OF THIS PAGE!

In connection with Big Data Week and Data Science London, we’re helping organize a global data science hackathon that will simultaneously take place in various locations around the world (including London, Sydney, and San Francisco). We will host the NYC event at the Bloomberg Ventures office in the West Village.

The aim of the hackathon is to promote data science and show the world what is possible today combining data science with open source, Hadoop, machine learning, and data mining tools.

Data scientists, data geeks, and hackers will self organize around teams of 3-5 members. Contestants will be presented with a ‘big data’ set (hosted on the Kaggle platform). In order to win prizes, the teams will have to use data science tools and develop an analytical model that will solve a specific data science problem specified by the judging tech panel. The contestants will have to report their achievements at specific milestones, and a leader board will be published online at each milestone.

The contestants will spend 24 hours in Bloomberg Ventures’ office space where food, drinks, workspaces, and resting areas will be provided. Teams will compete for both local and global titles and prizes.

The Hackathon runs for 24 hours starting on April 28th at 8am (early start to allow for the event to happen simultaneously in multiple time zones around the world).

If you have questions, please email shivon.zilis@bloombergventures.com

PLEASE READ CAREFULLY:

1. This is a technical competition, not a networking event or an opportunity to learn more about big data techniques and technologies. We have limited space, so we unfortunately need to be strict about who gets to compete. If you're an entrepreneur looking to recruit, we're excited to have you as a member of this community, but this specific event is not the right venue, please come our regular Data Business meetups instead! :)

2. You should have Mad Skillz at at least one of the following:

a) Data grappling and/or cleaning,

b) Data modeling and forecasting,

c) Data visualization,

d) Spontaneous micro- and macro-economic theory creation

3. You should know one or more of the following languages:

a) R

b) python

c) Matlab

d) Some statistical package like SPSS or SAS

4. You should bring your hardcore laptop to the event, since we will have on the order of 10 gigs of data to play with.