Kaggle PetFinder competition: Deep Learning for... puppies!

Dear Kagglers and data science enthusiasts,

It's time for the second Kaggle Days meetup in Milan!

This is the agenda:

• 18.00 Doors open at Nexi (Corso Sempione 55), in the auditorium
• 18.30 Talk: "Kaggle PetFinder competition: Deep Learning for... puppies!"
• 19.30 Aperitivo and networking

The speaker will be Luca Massaron.

Luca is a data scientist and a research director specialized in multivariate statistical analysis, machine learning and customer insight with over fifteen years of experience in solving real world problems and in generating value for stakeholders by applying reasoning, statistics, data mining and algorithms. From being a pioneer of Web audience analysis in Italy to achieving the worldwide rank of top ten data scientist at competitions held by kaggle.com, he has always been passionate about everything regarding data and analysis and about demonstrating the potentiality of data-driven knowledge discovery to both experts and non-experts. He is the author of books on Data Science, Machine Learning, Deep Learning and AI. He is also a Google Developer Expert in Machine Learning.

Talk abstract:
PetFinder.my has been Malaysia’s leading animal welfare platform since 2008, building in the meantime a rich database of more than 150,000 animals, completed with their history and photos. Recently it held a competition on Kaggle, requiring participants to develop algorithms to predict the adoptability of pets - specifically, how quickly a pet is going to be adopted. The problem mixed tabular data, textual information and varied images, requiring finding an optimal mix of preprocessing and learning techniques in order to achieve a performing result. Luca's team, comprising 3 Kaggle masters and 3 Kaggle experts from 3 three different countries, achieved the 8th rank in the competition and thereafter open-sourced our solution. In the talk, Luca will illustrate the organizational and technical challenges (with their solutions) faced to achieve such a result.

Looking forward to seeing you at this event and to growing the Italian Kaggle community!