Back from ODSC

Just back from ODSC, which is my first major business travel since the somewhat abortive New Zealand trip. I have not been writing recently as I’ve been busy with some client projects that have to stay at least reasonably confidential. More about those as I’m able to talk about them.

Unfortunately, the client work has also meant I’ve had to scale back my involvement with the National Transportation Data Challenge. I was hoping to be able to stick with it through the summit event that will take place this week, but reality intervened once again. Fortunately, it looks like it’s moving forward to a good conclusion and I’m looking forward to participating by livestream to the extent possible.

ODSC was a good time and a reminder that it’s fine to stay close to home. I have had my qualms with the current state of Silicon Valley which have caused me to avoid a number of events there because of what I find to be excessive hype. But this one — other than some minor logistics and organizational matters — was a lot of fun and very informative without too much of the insanity.

I’m looking forward to PyCascades in January, and my favorite conference, SCaLE, in March. I’ve submitted at talk for the new open data track at the latter.

My traveling companion Griffith the mountain lion and I got around quite a bit the past three days, considering we only left the conference site to eat and sleep.