Data Scientists predict crimes and incidents in Dubai for social good at 4th international Kaggle Days (1/4)
On April 30th – May 1st, Kaggle Days happened for the first time in the Middle East, as a part of AI Everything, the biggest AI oriented event in the region. We are truly grateful to DWTC and AI Everything for making it possible to bring Kaggle Days for the first time to the region.
This edition of Kaggle Days took us to the great city of Dubai, where top Kaggle Grandmasters and Kagglers gathered together to learn and compete in an offline competition. This was already the 4th edition of Kaggle Days worldwide, created for international Data Science community, which was also a record in terms of content – we gathered 11 Kaggle Grandmasters in one place, among which 6 is ranked among top #25 Kagglers in the world! This brought an incredibly high level of content.
This event is totally the best tech event (especially data science-related topic) I have ever had. The opportunity to learn from the practitioner and have a real competition at one place is the thing that makes this community becomes unique.
One of the participants
Kaggle Days Dubai participants solving the competition on Day 2
Kaggle Days Dubai gathered over 120 experienced Data Scientists who came to Dubai to learn, network and compete in offline Kaggle competition. Kaggle Days stand was located in the central area of the AI Everything venue and considered the main point of the event. By many, we were called the best content makers at the conference. People from the whole conference found this initiative interesting and were approaching Kaggle Days stand throughout the whole two days of the event. This time, all participants engaged in solving social problems together with Dubai Police, the official sponsor of this event.
Networking event for participants on the evening before Kaggle Days DubaiFantastic opportunity to learn and network
One of the participants
Networking
A huge and important part of our events is networking – and this is how we start all our editions! On the evening before Day 1 of Kaggle Days, over 40 participants met in the center of Dubai to enjoy the walk around Burj Khalifa, the tallest building in the world, and watch Dubai Fountain performance of light, music, and water, which is the world’s largest choreographed fountain system. Paweł Jankiewicz (CTO and co-founder at LogicAI, Kaggle Grandmaster) and Maria Parysz (CEO and co-founder at LogicAI, Kaggle Days President) attended the walk, together with Walter Reade from Kaggle and Dmytro Poplavskiy, Kaggle Grandmasters, who were also speakers at this event.
This was an absolutely amazing experience for those who were in Dubai for the first time. After a short walk (high temperatures in Dubai didn’t allow it to be longer ;)), we continued our evening in one of the roof bars, networking over some snacks and refreshments.
Overview
As usual, at Kaggle Days, we had 2 days full of learning, networking, and fun. If you have never been to Kaggle Days, here is a brief description of what you can expect from Day 1:
In the morning, the opening speech given by Paweł Jankiewicz and Maria Parysz from LogicAI were followed by a Keynote speech from the sponsor. Participants received some morning inspiration at these sessions, but also found out what exciting things are yet to come at this event. After a short coffee break, participants could select and attend one of 3 available streams:
- Practical presentations from Kaggle Grandmasters,
- Hands-on workshops by Kaggle Grandmasters,
- Solving social problems at brainstorming sessions (during the Dubai edition, co-organized with Dubai Police).
At Kaggle Days Dubai, on the main stage, Kaggle Grandmasters shared their approach to Kaggle competitions and machine learning problems, which the participants found very helpful for the current data science problems they are tackling. At the same time in the workshop area, top Kagglers (including current #2 and #3 on Kaggle) shared their experience on neural networks, building the binary classification pipeline and target encoding and ensemble. The last stream happening simultaneously was brainstorming sessions. Maria Parysz and Paweł Jankiewicz guided these sessions together with Dubai Police. The goal of these sessions was to solve real social problems of the city, through brainstorming in teams of 4-5 people. The best teams got to win some great prizes. The topics of brainstorming sessions were “Child abuse prevention” and “Reduce traffic fatalities”.
On Day 2, we hosted all day Kaggle offline competition for the 4th time already. This time, the dataset was provided by Dubai Police, and the goal of the competition was to predict the number of incidents in specific areas of Dubai. The topic of the competition was “Minority Report: Predict the number and the location of incidents.”
Despite being quite challenging, participants enjoyed the topic and the provided data a lot. The new mentoring model, which we introduced during this edition, was also very well received by the community. This time, the participants were assigned only 1 mentor, and only this Kaggle Grandmaster could mentor their team during the competition. In this way, we created the possibility for the speakers – Kaggle Grandmasters – to compete among each other as well.
How beneficial it is to team up!
One of the participants
The winners’ announcement was an incredibly exciting moment – 5 minutes before the deadline, there was a significant shake-up on the leaderboard. How did the leaderboard look like in the end? Check out the link to the competition here. Congratulations to the top 3 teams, “better than ever”, “Crime_Oracles” and “Stermedia”.
Day 2 finished off with a celebration of the competition winners in a bar nearby. It was another chance to network and talk to someone you didn’t manage to meet during the event itself.
Everything was great, especially afterparty =)
One of the participants
The Sponsor
During Kaggle Days Dubai, our representatives had the honor of meeting his Highness Sheikh Ahmed Bin Saeed Al Maktoum and Omar Sultan Al Olama, Minister of AI in person, in Dubai. They have congratulated us on organizing Kaggle Days Dubai and wished us all the best for the future of data science community building.
The Kaggle Days event in Dubai was sponsored by a local institution, Dubai Police. During the event, all participants helped to solve social problems that Dubai Police is facing within the city. Dubai Police is one of the most advanced Police force in the world in many aspects. In 2018, they created the most advanced police vehicles in the world, which can recognize faces (https://www.thenational.ae/lifestyle/motoring/watch-new-high-tech-dubai-police-vehicle-can-recognise-faces-1.797029).
“Our journey into the future has already begun with investments to build capabilities and adopt frontier technologies in our mission to become the smartest police force in the world. Artificial Intelligence solutions built for Dubai will put us at the forefront of law enforcement innovation and enable us to augment our community’s happiness. By collaborating with Kaggle – a leading community of exceedingly talented data scientists – and LogicAI, we hope to add new capabilities to our portfolio that will further cement our role as a leader in this space and ultimately make Dubai one of the safest, smartest and happiest cities in the world,” said Major Dr. Rashid Hamdan Al Ghafari, Chairman of the Dubai Police Scientists Council.
How did brainstorming sessions look like? What conclusions were made, and how did the competition go? All that you will find out in the next parts of this article, coming out in … days.
Thank you for creating this community with us and see you at the next Kaggle Days!
Kaggle Days are a series of offline, non-profit events for Data Science enthusiasts and Kagglers, created by LogicAI in partnership with Kaggle. Kaggle Days events aim to provide an opportunity to learn from Kaggle Grandmasters and network within the community. We gather worldwide Data Science community to encourage learning and sharing experience.
LogicAI is a data science consulting company providing end to end solutions for business problems using advanced analytics and machine learning models.
