2022-11-17 Meetup Event Details

Schedule

1700–1800h: (Pre-event Workshop) Matt Edwards

1800–1830h: Refreshments

1830–1835h: Welcome (🔗 slides)

1835–1900h: Andrew Blance, Waterstons

1910–1955h: Matthew & Keith, dstl Newcastle

1955–2000h: News & Announcements

Talks

Matt Edwards, Data Scientist @ National Innovation Centre for Data

Pre-event Workshop: Introduction to Databricks

Following on from the talk Databricks: Believing in Unicorns we move from ‘telling you’ to ‘showing you’ how to become an end-to-end Machine Learning specialist in Databricks. This workshop will include an end-to-end Machine Learning example with the 🍷 dataset. We will cover how to import and clean data; build, evaluate and tune models; and deploy them into production.

Andrew Blance, Data Scientist @ Waterstons

Getting Insight from Anything (🔗 slides)

The drive to make data-driven decisions shapes the strategy of many companies. However, this dream has a problem: just because you need to make a decision does not mean you have the data to make it! Often these decisions require data from sources typically unconnected to the internet. This could be an architect determined to understand how the construction of her building is progressing, or a manufacturer wanting to live their best Industry 4.0 life. It’s not uncommon for companies to find this journey to become “smart” is a long one - with difficult ethical ground to cover, or prohibitive costs associated with procuring the necessary equipment. However, the development of cheap and accessible IoT devices allows for the gathering of data from anything to be more within reach than ever.

This talk will look at efforts within Waterstons to build proof-of-concept IoT systems. We will discuss our (continuing) journey of using and managing hardware and the problems we faced along the way. The main focus however will be the software stack: Azure IoT Hub, Streaming Analytics, and the potential Azure ML offerings that can be used to gain valuable insight from this data.

Speaker bio: Dr Andrew Blance is a Data Scientist at Waterstons, a North-East based IT consultancy. His role primarily focuses on developing the data team’s data science offering. This is split between data science as a service and using MLOps to enable teams to deploy and scale models they have created. He also spends time developing innovation projects - dabbling in IoT, computer vision, and VR - intending to broaden the range of technology Waterstons can offer clients. Honestly, though, his opus is Brains on the Outside, a podcast about pitching ridiculous business ideas. Stop reading this, and go listen to it!

Matthew & Keith @ Defence Science and Technology Laboratory, Newcastle

The AI and Data Science challenges facing UK defence and security, and the work of the Defence Science & Technology Laboratory