The Big Data School and Hackathon was organized by DARA Big Data in partnership with the OAD, Technical University Kenya, and IDIA.
The Big Data School featured 2 days of programming, datascience and machine learning tutorials, followed by a 3 day hackathon. The tutorials were livestreamed on Youtube while the hackathon event was held on campus at the Technical University Kenya for a small group of participants with safety measures in place.
The event was part of the Big Data Hackathon project which aims to develop data science, programming and related skills in Africa in the context of huge radio astronomy projects.
The tutorial sessions can be watched on Youtube:
Places for our #BigDataKenya event were strictly limited to keep staff & students as safe as possible.
Pictured are our 16 participants, selected from almost 400 applications. Mon & Tues were livestreamed to allow more people to take part remotely.#BigData #DataScience #Kenya pic.twitter.com/3BOggZKznI
— DARA Big Data (@DARABigData) July 28, 2021
Tutorials have been given on Data Preparation, Model Evaluation & Random Forest Classifiers today, & other key #DataScience & #MachineLearning topics.
Our #BigDataKenya photographer Brian Matoke @its_brianKE has been capturing attendees & tutors in action.@Astro4Dev @Big_IDIA pic.twitter.com/aq7IhoV9Xl
— DARA Big Data (@DARABigData) July 27, 2021
Our intrepid tutors are ready for the day ahead!
Today our #BigDataKenya participants start the #hackathon, which uses sentiment analysis, #NLP & Twitter data to gauge reaction to various aspects of COVID19.
The hack was created by DARA Big Data/OAD fellow Dr Nikhita Madhanpall pic.twitter.com/ZK9eMx2kf2
— DARA Big Data (@DARABigData) July 28, 2021
Our 1st placed team is Team Simba! They did a v interesting presentation comparing the effect of COVID19 on mental health in Africa & beyond, showing good knowledge & skill progression.
Huge congrats to all teams, the panel were v impressed all round! 🏅💻#DataScience #BigData pic.twitter.com/t8MsUZUxw8— DARA Big Data (@DARABigData) July 30, 2021