#26 Paris Women in Machine Learning & Data Science: Joint Meetup with WiMLDS Milan, Emotion Recognition &Prediction Without Data
On the 4th of June 2020, we held a joint online meetup with WiMLDS Milan.
This was our second meetup with another European chapter — we did a joint event with Berlin chapter in April — and we love the format! Since meetings in person are not possible nor safe yet, we are seizing the opportunity to build relations with fellow data enthusiasts in Europe.
This meetup was coorganised with Milan chapter, and we really enjoyed working together with Carlotta Orsenigo and Claudia Volpetti to make it happen.
Carlotta introduced Milan chapter and its history — it was founded in 2017, as well as its various activities.
Natalie Cernecka from Paris chapter moderated the event. Around fifty data science enthusiasts tuned in to listen to two presentations, one from Paris, another from Milan, both presented with a beautiful Italian accent.
🎬 You can watch the entire meetup here :
The first speaker was Valentina Franzoni, Ph.D. in Engineering for Computer Science, Research Fellow in Artificial Intelligence, Adjunct Professor in Operative Systems at the University of Perugia.
In her talk entitled “Emotion Recognition in Artificial Intelligence” , she gave us an overview of the issues at stake in this hot new field, at the intersection of psychology, sociology, and machine learning.
How do you recognise emotions in texts, in voices, and in faces? What are potential applications and their ethical implications? Valentina gave a passionate and fascinating talk that left us with many valuable insights.
If you want to know more, check out her slides below.
The second speaker was Chiara Biscaro, Senior Data Scientist @ Carrefour-Google AI La. Chiara is an old friend of our meetup: in fact, she was an organising team member in 2017–2018, and it was wonderful to have her as a speaker!
Her talk was entitled “In production in one week: forecasting affluence in supermarkets during lockdown” , and was dedicated to her recent work project. She had to model and predict affluence in grocery stores during the recent lockdown, without much data available and on a tight deadline.
Curious how she dealt with this challenge and what she learned in the process? Check out her slides below.
That’s what Chiara wrote to us after the meetup:
Thanks a lot for the meetup! I’m receiving a lot of messages on Twitter and LinkedIn by people who watched the talks and had feedback or questions. I wanted to share with you the plot of my profile visits on LinkedIn, it could be good to show how much visibility a simple talk in a meetup can give, even if I’m not looking for jobs right now ;)
Thank you Chiara for your testimony! Likewise, we encourage everyone to give talks at meetups and other outlets, especially those of you who have never done it before. It will help you to gain visibility, build network, develop skills, learn new things, and have fun in the process. Many events now have moved online, do reach out to organisers and offer to speak.
As for us, we will continue building bridges to other WiMLDS chapters, so stay tuned for more joint events. Although online events may lack the conviviality of the in-person meetings — we would have loved to enjoy a Milanese aperitivo or a Parisian apéro in such a fun company — we really appreciate the variety and diversity of speakers and attendees that online events provide.
Our next meetup is planned for the 25th of June 2020. As it will still be online, whenever in the world you are, you are welcome to join. Don’t forget to sign up at our meetup page.
If you want to keep posted about our activities, you are welcome to:
📑 check our Google spreadsheet if you want to speak 📣, host 💙, help 🌠
🔗 follow our Twitter account, Meetup page, and LinkedIn page
📍join our Slack channel for more discussions about machine learning, data science, and diversity in tech!
📩 send an email to the Paris WiMLDS team to keep in touch >paris@wimlds.org
🎬 follow our WiMLDS Paris Youtube channel
📸 WiMLDS has an Instagram account, a global LinkedIn page and a Facebook page!
🔥 Feel free to share your company or lab’s job positions for free on WiMLDS’ website.
