Report on the inaugural SNAP workshop – 13/04/2022

The inaugural SNAP workshop was held on 13th April 2022 in an online format (via zoom). The main goal for the event was to provide an opportunity for the SNAP community to come together, get to know each other and share their ideas. I’m pleased to report that the workshop was a success. There were over 30 participants online throughout most of the day and I’ve received numerous positive comments from participants. Moreover, the workshop concluded with overwhelming support to hold similar events on a biannual basis.

There were 10 short presentations on a wide range of topics with speakers from many different schools and research centres. Topics included tools for climate/ocean/atmosphere modelling, visualisation in R (with ggplot2 and shiny apps) and Python (with py5), nested sampling for posterior evaluation, uses of docker containers, experiences on designing interfaces for real users, quantum cloud computing tools, applications of matrix diagonalisation and meta-analysis tools in R and Stata. Of course, this brief summary does not do the presentations justice, for more details you can find a copy of the final programme along with slides from several of the presentations via the following links: internal link and external link (note: the latter expires 31/10/2022).

The presentations sparked much lively discussion in each of the breakout sessions, and this also continued into the lunch break when several participants met in the Kelburn hub. There was much discussion around the use or Python vs R (including R markdown) for a variety of both research and non-research purposes. Tools to create good graphics and interactive visualisations to help communicate ideas to a broader audience was also a lively topic. Participants provided some good ideas into ways SNAP might facilitate training and raise awareness about the expertise in different tools/software across the university. There was also much interest in having workshops tailored to more specific tools/topics in future.

I would like to thank all those that participated on the day, and especially to each of our presenters. I would also like to convey a special thanks to those that assisted with the organisation of the event.

If you are interested in participating in future SNAP events, please get in touch.

Cheers, Brendan

I really enjoyed the inaugural SNAP workshop. It was great to connect with other data analysts at VUW and find out who’s doing what. The idea of collaborating to develop resources for visualisation and data analysis is very exciting! — Prof. James Renwick, SGEES