Skip to content
New issue

Have a question about this project? Sign up for a free GitHub account to open an issue and contact its maintainers and the community.

By clicking “Sign up for GitHub”, you agree to our terms of service and privacy statement. We’ll occasionally send you account related emails.

Already on GitHub? Sign in to your account

Meetup - ecology in Julia #49

Open
mkborregaard opened this issue Feb 5, 2020 · 75 comments
Open

Meetup - ecology in Julia #49

mkborregaard opened this issue Feb 5, 2020 · 75 comments

Comments

@mkborregaard
Copy link
Member

@tpoisot @richardreeve @kescobo
I'm currently planning the "VizCon" in Berlin, the second installment of a meeting to advance plotting (and networking) in Julia. Last time it was really successful.

I was thinking, maybe we could all really benefit from doing a 1-week meetup/hackathon to talk and code and get ecology in Julia to a place where it's well-integrated and generally useful? I wouldn't mind coming to Montreal for a week at some point after the summer, which should also be really convenient for Kevin (and Richard loves travelling 😄 ).

What do you say?

@tpoisot
Copy link
Contributor

tpoisot commented Feb 5, 2020

It would be great - at least locally, I know that @gabrieldansereau & @FrancisBanville are using Julia a lot for spatial ecology things, so we can also involve some grad students. We can also include a one hour seminar for one of you guys.

@mkborregaard
Copy link
Member Author

mkborregaard commented Feb 5, 2020

Yeah great, would those students be willing to contribute to building up the ecosystem? That would be pretty awesome

@tpoisot
Copy link
Contributor

tpoisot commented Feb 5, 2020

I think so - @gabrieldansereau is using SimpleSDMLayers and moving into questions of endemism, using eBird data, so this is close to the goals of SpatialEcology. @FrancisBanville is working on network prediction in space, which also fits. I think that if we come up with a specific idea leading up to a deliverable (release + draft of the software note), this could be a very productive week.

@FrancisBanville
Copy link

I would be very happy to contribute to the ecosystem!

I started my PhD 5 months ago with @tpoisot and I think this project is a great opportunity for me to share and improve my developing expertise in Julia and spatial network ecology.

@gabrieldansereau
Copy link
Member

I would be happy to contribute too!

As Timothee said, I am already using some of the packages for spatial ecology. A well-integrated ecosytem could be very useful, and I'd love to help develop it.

@mkborregaard
Copy link
Member Author

Awesome! I'm in. Now we just need @kescobo and @richardreeve too and find a date :-)

@mkborregaard
Copy link
Member Author

September and October are best for me - end August might work in a cinch

@kescobo
Copy link
Member

kescobo commented Feb 5, 2020

Oh yeah - Montreal would be awesome. Need to check in with family about dates, but I think I could make it happen. I think Sept/Oct would be easier for me as well.

@mkborregaard
Copy link
Member Author

mkborregaard commented Feb 5, 2020

Maybe also interesting for @rafaqz and @gabrielgellner

@rafaqz
Copy link
Member

rafaqz commented Feb 5, 2020

Thanks that sounds great, this has been something I've been meaning to get involved in for a while, seeing I'm working on a lot ecology/spatial packages.

I should be in Portugal for Juliacon, but not sure I could make another trip to Europe this year (I'm in Melbourne)

@kescobo
Copy link
Member

kescobo commented Feb 6, 2020

I suppose from the perspective of an Aussie, Montreal could be considered Europe :-P

@rafaqz
Copy link
Member

rafaqz commented Feb 6, 2020

Oh I just read the first line about Berlin above, Motreal is worse lol

@richardreeve
Copy link
Member

richardreeve commented Feb 7, 2020

Sorry about missing this earlier - I'm certainly interested, and @claireh93 might be too. I'm not a mad keen traveller (thanks @mkborregaard!), so Berlin sounds a lot more tempting than Montreal, but I'm persuadable! October starts to get difficult for me, but September should be fine...

@richardreeve
Copy link
Member

Could people potentially move on to somewhere else after JuliaCon if they were coming to that?

@claireh93
Copy link
Member

Yes this sounds good, I'm interested too! I would probably be able to make it for some/most of this, especially if it's somewhere in Europe.

@mkborregaard
Copy link
Member Author

Great! I'm not coming to JuliaCon. I've got a little bit of a hidden agenda on Montreal, because I'd like to spend a week collaborating with another good colleague who's at McGill and thought I could back-to-back them. I'm doing my best to not fly more than absolutely necessary

@richardreeve
Copy link
Member

Ah, okay. We'll have to look into sources of funding for drifting across the Atlantic. The current work we're doing is climate change related, and we had to promise not to spend any of the money on bad things like flying! We're even carbon offsetting our simulations... once we work out how to :)

@richardreeve
Copy link
Member

PS I should say, the reason I mentioned JuliaCon was not because we'd have the meeting there, but because a lot of people might be on the same continent, so if people were free the week before or after, we might be able to meet in Europe somewhere... obviously that doesn't help with the McGill plan though.

@tpoisot
Copy link
Contributor

tpoisot commented Feb 7, 2020

@mkborregaard there's also @eric-pedersen at Concordia, who from what I understand has some interest in using Julia for ecology as well. So we may have a critical mass of people locally to have a very produtive week.

@kescobo
Copy link
Member

kescobo commented Feb 7, 2020

Well, I can't do Europe, which is one of the reasons Montreal appeals to me (if I can drive, my wife and son can come too and that makes it feasible).

@mkborregaard
Copy link
Member Author

JuliaCon is smack in the middle of my family holiday. To a Dane it's an absolutely terrible idea to put a work-related conference in the middle of July...

@mkborregaard
Copy link
Member Author

@tpoisot great!

@richardreeve
Copy link
Member

Okay, we'll look into other funding sources... airbnb is suddenly looking v attractive!

@eric-pedersen
Copy link

I would definitely be interested in a meetup in Montreal; I'm only a Julia novice currently (my expertise is in R), but I'm investing time in getting up to speed, since tools like DifferentialEquations.jl and now SpatialEcology.jl are really at the cutting edge for modelling tools. One of my long-term goals for the lab is to develop a simulation suite for metapopulation and metacommunity dynamics, and Julia seems like the ideal platform for that.

I'd only be able to make Montreal though. . . I'm also trying to reduce long-distance travel, and I teach in the fall, which makes travel for that long very difficult.

@richardreeve
Copy link
Member

Okay, I can find money to come over, but the sooner we set dates (and the better they are aligned with cheap days to fly!) the better as far as I and @claireh93 the better...

@rafaqz
Copy link
Member

rafaqz commented Feb 8, 2020

Montreal is probably out for me. I might see some of you at JuliaCon - I should be talking about DynamicGrids.jl and Dispersal.jl there, which are also looking like cutting edge ecological modelling tools now, and may be of interest to some of you.

@mkborregaard
Copy link
Member Author

What days would be good for you guys then?

@kescobo
Copy link
Member

kescobo commented Feb 12, 2020

Generally for me/my family would be Sunday-Wednesday, and absolutely ideal would be 10/11-10/14. Only exception to that in Sept/Oct is 9/28.

@kescobo
Copy link
Member

kescobo commented Feb 12, 2020

I also have a colleague here at Wellesley (Jakie Matthes) that's julia-curious, and I might be able to get her to come along. In any case, it would be awesome to come back with some concrete suggestions for her to get started.

@mkborregaard
Copy link
Member Author

Great - I can do almost any time during those two months at the moment, except for... 10th-18th October, sorry.

@kescobo
Copy link
Member

kescobo commented Mar 1, 2020

It looks like my wife might actually be able to take that Saturday (the 4th) off, since it's a holiday weekend in the US, in which case we might be able to come up Friday. But I'm also happy to have a day in Montreal to sight-see... I think if Sunday-Sat works best for @mkborregaard Let's just do that.

Julia ecology meet up Sept 6th-Sept 12th... going once...

@mkborregaard
Copy link
Member Author

Sat to Sat then :-)

@kescobo
Copy link
Member

kescobo commented Mar 1, 2020

Well, it's not for sure... God I'm a pain in the ass 😆

@richardreeve
Copy link
Member

Not wishing to sound negative, but having come back from northern Italy last week to 2 weeks in isolation (one week to go, even though I have tested negative for coronavirus, because I have a cough!), I'm beginning to wonder exactly how wise it is to plan for a visit anywhere at the moment... I'm supposed to be on at least 5 more international trips this year including Montreal, but I'm struggling to believe they are all (any of them?) going to happen, and I'm certainly not booking any of them just yet...

@mkborregaard
Copy link
Member Author

Shit. What were you doing in North Italy? Glad to hear you tested negative.

@richardreeve
Copy link
Member

I was on long-booked holiday skiing! It was great, but the whole "save the planet by taking a train through England, France and Italy instead of flying" turned out to be a bit misjudged! To be honest, at this point I'd have been happy to get infected, so I could deal with it while we still had a functioning health care system...

@tpoisot
Copy link
Contributor

tpoisot commented Mar 9, 2020

In case the in-person meeting doesn't happen, we can (i) gather the local folks in a room large enough to maintain a 2m distance (probably), and then use a combo of zoom and teletype to work remotely.

@kescobo
Copy link
Member

kescobo commented Mar 9, 2020

I suspect things will be much calmer by end of summer. Possibly gearing up for the next flu/corona season.

Or else civilization will have collapsed and nothing will matter.

@mkborregaard
Copy link
Member Author

I still plan to come - as Kevin says it's likely to dissipate by May then launch a new attach next November, if it acts like any other temperate virus. I'm fine with waiting a bit with booking the tickets, and I definitely think we'll make most progress if Richard joins, but I'd most likely want to come anyway, if the rest of you are game.

@mkborregaard
Copy link
Member Author

I guess @richardreeve really is the virologist here though. Isn't your key research area influenza virus?

@richardreeve
Copy link
Member

richardreeve commented Mar 9, 2020

Yes, we just published a PNAS paper on epidemiological and ecological interferences between flu (A and B), the common cold (rhinovirus) and other viruses, but sadly not coronaviruses, otherwise I guess my career would now be made! And we've just finished the vaccine selection for N Hemisphere winter flu vaccines, which will now take 8 months to manufacture... it'll be a while - this time next year at the earliest I guess - before we have any hope of a coronavirus vaccine. The good news is that the public health measures being brought in in Asia have stamped on the flu season - in some countries worst affected it's already ended 2 months early!

As far as Sept is concerned though, I just don't think we have enough data. I certainly don't know anything about its seasonality - if it survives better in the summer, that won't be ideal(!). If worse, then you're right, Sept may be too soon for a second wave. If it's pretty insensitive to climate, then it'll all depend on how effective our public health measures are - if they're utterly useless, then the worst may be over by Sept, but whether there'll be enough public infrastructure left in N America to host a meeting is probably in question. If they're averagely good, we could drag out the epidemic wave for months (which is good, we can keep hospitals functioning). If they're fantastic (à la Singapore), and I've seen no evidence they will be (though they did a good job with me to be fair), then maybe we'll have squashed this outbreak by then, so we'll be waiting for a second wave again...

Anyway, I don't have any more information than anyone else, so certainly don't believe anything I say here, but I'd just suggest not making any firm plans yet. For instance, my university could very plausibly impose a blanket ban on travel almost irrespective of the severity of the situation to protect our ability to function in the new academic year starting mid-Sept. I believe one of the virology labs I collaborate with have already done that to protect themselves.

Who knows, fundamentally?

PS "estimates of the overall case fatality rate in all infections (asymptomatic or symptomatic) of approximately 1%" (vs observed of >3%, means we're missing most cases in known infection chains); "two thirds of COVID-19 cases exported from mainland China have remained undetected worldwide" (v large numbers of wholly unknown infection chains being missed); "epidemic doubling time of approximately seven days" (growing fast); "on average, each case infected 2.6 (uncertainty range: 1.5-3.5) other people" (need to drop our infectiousness by >60% to stop a local outbreak).

@richardreeve
Copy link
Member

That was a bit longer than I'd planned, sorry... tl;dr I think you're probably right that Sept may be a window of opportunity, but who knows!

@tpoisot
Copy link
Contributor

tpoisot commented Jun 24, 2020

Hi all - let's revive this discussion, do we want to have online sprint instead? It's clear there will be no travel in September, but we can most likely get things done remotely.

@mkborregaard
Copy link
Member Author

Great idea. Yes, I'm all for that.

@richardreeve
Copy link
Member

We're in a bit of an odd situation - we're currently using our spatial model as a COVID-19 model for the UK. Sadly, there are too few Julia programmers out there to spend time on our day jobs, much less anything else. Invenia are being very helpful, but if it's still ongoing in September (and it may well be obviously) then this won't be an option. If things have all settled down, then it would be great, but otherwise it'll be impossible to be honest.

@kescobo
Copy link
Member

kescobo commented Jun 26, 2020

I've been meaning to revisit but was still holding out some totally unjustified hope. I think you're right. I'm in for online sprint.

@richardreeve Totally understandable - perhaps we can do a bit more up-front planning so that you can chime in on design decisions and then the rest of us can push ahead with a bit more confidence that we can get everything to work together in the end.

Also tagging @pdimens, author of https://github.com/pdimens/PopGen.jl, since I think he would make a valuable addition (and integrating population genetics with all of the ecology tooling would be just amazing, I think).

@pdimens
Copy link

pdimens commented Jun 26, 2020

I'm all for incorporation of PopGen.jl into EcoJulia, and would be interested in chatting with someone that can help me understand how to do that.

@tpoisot
Copy link
Contributor

tpoisot commented Jul 3, 2020

@richardreeve fully understandable and I agree with @kescobo idea of agreeing on implementation -- having @pdimens onboard is also fantastic! Do we feel like a quick zoom is justified at this point? I know that at least @FrancisBanville and @gabrieldansereau will attend JuliaCon virtually to talk about their ecological use cases, so they might have some additional comments (and pain points they identified).

@mkborregaard
Copy link
Member Author

Quick zoom sounds good. Is everyone online at this point?

@kescobo
Copy link
Member

kescobo commented Jul 28, 2020

I'm UTC-4 (US east coast) and available most days ~9am-4pm

@pdimens
Copy link

pdimens commented Jul 28, 2020

Same as @kescobo -1

@FrancisBanville
Copy link

Yes, I agree that a quick Zoom call can be helpful!

I will be available as of August 10th, almost at any time during the day.

@tpoisot
Copy link
Contributor

tpoisot commented Jul 31, 2020 via email

@kescobo
Copy link
Member

kescobo commented Aug 6, 2020

Alright, just to move things along, I'm going to propose next Tuesday Aug 11, UTC 15:00.

Going to post zoom details on slack in #ecology channel, shoot me an e-mail (there's an address on my GH profile) or DM on Discourse if you're not using slack.

@tpoisot
Copy link
Contributor

tpoisot commented Aug 9, 2020

Do you mean #ecojulia? I don't see an #ecology channel on the main slack. Should we setup a gitter?

@kescobo
Copy link
Member

kescobo commented Aug 11, 2020

I've set up an ecology zulip stream for more persistent conversation.

From slack discussion - we'll meet today as I proposed, but will take notes on what's discussed, and do not expect anything to be the final word. If you can't make it, don't hesitate to chime in after the fact!

Wondering about collaborative document editing - I can set up a google doc, but I'm open to other tools. Regardless, I'll write it all up formatted for github and post here.

@richardreeve richardreeve moved this to In Progress in 2020 Julia EcoCon Jul 5, 2024
@richardreeve richardreeve moved this from In Progress to Done in 2020 Julia EcoCon Jul 5, 2024
Sign up for free to join this conversation on GitHub. Already have an account? Sign in to comment
Labels
None yet
Projects
No open projects
Status: Done
Development

No branches or pull requests

10 participants