satRday Cape Town

Almost a full month has passed since satRday Cape Town. Time races on (as always) bringing plenty of challenges and opportunities with each new day, but part of me wants to go back and re-live the experience, just to have some more time to take it all in again.

It’s an event which I hope will remain firmly ensconced in my memory for many years to come. I met many amazing individuals and made a whole lot of new friends. It was a fantastic time. As a result, I figured it would be a good idea to thank some of the people who made it possible.

Right at the outset, I think it’s only right to give a big shoutout to Andrew: without whom, satRday would not have come to South Africa. To give you some context, I believe he first got the process started around May 2016 with a proposal to host satRday in Cape Town. Over the following nine months as things started to come together, he worked tirelessly in order to nail down all the conference details ahead of time, and also planned and executed brilliantly during the week of the conference itself. If asked, he’ll probably say the execution was mostly down to his ability to delegate but the truth is he put in most of the hours. We all owe him a debt of gratitude.

R-ladies at Boulders Beach to see some penguins @JennyBryan @SteffLocke pic.twitter.com/fe8StAIPJh

— Julia Silge (@juliasilge) February 19, 2017

To Ryan and Etienne, who helped out with a myriad of things including web design, planning and chairing sessions, manning the registration table, recording talks, and sorting out catering – thank you for all your hard work.

Also a special thanks to Katie Lennard who helped out as a teaching assistant for both days of workshops prior to speaking on Saturday.

To our wonderful keynote speakers – Julia Silge, Jenny Bryan and Steph Locke – who all travelled a long way in order to be with us: we really appreciate you and are so grateful that you were able to be there to play your part in making the conference such a success. We really value all the effort you put into your workshops and talks, and also your willingness to invest time in conversation with many of us in the midst of it all. I hope you enjoyed your time in South Africa!

To all of the speakers and to those who led tutorials – especially those of you who travelled from elsewhere in SA or even further afield in order to be here – thank you for the time and effort spent in preparation to present at satRday Cape Town. Thank you also for being flexible in dealing with the time constraints due to the packed programme!

I hope that you all got a lot out of the experience as we did. It was a treat to have such a diverse group spanning many disciplines within both industry and academia, and I think the breadth and depth of topics covered reflect a vibrant and rapidly growing R community in South Africa.

Then to the management and staff of Workshop17 for making your magnificent facility available for this conference and for looking after us while we were there – thank you!

My final thanks go to all of our sponsors for Cape Town satRday, and especially to Vantage Data for sponsoring the Data Visualisation Challenge along with post-conference drinks. This extended the opportunity for networking and was a great way to wrap things up after a jam-packed day.

There were over 200 people in attendance, with tickets sold out for both the workshops and the conference day itself. Thank you to all of you for being part of the event. I hope that like me you were rewarded by the experience, in the form of both new knowledge and fresh inspiration.

For those who weren’t able to make it, note that the workshop resources, as well as slides and videos from the talks are available via the conference website.