eRum (2018) Top Twenty

My Top 20 highlights about eRum (2018) in Budapest. In no particular order:

1. Returning to my favourite European city after so many years.
2. Discovering the cheap and efficient bus 100E, which shuttles back and forth between the airport and city. I have previously only made this trip by car.
3. Partial support from Toptal to attend the conference. Thank you, @AsiaLindsay.
4. Partial support from the eRum conference organisers. Thank you, @daroczig.
5. The privilege of sharing a stage with many eminent useRs.
6. The novelty of attending a conference in a night club (which worked remarkably well as a venue!).
7. The great lunches and authentic coffee time snacks.
8. The workshop on “Deep Learning with Keras for R” by Aimee Gott, Douglas Ashton and Mark Sellors.
9. The keynote talk “R/exams: A One-for-All Exams Generator” by Achim Zeileis (slides are here).
10. The keynote talk “A practical history of R (where things came from)” by Roger Bivand (talk repository is here).
11. The talk about “Multi-state churn analysis with a subscription product” by Marcin Kosiński, Thomas Vladeck and Kyle Block.
12. Ildiko Czeller’s talk on “The essentials to work with object-oriented systems in R”.
13. Edwin Thoen’s talk on “A recipe for recipes” about the recipes package.
14. Staying at Pal’s Hostel, which was clean, uncomplicated and brilliantly situated.
15. Eating a year’s supply of smoked cheese.
16. Catching up with friends from a former life at Zöld Kapu (Green Gate). Appreciating the variety of pork shank options on the menu, which had sections “Knuckles Chapter 1”, “Knuckles Chapter 2” and “Knuckles Chapter 3”. The bean soup was the best thing I ate in Budapest.
17. Coming home with a bottle of Pálenka made by one of those friends.
18. Discovering that all of my Forint had expired but finding it quick and easy to change them at the local Post Office.
19. Morning runs along the Danube, crossing the Liberty and Chain bridges.
20. Buying my daughter a Hungarian doll at the market.