Helsinki Data Science Meetup on 27.1.2021
Ulla Kruhse-Lehtonen, CEO of DAIN Studios, opened the meetup with welcoming words and shared the line-up for the event ahead. She also explained the concept of the Helsinki Data Science meetup for the new people joining the Helsinki Data Science Meetup community.
Evening started with Maija Hovila, KONE’s Chief Analytics Officer sharing insights on how to build a strong analytics team and plans for the new global analytics team at KONE.
Then we heard cases presented by Olli Mali, Data Science Manager at 24/7 Connected Services, and Juho Kokkala, Senior Specialist at People Flow.
Global IOT is formed by elevators, escalators, and, building doors and together with the back reporting of KONE field technicians it generates a fascinating flow of information. Olli’s talk described how this information is enriched, processed, and, how it benefits tens of thousands of KONE maintenance technicians and increases the customer value. In particular, Olli described how the expert knowledge and the modern data-driven modeling methods are combined in a practical way.
Juho gave an interesting overview of applications of data science and related fields in KONE’s People Flow optimization solutions including simulation tools, intelligent elevator group control algorithms, People Flow sensors and People Flow analytics applications. Then, he discussed in more detail a data analytics example related to time series modeling/forecasting of elevator traffic.
All three talks raised interest and numerous questions the talkers answered more in detail in the Q&A tool of the Meetup webinar platform. DAIN Studios wants to once more thank KONE and Maija, Juho and Olli for co-hosting the event and sharing about KONE’s analytics journey.
Post-event analytics
This edition of the Helsinki Data Science Meetup marks the most successful one in terms of numbers. We received 434 registrations for the online event which is an increase of 16.67% towards the previous meetup.
During the event, we counted a maximum of 232 participants marking an increase of 56.7% in comparison to the last Helsinki Data Science meetup. Moreover, events like these normally have very high no-show rates “as high as 50%” (Eventbrite, 2018). During the COVID-19 pandemic these rates could be even higher due to online meeting fatigue and the massive amount of event held online. While in the previous event, the no-show rate was 61%, we have seen a decrease to just 47% during this edition hosted by KONE.
Registration locations for the meetup.
By holding the event online, we were also able to extend the audience beyond Helsinki borders. While most registrations were coming from Finland (339), the map shows that we could welcome people from all over the world. Germany (17), United States (13), Sweden (11) and Spain (7) are following Finland on the ranks 2 through 5 respectively.
During the event we asked the attendees about their level of seniority. In total, the poll was answered by 176 of the 323 attendees (75.8%). Most of the participants were Seniors (107) followed by Junior’s and Directors.
Previous polls have shown that roughly 40% of the Helsinki Data Science Meetup attendees are Data Scientists. One fifth of the attendees are from business functions. While the promotion of the event is focused on always the same channels, the comparison is not completely accurate as these results were drawn from two different events.
