Hi everyone,
Today we'll be hosting the *G-Research Coding Challenge*, where teams will
be competing to perform sentiment analysis. Winning team members will win
£50 Amazon vouchers! Make sure to register (link below). On Wednesday,
in *Bloomberg's
tech talk*, we'll be learning about parallelising the partition sort
algorithm and how to get the most out of it.
Have a great week!
*Thomas and the rest of the committee*
EventsG-Research Coding Challenge 2018
<https://www.facebook.com/events/222378784963112>
*18:00 Saturday, 3rd Week - Room 051, Department of Computer Science*
G-Research is a leading quantitative research and technology company. We
apply scientific techniques to find patterns in large, noisy and real-world
data sets, using the latest statistical and "big data" analysis
methodologies to predict global financial markets. Please join us for our
annual coding challenge where you will *compete in teams in a series of
progressively more difficult sentiment analysis challenges*.
This is a great chance to test your problem solving and coding skills
and a *chance
to win a £50 Amazon vouchers per team member* (plus prizes for runners up!).
- Where: Oxford Computer Science Department, Room 051
- Date: Saturday 28th October 2017
- When: 18:00-21:00
To take part all you need is at least one laptop per team and have a
development environment set up for C#, Java or Python and you must be able
to provide your own internet access. Afterwards we will provide food and
drinks and a chance for you to talk to our employees informally about
internships, graduate roles and life at G-Research!
*To register your interest, please email graduates(a)gresearch.co.uk
<graduates(a)gresearch.co.uk>.* You can register alone or as part of a team
of up to 4 members, if you register individually you will be allocated a
team at the event.
[This event replaces our usual Geek Night. Note that it begins one hour
earlier than usual.]
Bloomberg tech talk: Parallel partition
<https://www.facebook.com/events/140611299909511>
*19:00 Wednesday 4th Week - Lecture Theatre A, Department of Computer
Science*
The partition algorithm is an important building block for other
algorithms, especially for sorting. It seems like partition is inherently
sequential but there are ways to parallelize the algorithm. This
presentation shows a way to do so. It also discusses a few variations on
the interface to the algorithm to show how these affect performance.
Geek Night 4 <https://www.facebook.com/events/956134894534495>
*19:00 Saturday 4th Week - Undergraduate Social Area, Department of
Computer Science*
This week, we'll be trying to implement UNIX utilities in the language of
your choice. Who knew grep could be so complex?
Bring your laptop for an evening of relaxing, chatting, games, coding and a
selection of food and drink.
Palantir tech talk: Building Secure Search at Palantir
<https://www.facebook.com/events/1410719555717660>
*19:00 Wednesday 5th Week - Lecture Theatre A, Department of Computer
Science*
How do you design a search engine when different users only have permission
to view specific documents? In this workshop we will explore how object
level authorization can be used to take care of privacy in these times of
Big Data.
Pizza and drinks will be provided after the talk.
Who we are:
Today's critical institutions don't just protect public safety or provide
vital goods and services - they also deal with astonishing amounts of data.
At Palantir, our mission is to help the world's government agencies,
Fortune 500 companies, and nonprofits transform how they understand and use
that data.We build software that lets organizations integrate and analyze
their data so they can solve problems they couldn't before.
Sponsor noticesEntrepreneur First Early Application Deadline
The early application deadline to join EF's 10th cohort (beginning in April
2018) is on October 31st!
Entrepreneur First are Europe's leading startup builder, and always looking
for innovative, talented individuals to support in building their first
technology company - they are especially really keen to bring in those who
haven't previously considered founding their own startup, but who have
skills and enthusiasm and just need the right environment to flourish.
They're also encouraging more women to apply, and try to narrow the gender
gap between male and female founders.
The uniqueness of EF comes from the fact that they build companies
pre-team, and pre-idea; they select individuals based on pure talent, then
work with them to develop teams, ideas, technology, and help them raise
funding. If this sounds like an opportunity which interests you then please
please apply and you could be building your startup with us in April 2018!
It's a really exciting time to be at Entrepreneur First too, as they've
recently closed a $12.4 million round of funding, with LinkedIn founder
Reid Hoffman, and a handful of EF alumni from earlier cohorts also
investing, including the founders of Magic Pony Technology, who built the
company through EF and exited eighteen months later for $150 million.
If you have any questions, please don't hesitate to ask EF's student
partner Sienna Rothery <sienna.rothery(a)stcatz.ox.ac.uk>.
------------------------------
The Oxford University Computer Society (CompSoc) aims to organise meetings
and events for our members to use and further their computing interests.
See all of our upcoming events on our Facebook Page
<https://facebook.com/oxcompsoc/> or visit our Website
<https://ox.compsoc.net/> for more information about the society.
Thomas Denney
President - Oxford University Computer Society
president(a)ox.compsoc.net
Hi everyone,
Next Wednesday, we'll be hosting our first tech talk of the term with *Don
Syme of Microsoft Research*, who'll be telling us about F#, Microsoft's
functional programming language. A week Saturday, we have the *G-Research
Coding Challenge*, where teams will be competing to perform sentiment
analysis. Winning team members will win £50 Amazon vouchers! Make sure to
register (link below). Tomorrow we will be hosting our usual geek night,
when we'll be looking at esoteric programming languages.
If you're interested in participating in a beginner friendly programming
challenge, the first round of the *UK/IE Programming Contest*
<http://ukiepc.info/#home> is being hosted in the department *tomorrow*. If
you are interested in taking part please contact Nick Hu
<nick.hu(a)stcatz.ox.ac.uk>. You do not need to register as a team; he can
allocate you to a team if need be.
*Edward and the rest of the committee*
EventsGeek Night 2 <https://www.facebook.com/events/346289525782943>
*19:00 Saturday 2nd Week - Undergraduate Social Area*
This week we'll be exploring the weird and wonderful world of esoteric
languages. Use languages like Brainfuck
<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brainfuck>, Befunge
<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Befunge> or Piet
<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Esoteric_programming_language#Piet> - or
something of your own devising - to implement fiendishly simple programs
like FizzBuzz and the Sieve of Eratosthenes.
Bring your own laptop and we'll provide the pizza.
Microsoft tech talk: The F# Path to Relaxation
<https://www.facebook.com/events/533456163653843>
*Lecture Theatre A, Department of Computer Science - 19:00 Wednesday (Week
3)*
*Abstract:* Born in a lab, matured in the enterprise, and now fully baked
as an open-source, cross-platform, professionally-supported language - the
F# journey has always been about reconciling the apparently irreconcilable:
Functional and Objects, Types and Dynamism, Company and Openness, Linux and
Windows, Android and iOS, Programming and Data, GPU and CPU, Async and
Sync, Server and Client - F# finds a way. Come along and take a journey
with me through the modern programming landscape and the F# approach to
research, language design, interoperability, tooling and community.
*Bio:* Don Syme is a Principal Researcher at Microsoft Research, Cambridge,
the designer and architect of the F# programming language and an F#
community contributor. In 2015 he received the Royal Academy of Engineering
Silver Medal for his work on programming languages.
G-Research Coding Challenge 2018
<https://www.facebook.com/events/222378784963112>
*Room 051, Department of Computer Science - 18:00 Saturday (Week 3)*
G-Research is a leading quantitative research and technology company. We
apply scientific techniques to find patterns in large, noisy and real-world
data sets, using the latest statistical and "big data" analysis
methodologies to predict global financial markets. Please join us for our
annual coding challenge where you will *compete in teams in a series of
progressively more difficult sentiment analysis challenges*.
This is a great chance to test your problem solving and coding skills
and a *chance
to win a £50 Amazon vouchers per team member* (plus prizes for runners up!).
- Where: Oxford Computer Science Department, Room 051
- Date: Saturday 28th October 2017
- When: 18:00-21:00
To take part all you need is at least one laptop per team and have a
development environment set up for C#, Java or Python and you must be able
to provide your own internet access. Afterwards we will provide food and
drinks and a chance for you to talk to our employees informally about
internships, graduate roles and life at G-Research!
*To register your interest, please email graduates(a)gresearch.co.uk
<graduates(a)gresearch.co.uk>.* You can register alone or as part of a team
of up to 4 members, if you register individually you will be allocated a
team at the event.
[This event replaces our usual Geek Night. Note that it begins one hour
earlier than usual.]
------------------------------
The Oxford University Computer Society (CompSoc) aims to organise meetings
and events for our members to use and further their computing interests.
See all of our upcoming events on our Facebook Page
<https://facebook.com/oxcompsoc/> or visit our Website
<https://ox.compsoc.net> for more information about the society.
Hi everyone,
It was wonderful to see so many people at the Welcome Drinks last
Wednesday! Sadly, we won't be seeing on you Tuesday – the *Google talk has
been postponed* because our speaker had to drop out (we'll be announcing a
new date shortly). If you want to get your tech talk fix, there is a *Bloomberg
talk* tomorrow on analysing tweets using machine learning.
At this week's *Geek Night*, we'll be playing around with esoteric
programming languages and, thanks to a generous donation from Sauyon Lee,
we will also have a number of cheese available for tasting.
Have a great week!
*Edward and the rest of the committee*
EventsGeek Night 2 <https://www.facebook.com/events/346289525782943>
*19:00 Saturday 2nd Week – Undergraduate Social Area*
This week we'll be exploring the weird and wonderful world of esoteric
languages. Use languages like Brainfuck
<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brainfuck>, Befunge
<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Befunge> or Piet
<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Esoteric_programming_language#Piet>—or
something of your own devising—to implement fiendishly simple programs like
FizzBuzz and the Sieve of Eratosthenes.
Bring your own laptop and we'll provide the pizza 😉.
Other eventsBloomberg tech talk: Finding Signals in Tweets with ML/NLP at
Bloomberg – Lunch Provided
*13:00 Tuesday 2nd Week – Lecture Theatre A, Department of Computer Science*
Talk Abstract:
In the current social media era, Twitter has proven itself an indispensable
source of information as we frequently see information posted or shared on
Twitter become big market movers later on. Due to the mass volume, directly
consuming the raw contents without any kind of refinements is undesirable,
and, more importantly, the vast majority of the contents are irrelevant to
what interests our clients. In this talk, we will discuss how to refine raw
contents from Twitter and extract fruitful signals, e.g. Trending Topics,
Company Sentiments, Social Velocity, etc from them. Furthermore, we will
discuss challenges during developments of the business deliverables and how
we solve them via the use of ML/NLP techniques. Finally, we will go over
some applications which are built on top of these signals and used broadly
by professionals in the finance domain.
Iat Chong Chan – Profile:
Iat Chong Chan is a software developer in Bloomberg Machine Learning Team.
His interests mostly lie in the intersection of Computational Linguistics,
Machine Learning, and High Performance Computing. He has been working on a
scalable infrastructure to infer topics of social contents ingested to
Bloomberg by statistical models, and also a set of tools to maintain and
improve these classifiers. Iat Chong also leads the NLP guild inside
Bloomberg, to advocate the use of ML/NLP techniques for new business
problems. Before he joined the company, he was a MSc student in Dept. of
Computer Science at University of Oxford, supervised by Prof. Stephen
Pulman and Yishu Miao, and worked on building a better input method on
small hand-held devices by a novel Bayesian Network with Variational
Inference.
------------------------------
The Oxford University Computer Society (CompSoc) aims to organise meetings
and events for our members to use and further their computing interests.
See all of our upcoming events on our Facebook Page
<https://facebook.com/oxcompsoc/> or visit our Website
<https://ox.compsoc.net> for more information about the society.
Hi everyone,
Firstly, welcome to all our new members! Several hundred of you signed up
over at the Freshers' Fair and we're really looking forward to meeting you
all over the coming year. Thanks to all of those who helped out on the
CompSoc stall. To everyone else, welcome back! We send out a weekly e-mail,
but feel free to like us on Facebook <https://www.facebook.com/oxcompsoc/>.
This term, we've got talks from Google, Microsoft, Bloomberg, Palantir,
G-Research, Metaswitch and Facebook, along with regular geek nights, a
coding challenge, and a LAN party.
Our introductory Python course, Learn to Code, will be back in Hilary.
*Edward and the rest of the committee*
EventsIntroduction to Oxford University Computer Society
<https://www.facebook.com/events/343011032777780/>
*7pm Wednesday 1st Week - Undergraduate Social Area, Department of Computer
Science*
CompSoc is one of the oldest computer societies at any British university,
and this year we're looking forward to welcoming our 40th intake of
freshers! We welcome anyone passionate about computers, programming, or
anything geeky and we're always happy to point beginners in the right
direction. Regardless of whether you're a fresher or an existing member
we'd love to welcome you to our society.
We're holding a drinks and pizza reception to give you the chance to meet
the committee and existing members before our first talk in week 2. The
event is open to everyone and we'll have membership forms available if
you're interested in joining (£3 for an annual membership, or £5 for life).
Geek Night 1 <https://www.facebook.com/events/132785950704505>
*Undergraduate Social Area - 19:00 Saturday (1st Week)*
Geek Night meets Wikipedia: In the "Wikipedia Game" you click the random
article link and aim for another Wikipedia page in the fewest clicks
possible.
We're going to be writing bots to play the game and compete with one
another, but without downloading the entirety of Wikipedia.
Bring your own laptop and we'll provide the pizza :).
Please see here <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Wiki_Game> if
you've never played the Wikipedia Game before.
Other eventsBloomberg CodeCon Qualifiers - 13th October 2017
CodeCon is coming to the University of Oxford on the 13th of October!
CodeCon is a live programming contest developed in-house at Bloomberg.
Push your programming and problem solving skills to the limit against the
clock to win the title of Bloomberg CodeCon champion against your peers
across the UK and Europe!
Your school's top winners will be invited to our Bloomberg CodeCon Global
Finals in our London office in January 2018 for a chance to win an amazing
prize and compete against the best students from Europe and the US!
Please make sure you *register* with your *university email address* and *bring
your laptop*.
- The event will take place at:
Saïd Business School
Seminar Room A
Park End Street
OX1 1HP
- Kick-off at 6.30pm, come early to get a seat!
- Food and refreshments will be provided!
- To sign up, please follow this link: http://tinyurl.com/ydd45ygr
The Bloomberg CodeCon team look forward to seeing you there.
Become a Microsoft Student Partner today!
If you are considering a technical career at Microsoft, the Microsoft
Student Partner (MSP) programme is for you! Get a head start over the
competition and join the growing number of student ambassadors who partner
with Microsoft to run hacks, tech talks and other technology focused events
on campus. We will be looking out for outstanding MSPs to join our global
team.
*Reasons to be an MSP:*
- Build your network
- CV worthy experience
- Expand your technical knowledge
- Training from industry experts
- Access to professional courses
<https://academy.microsoft.com/en-us/professional-program/> for free
- Publish blogs to our developer page
<https://blogs.msdn.microsoft.com/uk_faculty_connection/>
- Opportunities for international travel
<https://blogs.msdn.microsoft.com/uk_faculty_connection/2016/11/21/a-view-fr…>
- Enhanced recruitment opportunities
This opportunity is exclusively available to technical students at Oxford,
Cambridge, UCL and Imperial. We have between 10-20 MSPs at each University
who work together to organise events on topics they are passionate about...
All with technical speakers, promotional goodies and pizza provided by
Microsoft.
If you are ready to join the team send us your CV
<https://mail.google.com/mail/u/0/mailto:embyle@microsoft.com?subject=%3cIns…>.
We will then invite you to a 20 minute Skype interview to understand more
about you, your passions, as well as your motivations for applying. *The
programme will start in October 2017*, with a trip to our Microsoft UK HQ
in early November to meet the team, your MSP peers and to start training!
*Send your CV to apply here
<embyle@microsoft.com?subject=%3cInsert%20Name%3e,%20University%20of%20Oxford%20-%20MSP%20Application>*
------------------------------
The Oxford University Computer Society (CompSoc) aims to organise meetings
and events for our members to use and further their computing interests.
See all of our upcoming events on our Facebook Page
<https://facebook.com/oxcompsoc/> or visit our Website
<https://ox.compsoc.net> for more information about the society.
Hi all,
Good morning, and a warm welcome to all our new and returning members!
This week we'll be at Freshers' Fair before we get started with the term's
events next week. The committee will be on the stall, but if you're
interested in catching freshers' flu early helping sign up new members and
explaining the society to freshers then feel free to email us
<committee(a)ox.compsoc.net>.
Next week we'll be hosting a welcome drinks + snacks session on Wednesday
evening to welcome new freshers to the society, before our first Geek Night
of the term on the Saturday, and our first talk in second week. This term
we have talks from Google, Microsoft, Bloomberg, Facebook, Palantir, and
Metaswitch scheduled, along with a G-Research coding challenge.
Have a great week!
Thomas and the rest of the committee
EventsIntroduction to Oxford University Computer Society
<https://www.facebook.com/events/343011032777780/>
*7pm Wednesday 1st Week • Undergraduate Social Area, Department of Computer
Science*
CompSoc is one of the oldest computer societies at any British university,
and this year we're looking forward to welcoming our 40th intake of
freshers! We welcome anyone passionate about computers, programming, or
anything geeky and we're always happy to point beginners in the right
direction. Regardless of whether you're a fresher or an existing member
we'd love to welcome you to our society.
We're holding a drinks + pizza reception to give you the chance to meet the
committee and existing members before our first talk in week 2. The event
is open to everyone and we'll have membership forms available if you're
interested in joining (£3 for an annual membership, or £5 for life).
Sponsor NoticesBloomberg CodeCon Qualifiers - 13th October 2017
<http://tinyurl.com/ydd45ygr>
CodeCon is coming to your university on the 13th of October!
CodeCon is a live programming contest developed in-house at Bloomberg.
Push your programming and problem solving skills to the limit against the
clock to win the title of Bloomberg CodeCon champion against your peers
across the UK and Europe!
Your school's top winners will be invited to our Bloomberg CodeCon Global
Finals in our London office in January 2018 for a chance to win an amazing
prize and compete against the best students from Europe and the US!
Please make sure you register with your university email address and bring
your laptop.
The event will take place at:
Said Business School Seminar Room A Park End Street OX1 1HP
- Kick-off at 6.30pm, come early to get a seat!
- Food and refreshments will be provided!
- To sign up, please follow this link: http://tinyurl.com/ydd45ygr
We look forward to seeing you there.
Bloomberg CodeCon Team
Entrepreneur First Student Partner opportunity
<https://boards.greenhouse.io/workforef/jobs/599587#.WdNiZUyZOV5>
We're on the lookout for a Student Partner to help us change the way the
most talented students think about their careers. At Entrepreneur First we
specialise in supporting people to build technically defensible companies
from scratch and we're looking for ambitious Student Partners to help us
inspire and engage the best student technologists to build a startup with
EF. This is a great opportunity if you're interested in tech startups and
either see yourself founding one or working for one in the future.
*The role*
You'll be helping us grow EF's brand at your university and encourage the
best student engineers to start companies. This is a community-facing role
and you'll be the eyes and ears 'on the ground' - gathering first-hand
insights about our customers and helping them to kick-start their startup
journeys with EF. You'll be focused on building a technical community and
running tech and startup-focused meetups and events. You'll play a key role
in driving applications to our EFX Internship programme enabling students
to experience working for a startup first hand.
For more information click here.
<https://boards.greenhouse.io/workforef/jobs/599587#.WdNiZUyZOV5>
------------------------------
The Oxford University Computer Society (CompSoc) aims to organise meetings
and events for our members to use and further their computing interests.
See all of our upcoming events on our Facebook Page
<https://facebook.com/oxcompsoc>, Twitter <https://twitter.com/oxcompsoc>,
or visit our website <https://ox.compsoc.net/> for more information about
the society.
Thomas Denney
President - Oxford University Computer Society
president(a)ox.compsoc.net
