Participant Info & Guidelines

Note: This document may be updated as the event approaches; any major updates will be clearly marked.

This is a long document, please take a moment to read over it carefully.

Sac State’s Data Science club - Their discord will be the official event discord on that weekend https://discord.gg/UmCx7bWXGS

Location

The event will be held in the Carlsen Center for Innovation and Entrepreneurship in the Main Library on the Sacramento State campus.

Address: 6000 J Street, Library 1520, Sacramento, CA 95819

Campus map showing the location of the library and parking

Go through main doors of the University Library, turn hard right and keep walking, up a short flight of stairs to Carlsen Center doors

Map showing how to get to the Carlsen center within the library

Transportation & Parking

  • Parking Structure I provides the easiest access to the Main Libarary.
  • Day parking is available for a small fee using the PayByPhone app. All student parking spaces double as day-use spaces for visitors.

Lodging

Hotels listed for less than approximately $100 per night are starred (*).

Hotels within 1 mile of Sacramento State

Food & Caffeine

Our goal is to keep you fed & caffeinated all weekend long. Check the Schedule for mealtimes.

Security & Access

Social Media

Did you know that, this year, DataFest will be held at over 70 universities around the world? DataFest takes place during a six-week window in the Spring, and different universities hold their event at different times.

An essential ingredient of Datafest is that the data be a surprise. There are several reasons for this. One is that it ensures that all teams start on an equal footing. Another is that, even if you research the organization that donated the data, you might still be totally unprepared for the context of the data (and maybe less prepared than had you known nothing!) Finally, it is simply more fun.

You are encouraged to share your excitement on social media and thank our sponsors. The official Twitter hashtag is #ASAdatafest25. However…

PLEASE KEEP THE SECRET UNTIL May 3rd!. Teams that leak the name or any information about the identify of the data donor will be disqualified!

Please do not post pictures that reveal any charts/graphs/tables/summaries/models that might reveal the data donor.

Presentations, judging, and awards

Presentations

Each team will have 4 minutes + 1 minute Q&A to present their findings to the judges. That’s exactly 4 minutes, not 4 minutes and a few additional seconds. Each team will be allowed at most two slides. Two! So at some point Saturday night or Sunday morning, you might want to set aside time to think about what you want the judges to know. The 4 minute presentation and 1 minute Q&A time limits will be strictly enforced. All team members must be present for the presentation, but not all team members need to actually speak (given the time limitation).

Optional

Along with your presentation you are also allowed to turn in a one-page write-up of your project. You can think about this as the text of your presentation. The judges can refer to these during deliberation. You will upload these documents along with your presentation. Only 1 page will be printed.

Submitting your presentation

Sunday morning all work must stop at a time specified on the schedule. Each team upload their presentation and optional write up to the submission URL provided by the organizers. If you are having technical difficulty, you can ask a coach for help.

Teams who fail to upload their presentations and write-ups late will not be eligible to have their presentations judged.

File naming

The files you’re submitting must be named in the following manner:

  • [Team Name] - Presentation
  • [Team Name] - Writeup

Allowed file formats

  • We very strongly recommend using PDF, Keynote, or PowerPoint.
  • If using a web-based tool like GoogleDocs or Prezi, please export to PDF and upload the PDF as your submission.

Note that you will not have time to log on/off to your account before your presentation. We don’t want to restrict your creativity but it is your responsibility to make sure that your presentation works seamlessly before the judging session begins.

Judging

The Judges will convene in a side room to deliberate and rank their nominations. Three of these will be selected for the award categories listed below. The judges also have the option to name a fourth winner as Judges’ Pick.

All are welcomed to the presentations and award ceremony.

Awards

Awards will be given in three categories:

  • Best Insight
  • Best Use of Outside Data
  • Best Visualization

These are listed in no particular order.

The judges also have the option to name a fourth winner as Judges’ Pick.

Winners will receive medals and books as well as one-year student memberships to the American Statistical Association. See http://www.amstat.org/membership/ for membership benefits.

Raffle prizes

  • Throughout the event we will be giving out raffle prizes. Announcements for these will be shared on social media or through Discord. Follow these channels to get a chance to win one of these sweet prizes!
  • Winning will also require that you are on premises at the time a prize is announced.

Recruiting

DataFest is a great recruiting opportunity for many employers, and surely they won’t miss it!

Many of our sponsors are attending the event so you can find out more about them.

Most of our coaches are coming from companies who are recruiting or at a minimum wanting to meet you, so chat with them, find out what they do, network.

We will collect resumes and share them with some of our sponsors. Participation in the resume book is optional, but highly recommended. You will receive information about this during the event.

Rules

  • You can come and go as you please, but all work must be completed on premises.

  • Do not use any space other than the designated classrooms, or work after the event closes for the night. Students found working in other areas or after hours will be disqualified from the competition.

  • You must follow the Code of Conduct. This can be found at https://norcaldatafest.netlify.com/faq/ and printed at the event.

  • Do not share the name of the data source publicly or on social media before May 3rd. There are many other upcoming DataFests around the country and we want to make sure the dataset remains a surprise for them.

  • Before your team gets the data all members must have signed Non-Disclosure agreement on file at the registration desk. You can freely share your results, presentations, findings, etc. as part of your digital portfolio, however you are not allowed to share the raw data with anyone outside of DataFest. At the end of DataFest, you must delete all data from thumb drives, hard drives, etc. The data are sensitive.

  • As much as possible during the event there will be a friendly coaches present. These are faculty, grad students, or other professionals from our community. Not all will have field specific knowledge on the data set. They all have different areas of expertise, so if you get stuck on something and one coach isn’t able to help, ask someone else later. Feel free to ask anything. This is not an exam, but a collaborative competition. Do not expect the coaches to write code for you, or do data management, etc. They are there to help point you in the right direction, but you’re responsible for getting there on your own.

  • PLEASE KEEP THE SECRET UNTIL MAY 3rd. Teams that leak the name or any information about the identify of the data donor will be disqualified! Please do not post pictures that reveal any charts/graphs/tables/summaries/models that might reveal the data donor.

  • Please do not tweet, create a TikTok, hashtag, Facebook, snapchat, etc about the identify of the donor or the context of the data. This means you should refrain from any hints, explicit or implicit statements that might reveal the context of the data.

  • Be careful about github repositories. Make sure yours is invisible to the outside world.