The three-day event, organized by the German association Gesellschaft für Informatik, attracted a large number of participants from science and research, education, business, and politics. Topics discussed included skills for the confident use of digital media and artificial intelligence (AI), paths to technological independence and the role of Europe as a business and science location. A recurring theme was the use of AI and its impact on various societal, professional and educational areas. For example, one workshop dealt with the future of traditional teaching and examination formats and new forms of assessment using portfolios or peer-to-peer feedback. In another tutorial, participants received practical tips on self-hosting large language models (LLMs).
For the DiSC, the all-day Data Science Community Workshop took center stage. The Data Science Community, a loose association of digital science and data science centers and related initiatives in the DACH region (Germany, Austria, Switzerland), which was formed at the Informatik2023 Festival, held a networking event on the third day of the conference. The DiSC joined the young association at the beginning of the year at the invitation of the lead institutions, the Data Science Center at the University of Bremen and the Digital Science Center at Kiel University. The workshop offered the DiSC representatives the opportunity to meet other members of the community in person, gain an overview of the heterogeneous landscape of digital science initiatives and present the various facets of the DiSC. While Ms. König’s talk was about the structures, tasks, and activities of the DiSC, Dr. Chimiak-Opoka’s contribution, which is published in the conference proceedings, focused on the interdisciplinary courses offered within the Minor Digital Science.
A large part of the workshop was furthermore dedicated to the presentation of some of the data competence centers currently being established in Germany, which promote data-driven research and data literacy with the help of various service and support offers. Finally, a World Café facilitated the exchange of ideas on what future shape the network could take. The Digital Science Center would like to thank the hosts for the invitation to the workshop and the excellent organization and looks forward to participating in joint projects within the data science community.
