Blind date with a data talk

Pick a mood, watch a talk!

A “blind date with a book” is where a book gets wrapped up in nondescript paper, and all the intro you get is a vague bullet point or two. You can’t judge a book by it’s cover, since, well, you can’t see it. You have to trust the synopsis and enjoy the adventure.

I got the idea to make a “blind date” with a data science talk after starting to curate a list of my favorite talks for a friend. Unrelated, I have been itching to play around with the shinylive project to put some interactive things on my blog. Why not put these two together?

#| standalone: true
#| viewerHeight: 300

import random
from shiny import reactive, render
from shiny.express import input, ui
from pathlib import Path

css_file = Path(__file__).parent / "styles.css"

dates = {
    "humor": [
        {
            "name": "Joel Grus: I don't like notebooks",
            "link": "https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7jiPeIFXb6U"
        }, # joel grus i dont like notebooks
        {
            "link":"https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hfqjyeA_z7s&list=PL9HYL-VRX0oRFZslRGHwHuwea7SvAATHp&index=40",
            "name": "Hadley Wickham: It's a Great Time to be an R Package Developer!"}, # hadley slide karaoke
        {
            "link":"https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C9OlkY87vf8&list=UULFYhY67dMuJ_w_9_cfkaruWQ&index=8",
            "name": "Vicki Boykis: An ML Fairytale"
        }, # vicki boykis ml fairy tale
        {
            "link": "https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=D48NQTNg19s&list=UULFYhY67dMuJ_w_9_cfkaruWQ&index=40",
            "name":"Jacqueline Nolis: Alaska challenged my preconceived notions of storing sunset data"
        }, # jacqueline nolis time
        {
            "link": "https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Pm9C-Cz4bXE&t",
            "name": "JD Long: I'd have written a shorter solution but I didn't have the time"
        } # jd long shorter 
        ],
    "story": [
        {
            "link": "https://youtu.be/Pa1PNfoOp-I?si=rF3udat0nV9n04w6",
            "name": "JD Long: It's Abstractions All the Way Down..."
        }, # jd long abstractions
        {
            "link": "https://youtu.be/DVQJ39_9L0U?si=PbsjmQR96rrz7scy",
            "name": "Kari Jordan: Black Hair and Data Science Have More in Common Than You Think"
        }, # kari jordan black hair
        {
            "link": "https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g1ib43q3uXQ",
            "name": "Felienne Hermans: How to teach programming (and other things)?"
        }, #  felienne hermans excel
        {
            "link": "https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s3WbEfoxRjs",
            "name": "Sophie Watson: What they didn’t teach you in Grad School"}, # sophie watson what they didnt teach u
        ],
    "nerd": [
        {
            "link": "https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sYliwvml9Es",
            "name": "Jeremy Howard: A hacker's guide to open source LLMs"
        }, # jeremy howard llm
        {
            "link": "https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-YEUFGFHWgQ",
            "name": "Calvin Hendryx-Parker: Bootstrapping Your Local Python Environment"}, # calvin hendryx-parker bootstrapping python
        {
            "link": "https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7nNB__jK9AY",
            "name": "Alison Presmanes Hill: The Happiest Notebooks on Earth"
        }, # 
        {
            "link": "https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EvQUVzDJRJ8&list=UULFYhY67dMuJ_w_9_cfkaruWQ&index=42",
            "name": "Chelsea Parlett-Pelleriti: Why Are You The Way That You Are: Sklearn Quirks"
        } # chelsea parlett scikit
        ],
    "reveal": [
        {
            "link": "https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qKfkCY7cmBQ",
            "name": "Peter Wang: Programming for everyone (or the next 100 million Pythonistas)"}, # peter wang pyright
        {
            "link": "https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HpqLXB_TnpI",
            "name": "Joe Cheng: The Past and Future of Shiny"
        }, # joe cheng shiny py 
        {
            "link": "https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p7Hxu4coDl8", 
            "name": "Mine Çetinkaya-Rundel & Julia Stewart Lowndes: Hello Quarto: Share, Collaborate, Teach, Reimagine"
        }, # mine and julia hello quarto
    ],
    "small": [
        {
            "link": "https://www.destroyallsoftware.com/talks/wat",
            "name": "Destroy all software: WAT"
        }, # wat
        {
            "link": "https://youtu.be/V3XdLVAwmX0?si=5gPV2bXsgURLqCYG",
            "name": "Libby Heeren: Why You Should Stop Networking and Start Making Friends"
        }, # libby heeren stop networking
        {
            "link": "https://youtu.be/ZDK5DZOgHD8?si=3q1q0Zo0z-Oet_Bb&t=1150",
            "name": "Katy Huff: I do (automate things)"
        }, # katy huff wedding website
        {
            "link": "https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ES1LTlnpLMk&list=UULFYhY67dMuJ_w_9_cfkaruWQ&index=41",
            "name": "Jenny Bryan: How to name files"
        } # jenny bryan file name
        ]
}

ui.include_css(css_file)

ui.input_radio_buttons(  
    "radio",  
    "I want a data science talk with:",  
    {
        "humor": "Lots of humor", 
        "story": "A good story", 
        "nerd": "Maximum nerdiness",
        "reveal": "An exciting new tech for the time",
        "small": "Something bite-sized"
    },  
)
ui.input_action_button("action_button", "Find me a talk 🔮")  

@render.express()
@reactive.event(input.action_button)
def _():
    k = input.radio()
    rec_talk = random.choice(dates[k])
    ui.HTML(f'<p></p><a href={rec_talk["link"]} target="_blank" color="purple">{rec_talk["name"]}</a>')

## file: styles.css
body {
    background-color: #FDFCFC;
    color: #404040;
  }
a {
  color: #404040;
}

Shoutout to Madison Yonash for asking about new data science talks and effectively nerd sniping me into spending an evening building this.