On January 9, Amsterdam Tech brought together data enthusiasts at the Amsterdam Science Park.

On January 9, Amsterdam Tech (ELU) organized their first Data Science Talent Meetup at the Amsterdam Science Park. The event attracted over 30 attendees from corporate organisations, recruitment firms, start-ups and universities.

The programme of the meetup was rich and led to engaged discussion among the audience. Alper Utku, President of the university, opened the event by highlighting the need for change in education. Traditional programmes fail to fully prepare talent with the skills on demand on the labor market, he explained, leading to a mismatch between the skills of young professionals and those demanded by today’s organisations. With its experiental approach to education, ELU’s programmes aim to create job-ready talent. During the meetup, five practitioners of the February cohort of ELU’s Data Science Programme showcased their work as data scientists.

Utku’s talk was followed by two keynotes by Julio Peironcely, Founder of Datafitter and Head of Analytics at Danone, and Violeta Misheva, Data Scientist at ABN Amro and one of the course facilitators for the Master of Data Science Programme at ELU. The keynotes demonstrated the continuing growth of data science as well as the reality on the ground within corporate organisations. Both Peironcely and Misheva highlighted the need to diversify the field of data science and to critically use its tools for positive impact.

The meetup showed a clear need for recruiters, professionals, and experts to talk about data science in the Netherlands. ELU is excited to be the main intermediary in bringing these people together.

— Lara Savenije, ELU Community Manager

Among the audience were numerous IT recruiters as well as professionals from corporate organisations like ING and ORTEC. Patrick Beyer, a data science recruiter at CareerValue, said that the event “surely was very inspiring for me. It is always great to hear about the journey talent takes towards a new, exciting challenge.” The event will be repeated in the future. Lara Savenije, Community Manager at ELU, expects many more meetups in the future: “The meetup showed a clear need to bring recruiters, professionals, and experts together to talk about the development of data science in the Netherlands. ELU is excited to become the main intermediary in bringing these people together.”