We are looking for volunteers to organize the next StanCons for 2024 and beyond!
If you are interested in making a proposal (or even just discussing the possibility of making one), you should get in touch with the Stan governing body via board@mc-stan.org.
What is StanCon?
StanCon brings together members of the Stan Community for a multiday conference that includes contributed talks, keynote addresses, tutorials, and more.
We’ve had participants from a wide range of applied fields, researchers in statistics and machine learning, software developers, and more. We’ve also enjoyed a good balance between early career and senior scientists, members from academia and industry, as well as both experienced and beginner Stan users.
What did the past StanCons look like?
StanCon 2023 took place at the University of Washington in Saint Louis, Missouri. The event included 2 days of introductory and advanced tutorials, and 2 days of talks, divided into contributed talks of ~20 minutes, as well as longer 1 hour talks by 4 invited keynote speakers. Regular speakers and tutorial instructors were selected following a call for proposals, which was reviewed by a scientific committee. As always, we were incredibly excited about the diversity of proposals we received!!
The format is not strict and has varied between the years.
Past StanCons included:
- StanCon 2017 in New York, NY
- StanCon 2018 in Asilomar, CA
- StanCon 2018 in Helsinki, Finland
- StanCon 2019 in Cambridge, UK
- StanCon 2020, online
The number of participants has ranged from 100 to 300, depending on the year.
What are we looking for in an organizer?
StanCon is organized by a committee (the last one had 5 members). The first thing is to find a local organizer, who represents an institution willing to host the event. There is no strict rule about who the other organizers should be, although in general we recommend having someone familiar with the Stan community and the Stan Governing Body.
What do we expect from future StanCons?
Any event organized under the umbrella of Stan must abide by the Stan Code of Conduct.
Location
There has been a diversity of locations and we intend to keep StanCon moving around, so that anyone interested has a chance to attend. The location should be accessible to a strong community of Stan users. At the same time, we want to avoid repeat locations and cater to regions of the world where the event has not been held yet.
Given StanCon attracts travellers from across the world, and to reduce costs and improve sustainability, we encourage places that are well-connected by flight routes and/or trains.
Accessibility
StanCon should be accessible to a broad number of individuals, including early career scientists and members from underrepresented groups in the STEM. There are several ways to achieve this:
- Affordable housing, such as on-campus dorms, is available close to the conference.
- Scholarships are available to cover registration fees and, to an extent, travel costs. In the past, funding for such scholarships has come from the hosting institution, NumFOCUS (the open-source organization that supports Stan), and sponsors.
- The conference is organized in a country which has reasonable visa rules and is LGBTQ+ friendly.
Online content
We encourage recording of talks and, when technically feasible, streaming the event. Online content makes the event accessible to individuals who may not be able to travel and attend in person.
Recorded talks are also a valuable resource for the Stan community after the conference.