While we hope you find the presentations interesting and inspiring, we've also got a variety of diversions lined up for you during this celebratory conference.
Celebratory journal issue: With thanks to our sponsor Sage Publishing, we include a special issue of Environment and Planning B celebrating 21 years of GeoComputation. This includes an editorial by our keynote speaker Mike Batty and a reflective portmanteau by a sample of GeoComputational academics, familiar and new.
Presentation prize: The Bartlett Centre for Advanced Spatial Analysis (CASA) have kindly sponsored a prize this year for the best PhD presentation. There's a form in your pack; please do vote for your favourite, and place the form in the box by reception before the final keynotes on Thursday.
MicroBit + competition: With thanks to the generous sponsorship of the Leeds Institute for Data Analytics (LIDA) we're delighted to include a BBC MicroBit in the pack, to celebrate 21 years of GeoComputation. The MicroBit is an initiative to teach computer programming to young people across the UK. All the instructions you need are in the box, but essentially if you plug the MicroBit into a laptop or other computer, and go to the coding page, you can generate either Scratch-like Javascript or MicroPython programs that you save/drag onto the MicroBit to work.
Please do share your programs (there's a 'share' button when you write a program, which will generate a URL); mail them to contact-us@geocomputation.org or tweet them with #GeoComp2017 or to our Twitter feed: there'll be prizes for the best!
After the conference, please do pass the MicroBit on to a young person if you don't want to keep it yourself, or we'll have a box by reception for unwanted MicroBits which we'll donate to a local youth group.
Book orders/R Workshop: In your pack, you'll also find a discount form for publications from CRC Press including the recent "Spatial Microsimulation for R", and for Sage's GeoComputation: A Practical Primer book. We're holding a mini-workshop on GeoComputation with R entitled "Spatial Data and the Tidyverse" on Monday evening between the conference and the evening event, and there's still a few places left if you'd like to register. We'll be having a launch for the "Spatial Microsimulation for R" book during the evening event on Monday.
Monday, Evening Buffet: With thanks to our sponsors, the RGS/IBG GIS and Quantitative Methods Research Group we'll be having an evening event in the University's Great Hall on Monday night (6pm for food at 6.45). We'll also be having a launch for the "Spatial Microsimulation for R" book during the evening.
Tuesday, Explore! Tuesday night is your own, to explore Leeds, a lively and entertaining city. We've drafted up a brief guide to the nightlife of Leeds to help.
Wednesday, Dinner and Live Music Coding: The conference dinner this year is at the Hilton DoubleTree Hotel (7pm, or walking down from the Parkinson steps at 6.30pm). Before the food, we're delighted to say that local algorave coder Belisha Beacon will be doing a live coding event. You can read more about her in this MixMag article.
Thursday, Fieldtrip to Manchester: The conference ends at mid-day on the 7th, after which some of us will be heading to the heart of the industrial revolution: Manchester! We'll be going to the Museum of Science and Industry where they have various items from the early history of computing, including a working Jacquard Loom and a working renovation/replica of the Manchester Small-Scale Experimental Machine aka "Baby", the world's first stored-program computer. It's all quite informal, as we're now going by train, so if you'd like to join us, we'll be announcing details on the last day of the conference.