Announcing the Quantopian Workshops

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edited

Our meetups have been a really great way to present some of the content from the Lecture Series, but we wanted to give attendees the ability to really dive into the material and get their hands dirty.

To that end we are launching a series of in-person full-day workshops in which we will alternate between lecture presentations and hands-on exercises. The goal is to give you an understanding of computational finance building blocks that you can use to further your own knowledge going forward. The curriculum we use has been vetted by professors at universities including Harvard, MIT, Stanford, and Cornell ORIE Manhattan.

We are planning more workshops in the future, including many international locations. Let us know where you’re located and we’ll see if we can set something up.

UPDATE: I've set up a form to record future responses. I've already collected what everyone has said on this thread, so no need to submit if you've already commented.

http://tinyurl.com/nlyt555

UPDATE: Our next workshop will be in Mt. View, CA on the 15th of October. If you are interested in attending, please RSVP here: **https://thequantopianworkshopathackerdojo.splashthat.com/.

More workshops are coming soon! Stay tuned.

Thanks,
Delaney

Disclaimer

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56 responses

Michael Bennett

Any plans for Sydney, Australia?

Deleted User

Any plans for Hong Kong?

Andrew Czeizler

i second one for sydney, Australia!!

Rhys Black

London, UK!

Delaney Mackenzie

Hey everyone, thanks for responding. We're in very early planning stages on everything, so no promises, but I wanted to give you an update on our current plans.

We're looking at options to be in London and Paris in early-mid February.

We may be in Singapore mid-march, and are looking at the feasibility of Hong-Kong and Sydney visits in the same time frame.

The more interest we can get for these events the easier it is for us to make them happen. If you know folks who may be interested in attending, please let us know and we'll go from there.

Thanks,
Delaney

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Matthieu Lestel

Definitely willing to attend if you organize one in Paris

Prague or Vienna? :)

Chicago!

Chicago!

Singapore

Chicago!!

Hey Delaney,

You wrote:

The curriculum we use has been vetted by professors at universities
including Harvard, MIT, Stanford, and Cornell ORIE Manhattan.

Did those institutions allow Quantopian to use their names as endorsements? From what I know it seems very unlikely that Harvard, MIT or Stanford would endorse any curriculum from a third-party like Quantopian. Perhaps marketing overreach?

Karim Bhanji

Are you planning to record these session and posting it?

Delaney Mackenzie

Hello again,

Chicago is definitely on the shortlist, we'll probably make it out there sometime in the spring. There are no immediate plans for Prague or Vienna, but this is all interest based and if we determine that enough people would participate to make the travel worthwhile, we could definitely figure something out.

Karim, we are unfortunately not planning to record the workshops at this point. We are keeping the workshops in-person and capping attendee numbers to focus on providing the best experience possible. However, we understand that not everybody will be able to make it to the workshops, so we are also considering options for some kind of online course and certification. It's very early stage, but we'll make announcements when we figure out how that might work.

Thanks,
Delaney

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Peter Bakker

sydney or melbourne would be great

Ravi Aggarwal

Chicago!

James Gilbert

So, Quantopian seems to require 2 things, knowledge of finance/econometrics/basic stock trading principles, and knowledge of how to code in PYTHON(or how to code in general and the ability to learn PYTHON). Does Quantopian have plans to put as much effort into helping people learn PYTHON as they put into teaching finance and trading concepts. There are 20 "lectures" explaining various finance and trading concepts, and 0 dedicated to PYTHON. There is an hour long video explaining linear regression, which is clearly labeled and easily accessible form the help menu. compared to 3 sentences buried in a comment on the community boards, that seek to explain the difference between filtering and screening pipeline results. I understand that this is a free site, and as such the amount of training is limited, what I don't get is the immense difference in effort between these 2 areas. From what I can gather, the hope was that the community board would be a source of help, information, and idea sharing. It is that, but ultimately isn't all that helpful to people with limited experience. Quantopian seems to have accepted and addressed this, but only for the finance and trading side of the equation.

Sally Sanford

@James,

There are many great, free resources for learning python. For example, this Harvey Mudd course hosted by edX, this Lynda course (free if you can finish it in a week) or any of these:

I have a more comprehensive list hiding in my folders that, when found, I will use to update this short list.

However, you have a legitimate gripe if you were to compare building out your own python environment and learning the quirks and limitations of the Quantopian sandbox. For me, it was far, far easier to develop my own environment and a whole let less stressful debugging my errors instead of conforming to Quantopian's rather limiting implementations of both data and code. YMMV.

Spencer Singleton

@James,

I recognized and have used a few of the ones Sally recommended. I would also recommend watching Sentdex's video's which are more Python focused and are made in the Quantopian IDE https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLQVvvaa0QuDeN06s5ervxTfTcVvt-xpZN. As a side note I had never coded in Python before Quantopian. I learned from just messing around with the sample algos in addition to algos people posted in addition to using some of the resources Sally recommended, and picking up a Python book from the library. Ironically though recently ideas which can't be implemented in Qunatopian "sandbox" as Sally Sanford put it have arisen. I'd recommend that before you spend to time to learn the IDE you know for certain your ideas can be implemented. Just my advice which is worth about as much as it cost.

Spencer Singleton

If Quantopian did a workshop somewhere in Texas I would love to attend. Doesn't seem like there are many fellow Texans on here, but regardless I will cast my vote for a workshop in Texas.

Kyle Goldman

Austin please!

Joshua Franklin

Southern California! bring finance coding to the hippies and everyone else :)

Ariel Rodriguez

New York City

Shane Ogren

New York City!

Deleted User

HI :)
If you're planning to go to Paris. You can come to my school l'Ecole Centrale Paris, one of the best engineering school in France and Europe. It is the chair of BNP Paribas quantitative finance. We could provide everything you need, a lecture room, food and drinks, and moreover, many student of my school are very interested in your platform :)
Feel free to contact me :)
mail: [email protected]

idriss diane

+1 For Ecole Centrale Paris :) , as it was my school and I know they can provide all what you need for a succesful workshop

RP Prasad

Dallas, Texas

Delaney Mackenzie

Hey everyone,

Thanks for all your continued suggestions. I've set up a form to record future responses. I've already collected what everyone has said on this thread, so no need to submit if you've already commented.

http://tinyurl.com/nlyt555

I'll be in touch with those who mentioned ECP. Happy thanksgiving if you celebrate, otherwise happy Thursday EST!

Thanks,
Delaney

Disclaimer

Za Do

+20 to Melbourne Australia

Houston?

London/Oslo

Tel Aviv

Hello, I'm in Boston and was very interested in attending until I saw the $675 price for a 1 day seminar. Why is the cost so high?

Randy Pratt

Phoenix AZ would be great.

Delaney Mackenzie

Hey Sam,

We appreciate that $675 if not a small amount, and we did think a lot about the correct direction to go here. We want to clarify that what we’re charging for is events in addition to our normal schedule. We are still running the same free meetups and will be presenting the same lecture content as before. The workshops were built in response to the many requests we have gotten from our community for this type of hands-on education, and after noticing the success of this material when presented at top schools. Given how expensive other workshops teaching the same content are, we’re confident that we can offer the best education at a below market rate.

In addition to the hundreds of hours that we put into building these workshops, we use the profits to enable more free events in previously unreachable locations. Because of the workshops, we hope to be able to fund trips to Europe and Asia. We’re also experimenting with ideas for a cheaper online course option, and welcome your continued feedback.

Thanks,
Delaney

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Sam Burck

Thanks for explaining everything. Maybe I will go to a workshop after checking out more of the free events, as it does sound like a good opportunity.

Suminda Dharmasena

Can you record the workshops and upload the videos on Youtube after some laps in time. Say 2 workshops before the last. This way who need to attend the most current can pay while others can also access this after some time. It will be a compromise between totally free and totally commercial. Also as an alternative you can perhaps make the courses available through https://www.coursera.org/.

Gilberto Allende

Mexico City :D
We need it please!!!

Willian Molinari

Any plan for doing it online? We have a lot of people following Quantopian around the world. :)

L. B

Any lectures near or in Miami Florida USA

Mark Segal

Here is a vote for Toronto!

Delaney Mackenzie

Update, we're doing a bay area tour in early Jan and will be holding workshops in San Francisco and Mountain View. More updates will be coming about workshops in February and March.

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ree tewe

I vote Toronto.

Hao Zhang

I vote Sydney!

Kelly Elmstrom

Update: Our next workshop will be in New York City on January 23rd. RSVP here: https://thequantopianworkshopnyc.splashthat.com/.

Workshops in London, Paris, Sydney and more are coming soon! Stay tuned.

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Kelly Elmstrom

Update: Our next workshop will be in London on 6th of February. If you are interested in attending, please RSVP here: https://thequantopianworkshopinlondon.splashthat.com/.

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Kunal Mathur

Frankfurt, Germany !

Volodymyr Nepiuk

Kiev would be really nice )

Connor Frol

Update: Our next workshop will be in Sydney on the 18th of June. If you are interested in attending, please RSVP here: https://thequantopianworkshopinsydney.splashthat.com/.

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Miles Adkins

Chicago?

Delaney Mackenzie

Hello everyone,

We're starting to accelerate our workshops program due to demand, so please keep track of https://www.quantopian.com/workshops as we add new events. We're hoping to be able to hold more regular events in each city, rather than rotating around through a large list. Among the cities we already have plans for this are:

Sydney, Singapore, Boston, NYC, Dallas, London, and Paris

We're also working on Chicago, Genoa, the Bay Area, and would like to get to Toronto and other parts of Europe at some point. Please keep letting me know locations as it helps us prioritize new events.

Thanks,
Delaney

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Daniel X

Toronto plz, we are so close to you guys. We could have a Toronto meetup event first.

Kelly Elmstrom

Hi everyone,

We have just scheduled our next introduction to algorithmic trading workshop for October 15th in Mountain View, CA. To learn more and RSVP, go to: https://thequantopianworkshopathackerdojo.splashthat.com/.

Thanks,

Kelly

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Hussein Nasser

Another vote for London

Delaney Mackenzie

Hello all,

Just a reminder that we currently have active workshop franchises in many of the cities people are asking about. Namely Sydney, London, Singapore, San Francisco, NYC, and Boston. We are working on expanding the cities in which we run regular workshops, we're currently doing them about once every 3 months in each location. You can find events near you at our events page by sorting by location https://www.quantopian.com/events

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Jingshu Zhu

Chicago！Beijing！

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