A semi-automated conference assistant

#api #conference #dimensions #python #research-analytics #science

A couple of weeks ago I went to the excellent Move Or Perish—Scientific Trajectories, Inclusion, And Inequality, And Their Consequences For Transformative Science workshop in Vienna. While getting ready for it, I found myself asking some familiar questions. Who are the speakers? What is their background? How to best contextualise the topics being discussed?

Nowadays scientists tend specialise in highly niche areas, so it doesn't take much for people to feel they are getting out of their confort zone, when attending a conference. So many times I wish I had an automated digital conference assistant.

Brainstoming with the Dimensions API

These are big question I know, but I wonder if a simple piece of software could help. To put it simply, a software that would sift through the available online information about the speakers and the conference topics - and give it back to me while I'm attending a talk or event.

Thought I could use the Dimensions DSL API to build a simple proof of concept. Check out the Colab Notebook for more details.

The basic workflow is:

Enter speakers names
Match them to Dimensions researchers IDs
Run common analyses using the identifiers

For example, see below a resulting co-authorship network of the Move Or Perish workshop speakers.

The source file also available on Github: 2022-06-17-conference-assistant-queries-SHARED.ipynb