Please join Charlottesville Data Science for the talk Accuracy Isn’t Everything: Good Models are Lurking Everywhere from Evzenie Coupkova, a mathematics PhD from Purdue. In this talk, instead of focusing on one “best” model, Evzenie will explore the broad landscape of possible models, consider what it means for a machine learning model to be “good” for a given problem, and examine the trade-offs between predictive accuracy and other desirable characteristics, like generalization and interpretability.
We’ll be gathering in person at the UVA School of Data Science on the evening of Thursday, October 8. We look forward to seeing you there!
beCamp 2026 is less than three weeks away
beCamp 2026, Charlottesville’s annual “un-conference”, is less than three weeks away! If you haven’t been before, beCamp is a conference planned by the people who show up. There are no pre-selected speakers or sessions. Participants collaboratively build the conference agenda together.
We’ll gather on the evening of Friday, October 2 to pitch sessions, vote for our favorites, and assemble the conference schedule. Then, on Saturday, October 3, we’ll reconvene and run the conference we just planned the day before!
beCamp is completely free to attend. There’s no better way to connect with the local tech community, share what you’re interested in, and learn something new!
434 Startup Series
Are you thinking about founding a tech startup? If so, check out the Startup Series from 434, Charlottesville’s startup accelerator. The Startup Series will provide you with a background in and some experience with the “nuts and bolts” of starting, funding, and managing a scalable, tech-driven company.
The first session starts today, and additional sessions will run each Monday for the next seven weeks. Sessions are free and lunch is provided.
Cool stuff from the Charlottesville Data Science community
Mike Pfaffenberger, an AI Engineer at Pydantic, published Linguistic Drift at the Frontier, an article exploring how frontier LLMs are influencing language use over time, possibly in a self-reinforcing feedback loop.
Carson Sweet published The Agentic Thundering Herd, an article exploring how AI agents can exhibit emergent “herding” behavior, and how to mitigate it.
Andrew Boyd of Standard Agents figured out how to get Apple Touch ID hardware working with Linux — a technical feat that’s apparently never been done. Not “data science”, per se, but still cool!
More upcoming events around Charlottesville
Thursday, September 17: CvilleBioHub holds its fifth annual BioDiscovery Summit, “From Spark to Scale,” at the Irving Theater in the CODE Building.
Friday, September 18: The UVA School of Data Science hosts Ranking in Networks: Models, Leadership, and AI Preferences, a talk by Jean-Gabriel Young of the University of Vermont. The talk explores extending Bradley-Terry ranking models, including a look at how large language models often hold multiple, internally inconsistent preference orderings rather than one latent ranking.
Friday, September 18 – Saturday, September 19: UVA’s Department of Systems and Information Engineering celebrates its 50th anniversary with an open house, networking receptions, and interactive sessions spread over two days.
Thursday, September 24: The Charlottesville Rust Meetup holds an online event called Rust Cells — Interior Mutability from Rust Core to Tock OS, providing a look at Rust's cell types and how they solve embedded-systems problems in the Tock operating system.
Tuesday, September 29: Cville AI Explorers hosts an AI Design Bake-Off at Studio IX. The group will split into small teams, then spend 45 minutes redesigning the Cville AI Explorers website using a variety of AI front-end design tools. No previous design experience required.
Thursday, October 1: AFCEA Central Virginia (CeVA) holds its third annual Data Centric Summit (DCS26) at the Irving Theater in the CODE Building. The summit will focus on the technologies, architectures, and operational practices shaping the next generation of data‑driven decision-making across defense, government, and industry.
Friday, October 2 – Saturday, October 3: beCamp 2026, one of the longest-running and most storied events in the Charlottesville technology scene, returns for its 20th year. beCamp is Charlottesville’s annual “unconference”, an event fully planned and run by the people who show up. Join fellow members of the Charlottesville tech community to connect, share, and spend a day learning something new. There’s nothing else quite like beCamp in town!
Friday, October 23: The UVA Darden School of Business hosts the inaugural Innovate@Darden event. Innovate@Darden will bring together students and practitioners for a day of dialogue around emerging trends, career pathways, and real-world applications of tech and AI across industries.