1. Log in to Slack

You can find the “Join Slack” option under the Society tab on the front page, or you could register following this link. 

1.2. Participate in online conference call

First and most important you should provide us with a timetable of when You are going to be available online during the two days of the Datathon. We expect that you would be available for mentorship at least a total of 6 hours spread in two time slots of three hours. Take some time to familiarize with the cases which are relevant to Your field of expertise. Also it would be nice to log in about once a day online in the Slack channel in the week starting on 11 April, so that You would interact and introduce Yourself with the participants.

1.3. Write preliminary guidelines for the cases you will be mentoring

You should notify us about which cases you prefer to mentor on (in Slack or over e-mail if there is more than one case at the Datathon). This statement does not limit You in any way to give advice on the other cases, but it is rather useful information for us as organizers.

In the weeks before the event, you will be given access to write in a template article in which You would state Your advice and suggestions to the participants of how to solve the case. We only ask that You write your name in front of every paragraph written by you in these articles so that there are no mix-ups with the other mentors. These guidelines should be ready about one week before the start of the event.

The case is really challenging and we invite you to give your guidelines into the linked case guidelines. Every mentor should write their name and chat name at the beginning of their texts so that there are no mix-ups with the other mentors.

1.4 Participate in the online discussions

Please, provide us with a timetable of when You are going to be available online during the three days of the Datathon. We expect that You would be available for mentorship at least a total of 6 hours spread in two-time slots of three hours. Take some time to familiarise with the cases which are relevant to Your field of expertise. Also, it would be nice to log in about once a day online in the Datathon chat channel in the week before the start of the Datathon, so that You would interact and introduce Yourself with the participants.

2. During the event

2.1. General directions

Be an expert. The main reason we are inviting You as a mentor is that You have shown brilliance in Your field of expertise. We expect to put Your best foot forward and push the data scientists at the Datathon to their success.
Be inspiring motivator in the darkest hour. Although the level of expertise of our participants has always been very high, we have noticed that from time to time some teams run into seemingly thick walls working under pressure and within short deadlines. You as a mentor should be the one to pull them out of their despair and lift their spirits.
Support all teams, who ask for Your advice. As there would be various cases and a lot of participants, Your mentorship would be sought by many teams. While leaving to Your discretion as to how to mentor them or to which team You would put most effort, we would ask You to turn Your attention to every request for advice.

2.2. Online participation

Following Your timetable (but preferably throughout the whole event) You should participate in the online chat (in the respective channels). You may join as many team channels as You want, You may communicate with the teams through whatever other means of communication You want.

Teams may write You in as a mentor of their solution (in the field “supervised by”) so You may see inside their article while it is still work in progress (and not accessible to the public).
As a mentor, You should provide feedback to as many teams as You feel comfortable after the event. Have in mind that many of the teams would continue working on their cases and Your support would help them tremendously.

2.3. Q&A live session

Normally around Saturday morning, there are many questions by the participants of the Datathon. That is why we organize live Q&A session on Saturday morning in which the industry experts and the mentors provide some clarifications about the cases and about the approaches to solve them. Your participation would be very beneficial to everyone.

3. At the end of the event

3.1. General principles

The event finishes with the mentors jurying all the team solutions by voting. This time we are most probably going for a two stage evaluation since we expect many participants (e.g. many teams).

3.2. Semi-finals – leader board

The teams will be assigned in groups for each case by uploading their interim results. Several teams which are ranked at the top of their leader boards will qualify for the final. The finalist teams are going to be announced and preparing for the final round where they need to login and present their solution.

3.3.Finals and closing

The finalist teams would have to provide and uploaded a video of up to 3 minutes to explain some details, to be evaluated by the Jury. The jury vote will be based mainly on the content of the articles of the team. The mentors will provide you with feedback below your article. Participants are also encouraged to leave comments and questions to other articles, when they are available. The team with the best collective rank wins. There will be streaming for the award ceremony so keep an eye on the website, schedule and the #announcement chat for pinned messages.

3.4. Voting instructions

In order to jury the teams (after the deadline):
1) go to your profile (click in top right corner of the webpage);
2) go to “Jury articles”;
3) you should be able to see links to all the teams, you are supposed to judge;
4) read all the articles, leave feedback in the comments (this is what the participants would like, and also, this enriches the content of the solution);
5) after you read them, put ranks in front of each team, where rank 1 is the best solution (according to you), second best is rank 2 and so on;
6) you should judge the teams solutions on the methodical correctness and rigorousness, but also originality of the approach. We may have metrics’ scores of the teams (depending on the case), but you should use this information for reference only.