Not long now until YSC2019 and we are so excited to welcome you to Canberra! To date we have received close to 70 registrations, which means we are able to deliver a solid program, offering fascinating talks on many different topics. Sessions include “Population and economics”, “Applied biostatistics and biostatistics in practice”, “Computer science” and much more.  And don’t forget the Career Session at the end of the first day! Hear from first class statisticians how they turned their passion for statistics into successful careers they love.
A tentative program is now available on the conference website.

Our international keynote speaker is Alison Hill. She is busy putting the material together for her keynote address and her workshop “Communicating with R Markdown”. Keep in mind that the workshop, held at Manuka Oval, is available to everyone, not just conference delegates. Alison will demystify how R Markdown works “under the hood”. Participants will learn practical tools and workflows to increase their efficiency and productivity using R Markdown (including RStudio IDE features and templates), while learning how to use some extension packages along the way. You don’t need to be an advanced R Markdown user to be able to take advantage of this workshop.

Another course held in conjunction with YSC2019 is our workshop “Maximising the use of Australian Bureau of Statistics Data Products and Analysis Tools” and we are grateful to the Australian Bureau of Statistics for generously sponsoring this event.The one-day workshop will have two components. First, it will provide an overview of the wide variety of data sources from the Australian Bureau of Statistics that are available for analysts. Secondly, part it will focus on how Table Builder can produce data-cubes for a standard analysis in R.

One of the conference highlights, no doubt, will be the Trivia Night, kindly organised by the Canberra Branch. Again, this event is open to everyone keen to show off their trivia skills, not just YSC2019 delegates and it would be great to see lots of members of the Canberra Branch there as well. Being held at Manuka Oval you’ll be in for a real treat, as Manuka Oval will be supplying the refreshments.

If you need another incentive to travel to Canberra to YSC2019 (though why would you?), there is an amazing Dreamworks Animation exhibitionstarting at the National Museum of Australia in September. This Exhibitionexplores the essential ingredients— character, story and world— of the studio’s most popular films. Through interviews, behind-the-scenes footage, original concept art, maquettes, digital interactive displays and more, visitors can follow the creative path from sketch to screen.So if you are a fan of all things animated, or Shrek, Hiccup, or the gang from “Madagascar”, you won’t be disappointed.

Perhaps, though, you are into film-making yourself? Then you should enter this year’s Video-Competition.  At this stage we haven’t received many entries so it doesn’t take a statistician to conclude that you’re in with a real chance of taking home the prize! Not only that, if you win, we’ll be tweeting about you, mentioning you on social media and featuring your video at the next YSC in 2021, trying very hard to make you as famous as Shrek in no time! So throw your hat in the ring and be part of this year’s conference, even if you can’t make it to our conference in person.

One thing we are still fine-tuning is the conference dinnerat the Kingston Hotel. We received some really good ideas from our YSC2019 committee members, ensuring that it will be a fun night and not “just” a dinner. Details will be revealed in due course. The registration fee for the dinner is only $20 for conference delegates, but the meal alone will be worth more than that – let alone the entertainment and the drinks- and you can’t put a price on the fantastic company! Please join us for a great night out!

See you in Canberra!

Marie-Louise Rankin
SSA Executive Officer