About the workshop

The IIF special workshop on Open Source Forecasting is a two-day event scheduled to take place immediately before the ISF 2025 conference in Beijing. The workshop will host 30 participants, selected by invitation to ensure a diverse group of professionals from academia, industry, and government. To encourage new discussions and ideas, invitees have been chosen to represent a mix of career stages, programming language expertise, and countries.

The workshop will focus on recent advancements and potential avenues in open-source forecasting software. It aims to establish best practices and encourage collaboration among developers to advance the development and use of open-source tools in forecasting.

This event is limited to 30 people, and attendance will be by invitation.

Workshop aims

The workshop will focus on recent advancements and potential avenues in open-source forecasting software. It aims to establish best practices and encourage collaboration among developers to advance the development and use of open-source tools in forecasting. There is no registration fee for the workshop, and travel support is available for Early Career Forecasters (ECFs) and invitees from low-SES backgrounds (by application).

Workshop topics

• Forecasting frameworks design (fable, sktime, gluonts, statsforecast, etc.)
• Large forecasting models (foundation models, neural networks, etc.)
• Exploratory time series analysis (data, visualization, evaluation, etc.)
• Future developments for forecasting software (current plans, open problems, etc.)
• Forecasting at scale (hierarchical, big data, optimization, etc.)
• Driving innovations in forecasting (new developments, their implementation and promotion)

Schedule

• 25th June 6.00 pm – 8.30 pm: Welcome reception dinner
• 26th June 9.00 am – 5.00 pm: Workshop (day 1)
• 27th June 9.00 am – 5.00 pm: Workshop (day 2)

A complete program can be found here.

Venue

The workshop will be at Beihang University in the Haidian district of Beijing, China. The workshop will also run hybrid to enable participation from invitees unable to travel.

Getting there

There are regular trains to the venue at Beihang University. We recommend taking the Beijing Metro line 10 or 27 to stop at 西土城 (Xītǔchéng) station which is nearest to Beihang University and the Vision Hotel. Alternatively, the Beijing Metro line 13 can be taken to 知春路 (Zhīchūn Lù / Zhichun Road) station, which is also nearby.

At Beihang University (Xueyuan Road Campus), the workshop is at Block A in the New Main Building (北京航空航天大学(学院路校区)新主楼-A座).

You can navigate to the building with:

• Amap: https://surl.amap.com/3KJZILn1p30b
• Baidu Maps: https://j.map.baidu.com/14/goW
• OpenStreetMap: https://www.openstreetmap.org/?#map=19/39.979603/116.346057
• Google Maps: https://maps.app.goo.gl/qnWoCsGgQVfSVQDc8