conference_darwin

A library for building conference schedules using a genetic algorithm. Read more about the motivations and goals of this project in Using a Genetic Algorithm to Optimize Developer Conference Schedules and about how the first application of this algorithm in real life turned out in the postmortem article.

Usage

The project contains an example (the exact code that scheduled DartConf 2018). Clone this repository, cd to the directory, and run the algorithm like this:

dart example/example.dart

This will run for ~30 minutes (but will print out each 1000 generation). You can modify example/example.dart to run less generations and/or print out results more often.

When ready, copy-paste or create your own executable (by convention in bin/something.dart). You mainly want to change the list of available sessions, and the list of custom evaluators.

final evaluator = new ScheduleEvaluator(yourSessions, [yourEvaluators]);

You might not need to touch the rest of the code.

Sessions are provided in a list, with each session looking something like this:

new Session('Making Dart fast on mobile', 30,
    tags: ["flutter", "deepdive", "day1" "after_dart_main"],
    avoid: ["deepdive", "keynote"],
    seek: ["flutter"]),

The session above takes 30 minutes. The tags are all optional and tell the algorithm what the topics are (Flutter in this case), what's the style (deepdive), which day to schedule for (first) and which talks are required to come before it (everything tagged with "dart_main"). Look at lib/src/session.dart for a complete documentation of tags which have special meaning (e.g. "energetic", "exciting", "day_end", "keynote").

When organizing the conference, you will probably want to keep your talks in a spreadsheet like this:

DartConf 2018 program	Time needed	Tags	Avoid neighbors	Seek neighbors
Let’s live code in Flutter	30	flutter, energetic, demo, exciting, flutter_main	demo
Flutter / Angular code sharing deep dive	30	flutter, angulardart, platform, deepdive, after_flutter_main, after_angulardart_main, codeshare, after_apptree	deepdive, codeshare
How to build good packages and plugins	30	platform
Keynote	45	keynote, platform, energetic, exciting, day1	deepdive
Unconference	120	day_end, day2
Making Dart fast on mobile	30	platform, flutter, deepdive, flutter_fast, after_dart_main	deepdive	flutter
What's new with AngularDart	30	angulardart, architecture, deepdive, angulardart_main, after_dart_main	architecture, deepdive
Dart language — what we’re working on	30	platform, exciting, day1, dart_main		platform
Effective Dart + IntelliJ	30	platform, tooling	keynote

It is then easy to generate the new Schedule(...) code ahead via a simple spreadsheet formula. Here's the one I used:

="new Session('"&A2&"', "&D2&", tags: ["&K2&"], avoid: ["&L2&"], seek: ["&M2&"]),"

When you're ready to run the scheduling algorithm again, just copy paste the row containing the formula into your Dart file, between the session brackets.

final sessions = <Session>[
  // copy-paste here
];

Of course it's perfectly possible to modify your script to do this automatically (e.g. through package:googleapis if you're using Google Spreadsheets or through a database connector if you track your WIP program in a database). You can even plug this into your continuous integration and have your schedule auto-regenerated any time the inputs change.