On the 31st of August 2026 we had our first annual Swiss RSE day in Zurich with a full program and close to 150 attendees! It was a great time to catch up with all RSEs from all over Switzerland - here some quotes:
I really liked the diversity of the topics and also the quality of the presentations, especially the keynotes. Overall, it was a great experience.
Good program, good crowd. Thanks for organization.
This was an excellent event, thanks for organizing. It would perhaps have been good to have a little more time for breaks/socialising but that’s always difficult to fit in with a 1-day event. Overall a great and very well organized event.
A dinner party would’ve been nice. And less overlap in session. But overall great experience!
You can find most of the presentations on the agenda of the event.
We’re all listening!
Some Highlights
As can be expected, the discussionis around LLMs were dominating most of the hallway talks:
Hype? Help? Hell?
Having lived through the blockchain hype, it feels similar - with the big difference that people
are actually using it!
And that LLMs’ impact on our CO2 imprint is even bigger - much bigger!
https://rse.swiss/blog/2026_10_12_pictures_from_the_first_swiss_rse_day/pictures/20260831-A7RV-DSC06361.jpg Discussing which parts of our projects have the biggest CO2 impact
But there were many presentations about work done by RSEs, and there another theme emerged: we’re all human beings, and working together takes time! As the wise said: “if you want to go fast, go alone; if you want to go far, go together” I liked the realisation of the presenters and people in the room that sometimes, all a project needs is to have a coffee together…
Coffee or beer - your choice!
Another highlight was the funding assembly of RSE Switzerland! We thought it would be just a small set of people, but it turned out that many of you are willing to actively participate and think that RSE is an important, and long-term, part of research. Thanks to all of you, and we hope to see you at the AG on November the 17th!
We had a full room of people interested to be part of the RSE-CH Association!
And of course we had the HAT Linus explaining how to generate patterns on his hat.
More Feedback
Looking at the feedback you gave after the conference, the reviews are unanimous and very positive. As this was the first time we organised this event, we’ll keep the couple of pain points to be fixed:
- add breathing room between the talks
- fewer parallel tracks, more depth
- better presentation of posters / demos
One discussion which is nearly 50/50 is whether we should do a two-day conference instead of a one-day conference. For next year’s conference, we think we’ll make paying tickets for entries. But the RSE Swiss membership will give you a reduction, so look out for that!
Next Events
- General Assembly of RSE CH - November 17th - EPFL and zoom
- EnhanceR Symposium 2026 - November 30th
Pictures
You can find all the pictures of the event in the Photo Album.
Group picture of all RSEs in the conference