CodeChella Madrid, My Summer Plans in Europe, and a Video Review of my new Apple Vision Pro

Only a handful of tickets left for CodeChella ("while supplies last")

This is the last week of exams for me. TAMU final is been graded as we speak, and later today is the Baylor exam. This semester has gone better than most for which I’m grateful. But it’s winding down now. Last weekend was my daughters’ prom, which was special for me and their mom (and them). And then in a few weeks, my oldest daughter will graduate from high school. And the next morning, I’m gone for a while. I have a few things lined up that I wanted to share. So this is more of an update than anything, but I thought I’d do it anyway.

Summer in Europe

CodeChella in Madrid

After my daughter’s graduation, the next morning at 5am my wheels lift off to take me from Waco to Madrid, Spain because on May 27th and concluding on May 30th, Mixtape Sessions with CUNEF will be hosting a live workshop in Madrid called “CodeChella Madrid”. You can sign up for it here. We have sold 82 tickets out of 90, so if you’re wanting to come, hurry.¹ “While supplies last” means something here because we have a hard cap at 90 people due to the fact this auditorium only seats 90 people.

But the prices, you say? The prices for students/postdocs/predocs are $160 and faculty $310 (plus eventbrite fees and taxes). And as of this writing (written Tuesday afternoon, but posted on Wednesday), we have 6 available “student” class tickets, and 2 “faculty” class tickets. It’s looking like a sold out crowd! I predict by the end of day Wednesday, we are all sold out.

Kyle Butts and I will be speaking, as will Mark Anderson and Dan Rees. Thank you to CUNEF for helping us find an auditorium to seat 90 people! I think it’s going to be a lot of fun and it will cover difference-in-differences and synthetic control, and will include coding sessions.

Turino in June

After the conclusion of CodeChella Madrid, I catch a plane and head over to my airbnb in Turino Italy because for the month of June, I will be faculty in residence (I think that’s what they call me) at the University of Turino and Collegio Carlo Alberto. This will be my second time to be in Turino for an extended period of time; I taught a difference in differences workshop there, and attended a dissertation defense, I think in November 2022. Turino is absolutely beautiful, and University of Turino is where Vilfredo Pareto was a faculty member. And Joseph-Louis Lagrange has a street named after him. I’m hoping that I can find some wet cement on that street and solve for the first first order conditions of a utility maximization problem with a Lagrangean function.

I’m very excited this time around to learn more about the city and soak in the history, as well as meet students and faculty and work with coauthors. Diego Gambetta is in the social and political science department there and he has written excellent books on crime that I wish more economists knew about. One of them is a fantastic book about how criminals communicate with each other using signaling principles. That book had a big impact on how I thought about markets for sex work under digitalized markets like had happened over the last two and a half decades. So I’m looking forward to meeting him, but there are many others too including my friend Marina Della Guista, Maria Laura Di Tomasso and Giovanni Mastrobuoni. And that’s just the faculty I know; I’m looking forward to getting to know even more.

Scotland in July

After I leave Turino, I go to Scotland to teach a weeklong workshop in Stirling for PhD students across Scotland. I’ll be teaching about unconfoundedness and instrumental variables. Four long days followed by a keynote for a crime conference. It should be a lot of fun. ill be in Stirling where William Wallace was from and fought famous battles.

Three week writing retreat

And then to top off the summer in Europe, I’m going to have an actual vacation. No workshops. Just a three week writing vacation to work on the Mixtape, and hopefully finish the revision. I’m torn between Terraasini, Italy which is on the island of Sicily — a place I’ve always wanted to visit, but have never gotten to go — or the Basque Country (home of synthetic control) but am undecided. I’ve narrowed it down to those two places. Both of them are coastal, and I think both will be romantic places for me to write. I am a little torn. My love of Alberto Abadie, Spain and synthetic control calls me to the Basque Country. But my love of Italy calls me to Sicily.

I’ll be deciding I’m sure a while longer. I’m sure CodeChella Madrid is going to pull me towards synth, I mean the Basque Country, and then I’m sure a month in Turino is going to make me want to try Sicily, a lifelong dream. Plus I found an airbnb for $800 all in in Terrasini, and it’s right on the water. So I’m kind of leaning towards that one. Three weeks in Sicily/Basque Country! Here’s two videos of them both.

The plan is to bring the girls over, but it’s unclear if that’s going to be during the Turino leg or the Basque Country/Sicily leg. But one thing I do kind of like about the Sicily adventure is that the host of the airbnb literally said I can use his car if I want. Use his car! Anyway, tune in again as I am paralyzed by indecision.

Northwestern Causal Inference Workshop

And the last part is the last week of July through the first week of August, I’ll be in Chicago helping Bernie Black host the Northwestern causal inference workshop. There’s two of them: the main one is July 29 to August 2nd. And the advanced one is August 4 to 7th. Below are the speakers — it’s a bunch of all-stars. The top is the main workshop and the bottom is the advanced.

Main workshop:

Advanced workshop:

That advanced lineup is awesome. I’m psyched to see Bacon and Peter. Chris too.

Video of Me Using Apple Vision Pro for Referee Reports and Writing

And finally, I thought I’d share with you a video about my new Apple Vision Pro. Yes, that’s right I got myself an Apple Vision Pro. And I made a video of how I’m using it to do productive stuff which is to write and work on referee reports. It’s about a 10 minute video that I filmed while inside the thing as the goggles are a camera that shows you what I see (though the video can’t do it justice tbh).

But I thought it might be an interesting review for readers who are academics to see another academic trying to use it for something related to work, which is writing a report. I don’t actually show myself writing the report, but I spent the last two days writing my report this way, and it was absolutely a success far exceeding what I assumed it would be like. So I thought seeing the workflow would be interesting, but it has a few elements. They are:

1. Put myself on the dark side of moon to be completely immersed in an environment without distractions

2. Put my classical music on which I use to block out other thoughts and distractions and have ever since grad school

3. Open ChatGPT and set it to “Voice” so that I can use it as a voice memo device that collects all my thoughts about the paper as I work

4. Mirror my computer and then create a second monitor using the “Splitscreen” app which I then use to put the paper up beside my main screen

5. Open Apple Books where I have already stored the paper and put it on the other side of me so that I have on one side the figures and tables open and then on the other side the article itself

6. Then read, highlight the article, use ChatGPT to keep my running thoughts (though I can also type directly since I’ve already mirrored the screen), and just go over the thing a few times.

I found that using ChatGPT as this secretary who takes in everything I say and then summarizes it for me at the end has been a huge help. I don’t use it to write the report; I just use it to keep my notes for me and then later synthesize everything I said so I have it in one place.

Anyway, it’s been a huge success and below the paywall is my video of me doing it. I think tomorrow I will do the same thing with an explainer, adding a video at the bottom of me explaining it again so you can see me using it. I figure the more people see it being used for work related matters, the better they can be informed as to whether this is a useful investment or not. But already I can tell it’s the right piece of technology for me.